The Statue of Liberty
Created | Updated May 3, 2003
The Statue of Liberty is of course a hugely popular attraction, with ferryloads of tourists visiting every day, even in winter, and even those who have never visited it may possibly regard it as in some sense iconic.
Let us delve a little deeper into the genesis of the whole project and to give due credit to the man whose original idea it was. The original conception was nothing to do with America but was an expression of purely French ideals of the Republic. It came from Edouard Rene Lefebvre de Laboulaye, a French legal scholar and staunch Republican. He found the regime of Napoleon III oppressive and greatly admired the post-Civil War American Republic. What he really wanted was a monument that would revivify and sustain the Republican ideal in France, and it was Laboulaye who first discussed the idea with Bartholdi.
Although such a monument was genuinely meant to be a gift to America, Laboulaye also knew that such a strong assertion of the French Republican ideals of Liberty would not be at all welcome in Imperial Napoleonic France. While Bartholdi was away, looking at various possible sites in America, back in France Napoleon was ousted after France was defeated by Prussia in 1871, and the resulting vacuum was characterised by a struggle between monarchists and republicans for the hearts and minds of the French populace. Laboulaye and his fellow republicans saw such a monument as a way to establish Republican ideals on a firmer footing in France. The plan to build it was announced in 1874 before France herself had become republican once more. Then in the early days of the new French republic the ideals of liberty and freedom were still fragile, and a powerful symbol would be needed to help foster them.
Bartholdi was a committed libertarian and was also inspired by the immensity of the ancient colossi, particularly the Colossus of Rhodes (a huge statue of the sun god Helios) spanning as it did the entrance to a harbour, and as soon as he saw Bedloe's Island in New York Harbour he knew that he had found the perfect site for this new Colossus. This is alluded to in Emma Lazarus' Sonnet 'The New Colossus', mentioning as it does the 'air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame' - the 'twin cities' being New York City, New York and Jersey City, New Jersey.
It is worth mentioning that the statue was formed in plaster, firstly as a scale model then gradually increased to full size. Wooden patterns were made, conforming to the plaster sections, then sheets of copper 2.5mm thick were hammered into shape against the wooden patterns.
The framework designed by Eiffel was ingeniously constructed using flexible iron bars to allow the statue to sway in high winds yet also to expand and contract, as copper does, with variations in temperature, since in New York winters can be very cold and summers very hot.
The statue was completed in 1884 and stood in Paris for about a year before being dismantled and shipped over to America. When it arrived, however, America was not ready for it.
The French were to provide the statue, the Americans the pedestal. But the pedestal was not ready for the statue, owing to lack of funding. It is not accurate to state that the American government raised the funds for the pedestal. Funds were solicited from private donors, but they were not sufficiently forthcoming. Pulitzer's achievement was, through his publications, to get large numbers of ordinary people to send in mostly small donations and buld up the funds in that way, rather as enormous sums of money can be raised for charity from small donations from ordinary folk.
For the statue's centenary celebrations in 1986 a complete refurbishment was needed, which included replacing Eiffel's ironwork, now of course badly corroded, with stainless steel. The arm had originally been incorrectly installed, and this needed to be corrected and strengthened. French metalworkers replaced the old flame that had been lit from inside with a gold-plated copper flame lit by reflection, as Bartholdi had originally intended. In any case the original torch was badly corroded as its windows could not be sealed properly.
Where the entry states that the seven spikes in her crown represent the seven seas of the world, it would be worth adding that they also represent the seven continents (North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica).
It could be mentioned that the Statue of Liberty was from 1886 until 1902 listed as an official navigational aid for ships entering the busy port of New York City. Most mariners still consider her a lighthouse.
"The chains below her feet symbolise the broken shackles of slavery." There's something very interesting about these chains or shackles - they cannot be seen. At least, not from the ground. If a visitor wishes to see them, they would have to take a helicopter ride to get a bird's eye view. I believe this is deliberate. Even by the time the statue was erected the question of slavery was still a contentious issue in the USA, and it could have been too contentious to display the broken shackles openly. So they are there, but not visible to the casual visitor.
Now to the poem, The New Colossus. The poem played no part in the inauguration of the statue. The statue was never intended to represent the Mother of Exiles gathering the huddled masses. This was purely Emma Lazarus' notion. She was not herself one of the recent immigrants, but came from a prosperous Manhattan Jewish family who had been established in America for quite some time. She was of course aware of the waves of immigration in the 1880s, and of how many of the immigrants settled initially in Manhattan's Lower East Side in conditions of poverty and overcrowding scarcely much better than those from which they had fled - except that they were no longer persecuted.
