93: La Liberté éclairant le monde: Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi’s Statue of Liberty 01:11:37

Thomas Alva Edison, the Wizard of Menlo Park, as he was known, made a recent appearance in our Origin of the Movies episode.

because in addition to the electric light and countless other inventions, he also gave us the motion picture camera. It reminded me that Edison didn't do well in the traditional school classroom when he was a boy. This prolific inventor and successful businessman learned better at home. At school, it's reported that he'd likely be lost in thought. His mother, Nancy, recognized a different approach to learning was required for her son. And the rest is history. As a parent, I appreciate that.

because each of my own three children are different. They each learn in different ways, and I want them to thrive at whatever they choose to do later in life. One learning option for kids today is K-12. K-12 powered schools are accredited, tuition-free online public schools for students in kindergarten through 12th grade. K-12 can help your child reach their full potential and give you the support you need to get them there.

This is different from homeschooling, where you are responsible for teaching them. K-12 powered schools have state certified teachers, specially trained in teaching online.

So join the more than 2 million families who have chosen K-12 and empower your student to reach their full potential now. Go to k12.com slash HTDS today to learn more and find a tuition-free K-12 powered school near you. That's the letter K, the number 12 dot com slash HTDS. K12.com slash HTDS. It's an unspecified evening in the summer of 1865.

Monsieur Edouard René de Laboulaye is hosting a dinner party at his stately home near Versailles, France. The clean-shaven 50-something Frenchman with dark hair is glad to enjoy good food with some like-minded friends. Fellow liberals. Now, I don't want to take us too deep into the weeds of 19th century France's many political identities. Not just yet. But their liberalism is fairly centrist. They value constitutionalism and love individual liberties.

No surprise, then, that, looking around this ornate dining room, we find this mostly 60 and older crowd of liberal aristocrats and the like include the last names of Lafayette and de Tocqueville, as in a grandson of America's revolutionary hero, the Marquis de Lafayette, and a brother of the now-dead Democracy in America's author, Alexis de Tocqueville.

Indeed, the gentlemen supping at this table feel no love for France's current authoritarian regime and ruler, the Second Empire led by Napoleon Bonaparte's nephew, Napoleon III. This dinner group does, however, love the United States. Living in their present authoritarian state, these liberals see the U.S. as proof that liberty can succeed.

True, this deeply anti-slavery group harbored doubts in the past. But with the United States' recent victory over the Confederacy and a Reconstruction Congress sending the slavery-abolishing 13th Amendment to the states for ratification, by God, the United States offers hope for the cause of liberty. Liberté. In fact, celebrating that newly reinforced hope is the primary reason for tonight's gathering. Our host, Edouard Delabouillet,

who is France's foremost scholarly author on and champion of the United States, has invited his friends over to fete the Union victory and mourn the assassination of his hero, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. Following dinner, Edouard and his guests retired to his smoking room or "sumoir." I wonder, do the guests take note, be that now or at another point in the evening, of Edouard's portraits of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin?

Do any of them peruse the titles in his heavily American-oriented library, including his own several publications on the United States? Whether they do or don't, Eduard and his esteemed, politically engaged, intellectually inclined guests settle into their seats, light their cigars or cigarettes, and are soon engrossed in conversation about international politics.

Specifically, they're discussing if the recently declared Kingdom of Italy feels gratitude toward France for the latter's help in its 1859 war against Austria. "Gratitude cannot exist among nations," an unidentified gentleman asserts. Clearly of a realpolitik mind, the guest continues: "The least material interests, the lightest political breath will break every tie of that sort."

Interesting. The group explores our unnamed philosopher's universally applied thesis. What about the United States? Does it feel gratitude for the indispensable support France provided during the Revolutionary War nearly a century ago? Another guest responds, The United States. France can no more count on the remembrance of the past. But our American-loving host, Edouard, sees a sharp distinction between the cases of Italy and the U.S.,

He feels the need to explain that delineation. In the case of Italy, there has never been a popular tradition of friendship. In 1859, a service had been done her, but she had been made to feel that France had repaid herself for it. And that fact is sufficient to make the remembrance unpleasant to the Italians. An intriguing thought. It is true that, in exchange for helping Italy, France did annex Nice and Savoy.

That feels more transactionary than friendly. Conversely, Édouard contends, that isn't how it went down when Frenchmen bled for American independence. He continues, America has more sympathy for France than any other European nation. This sentiment is based upon the remembrance of the community of thoughts and of struggles sustained with common aspirations."

The Frenchmen who fought in the United States spilled their blood for the principles that they hoped to see prevail in France and in the world. The first volunteers went away in spite of the gouvernement, and all the world recalls the difficulties encountered by Lafayette at his departure.

There is then in that struggle for indépendance not a simple service rendered to a friendly nation, but a fraternity of feelings, a community of efforts and of emotions. And when hearts have beaten together, something always remains among nations as among individuals. It's a stirring speech.

But like any good academic, Edouard won't make an assertion without backing it up. Our host now lays out the evidence for his claim of gratitude and friendship between the U.S. and France, present-day America's adoration for Lafayette and the Frenchmen who fought with him.

The proof is that in the United States they hold up to honor the remembrance of the common glories. They love Lafayette and his volunteers as they revere the American heroes. Everyone recalls the names and the deeds of the French soldiers. There is the basis of the sentiments which are felt in the United States toward the French. An indestructible basis, a sentiment honorable to the Americans as to us.

I wish we had a record of how this room is reacting. I imagine though that these liberty-loving Frenchmen, so depressed by their current authoritarian reality, yet hopeful in the promise of a reconstruction United States, are filled with tender thoughts of the battlefield-born brotherhood, fraternité, of France and the United States. Edouard de Laboulaye seems to be. He delivers a last thought. If a monument were to be built in America,

as a memorial to their independence. I should think it very natural if it were built by united effort, if it were a common work of both nations. A Franco-American made monument to American independence. Whether the idea strikes a chord with everyone in the room, we'll never know. But it impacts at least one of the guests, a dark-haired, slide-of-frame sculptor, Frédéric-Auguste Bertourdi.

