Statue of Freedom

A bronze allegorical figure atop the United States Capitol dome in Washington, D.C. Designed by Thomas Crawford, it was installed in 1863.

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Thomas Crawford: An American sculptor whose major works include the Statue of Freedom and the equestrian statue of George Washington. Crawford designed the figure and developed its original iconography.
United States Capitol expansion: The nineteenth-century enlargement of the United States Capitol, including construction of its present dome and extensions. The dome’s construction created the need for a monumental crowning figure.
Lost-wax casting: A metal-casting process in which a wax model is replaced by molten metal in a mold. Crawford’s plaster model was used to produce cast bronze sections for the figure.
National personification: A human figure used to embody a nation or one of its defining political ideals. The statue personifies freedom as a guardian figure above the seat of government.
United States Capitol dome: The cast-iron dome crowning the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. The statue’s scale and placement were designed for this architectural setting.
Jefferson Davis: An American politician who served as U.S. secretary of war before becoming president of the Confederacy. As secretary of war, Davis objected to the Phrygian cap in Crawford’s proposed design.
Plaster model: A three-dimensional model made from gypsum plaster, often used to prepare a sculpture for casting. The full-scale plaster model provided the form from which the bronze components were made.
Emancipation: The act of freeing people from legal or social bondage, especially slavery. Its original Phrygian cap carried associations with emancipation that Davis rejected.
Phrygian cap: A soft, conical cap associated in Western imagery with liberty and emancipation. Crawford’s proposed cap became a point of dispute over the statue’s symbolism.
Montgomery C. Meigs: A U.S. Army engineer who supervised construction of the Capitol dome and other federal projects. Meigs oversaw the project and communicated Davis’s objection to Crawford.