Statue of Freedom

The bronze figure at the top of the Capitol dome was cast partly by people who were not free. According to the Architect of the Capitol, Thomas Crawford, an American sculptor working in Rome, was commissioned in May 1855 to design a statue for the dome. His first version included a liberty cap; Secretary of War Jefferson Davis objected to it, citing its association with freed slaves, and Crawford's crested-helmet design was approved in April 1856. Crawford died in 1857, and his widow shipped the plaster model to Washington in six crates in 1858; it arrived by late March 1859. Clark Mills began casting the statue in five main sections in 1860, and by the end of 1862 it was finished with the help of Philip Reid, an enslaved man. The AOC gives the cost of the statue, excluding installation, as $23,796.82. It was raised in sections, the final head and shoulders going up on 2 December 1863 to a 35-gun salute. Freedom stands 19 feet 6 inches tall on an 18.5-foot cast-iron pedestal topped by a globe carrying the motto E Pluribus Unum, and the helmet crest rises about 288 feet above the East Front Plaza. Nine stars encircle the helmet, and ten platinum-tipped bronze points protect it from lightning. The roughly 15,000-pound plaster model is now the centrepiece of Emancipation Hall in the Capitol Visitor Center, where visitors can see details impossible to see from the ground.