He's far younger and less political than the other guests, but he's incredibly ambitious. In the decades to come, he'll build a colossal, francophone American monument unlike anything the world has ever seen. Welcome to History That Doesn't Suck. I'm your professor, Greg Jackson, and I'd like to tell you a story. History That Doesn't Suck

That dinner party was the start of another Gilded Age technical wonder, the Statue of Liberty. At least, it was if we take Federico Guspertodi at his word. His record of that night is the only one we've got. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Before bonding with the Frenchman and hearing the tale of Lady Liberty's rise, we need to take a trip into French history. Because even if we wish to question our sculptor's motives—and some do—

we still need to understand the idea of some sort of shared Franco-American liberty that he's tapping into. To that end, we'll first visit modern France's incredibly messy history of revolution and regime change. Then, armed with the full historical context of France's struggle for liberty, we'll catch up with the sculptor Federico Guspatoldi and the Statue of Liberty on their long path to New York.

And of course, we'll conclude with some thoughts on both the beauty and contradictions of this whole project. It's a lot to cover. And we start by going further back than we ever have on HTDS to follow the idea of liberty from the French Revolution back to this dinner party and on. Rewind.

The French Revolution is a long time coming. To understand its causes, we start with the 17th century House of Bourbon King, Louis XIV, who solidifies absolutist rule in France. In short, this means there are no real checks on his authority. Louis makes the French nobility cower as these once semi-autonomous figures compete for the honor of helping his majesty dress when he awakes in his awe-inspiring palace 20 miles outside of Paris in Versailles.

He is the Sun King because like the sun, everything revolves around him. It's alleged he once asserted, l'état c'est moi, meaning I am the state. He probably never said it, but the sentiment is true enough as he rules over half a century and outlives two generations of heirs. His five-year-old great-grandson, Louis XV, inherits the crown when the nearly octogenarian goes to the grave in 1715. Louis XV then rules almost as long.

His grandson, Louis XVI, succeeds in 1774. Now France's monarchy may have remained absolutist all this time, but France's intellectuals, called philosophes, are spreading new ideas in this age of enlightenment. For instance, Berne de Montesquieu is arguing that there are three distinct powers of government, executive, legislative, and judiciary, and they should be separated. You might recall that I mentioned his influence on America's founding fathers all the way back in episode 15.

Hmm, that doesn't exactly jive with absolutist monarchy. Voltaire is arguing for religious tolerance. A gutsy position, considering that non-Catholics lack legal rights and the Catholic Church's clergy make up a second sort of nobility, or second estate, behind the nobility's first estate. Add to these ideas a massive, partly due to the American Revolution, national debt, shouldered by France's 97% not-noble, not-clergy population, the third estate.

And we've got a revolution. The French Revolution starts out in what we call a liberal or bourgeois phase. Revolutionaries storm the Bastille. The National Constituent Assembly abolishes feudalism. It produces a charter of universal rights called the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, drafted by the Marquis de Lafayette with input from Thomas Jefferson, no less. It also ends absolutist monarchy by making Louis XVI a constitutional monarch.

But by 1792, things are getting dicier. There's war with Austria and Prussia, and back in Paris on August 10th, revolutionaries attack the king's current residence, the Tuileries Palace. They and the king's protective Swiss guards alike die by the hundreds. More violence follows the next month as revolutionary leaders, amid establishing the first French republic no less, also execute over a thousand political prisoners in the September massacres.

the revolution's liberal or bourgeois phase is over. The radical phase has begun. A few months later, in January 1793, King Louis XVI is guillotined. I detailed that for you back in episode 17, so we'll leave it there. Shortly after this, Austria and Prussia pick up more allies in their fight against revolutionary France. And as the foreign threats to the revolution increase, so do the revolutionaries' fear of domestic threats.

To save the barely born republic then, the National Convention creates its Committee of Public Safety. A 35-year-old deputy who sits on the left side of the room in the convention is soon elected to it. And yes, this is where the terms political left and political right come from. This is the allegedly incorruptible Maximilien Robespierre. Under Maximilien's leadership, the convention strips suspected enemies of the state of due process.

This inaugurates the Reign of Terror, a time when nearly 20,000 people, including the deposed Queen Marie-Antoinette, are executed in the name of creating a republic of virtue. But as the Maximilian-led committee takes out fellow revolutionaries, including the less guillotine-happy Georges Danton, and France's victory against Austria and Prussia's coalition begins to look certain, some start to wonder: is the Committee of Public Safety member justly eradicating traitors?

or targeting political foes? That's a scary question as Maximilian seems increasingly all-powerful. He's even succeeding in sweeping away the Catholic Church with his Festival of the Supreme Being, which is held at the Temple of Reason, formerly known as the Cathedral of Notre Dame.

By summer 1794, as he's accelerating executions in a time called the Great Terror, some national convention deputies, including fellow terror-supporting public safety committee members, come to fear that Maximilian's next purge might include them. Unless they come for Maximilian first, that is. It's late morning, July 27th, 1794, or to use the revolutionary calendar, the ninth day of Thermidor in the second year of the Republic.

We're in the Tuileries palaces, salle des machines, where the national convention meets. Maximilien's fellow committee member and youthful ally, Louis de Saint-Just, approaches the tribune, pulls out a prepared speech, and begins to address his fellow deputies in the semi-circle seating before him. "I belong to no faction. I will fight them all!" That's as far as he gets. Jean Laberge Tallien yells out, denouncing Maximilien Robespierre. Other accusations soon follow.

When Maximilien tries to defend himself, he's shouted down by cries of "Abat le tyran!" Someone yells out "The blood of Danton chokes him!" It's a reference to the previously guillotined revolutionary, Georges Danton. That afternoon, the convention arrests Maximilien and four of his most loyal allies: Louis de Saint-Just, Joseph Lebas, Maximilien's younger brother, Augustin Robespierre, and the wheelchair-bound Georges Couton. This doesn't work though.

No jail wishes to incarcerate the incorruptible Maximilien Robespierre. Meanwhile, allies within the Parisian municipal government, the Paris Commune, move to liberate the five men. They then take refuge at the City Hall, or l'Hôtel de Ville. Their respite won't last long though. It's now 2:30 a.m. the next morning. Maximilien and his friends are in the Hôtel de Ville preparing a call to arms when suddenly the convention's forces burst in.

The incorruptible robs Pierre's younger brother, Augustin, jumps from a window. Whether this was an attempt to escape or kill himself, he's failed. With both legs broken, Augustin lays in agony. Despite his physical impairment, Georges Couton tries to flee too. He suffers severe injuries as he tumbles down a staircase. Joseph Lebas refuses to be taken alive. He shoots himself in the head. Louis de Saint-Just quietly resigns himself to captivity.

Finally, we have Maximilian. His jaw is nearly shot off. But was this his own failed suicide attempt? Or did convention troops purposely mangle his mouth so he can't speak? His fans and critics will differ on this forever.

