Commemorating the End of Slavery

The French abolitionist, Edouard Laboulaye, envisioned a statue to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States—a gift to the American people to honor an end of servitude and oppression. He and the French sculptor, Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, drew up designs of Lady Liberty holding broken chains in her left hand and wearing broken shackles at her feet. The Americans financing the pedestal rejected their idea. They did not want the monument to acknowledge slavery in any way. Without the pedestal there would be no statue and so Laboulaye and Bartholdi were forced to comply. Bartholdi replaced the chains in Liberty’s hand with a book but peeking out from under the folds of her gown, in front of her right foot, a shackle lies, its last link broken.

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