Emma 'adopted' these people. Although she was Jewish her family were Sephardi (basically Jews of Spanish/Portuguese origin) and most of the immigrants were not from that culture. She studied their Yiddish and tried to learn their culture and she helped them to learn English. She was a highly intelligent woman, and published articles in the leading journals and newspapers. When she was asked to write a sonnet to the statue, to help raise funds, she initially refused. But when it was suggested that she write about the statue in the context of the immigrants, she agreed to try.
The sonnet was written in 1883, but lay neglected. Evidently Emma didn't think much of it. At the same time many other artists, including including Mark Twain and Walt Whitman, created works to be auctioned off to raise money to build the pedestal for the statue. It was only after Emma Lazarus had died that some of her friends, spurred on perhaps by the opening of the immigration centre at nearby Ellis Island in 1892, arranged to have a small plaque engraved with the sonnet placed inside the statue's pedestal in 1903.
It is because of that, and no doubt because of the magic of the moment when all those millions of immigrants caught their first sight of the statue, that the original meaning and purpose of the statue has been superseded. It was never intended as a lighthouse welcoming immigrants to America. It was meant as a symbol to the world and particularly to Europe (it points towards Europe not America) of the Republican ideals that America embraced.
The poem contains its own tensions. It refers to 'the wretched refuse', perhaps as an allusion to the misery and, yes, discrimination that those immigrants suffered when they first made landfall. For many of them the streets were certainly not paved with gold, and for many of the native population the shackles of slavery had not been broken. Walt Whitman himself lost his prestigious position as Editor of the Brooklyn 'Eagle' because he dared to speak out against slavery, and he went off to write 'Leaves of Grass'. In the years following the waves of immigration there was an inevitable backlash and laws were passed severely restricting further immigration. Emma's Mother of Exiles could cry out her message only 'with silent lips' - was she, even then, being gagged?
Perhaps it should be said that the symbolic value of the Statue of Liberty lies not in inspiring immigrants to leave their homelands to come to the United States, but in inspiring the other peoples of the world to embrace the ideals and freedoms that the United States holds dear.
Let us delve a little deeper into the genesis of the whole project and to give due credit to the man whose original idea it was. The original conception was nothing to do with America but was an expression of purely French ideals of the Republic. It came from Edouard Rene Lefebvre de Laboulaye, a French legal scholar and staunch Republican. He found the regime of Napoleon III oppressive and greatly admired the post-Civil War American Republic. What he really wanted was a monument that would revivify and sustain the Republican ideal in France, and it was Laboulaye who first discussed the idea with Bartholdi.
Although such a monument was genuinely meant to be a gift to America, Laboulaye also knew that such a strong assertion of the French Republican ideals of Liberty would not be at all welcome in Imperial Napoleonic France. While Bartholdi was away, looking at various possible sites in America, back in France Napoleon was ousted after France was defeated by Prussia in 1871, and the resulting vacuum was characterised by a struggle between monarchists and republicans for the hearts and minds of the French populace. Laboulaye and his fellow republicans saw such a monument as a way to establish Republican ideals on a firmer footing in France. The plan to build it was announced in 1874 before France herself had become republican once more. Then in the early days of the new French republic the ideals of liberty and freedom were still fragile, and a powerful symbol would be needed to help foster them.
Bartholdi was a committed libertarian and was also inspired by the immensity of the ancient colossi, particularly the Colossus of Rhodes (a huge statue of the sun god Helios) spanning as it did the entrance to a harbour, and as soon as he saw Bedloe's Island in New York Harbour he knew that he had found the perfect site for this new Colossus. This is alluded to in Emma Lazarus' Sonnet 'The New Colossus', mentioning as it does the 'air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame' - the 'twin cities' being New York City, New York and Jersey City, New Jersey.
It is worth mentioning that the statue was formed in plaster, firstly as a scale model then gradually increased to full size. Wooden patterns were made, conforming to the plaster sections, then sheets of copper 2.5mm thick were hammered into shape against the wooden patterns.
The framework designed by Eiffel was ingeniously constructed using flexible iron bars to allow the statue to sway in high winds yet also to expand and contract, as copper does, with variations in temperature, since in New York winters can be very cold and summers very hot.