Seventeen hours later, at 7:30 p.m., on the 10th of Thermidor, year two of the Republic, / July 28, 1794, Maximilien, his four fellow deputies, and still other followers, are taken to the Place de la Révolution, or, as non-revolutionary France calls it, Place de la Concorde. Thousands of French citizens and leaders, from Louis XVI to Georges Danton, have met the guillotine here, and so shall these men.

The once thought incorruptible committee member, now called a dictator, watches as 20 loyal to him heads roll. Now it's his turn. They rip off his once gorgeous blue silk coat. Next, they rip off the bandage holding the remains of his mangled lower face. What's left of the condemned's former jaw falls open as he shrieks in pain. It's the last sound Maximilien Robespierre ever makes.

Maximilien's foes were more worried about becoming his victim than stopping his methods. Yet it's soon clear that the French people have had enough. The reign of terror ends, leaving France to try to figure out where and how their revolution in the name of liberté, égalité, fraternité, that is, liberty, equality, brotherhood, took a deadly authoritarian turn. But sorting this out is easier said than done.

From the far left's anti-clerical Republican Jacobin Club to the far right's Catholic Royalists, to everyone in between, who has it right? And since we aren't doing absolutism, who should be allowed to vote? France will bounce all over the political map for nearly a century in something of a national identity crisis as it seeks these very answers. In 1795, a new representative government with a five-man executive committee is instituted.

This is the Directory. Hoping to avoid the excess of the revolution, it limits the vote to wealthy, land-owning men and arrests former leaders of the now-defunct radical-left political club to which Maximilian belonged, the Jacobins. Yet the regime isn't conservative either. Royalists are no fan of this republican system. In short, no one likes the Directory, so no one will miss it.

In 1799, a general who's taller than you might think leaves his troops in Egypt to go to Paris. Yes, this is Napoleon Bonaparte. And in November 1799, a bloodless coup d'etat, or simply coup, meaning to overthrow the government, ends the directory and elevates him to first consul of a new government, the three-man executive consulate. But this more centralized form of Republican government isn't going to last long either.

In 1804, Napoleon moves the needle away from republicanism altogether. The Mediterranean native who speaks French with an Italian accent makes himself the emperor, instituting a regime we now call the First French Empire. Crazy, isn't it? Napoleon, a son of the revolution, as he's often called since it enabled his rise, is the one who kills French republicanism.

Ironically, he's doing so as a French colony of enslaved plantation workers in the Caribbean are embracing the revolution's ideas and overthrowing French rule. This is the creation of Haiti. And as we know from episode 21, it ends Napoleon's interest in the Americas and leads him to sell the Louisiana territory to the United States. Yet there is a rhyme to his reason.

Napoleon has shed his more radical views and now considers himself an enlightened despot who maintains fundamentals of the revolution, like equality before the law. This is evident in the law system that bears his name, the Napoleonic Code. To his credit, it's so clear and sufficiently fair that it will endure, though plenty modified, into 21st century France.

In short, even as he ends republicanism and embraces censorship, his code keeps other gains of the revolution, like ending feudal dues and allowing people to do what they want with their property. And as he continues to extend his code over Europe via conquest, this terminator of republicanism also exports, ironically enough, aspects of the revolution beyond France. I know, this dude is complicated.

But his empire doesn't hold up. Though Napoleon controls nearly all of Europe by 1810, the United Kingdom remains aloof. His answer is to implement a block-the-Brits continental system that prohibits Europe from trading with the industrialized, trade-reliant island power. But Russia isn't playing along, so in 1812, he leads his 500,000-strong Grande Armée to Moscow to teach the Tsar a lesson. Yet, it's Napoleon who gets schooled.

He learns the hard way that beating the Russian army isn't the same as beating the Russian winter. He takes Moscow, only to have to march his frozen, starving, depleted forces back to Paris. This is the start of his end. Oh, I'd love to go into so much more detail here, but eyes on the prize, Statue of Liberty. Let's just say that pretty much all of Europe gangs up on Napoleon. He loses. The British have the last laugh.

Not only does L'Empereur lose and get exiled to their beyond-remote island in the middle of the Atlantic, St. Helena, they'll eventually name a London train station Waterloo. And as luck would have it, the Paris and London Eurostar train will later run to it. Yep, depart Paris, arrive in London, and be reminded of one of the most impactful victories the British and their allies ever had over the French. I love the French, but that's hilarious.

But what should France do now? Well, as Europe pieces itself back together in a conference held in Vienna, France kind of comes full circle. Much to the approval of nervous European monarchs, French elites arrange for the brother of the now long-dead Louis XVI to become king. In a nod to his tortured, dead nephew, who would have taken the throne, this king of the Bourbon dynasty skips the title 17th, instead calling himself Louis XVIII.

It's a definite royalist win, but it's no return to the "old regime" of pre-revolutionary France. This Louis gets that the absolute monarchy is as dead as his beheaded brother. He'll rule as a constitutional monarch under a charter, or la chartre. In 1824, Louis dies, thus becoming the first French monarch or emperor to end his rule without being overthrown, forced to abdicate, or killed since 1774.

He's also the last who will ever do so. Louis XVIII's successor, his not-so-young, younger brother, Charles X, appears not to get the "don't try to be an absolute monarch" memo. He's frustrated by legislators, like the aging hero of America and France, the Marquis de Lafayette, who defends civil liberties and pushes back against him. In this environment, Charles X gives ear to the far-right, ultra-royalists, and, in 1830, proceeds to make terrible decisions.

Thinking it will help his popularity, he launches an invasion of Ottoman-controlled Algiers on the North African coast. It won't, though it will start French colonization in Africa. He then flexes his power with the July Ordinances, which suppresses the free press and further restricts the already restricted electorate. What the hell is this? Absolutism lite? Liberty is a part of the French nation's discourse now. Paris won't stand for it.

On July 27th, the day after these ordinances come out, a few demonstrators take to the streets. On July 28th, Parisians and royal forces engage in full-on combat, including at the Hôtel de Ville, where Maximilien Robespierre and his deputies were apprehended. On July 29th, with barricades filling Paris' narrow streets and fighters proudly waving the tricolor flag of the long-since-past First Republic, the people take to the Tuileries Palace. The fighting is over.

The second French Revolution, the July Revolution, or Three Glorious Days as it's known, sends Charles X into exile. Another regime change. So what now? While some hope for a renewed republic under a President Lafayette, that won't happen. Instead, the old hero endorses Charles X's liberal cousin, Louis-Philippe of the House of Orleans, as France's leader.

