Emblem of Freedom

It took the Continental Congress six years and three committees to decide what the United States should look like on paper.

The first committee was named on July 4, 1776, the same day the Declaration was adopted: Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Their ideas were full of Biblical and classical scenes, and Congress set them aside. A second committee tried in 1780 and a third in 1782. Congress then handed the whole file to its secretary, Charles Thomson. He made the American bald eagle the centerpiece and wrote the description Congress adopted on June 20, 1782.

That description is written in words, not drawn, so every engraver since has cut the eagle a little differently.

This print takes the engraver's side of that tradition. The eagle is drawn in cream line on a near-black navy ground, every feather built from fine parallel strokes. The shield on its breast carries stars over red and cream stripes, the only color in the picture. An olive branch hangs from one talon and a sheaf of arrows from the other, and thin rays climb from the eagle's head toward an arc of seven stars. It reads like the back of an old banknote, scaled up for a study or the wall above a desk.