Freedom’s Hope

Text: John 8:31-38

Freedom’s Hope

She is the Statue of Freedom and she is bolted to the top of our nation’s Capitol Dome.

FREEDOM: Achieved[1]

[A]ll persons held to service or labor within the District of Columbia

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by reason of African descent are hereby discharged and freed.”

— D.C. Emancipation Act, April 16, 1862

T he Statue of Freedom was cast from Crawford’s plaster model at Clark Mills’ foundry in the District of Columbia. In 1859 an Italian craftsman demanded more money for the job. Mills then turned to one of his enslaved men, Philip Reid, to separate the five sections of the plaster model. Reid then worked on casting the sections in bronze. Once the casting was completed in 1862, workmen erected the statue section by section atop the Capitol Dome. The final section was bolted in place on December 2, 1863 with thirty-five guns firing a salute to Freedom. If Philip Reid was present on that day, he was there as a free man. The D.C. Compensation Emancipation Act had ended slavery in the District of Columbia on April 16, 1862.

FREEDOM: Phillip Reid and the Statue of Freedom[2]

“I have endeavored to represent Freedom triumphant.”

— Thomas Crawford, 1855

The nineteen-foot six-inch bronze statue of Freedom crowns the cast-iron Dome of the Capitol. Sculptor Thomas Crawford’s second design represented Freedom as a female figure clad in classical robes, bearing a sheathed sword and shield, and wearing a liberty cap.

Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, a slaveowner from Mississippi who would later become president of the Confederacy, objected to the liberty cap “as the badge of a freed slave” and suggested that Crawford change the statue’s headgear to a helmet. The sculptor followed Davis’s instructions, and Freedom wears a helmet composed of an eagle’s head and feathers. Neither Davis nor Crawford could know that an enslaved African American would play a critical role in casting the statue.

The statue of Freedom was cast from Crawford’s plaster model at Clark Mills’s foundry in the District of Columbia.  After an Italian craftsman in 1859 demanded more money for the job, Mills turned to one of his slaves, Philip Reid, to separate the five sections of the plaster model.  Reid then worked on casting the sections in bronze.

Once the casting was completed in 1862, workmen erected the statue section by section atop the Capitol Dome. The final section was bolted in place on December 2 with thirty-five guns firing a salute to Freedom. If Philip Reid was present on that day, he was there as a free man. The D.C. Emancipation Act had ended slavery in the District of Columbia on April 16, 1862.

What a juxtaposition, a contrast, an irony…

The sculptor, Thomas Crawford, designed her, and Jefferson Davis had him make changes to her because of the symbolism of freedom her first design represented to the slaves.

The Italian who cast her mold was greedy and demanded more money. So, Clark Mills, the owner of Mill’s Foundry, turned to his slave, and in between 1859 and 1862 this slave worked on Freedom.

Philip Reed, a slave, was responsible for separating the molds and then casting the five sections in bronze.

Those sections were then bolted, one section at a time, to the top of the capitol dome.

On December 2, 1863, the last section was bolted and Freedom stood “triumphant in war and peace.”

By the time the last bolt was tightened Philip Reed, and all the slaves in the District of Columbia were freemen and freewomen.

The U.S. Congress freed them on April 16, 1862.

Could the Hope of Freedom been the force behind Philip Reed’s careful and expert work of the Statue of Freedom.

Perhaps, Freedom as an ideal moved him along his given path.

He was enslaved bodily, but his mind and heart and soul were free.

I’m not free, yet, but one day…

Then that one day came and was free.

What does it mean “to be free?”

Thayer’s Greek Definitions:

1. freeborn
   1. in a civil sense, one who is not a slave
   1. of one who ceases to be a slave, freed, manumitted
2. free, exempt, unrestrained, not bound by an obligation
3. in an ethical sense: free from the yoke of the Mosaic Law

Strong’s Hebrew and Greek Dictionaries: “unrestrained (to go at pleasure), that is, (as a citizen) not a slave (whether freeborn or manumitted), or (generally) exempt (from obligation or liability): – free (man, woman), at liberty.”

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/free:

1. enjoying personal rights or liberty, as a person who is not in slavery: a land of free people.
2. pertaining to or reserved for those who enjoy personal liberty: they were thankful to be living on free soil.

Freedom is Liberty

There is a freedom beyond chains and physical bondage.

It comes only from Jesus Christ.

The Lord has planned our release, and it is foreshadowed in the Old Testament in the way:

“At the end of every seven years thou shalt make a release. And this is the manner of the release: Every creditor that lendeth ought unto his neighbour shall release it; he shall not exact it of his neighbour, or of his brother; because it is called the LORD’S release….And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the LORD thy God redeemed thee: therefore I command thee this thing to day” (Deuteronomy 15:1-2, 15).

But, Israel didn’t keep the Law of Release, the Law of Freedom, and they were judged for it:

Jermiah 34:17, “Therefore thus saith the LORD; Ye have not hearkened unto me, in proclaiming liberty, every one to his brother, and every man to his neighbour: behold, I proclaim a liberty for you, saith the LORD, to the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine; and I will make you to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth.”

Isaiah 58:6, “Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?”

True Freedom has happened when:

1. We are released from all the chains of wickedness, wrong, iniquity
2. The heavy weights of sin and the burdens of the past are removed
3. We free the broken, bruised, crushed, discouraged, oppressed, and the struggling.
4. We break every oppressive bond of enslavement.

Freedom is here for you today: Luke 4:16-21

(16)  And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read.

(17)  And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written,

(18)  The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,

(19)  To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

(20)  And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him.

(21)  And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.

Today is your Day of Hope, your Day of Freedom – Freedom’s Hope

After his freedom, Philip Reid signified his new found freedom by changing the spelling of his last name to “Reed.”

Today, you can also have a name change as you receive your freedom.

John 8:36, “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.”

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[1] SOURCE: https://uschs.org/explore/from-freedoms-shadow-freedom/. Accessed: 7/3/2022.

[2] Ibid.