The following month, August 1830, Louis-Philippe becomes France's newest monarch. Its new constitutional, liberal monarch. Instead of King of France, he is dubbed King of the French. It's been 40 years since the French Revolution unleashed the ideas of liberty, equality, and brotherhood. 40 years of trying to grow the seeds of these new ideas in the soil of a once absolutist monarchy.

But unlike all other French rulers since the revolution, Louis-Philippe genuinely believes in individual liberty and constitutionalism. He's both an aristocrat and an earnest liberal. Can Louis-Philippe, called the Citizen King, bridge this gap? It's still a hard path. Consider how divided France is now. The monarchists are still numerous, but split in their loyalty between three different dynasties: the Houses of Bourbon, Bonaparte, and Orleans.

Meanwhile, Republicans feel betrayed by the July Revolution's outcome. In 1832, their barricades will again fill Paris' narrow streets. They fail, yet this rebellion will forever be remembered thanks to Victor Hugo's later dramatization of it in his work. "Pet me de l'arbre." I don't mean to overstate Louis-Philippe's troubles. He enjoys some initial popularity, but the world is changing.

Industrialization is creating rich industrialists and a new working class increasingly interested in a new ideology called socialism. Meanwhile, many of the well-to-do business class, or la bourgeoisie, are frustrated that their growing wealth still isn't enough wealth to qualify them to vote. The threshold is just so high. But Louis-Philippe's minister, François Guizot, has no sympathy. His answer is, "enrichissez-vous."

Basically, get rich. In short, though the Citizen King embodies many of the liberal values the American-loving Frenchman we met in this episode's opening scene cherish, his regime is alienating many. These frustrated middle-class Frenchmen start holding banquets dedicated to suffrage reform. As they do, the lower classes grow excited too. Growing fearful of this trend, the government bans a Paris meeting, but this just leads to protests.

On February 23rd, 1848, in a moment of likely confusion, troops fire on the people. They respond by once again barricading the streets of the capital. But Louis-Philippe's seen this too many times to stick around. He abdicates the next day. Another regime come and gone. Following this third revolution, the Revolution of 1848, which sets off other though largely failed revolutions across Europe, the French people grapple once again with their divided ideas.

But between its socialists, moderate Republicans, and dynasty-divided conservative monarchists, a second republic does indeed emerge. France's first universal male suffrage vote hands the office of president to a man with a vague platform and famous name, Napoleon Bonaparte's nephew, Louis-Napoleon. But the republic won't last.

Three years later, in 1851, the mustache and goatee wearing president takes a chapter out of his uncle's book by leading a coup against his own government to extend his rule. After a year as a more powerful president, he makes himself emperor. Like Louis XVIII did before him, Louis Napoleon nods to a never-crowned nephew and skips a number. As of 1852, he is Napoleon III of the Second French Empire.

He arrests political enemies, curtails free speech, and with the aid of Georges-Eugène Haussmann, the emperor systematically rebuilds old medieval Paris with wide, large boulevards and new buildings. It's gorgeous. It also means pesky revolutionaries can't easily barricade the streets. If anything, the army can now march down them more easily. Once again, the ideas of liberté, égalité, fraternité have been snuffed out.

Republicans and liberals of all stripes are crushed. Noted author and devoted Republican Victor Hugo leaves his beloved France for life in exile on the British island of Guernsey. That was a fast and nowhere near deep dive, but I hope you feel a better appreciation for the complex, difficult, more than a century-long path that the idea of liberty has traveled by the time Édouard de Laboulaye and his guests sit down in 1865.

I hope you see how they, living in Napoleon III's Second Empire, yearn for liberty's resuscitation, and how a reconstruction in the United States would inspire them, perhaps arm them. After all, building a monument to American independence would be a veiled shot across the bow at Napoleon III. But the liberals in that smoking room aren't the ones who will set any sort of monument in motion.

It's the non-political sculptor with no particular love for the United States. Frédéric-Auguste Bateau-Di. Are you earning and investing in the stock market? In real estate? How about in relationships? Are you earning and investing in your life?

I'm Doc G, semi-retired hospice physician and host of the Earn and Invest podcast, where we have the 201 or next level conversations about money and life. Not only how you make money and grow it, but also how you use your wealth to create a better and more fulfilling existence. Join us every Monday and Thursday wherever you listen to fine podcasts.

It's August 8th, 1869. We're in Ismailia, Egypt, and Frédéric-Auguste Bertaudy, or Auguste, as he's known to his friends, is sitting patiently in an antechamber. It's been four years since the dark-haired, slide-of-frame French sculptor attended Edouard de Laboulaye's dinner party. But that's just for our reference, because it couldn't be further from his mind today. Auguste is about to make a pitch to the Egyptian khedive, Ismail the Magnificent.

Heavy set with a well-trimmed beard, Ismail is an energetic leader who, depending on whether you talk to his friends or critics, is either advancing Egypt's global influence and economy or blowing money foolishly to impress Europe. Either way, the Khedive is an ambitious man.

Most notably, he's granted a concession to the French-organized Suez Canal Company to undertake the incredible, audacious task of carving a canal through the Isthmus of Suez that will link the Mediterranean and Red Seas. It's hard to overstate the enormity of this project or its eventual outcome as it will allow ships to travel between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean without going around the entire continent of Africa.

This is, in every sense of the word, huge. Surely then, it deserves an equally and always huge statue. At least, that's what Auguste is going to argue. After a two-hour wait, the Frenchman is shown into the Cadiv's chamber. A massive divan occupies much of the room, but otherwise, the decor would make you think we're in the heart of Paris. The two men, both in their 30s, are not alone.

A handful of Ismail's servants and experts are here, including his French born and raised Director of Antiquities. Auguste lays out sketches and presents a small terracotta statuette, otherwise called a maquette, modeling his statue. It depicts a strong Arab peasant woman, a fellah, holding a torch with one hand thrust high above her head. Her other hand is low, about waist high, holding out her open palm.

The complete statue, August explains, will be 86 feet tall and stand on top of a 46-foot pedestal. It will tower over all in the Suez Canal's harbor, filling sailors with awe as they look at the illuminated statue for guidance since it will double as a lighthouse. Seeking to appeal to Ismail's sense of modernization and progress while connecting to the lighthouse theme, August calls the colossal statue "Egypt carrying the light to Asia."

