Statue of Freedom
Walt Whitman seemed fascinated by it. The Statue of Freedom’s top-most section was put into place in the early days of December 1863. Whitman’s “Genius of Liberty” was on top of the Capitol Dome.
From the Richmond Daily Dispatch December 11, 1863:
The “Crowning of a Statu[e] of Freedom” in Washington.
–A very remarkable affair came off in Washington on Friday last. It was nothing less than the crowning of a Statue of Freedom on the Capitol of a nation which has no habeas corpus[,] twenty bastiles, and legions of Government spies. Very apropos to the proceeding was the appearance of several of the Russian fleet in the river at the time. The Washington Star says:
The crowd which gathered numbered several thousand, and we noticed that a large number of opera glasses were brought into play; whilst many of the windows of the dwellings around the square were filled with ladies, glass in hand, viewing the motions of the workmen on the scaffolding as they placed the head on the figure.
About 11½ o’clock A. M., the upper portion of the figure, which had been placed in a large box near the central entrance to the Capitol, was attached to the hoisting apparatus, and was speedily raised to the roof of the building. Here it was attached to a rope leading from the beam which has been used in raising the iron pieces of the dome, and was soon at the summit of the dome and at the foot of the tholes.
Here the hoisting apparatus on the platform on top of the huge cage or scaffold work was brought into play, four men working the crank, soon having the head of the statue at the proper height, and it was swung to its place, where it was secured, and the work was completed.
Immediately that the head was adjusted, the hoisting of a flag signaled to all below that the statue was complete, and cheer after cheer filled the air from the throats of the large concourse present.
The prisoners in the Old Capitol and Carroll prisons also gave several cheers, but some think that they were intended to be, as Artemus styles it, “sarcastic.” At the same time a battery of artillery from Camp Barry, stationed on the grounds east of the Capitol, fired a salute of thirty five guns (one for each State,) which was replied to by similar salutes from the forts around the city.
The Dispatch noted restrictions on liberty in the North. Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president, was involved with the creation of the Statue of Freedom. As Secretary of War in the Pierce administration, Davis was “was in charge of the Capitol construction and its decorations”. He forbid the statue’s designer from putting a liberty cap (a old Roman symbol of a freed slave) on the statue’s head. The helmet with feathers was the replacement.
