American History Tellers - The Statue of Liberty | 6

Episode Date: July 3, 2019

The Statue of Liberty is one of America’s most iconic monuments to freedom. As we head into the Fourth of July holiday, we’ll look back on the amazing effort it took to get Lady Liberty built.Beckett Graham is co-host of The History Chicks podcast, a show that explores the legacies of women throughout history. Beckett joins us to talk about her approach to telling women’s stories and we’ll also play a portion of The History Chicks podcast episode on how the Statue of Liberty came to be. It’s a story that includes New York’s first ticker tape parade, some challenging construction issues and suffragists on a boat protesting the statue’s dedication.Support us by supporting our sponsors!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge new seasons of American History Tellers early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. From Wondery, I'm Lindsey Graham, and this is American History Tellers. Our history. your story. Today, we're talking with Beckett Graham. She is the co-host of the podcast The History Chicks. It's a show that explores the legacies of women throughout history. Beckett and her co-host Susan Bollenweider use the show as a platform to educate people

on the lives of women who are thought leaders, artists, politicians, and activists, and who made a huge impact on the world. Tomorrow is the 4th of July, a day where folks will fire up the grill, maybe light some sparklers, and come together to celebrate the one thing that binds us all together as Americans, the idea of liberty. Throughout history, there have been countless symbols dedicated to the idea of liberty, but maybe none are as big, literally and figuratively, as Lady Liberty herself, the Statue of Liberty. The story we know all too well is that the statue is a gift from France,

a gesture of goodwill to cement the brotherly friendship between two nations. And that's true for the most part. It turns out, though, the statue took an incredibly complicated journey to get from the mind of its creator all the way to Liberty Island, where she stands proudly today. It was a journey that involved immense struggles to pay for the monument, construction challenges, New York's first ticker tape parade, and even a band of suffragists who rowed a boat out to the statue to protest its unveiling. Today, more than 4 million people visit the statue every year. Since its dedication in 1886, it has been a beacon of hope for Americans

and the 12 million immigrants who sailed by her on their way to neighboring Ellis Island and a new life in America. We'll talk to Beckett Graham about her exploration of the statue's history, what surprised her about its construction, and how she thinks the stories in her podcast illuminate the contributions women have made throughout history. Here's our conversation. So Beckett, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having me.

So you describe your show as a place where you can learn about how women are remembered and how their legacies live on. As you've done this show, what have you learned about those questions yourself? How are women and their legacies remembered, do you think? Well, of course, the further back you go, the scantier the evidence. But the thing is, the information is there. It's just harder to get a hold of. It's amazing how many fields women had integral parts in that are just now coming to the surface. Modern scholarship is turning up, lifting all the stones and coming up with the vast amount of women's history that has heretofore been hidden.

So we are enjoying digging into that. We are constantly surprised and delighted. And then we're amazed by the courage of the people who came before us. We have it comparatively very, very easy in the modern day. That's why we say we'll never time travel. Yes, I have actually no real inclination to go backwards before vaccines and penicillin either.

But you mentioned that as time goes by, women's stories are told better and more fully. How have you discovered, though, the differences in how women's stories are told in general? A lot of women's stories are told through their relationships with men. And sometimes you have to go through the men's stories and ferret out the little corners where they appear, our women subjects. Agrippina the Younger was one. We had to kind of shoot around all the menfolk in her life to get to a full picture of her story. So that is the challenge, separating what has been

the traditional narrative from kind of the underlying input of the women whose stories are overshadowed. Tell me a little bit about how you go about writing for the show, how you find your subjects. What's the writing and the scholarship process? We begin, I have a co-host named Susan Vollenweider, and she and I, luckily enough, are in two different library systems. And so we start with the books and check out every book we can come across. We rely heavily on reference librarians. Sometimes it'll be a movie. Sometimes you have to call Ghana and ask about the history of a particular person.

Sometimes you have to call the British Museum. We talk to people all over the world, ask questions. When possible, we get into primary source documents, letters, which I don't know how the historians of the future are going to come across mysterious facts, because I don't know if a text has got the same weight as a hidden letter that didn't make it into the fireplace. So that's what we do. We just gather, gather, gather, gather, and then we have a birth-to-death format. So we don't have to

write an outline, and we make a point of never speaking to each other about the subject until we turn on the microphone. That's fascinating. So it's a real conversation between the two of you sharing your independent research. Correct. So when I'm surprised on tape, I'm surprised. The stories you tell, though, highlight women throughout history and the contributions they've made in arts and culture and society and science. But what do you attribute to the lack of storytelling about these accomplishments from these women in history in general, in TV shows, any medium? Well, it all turned around around 18, I would say 80. Just about the time, actually, that the Statue of Liberty was kind of coming in to her own. Just women in general were entering college at greater rates.