The Egyptian ruler studies the drawings and statuette. Finally, he speaks: "I would prefer to see the luminous apparatus moved above her head, in the matter of the Falah woman." The khedive is referring to the way in which Falah women carry large loads, particularly large water jars, balanced on their heads. Auguste will admit in a letter to his mother next week that he doesn't like the suggestion. But as they say, the customer is always right.

Our quick-thinking sculptor politely answers, "That would be easier." Auguste doesn't feel this pitch is landing, but he always leaves the door open. "I'll leave you the drawings and see you again on your trip to Paris in two months." And with that last Hail Mary play, he salutes the khedive and takes his leave. Auguste is a talented sculptor and one who's always dreamed big. I mean that literally.

Back in January 1852, the then 19-year-old Auguste received a commission to create a sculpture of the Napoleonic-era general, Jean Ra. No coincidence here. The general and Auguste both hail from Colmar, a town in France's eastern region of Alsace. You'll want to lock that one in. And in a fun Napoleonic connection, this is the same month that Napoleon III officially takes France from its second republic to its second empire.

The final product is good. It receives an award and critiques, but most notably, it's freaking huge. When installed in 1856, Auguste's wrapped statue stands with its pedestal at 26 feet tall. It's during these same years that the 20-something up-and-coming sculptor makes his first trip to Egypt and is wowed by the pyramids. He returns home determined that when one day he finds a worthy subject,

I will honor that subject by building the tallest statue in the world. Clearly, Auguste has developed a taste for colossus statues, and now, in 1869, it seems the successful sculptor thinks the Suez Canal might be that subject. Alas, it's not meant to be. Ismael the Magnificent does not commission this statue. But in truth, there won't be much time for thinking about art this next year anyway.

Like all French living under the Second Empire, Auguste's world is about to be transformed by the Franco-Prussian War. Here's the deal. Germany is not yet a single nation in mid-19th century Europe. What we have are 39 independent German states tied together in a German confederation. Austria has been the top dog in this union, but the Kingdom of Prussia is jockeying to dislodge Austria and unify these German states under its leadership.

Prussian Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck is all over this. The Realpolitik, Iron Chancellor, successfully navigates Prussia through two wars in the 1860s that position it as the leader of the northern German states. He needs a little something more to get the southern states to play ball, though. That something comes in 1870, when Napoleon III raises his hackles at the thought of a member of the Hohenzollern dynasty, which already holds the Prussian throne, ruling in Spain as well.

Knowing nothing unites Germans like hating on the French, Audubon Bismarck uses a carefully worded telegram to fan the flames. France foolishly bites and declares war. Thus we have the Franco-Prussian War. Auguste Bartholdi fights. Worried about his long widowed mother still living in his nearly on the border hometown of Colmar, he requests to be assigned there. Come September 1870, the sculptor turned captain finds himself defending the town of his youth.

I can only imagine what a goose must feel watching terrified people he may well know flee to their homes as rifles crack. The inexperienced captain and his ill-trained men do their best, but it's far from enough. Colmar is occupied. Nor is the war going well elsewhere. Only a week or so earlier, on September 2nd, 1870, Napoleon III was captured at the Battle of Sedan.

This leaves a hastily organized French Third Republic trying to pick up the pieces and stave off invasion. Interestingly though, it's during this dark period of Auguste's life that he finds himself recalling the words of his years ago dinner host, Edouard de Laboulaye. Three months after his hometown's downfall, in December 1870, Auguste is sent to France's west coast port city of Bordeaux to receive arms and munitions coming from the United States.

The 36-year-old Kapitän is pained as he hears the ship's officers describe demonstrations in support of Prussia and its united German forces back in the United States. But then, one officer adds a more nuanced observation.

Only recently immigrated Germans, he asserts, are demonstrating, and they're not so much interested in French defeat as much as German unification, which they hope will yield a new Germany with the very same liberty they came to the U.S. to enjoy. Basically, he's describing those like John Roebling from the last episode, although I doubt the Prussian-born German immigrant even knew about the war. He died three days after it started.

Anyhow, this officer finishes by describing these immigrant demonstrators as having become "too much Americans and citizens of the great free people to feel hatred towards France or to rejoice over the misfortunes of the nation which hope to create their new country."

Huh, almost a century since the American Revolution and this officer who's been to the US says its citizens still remember France's role in their independence. It's this conversation, Auguste will later claim, that makes him remember the after dinner discussion about France and the United States at Edouard de Laboulaye's place years ago. And that includes remembering Edouard's off-the-cuff suggestion for a jointly built memorial to American independence.

The Franco-Prussian War ends the next month, January 1871, with enormous ramifications for France. The French maintain their wartime protected republic, but not everyone loves it. Monarchists are just too split over the nation's three dynasties to propose anything else. On the other side, Parisian radicals who want to reform the nation as a decentralized federation ruled by the people declare the capital a commune.

In the next few months, a brief but bloody civil war follows. The Third Republic wins, defeating its own Parisian citizens. But its victory comes at a cost of as many as 25,000 lives.

The memory of the Commune will cast a long shadow and become a rallying point for radicals globally as Karl Marx characterizes it as the first proletarian dictatorship in history. Yet none of this turmoil impacts Auguste Bertoldi as much as what the newly united German Empire, the Second Reich, imposes on France's newest republic.

It demands France pay a war indemnity of 5 billion francs. And worse, Germany annexes territory along its border with France. One-third of Lorraine and nearly all of Alsace. This includes Auguste's hometown of Colmar. Like many French, he'll never forgive the Germans for this. But that's a story for another time. We aren't ready to talk about World War I yet.

With his childhood home now a part of Germany and Paris caught in a violent civil war, neither of the cities that have defined so much of Auguste's life are open to him. He returns to the near Versailles home of his former client, now friend, Edouard de Laboulaye. It's almost like a five years on dinner party reunion. Auguste finds Edouard is still hanging out with his same pro-American friends, like the Marquis de Lafayette's grandson, Oscar Lafayette.

As talk turns to American sentiment toward France, Auguste mentions what the ship's officer in Bordeaux said. All excited, Edouard begins to wax eloquent about the United States once more. Finally, Auguste claims that his liberal friend tells him that, with the 100-year anniversary of the United States declaring independence soon at hand, he ought to go to see that country, propose to our friends over there,

to make with us a monument, a commune work, in remembrance of the ancient friendship of France and the United States. Historians will later question if Edouard really said this. The French scholar's own written records depict him as rather downtrodden after the Franco-Prussian War, uninterested in taking much initiative in anything.

