Page "Statue of Freedom" Paragraph 5

Crawford was commissioned to design the Statue of Freedom in 1854 and executed the plaster model for the statue in his studio in Rome.

Mississippi Senator and Secretary of War Jefferson Davis ( who would later become President of the Confederacy ) was in charge of the Capitol construction and its decorations.

According to David Hackett Fischer in his book Liberty and Freedom, Crawford ’ s statue was … … very close to Jefferson Davis ’ s ideas in every way but one ….

Above the crown he added a liberty cap, the old Roman symbol of an emancipated slave.

It seemed a direct affront to a militant slaveholder, and Jefferson Davis exploded with rage.

The northern sculptor and the southern slaveholder had already clashed over a liberty cap in the interior decoration of the Capitol. Davis sent his aide, Captain Montgomery Meigs, with orders to remove the cap, saying that “ its history renders it inappropriate to a people who were born free and would not be enslaved ”.

A military helmet, with an American eagle head and crest of feathers, replaced the cap in the sculpture's final version.

( Today many casual observers take the statue, with its eagle and feathers, to be an American Indian.