The statue was completed in 1884 and stood in Paris for about a year before being dismantled and shipped over to America. When it arrived, however, America was not ready for it.
The French were to provide the statue, the Americans the pedestal. But the pedestal was not ready for the statue, owing to lack of funding. It is not accurate to state that the American government raised the funds for the pedestal. Funds were solicited from private donors, but they were not sufficiently forthcoming. Pulitzer's achievement was, through his publications, to get large numbers of ordinary people to send in mostly small donations and buld up the funds in that way, rather as enormous sums of money can be raised for charity from small donations from ordinary folk.
For the statue's centenary celebrations in 1986 a complete refurbishment was needed, which included replacing Eiffel's ironwork, now of course badly corroded, with stainless steel. The arm had originally been incorrectly installed, and this needed to be corrected and strengthened. French metalworkers replaced the old flame that had been lit from inside with a gold-plated copper flame lit by reflection, as Bartholdi had originally intended. In any case the original torch was badly corroded as its windows could not be sealed properly.
Where the entry states that the seven spikes in her crown represent the seven seas of the world, it would be worth adding that they also represent the seven continents (North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica).
It could be mentioned that the Statue of Liberty was from 1886 until 1902 listed as an official navigational aid for ships entering the busy port of New York City. Most mariners still consider her a lighthouse.
"The chains below her feet symbolise the broken shackles of slavery." There's something very interesting about these chains or shackles - they cannot be seen. At least, not from the ground. If a visitor wishes to see them, they would have to take a helicopter ride to get a bird's eye view. I believe this is deliberate. Even by the time the statue was erected the question of slavery was still a contentious issue in the USA, and it could have been too contentious to display the broken shackles openly. So they are there, but not visible to the casual visitor.
Now to the poem, The New Colossus. The poem played no part in the inauguration of the statue. The statue was never intended to represent the Mother of Exiles gathering the huddled masses. This was purely Emma Lazarus' notion. She was not herself one of the recent immigrants, but came from a prosperous Manhattan Jewish family who had been established in America for quite some time. She was of course aware of the waves of immigration in the 1880s, and of how many of the immigrants settled initially in Manhattan's Lower East Side in conditions of poverty and overcrowding scarcely much better than those from which they had fled - except that they were no longer persecuted.
Emma 'adopted' these people. Although she was Jewish her family were Sephardi (basically Jews of Spanish/Portuguese origin) and most of the immigrants were not from that culture. She studied their Yiddish and tried to learn their culture and she helped them to learn English. She was a highly intelligent woman, and published articles in the leading journals and newspapers. When she was asked to write a sonnet to the statue, to help raise funds, she initially refused. But when it was suggested that she write about the statue in the context of the immigrants, she agreed to try.
The sonnet was written in 1883, but lay neglected. Evidently Emma didn't think much of it. At the same time many other artists, including including Mark Twain and Walt Whitman, created works to be auctioned off to raise money to build the pedestal for the statue. It was only after Emma Lazarus had died that some of her friends, spurred on perhaps by the opening of the immigration centre at nearby Ellis Island in 1892, arranged to have a small plaque engraved with the sonnet placed inside the statue's pedestal in 1903.
It is because of that, and no doubt because of the magic of the moment when all those millions of immigrants caught their first sight of the statue, that the original meaning and purpose of the statue has been superseded. It was never intended as a lighthouse welcoming immigrants to America. It was meant as a symbol to the world and particularly to Europe (it points towards Europe not America) of the Republican ideals that America embraced.
The poem contains its own tensions. It refers to 'the wretched refuse', perhaps as an allusion to the misery and, yes, discrimination that those immigrants suffered when they first made landfall. For many of them the streets were certainly not paved with gold, and for many of the native population the shackles of slavery had not been broken. Walt Whitman himself lost his prestigious position as Editor of the Brooklyn 'Eagle' because he dared to speak out against slavery, and he went off to write 'Leaves of Grass'. In the years following the waves of immigration there was an inevitable backlash and laws were passed severely restricting further immigration. Emma's Mother of Exiles could cry out her message only 'with silent lips' - was she, even then, being gagged?
Perhaps it should be said that the symbolic value of the Statue of Liberty lies not in inspiring immigrants to leave their homelands to come to the United States, but in inspiring the other peoples of the world to embrace the ideals and freedoms that the United States holds dear.