Yet, according to the narrative I just shared with you, which Auguste will later prepare for fundraising in the United States, Edouard not only encourages him but goes on to suggest they'll organize a campaign in France to raise funds. It's details like this last bit that will lead historians to wonder: is Auguste really driven to build a great memorial to American independence and the nation's shared sense of liberty with France?

Or is he a driven, ambitious sculptor looking for a good excuse to build the greatest colossus the world has ever seen? Whatever the details of their discussion, Edouard de Laboulaye provides Auguste with letters of introduction. The sculptor calls on his rather senior assistant, Marie Simon, and the two men depart for the United States in June of that same year, 1871. Auguste travels across the nation. He considers various cities and sites, but his favorite is New York Harbor's Bedloe's Island.

It's currently occupied by a fort, but there, this colossus would stand visible to all ships approaching the United States' largest city. Auguste also meets noted figures such as the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and U.S. Senator Charles Sumner. He even meets current U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant, who says he likes this project. Okay then, nothing is concrete, but surely that is a start.

Auguste returns to France that October. He's already worked on some ideas for this specific colossus, though you might say his work on it began before the war. After all, his proposal is a gigantic woman holding up a torch and serving as a lighthouse, just as he proposed to the Khedive of Egypt for the Suez Canal. The moquettes for both proposed projects depict a woman standing in nearly identical positions with one hand holding a torch aloft while the other hand is held down low.

The only significant difference early on is in this latter one, called La Liberté éclairant le monde, that is, liberty enlightening the world, she wears a stola, the ancient Roman woman's equivalent to the toga. Further evolution happens from here. Auguste changes the precise stance in which liberty stands. The stola's folds change. The crown becomes a rayed diadem with long spikes.

It's often said that she has the body of Auguste's wife, Jeanne-Emilie, and the face of his mother, Charlotte. Others will later argue, however, that Lady Liberty is something of a dead ringer for Auguste's only sibling, Jean-Charles, or still another, a woman named Sarah Koblenzer. Perhaps she's a blend of all the above. Whoever the models are, though, one thing is sure. The Falach woman has morphed into a Greek or Roman-style goddess.

Her left hand changes too. Initially, the statue's left hand is near her hip, clenching a few links of a broken chain. This model conjures up memories of the 1865 dinner party, at which the anti-slavery liberals took great satisfaction in the United States' new slavery-banning 13th Amendment. Likely in consultation with Édouard de Laboulaye, the chains are moved down low, now trodden under Liberty's left foot, while the arm is brought up with tablets reading July 4th, 1776.

Scholarly speculations on this decision include concerns that, when actually built, the chain links would either be difficult to notice or lost symbolically on observers, or that the duo decided to emphasize 1776 to make the statue speak to the upcoming American centennial, now only five years away.

If the latter though, Auguste is losing his window of opportunity. Between owing a war indemnity of 5 billion francs to the new German Empire and uncertainty that its new republican government will endure, France and its people are neither financially nor politically healthy enough to fund his colossus. Auguste works on other projects, including a more "normal" sized statue of the Marquis de Lafayette to be given to New York City. Then finally, in 1875, a committee called the Franco-American Union is organized to raise funds.

The idea is that France will pay for the statue, the United States will pay for the pedestal. Still hoping to have something to display at the United States' Centennial International Exposition in Philadelphia next year, the work now progresses in earnest. Auguste creates a nearly 38-foot model.

At this point, though, the art merges with engineering. With the help of a former mentor, the architect Eugene Viollet-le-Duc, and an ironworks expert, Honoré Mondry, Auguste will make his actual metal statue four times bigger, about 150 feet tall, or, to use the French Revolution-inspired metric system as Auguste does, 46 meters. Here's how they'll do it. They conceive of their already sizable model in several sections.

They then draw dots within each section and take measurements. Those are then enlarged by a factor of four, which they nail perfectly by using plumb lines. Wooden frames of a given section are then built on this larger scale. Next, they spread plaster on these frames and sand them down to perfection. They then build matching wooden frames on which copper can be hammered into shape. That's the exterior of the Statue of Liberty, copper no thicker than two stack pennies.

Knowing they can't complete, ship, and assemble the statue in mere months before anything they wish to display at the coming exposition in Philadelphia, though, they decide to build and display just the right hand holding the torch. That will be their display at the expo. But as workers are in the process of moving the plaster of the 13-foot hand, it falls and breaks into pieces. It will now be impossible to build anything in time for the Philadelphia Expositions Open.

In this moment, that crashing hand might as well have been the crashing of any opportunity to gain exposure and raise funds in the U.S. amid the nation's 100-year anniversary. Auguste is sick at this thought. How on earth can he salvage this? The situation looks hopeless. Philadelphia's exposition opens May 10, 1876. Auguste's submission doesn't arrive until August and takes longer even still to set up.

But when all is in order, his work turns some heads. The gargantuan, 40-foot-tall Fist and Torch offers spectacular views to anyone who ascends it. For a price, that is. You can also buy medallions, photographs, a small statuette, and so many other souvenirs. Looks like Auguste is one artist with some serious business sense. While he only catches the tail end of the expo, our savvy sculptor certainly makes the most of it.

And when the event ends, he sends the hand and torch to New York, where it will sit on display in Madison Square Park for several years. Before returning to France, Auguste also sees the formation of an American committee. Over the next year, it lands a big win. The committee convinces Congress to designate one of two federally controlled islands in New York's harbor as a home for the colossal lighthouse. Civil War hero, General W. Tecumseh Sherman gets to pick which one, and he makes the selection Auguste hoped for: Bedloe's Island.

The committee struggles, however, with its main purpose: to fundraise for the statue's pedestal. We'll circle back to this issue, but I'll tell you now: it's going to be a hard go. Many Americans aren't sure what to make of a gift that requires them to raise a small fortune. But back in France, Auguste is having luck with yet another exhibition. It's June 30th, 1878. We're at the workshop of Gagé et Gautier, located at 25 Rue de Chaisel in Paris, France.

Men and the employ of Auguste Bertaudi move the completed head and bust of the Statue of Liberty into the street on an enormous oversized cart. From there, she travels south by the Arc de Triomphe down toward the Champ de Mars. Today, the head of Lady Liberty joins Paris' already in progress Universal Exposition. She doesn't look quite like the often frigid and cap wearing French personification of the Republic, Marianne. No, this woman wears a seven point crown.

But the people see it. Not Marianne, perhaps, but a Roman-style goddess of liberty, all the same. It conjures the image of their several revolutions, their constitutions, their declaration of the rights of man and of the citizen, and the tens of thousands who died in this very city for liberty. Liberté, égalité, fraternité. And we know this because as the head reaches the Champs-Élysées, a voice cries out. Vive la République !

