Huge crowds had gathered on the Capitol grounds that morning despite Walter’s attempt to understate Freedom’s completion. Earlier he had vetoed plans for a grand celebration with speechmaking, and had instead authorized a sober 35-gun salute, one cannon report for each state including those in rebellion—first from Capitol Hill and then from each of the dozen U.S. Army encampments encircling the capital. A worker draped a flag across Freedom’s shoulders when the work was finished. “Freedom now stands on the Dome of the Capitol of the United States,” wrote Commissioner of Public Buildings Benjamin B. French, “may she stand there forever not only in form, but in spirit.”
Except for a few months in 1993 when it was removed for restorations, the Statue of Freedom has, as French hoped, stood atop the Dome as both a physical and allegorical reminder of America’s most fundamental principle. It also would have reminded everyone who attended the modest ceremony 150 years ago just why, exactly, they were fighting a Civil War.
Ironically, the man with ultimate authority over the Capitol project was Mississippi’s Jefferson Davis, then Secretary of War. Davis rejected Crawford’s cap for Freedom as too provocative an allusion to contemporary debates about slavery, calling it “inappropriate to a people who were born free and would not be enslaved.” Crawford’s subsequent revision replaced the cap with an eagle headdress, feathers pointed along the center, evoking Native American culture. Critics panned the new design, but it satisfied the future Confederate president.
Reid, who had been freed by the District of Columbia Emancipation Act of April 1862 and was self-employed in Washington, undoubtedly heard the cannon fire that signaled the installation of his greatest professional achievement. “Was there a prophecy in that moment when the slave became the artist, and with rare poetic justice, reconstructed the beautiful symbol of freedom for America?” asked a New York Tribune reporter who, like others, could not escape the incongruence of a slave casting the Statue of Freedom.
The nervous architect Walter, meanwhile, returned to his office as ceremonial cannon fire punctuated his remaining workday. His Capitol expansion plans were still unfinished—like the larger work of the nation struggling to end a fratricidal war and fulfill the promise Freedom’s statue represented.
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