There was agitation that women should be allowed to vote. There were the first female doctors. It just seemed like women's fortunes turned right around then, right around the Gilded Age. And so ever since then, the stories are easier to obtain. There's just more of them. There have got to be a kind are forced to say, her father allowed her to read whatever she wanted. And honestly, that seems to be the key throughout history is having a father who was more of a mentor and allowed his daughter to reach her full potential. Really seems to be the key up until very, very recently. Well, you mentioned the Statue of Liberty, so let's pivot a bit and talk about her. This is an incredible story of engineering feats and architects and an international feeling of goodwill. What surprised you the most about the story?

And other than the female figure, who were the women in it? What surprised me was sort of the origin story. The Statue of Liberty was perhaps not born, but conceived at a dinner party. That's not something every lady can say. And the women in the story on both sides of the Atlantic tend to be the common people, the people that saw in the Statue of Liberty the promise of friendship between the two nations and contributed as little as a penny. Women, school children, small investors all across both nations were the key to getting the Statue of Liberty erected.

Yeah, I think that's surprising to most people that it's often told as a gift from France to the United States, but it was a lot of work, especially on the American side, to get this done. The ship was coming. The statue was in pieces and en route to its new home before the home was actually built. So it was a little bit of pressure. And that was the division of labor here that we would promise the pedestal if they shipped the statue. Correct. And it had not been constructed while the statue was en route. That is correct. The statue itself had been standing in the middle of Paris, fully completed. They wanted to test, you know, you have to build it before you take it apart and ship it, make sure all the parts are working.

So it had risen above the skyline of Paris. And as alarming as that is to think about, it became quite the tourist attraction there. And there were those that didn't want to let it go. And so when it left, a group of American expats got together and gave them a smaller scale replica, which still stands in Paris today. In the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Peru and New Zealand, lies a tiny volcanic island. It's a little-known British territory called Pitcairn,

and it harboured a deep, dark scandal. There wouldn't be a girl on Pitcairn once they reach the age of 10 that would still have heard it. It just happens to all of them. I'm journalist Luke Jones and for almost two years I've been investigating a shocking story that has left deep scars on generations of women and girls from Pitcairn. When there's nobody watching, nobody going to report it, people will get away with what they can get away with. In the Pitcairn Trials, I'll be uncovering a story of abuse and the fight for justice that has brought a unique, lonely Pacific island

to the brink of extinction. Listen to the Pitcairn Trials exclusively on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. For more than two centuries, the White House has been the stage for some of the most dramatic scenes in American history. Inspired by the hit podcast American History Tellers, Wondery and William Morrow present the new book, The Hidden History of the White House. Each chapter will bring you inside the fierce power struggles, the world-altering decisions, and shocking scandals that have shaped our nation. You'll be there when the very foundations of the White House are laid in 1792, and you'll watch as the British burn it down in 1814. Then you'll hear the intimate conversations

between FDR and Winston Churchill as they make plans to defeat Nazi forces in 1941. And you'll be in the Situation Room when President Barack Obama approves the raid to bring down the most infamous terrorist in American history. Order The Hidden History of the White House now in hardcover or digital edition wherever you get your books. There was a good moment in this episode about the model for the face of the statue and the inspiration behind it. Can you tell us about it? There is a sculptor named Elias Robert who made a statue called France Crowning Art and industry. And although this statue has been quite vandalized and many of her spare parts are now missing, her face can be mistaken for a twin of our Statue of Liberty. And while various models have been floated, his mother, a local model, I do believe that if you were to see the face of

this statue to which Frederick Bartholdi had been exposed, you would see the similarities. I'm actually looking at it right now. And yes, any casual observer would be forgiven for confusing the two. Even the crown is similar. And that crown represents the idea of liberty itself radiating from the statue. But perhaps there's a hypocrisy there that a statue of woman radiating liberty, representing freedom at a time when women couldn't vote, was apprehensible. What was the political message of this? A woman representing liberty in a time when liberty was not given to women? Well, I assure you on opening day, there were protests. There were only a few women allowed on the stage at all during the grand opening.

And there were boats of votes for women, women's rights, advocates traveling the waters, trying to make clear that the irony of this was not lost on many people. We think of it as a general joyous occasion, but it had to have been a little bit of a slap in the face. This copper giant woman has more accolades than your mother, you know, does. If you think about that, more respect from the menfolk in politics. And the statue was dedicated, I think, in 1886, right? So that would have been 35 years before the right to vote. There was a significant time frame, yes, before women were allowed to vote.