Yes, long live the Republic, which, with the fall of Napoleon III, has been their form of government for eight years. Countless other voices repeat the phrase. Those voices then turn into a chorus as some 1,500 citoyens spontaneously begin singing the French Revolution's war song that you and I will later know as the nation's national anthem, La Marseillaise. Does Auguste feel a surge of patriotism when he looks at his work?

Or is he, as his most vociferous critics suggest, just opportunistic? Could he be a blend of both? Whatever his own sentiments, one thing is certain: his statue is having the effect he wanted. To speak of practical considerations, though, the Paris Exposition helps keep his massive team of 50 experts employed. Not directly. The Expo doesn't allow Auguste or his fundraising Franco-American Union to charge people for ascending the statue's head. But they find a loophole around that.

Of course it's free to go up. The privilege, however, is limited to those who have donated to the Franco-American Union and have a specific photograph to prove it. What can I say? Auguste and his supporters are doing everything they can to collect the necessary funds. Finishing this head has wiped the coffers clean. It's only with the help of a national lottery that the committee manages to raise the remaining funds.

With hopes of winning the grand prize of 35,000 francs, the French people buy 300,000 tickets, which will close the last financial gap for the statue, though not its pedestal, in 1880. I'd say Auguste must feel relieved, but he has another crisis on his hands. His mentor and architect, Eugene Viollet-le-Duc, dies in 1879.

How on earth will the ambitious sculptor make his copper statue, or lighthouse, stand up and stay up amid the harbor's winds and the copper expanding and contracting temperatures it will face in New York's bay? He turns to a bridge builder, Alexandre Gustave Yvel. You've heard his name before.

Gustave Eiffel's most famous work, the Eiffel Tower, is still ahead of him. He won't build that for another decade. But the well-coiffed and bearded Frenchman had to make a name for himself before building the tower somehow, and he's done that by building bridges. Gustave is a talented engineer, though given to self-doubts, if anyone can figure out how to make liberty stand, it's him.

Here's how he does it. Gustave designs an over 90-foot iron tower, or pylon, to go inside the thin copper statue. Beams then come off the tower, which connect through fittings to the statue's copper skin. This keeps the iron and copper from touching and allows Lady Liberty to expand, contract, and sway as needed. And so, up she goes. As we enter the 1880s, the Statue of Liberty is built in its entirety in Paris.

By 1884, Parisians walking in the vicinity of Rue de Chézelle can see the massive, currently orange-red goddess of liberty towering over the six-story, Ousmane-style buildings that were constructed during the reign of Napoleon III. They're welcome to visit, for a fee, of course, God to cover the shipping costs. And Auguste guesses that, in total, about 300,000 people do. Among them is Victor Hugo.

As you might recall, the famous author went into exile when Napoleon III ended the Second Republic. The octogenarian literary and political hero of the nation has come to see this monument. "C'est superbe," he declares. The whole nation will mourn when Victor passes away next year. But his is not the only death we should note. Our 1865 dinner party host, Édouard de Laboulaye, died in 1883, the year before his visit.

Auguste is now ready to send his Colossus to the United States. Though not leaving France's shores just yet, it's handed over to the United States with great pomp and circumstance on the 4th of July, 1884. There's just one problem: the U.S. isn't ready to receive his Colossus. Years have passed since we briefly met the American Committee, but in truth, we haven't missed much. Fundraising for the pedestal has continued to prove a rather hard go. Far harder than the fundraising in France.

New Yorker Richard Morris Hunt has made a 150-foot design for it, and as of May 1883, chief engineer Charles Stone began excavating the statue's future home on Bedloe Island. But this former Union general, who once thwarted a Lincoln assassination attempt, is constantly strapped for cash as he endeavors to turn this island's former fort into a proper foundation. Excavation and early concrete work alone blow through 85,000 of the American committee's total $100,000.

Fortunately for him, the American committee and this pedestal, the French-American statue is about to gain a useful Hungarian-American ally, Joseph Pulitzer. Born in 1847, the dark-haired, bearded, pince-nez-wearing Hungarian immigrant, Joseph Pulitzer, came to the United States during the Civil War as a 17-year-old overseas recruit for the Union Army.

Since then, he's built an incredibly successful career in the world of journalism, and in 1883, he bought the sizable but failing New York World newspaper. Joseph bought it from one of the corrupt and very disliked gentlemen whose manipulative ways caused the 1869 gold panic known as Black Friday, Jay Gould. There's a bit of irony in that. Joseph wanted the paper to attack corrupt, stingy millionaires.

But no matter, the polyglot immigrant is quickly turning the paper around, and in 1884, he sees the Statue of Liberty's pedestal as a phenomenal opportunity to pummel New York's most wealthy residents. Days after Joseph Pulitzer's purchase of the world, the paper declared, "...the Statue of Liberty, the gift of our sister republic, is ready for us. But the place to put it is lacking, owing to the poverty, to put it acidly, of the millionaires of the metropolis."

The wealthy do donate, but not nearly enough. And so, Joseph goes another route. He turns to the common people. On March 16th, 1885, Joseph issues the following call in the New York world: "We must raise the money!"

The world is the people's paper, and now it appeals to the people to come forward and raise the money. The $250,000 that the making of the statue cost was paid by the masses of the French people, by the working men, tradesmen, the shop girls, the artisans, by all irrespective of class or condition.

Joseph further promises to print the name of every donor, no matter how small the amount. Readers begin sending contributions to the world.

Nearly all the amounts are small, just pennies. But taken together, the roughly 125,000 donors become a tidal wave of support. Their contributions add up to over $37,000. It's still not quite enough. The American committee is about $70,000 shy. But Joseph has one more idea. He gives us the nation's first professional fundraisers. These drummers, as they're called, hit the streets knowing they'll keep 20% of whatever they raise.

And that's how the last gap closes. In August 1885, Joseph Pulitzer announces that all the funds have been raised for the pedestal. Work on it picks up again as the dismantled Lady of Liberty, who arrived in New York on June 17th, lays in pieces. She waits almost a year, but finally, on April 22nd, 1886, the 150-foot-tall concrete and granite work of classical architecture that is her pedestal is finished.

All in all, the French raised roughly $250,000 for the statue. The Americans have now raised over $300,000 to pay for the surprisingly expensive pedestal. One last cost remains: the actual assembly. Amid great division, Congress ultimately kicks in the needed $56,500. Of course, for the Statue of Liberty to qualify for these federal funds, it must remain what Auguste I promised: a lighthouse.

