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| December 2, 1863 |
Today is the 150th Anniversary of the crowning of the Capitol Dome with Freedom. She is a colossal bronze figure (designed by Thomas Crawford) standing 19½-feet tall, weighing approximately 15,000 pounds and standing 288 feet above Washington, D.C. Freedom holds a sheathed sword in her right hand, while a laurel wreath and the shield of the United States are held in her left hand.
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| 1855 Phrygian Cap Design |
Ironically in 1855, Secretary of War Jefferson Davis (later to become POTCSA) was in charge of the Capitol construction project and Crawford's original design was adorned with a Phrygian Cap...an ancient Roman symbol for an emancipated slave! This seemed to be a direct insult to slaveholders and Davis erupted with anger (so much hypocrisy/ irony here) against this Northern assault to the "Southern Way of Life":
“Its (Phrygian Cap) history renders it inappropriate to a people
who were born free and would not be enslaved”.
The original design was changed and the final version of Freedom wearing a military helmet with stars, an eagle's head and crest of feathers was placed atop the dome as the Civil War raged!
She gracefully stands on a cast-iron globe inscribed with the words:
E PLURIBUS UNUM
The freedom that seemed so close in 1863 and so far away in 1963...is still a freedom worth striving for...for many.
This poem (1965) about a "telescope of dreams" by Langston Hughes is a powerful metaphor to remind us that freedom is not merely the casting off of chains...it is also killing jellyfish...
Long View: Negro
Emancipation: 1865
Sighted through the
Telescope of dreams
Looms larger,
So much larger,
So it seems,
Than truth can be.
But turn the telescope around,
Look through the larger end-
And wonder why
What was so large
Becomes so small
Again.
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