Yeah, it was August of 1920 in which women were first allowed to vote, which meant they had to wait almost a full year to celebrate their first Independence Day as truly independent and participating members of American society. But speaking of Independence Day, July 4th is tomorrow. And Americans, of course, celebrate their independence and freedom. And the Statue of Liberty is one emblem among many of that freedom. How would you categorize the legacy of the Statue of Liberty as a symbol to women and freedom in the United States? Has it changed from something to protest to something embrace? Yes, actually, it started out as a gift from the people of France to the people of America, largely as a bridge of friendship

to perhaps prevent America from becoming better friends with another major power in Europe, Germany. So there was a little bit of an undercurrent of ulterior motive perhaps there. We are better friends with you than the Germans are, etc. As time went on, and as the poem became attached to the Statue of Liberty, give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free, etc. It became a symbol of hope for the immigrant. The way she was positioned in the harbor, she's not actually facing a direction you would think she would be. She's faced so that boats coming in kind of have to circle her and see the maximum amount of the front of this statue. She's a major inspiration. There were reports that everyone on a boat would run to the side

where the Statue of Liberty was. People would take off their hats. People would begin to cry at that moment. She's the symbol of a new life. Kind of a calming thing to see. You've left everything you know behind, but here I welcome you to your new life. It really became an emotional thing for the immigrant. And so ever since around the Titanic era, she has become the symbol of a new life in America and kind of stood in for immigration, which that's not how she began. But that is how she is thought of in the minds of the populace. Also, she is a place where there have been many protests against the Vietnam War, for example. People have seized her. People have occupied her to further their protests. Using her as a lightning rod to attract attention to their cause. There was recently a woman who climbed the Statue of Liberty and there was outrage. And I thought, well, people have used her for that before. So we shouldn't be surprised. We'll be playing a portion of the Statue of Liberty episode at the end of this interview. But I thought I'd give you a little opportunity to tell us a little more of your podcast, which has covered a wide range of women and not just those cast in bronze. Correct. So what were some of your more surprising stories, the turns that you found genuinely revealing about the period, or just touched you on a personal level? of railroad cars just to survive, to hide under vegetable carts and reach up with your little

hand and steal a carrot, etc. She was an African-American woman who was trying to make it in entertainment and found a, ironically, a home in France, the reverse of people coming to America. She became the toast of Paris, the toast of France. And she was the most famous for dancing topless in a banana skirt. And the average person, if they know about Josephine Baker at all, that's where their knowledge ends. What an image that is. But what they don't know is she used her fame as a weapon against the Germans and their allies in World War II. She would write mysterious messages or people would write hidden invisible ink messages on her sheet music, which she would take through roadblocks. If she'd been caught doing any of this, she could be killed. She would be invited to embassy parties

as a famous entertainer, and she would excuse herself to go to the women's room and write down things she has heard from the German guests at the party and put them into her undergarments and leave the party. She was once at home in her country estate and a group of French resistance fighters burst in on her. They were panicked. They were sweaty. The Nazis were right behind them and she escorted them into the next room, opened the door. And the Nazi soldiers who one second ago were on the pursuit of their prey became people who wished Instagram had been invented because functionally there's Madonna standing right in front of them.

And she charmed them and, you know, autographed things and turned it all around and sent them on their way and saved that particular unit of the French resistance. But the information she gathered and passed on to the Allied commanders saved tens of thousands of American lives. And she was standing beside Martin Luther King when he gave an I Have a Dream speech. So she achieved the thanks for her work within her lifetime, which is rare enough. But her story surprised me so greatly. It's a point where you shut the book you're reading and think, really? Really? And then you open the book again. That was the one that surprised us the most. And we are constantly surprised by things like that. Big and small, Marie Antoinette had a flush toilet.

Whatever. That's super funny. We love unear by things like that. Big and small. Marie Antoinette had a flush toilet. Whatever. That's super funny. We love unearthing things like that. Absolutely. Well, Beckett, thank you for joining us and telling us a little bit about your podcast and the women it celebrates and unveils. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me.

Beckett Graham is the co-host of the History Chicks podcast. Coming up next is a portion of the History Chicks episode about the Statue of Liberty. I hope you enjoy it. I'm Tristan Redmond, and as a journalist, I've never believed in ghosts. But when I discovered that my wife's great-grandmother was murdered in the house next door to where I grew up, I started wondering about the inexplicable things that happened in my childhood bedroom. When I tried to find out more, I discovered that someone who slept in my room after me, someone I'd never met, was visited by the ghost of a faceless woman. So I started digging into the murder in my wife's family, and I unearthed family secrets nobody could have imagined.

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your last few minutes on Earth? You can binge Incoming exclusively in ad-free and Wondery+. Join Wondery+, and the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. She was born among silverware, paid for with nickel, dressed in copper and held up by an iron framework and the hopes and dreams of generations of Americans. Not the end. Let's talk about the Statue of Liberty.