So, Chief Engineer Charles Stone will ensure eight lamps are installed on Liberty's torch. With that understanding, the Paris-born statue's internal pylon and exterior copper skin are reassembled. She's completely put back together and on her new island by October 23rd, 1886. From pedestal to torch, Lady Liberty reaches 300 feet into the air. She's taller than Trinity Church or even the recently completed Brooklyn Bridge.

It's now October 28th, 1886. The day is gray, murky, and filled with scattered showers. But no one seems to care. After years of talking, donating, and watching her rise, everyone is caught up in the excitement of inaugurating the Statue of Liberty. Joined by Brooklynites crossing the newly completed Brooklyn Bridge, New Yorkers crowd the streets of Manhattan to watch the parade. And there's plenty to see. This parade is some two miles long.

Sharply dressed in his military uniform, statue pedestal chief engineer turned grand marshal, General Charles Stone, rides at the front on a white steed. Behind him are 20,000 plus parade participants, ranging from active military to Civil War vets, firefighters, police, social clubs, flower girls, students, bricklayers, you name it. From as far north as 57th Street, they descend down to Madison Square, where President Grover Cleveland and American and French dignitaries alike are watching.

From here, the Paraders continue down Fifth Avenue and make their way to Park Row. There, they pass by the New York World's newspaper building and under an arch with a bilingual banner attached to it, reading La Belle France, the United States. Vive l'entente fraternelle des deux républiques, which translates roughly as Live long the brotherly harmony of the two republics.

Yes, there's plenty of talk of liberty, equality, brotherhood, and the now long-dead Marquis de Lafayette today. The parade then moves down Broadway toward its endpoint, the Battery. But as the parade passes Wall Street, stock traders, pretty much the only ones who aren't taking today off, make their contribution by spontaneously throwing ticker paper from their windows. This has just become the first ever ticker tape parade.

That afternoon, over 2,000 people crowd onto Bedloe's Island for the official unveiling. The Statue of Liberty's face is covered. An enormous blue, white, and red tricolor. That French Revolution-born flag that now represents the French Third Republic hangs over her face. But in her crown, Auguste Bertholdi waits as Senator William Everts speaks to the crowd below.

The moment he finishes his address, Auguste will receive a prearranged signal to pull a cord that will release the French banner to reveal his magnum opus. But there's a communication error, and thinking the oration is over, Auguste pulls the cord right in the middle of the senator's speech. Bedloe's Island erupts in cheers. Hundreds of boat whistles sound their adoration while the battery and warships fire salutes. Seems no one is much interested in whatever else the senator had to say.

A man in the crowd shouts, "Hail Liberty!" Indeed, liberty, "liberté." Auguste, still inside the crown, is overcome with emotion. Tears flow freely as he hugs his dear American friend and fundraiser, Richard Butler. Finally, it's done. His big daughter, as she's called, the Red Colossus, is home.

Meanwhile, President Grover Cleveland, down below, officially receives the statue, proclaiming, quote, "...she holds aloft the light which illuminates the way to man's enfranchisement. We will not forget that liberty has here made her home, nor shall her chosen altar be neglected. Willing votaries will constantly keep alive its fires, and these shall gleam upon the shores of our sister republic."

Reflected then and joined with answering rays, a stream of light shall pierce the darkness of ignorance and man's oppression until liberty enlightens the world. For at least 110 years, from 1776 to 1886, the United States and France have shared an evolving sense of liberty. One says life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The other, liberty, equality, fraternity.

And for those involved in the Statue of Liberty's creation, be that the 1865 dinner party host, Edouard de Laboulaye, those at the 1886 inauguration, or still so many others in between, the Statue of Liberty reflects those values. But that isn't the case for all. Amid the failures of Reconstruction, Jim Crow laws are actively taking liberty from the nation's Black citizens. They might be left to wonder just how shattered the chain at Liberty's feet really is.

Nor is the irony of a colossus woman representing liberty lost on the New York State Women's Suffrage Association. Amid those boats celebrating the statue's inauguration, more than 200 of these intrepid women are on a rented boat, actively voicing their disapproval as they don't have full rights. Of course, the same can be said of the French, who also deny women the right to vote and, at this point, are growing one of the largest colonial empires the world has ever seen.

Likewise, many will continue to argue over the real desires of Auguste Bertoldi. Was he just an egotistical sculptor, determined to build a colossus, be that in Egypt, the US, or elsewhere, who simply tapped into the narrative of liberty? Or did he really see liberty as an ideal worthy of a colossus? And from celebrating reconstruction to American independence, a transatlantic friendship, and liberty, what exactly is the meaning of this evolving statue? Of course, none of these are mutually exclusive.

The statue has, does, and will yet mean so many different things to different people, just as Auguste likely had both selfish and noble aspirations driving him. But personally, I like the word "evolving" because, in truth, the Statue of Liberty not only has a multitude of meanings, but one of her greatest doesn't come from Auguste or any other man involved in her creation.

This one comes from Emma Lazarus, who, in 1883, wrote a poem for a Statue of Liberty fundraising auction. Deeply concerned about refugees, the young Jewish woman and New Yorker focused her sonnet on how the statue would welcome these and other immigrants coming to the United States seeking a better life, seeking liberty. Years later, the poem will be added to the statue's pedestal. But my words can't do her words justice. So I'll just let Emma end this episode.

With no further ado, here's her sonnet, the new Colossus. Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, with conquering limbs astride from land to land. Here at our sea-washed sunset gates shall stand a mighty woman with a torch, whose flame is the imprisoned lightning, and her name, Mother of Exiles.

From her beacon hand glows worldwide welcome. Her mild eyes command the air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp," cries she with silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

Anthony Pizzulo, Art Lang, Beth M. Christiansen, Bev Hawkins, Bill Thompson, Bob Drazovich, Brad Herman, Brian Goodson, Bronwyn Cohen, Charles and Shirley Clendenin, Chris Mendoza, Christopher McBride, Christopher Merchant, Christopher Pullman, Clayton Crouch, Dane Poulsen, David Aubrey, David DeFazio, David Rifkin,

Mark Price

Matthew Mitchell, Matthew Simmons, Melanie Jam, Nick Seconder, Noah Hoff, Paul Goeringer, Rick Brown, Sarah Trawick, S.B. Wave, Sean Pepper, Sharon Thiesen, Sean Baines, Creepy Girl, Tisha Black, and Zach Jackson. Join me in two weeks, where I'd like to tell you a story.