Statue of Liberty-Online

Statue of Liberty Online In 1865, a group of French intellectuals came up with the idea of building some kind of monument in the United States to commemorate Abraham Lincoln's emancipation of the enslaved. Over the next 21 years, a small cadre of Frenchmen (including the sculptor, Auguste Bertholdi) worked tirelessly to generate support for the project on both sides of the Atlantic. Meanwhile, the Statue was gradually designed, constructed, shipped to the United States. And finally, in 1886, it took its place on Bedloe's Island in New York Harbor. By then, the connection to Lincoln had been pretty well forgotten, but the Statue has ruled ever since as a transcendent symbol of American liberty. Sandra Opdycke, Ph.D. is an historian. She has written books about the flu epidemic of 1918, the woman suffrage movement, the WPA of the 1930s, and Bellevue Hospital, as well as a biography of Jane Addams, an historical atlas of American women’s history, and several co-authored books and articles on social policy. Register here.