Philip Reed

17.…

The version of the story of Reed saving Freedom most popular today seems to have first occurred in an 1869 guidebook, Samuel Douglas Wyeth's The Rotunda and the Dome of the United States Capitol (Washington, DC: Gibson Brothers, 1869), 194.

Here, an Italian sculptor who assembled the five sections of the model when it went on display in the Capitol before the casting refused to explain how to take it apart again unless he was given a pay raise. He had covered the seams with plaster and claimed “he alone” knew how to find them. But Reed suggested attaching a pulley to the lifting ring on top of the model, then gently lifting up to reveal the seams. This story was repeated on the floor of Congress in 1928 and is still told to visitors to the Capitol: Finis James Garrett, remarks on “Statue of Freedom,” on January 9, 1928, 17th Congress, Ist Session, Congressional Record 69, part 2: 1199-1200; “Philip Reid and the Statue of Freedom,” Architect of the Capitol, https://www.aoc.gov/explore-capitol-campus/art/statue-freedom/philip-reid. But it is also too good to be true. The similarities to the 1863 version, down to the striking workman claiming he was the only one in America who knew the required secret, are suspicious. And while the model, which survives, does indeed have a lifting ring on top, the story's logic is questionable. The model was on display for only a year, which seems too a short a time for everyone else involved in its assembly to have forgotten the details. And the expert plasterer I consulted pointed out that there are many ways to find hidden joints, including spritzing water on the surface to see differences in the suction pattern, or simply choosing an area that can be repaired and sawing out a portion to reveal the internal armature. Wyeth claims he heard the story from Fisk Mills, the sculptor's son. But he was away at school during the disassembly of the model. He may well have told the story, perhaps inspired by the earlier versions of a strike during the casting, in an attempt to change the public perception of his father from a known slave owner and rumored Confederate sympathizer into someone who respected the knowledge of a skilled Black worker.