But first, let's drop her into history. In 1886, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson was first published. Carl Benz patented and began manufacturing the Benz patent motor wagon, the first automobile powered by a gasoline engine. Sigmund Freud opened his first private practice in Vienna. Jacobs Pharmacy in Atlanta began selling Coca-Cola. After fighting for his homeland for over 30 years, Apache warrior Geronimo is the last Native American to surrender to the United States. Spanish royal decree abolishes slavery in Cuba.

Diego Rivera, husband of Frida Kahlo, Clarence Birdseye, father of frozen foods, and Ty Cobb, a guy who played baseball, were all born. Emily Dickinson and John Deere both died. And on October 28, 1886, the dedication of the Statue of Liberty was held in New York City. The Statue of Liberty was born at a dinner party in the summer of 1865 in Gwatinie, France, or should we say conceived at a dinner party? It's not many ladies who can say that.

That's really funny. It was a meeting of some progressive French intellectuals who were gathering both to mourn the death of the American president, Abraham Lincoln, and to celebrate the North's victory in the American Civil War. out of any real love of slavery exactly or the South in general, but he wanted America busy eating itself while he was going to take over Mexico. Nefarious purposes. Now here's where we can insert an alternate yet related origin story. Basically, that same group of French intellectuals, again defying Napoleon III, raised money to give a gold medallion to Abraham Lincoln's widow, our old friend Mary Todd Lincoln, from episode 70, which they did in fact present. In French, it says, Lincoln, the honest man who abolished slavery, restored the Union, and saved the Republic without veiling the Statue of Liberty. Oh, ho, ho. Well, regardless of the origin story, Liberty Enlightening the World, which was the original title, was the first and only offspring of the people of France and the United States, thousands of tradesmen, marketers, and her father, Frédéric Auguste

Bartholdi. Yeah, in this case, we just don't seem to have a mother figure at all. So let's just move on to Papa. Frederick Auguste Bartholdi was born in 1834, one of the sons of an extremely wealthy man who had died when his son Frederick was only two. And so Bartholdi was raised by a very strong mother, let's say, who kept him financially dependent on her. I never really approve of that. No, but she also was in his corner quite a bit. We'll get into that. But I don't know. Yes, she was strong. And for the time, she was probably very brash, I think. Well, still, there are worse dates because there was money to burn. His mama had wanted him to be a lawyer. Luckily, he had an older brother who at least at the outset towed the line to lawyerdom. Okay, so our Bartholdi was a little

more free to study things like art and architecture. Which is one of the perks of the second child. The pressure is kind of off of them. That's why I always say that Prince Harry has a joyous life. He does look a lot happier, doesn't he? Especially now, now that he has the Markle sparkle on his arm. Oh, he's so cute. I know. His mom did move the family from Colmar, France, which is in the northeast corner. It's kind of on the border of Germany and France and Switzerland's in that area, to Paris. Although although Bartholdi always held Colmar as his hometown in his heart. That plays a part in his life later. But when he was in Paris, he was sent to the National School of the Arts and studied both architecture and painting.

Well, one of Frederic Bartholdi's mentors had a real passion for giant statuary and had in fact designed two of the major large statues on the Arc de Triomphe. We'll put pictures of them up. So peace and resistance are his two statues and they're just giant. And of course, everybody with a classical education knew about the Colossus of Rhodes, which was a giant statue of the Greek god Helios, one of the wonders of the ancient world, about 108 feet tall. And even after an earthquake had knocked it over, it was a tourist attraction for 800 more years

until it was dragged away and sold for scrap, which seems really ignominious to me. I'm like, how dare you? Do you not know what that is? Well, so it's gone forever. And of course, there's Michelangelo's David, which is not as big, but is giant in scale. And there were and are significant ancient colossi in Asia,

though I am not sure Bartoldi would have studied those. Well, he would have studied quite a bit. It wouldn't have totally surprised me. There is something awe-inspiring about giant works of art. I don't know what it is. I mean, they continue to be built. It's kind of amazing how many you can even just think of off the top of your head and wait until you guys see the Genghis Khan monument. It's pretty new. 2008 or the Guanyin from 2005. I mean, they just keep getting built. We all, of course, recognize Brazil's Christ the Redeemer because the Olympics wanted to use their drones real bad

in the Rio Olympics. So we got a lot of footage of that statue. Mount Rushmore, Sitting Bull. I am not sure either of those qualifies colossi. I keep wanting to say colossuses. I think because of hippopotamuses. It's not colossuses? No.

We can't make it a thing? But it is hippopotamuses. And it's not hippopotami. But it is cacti. Oh, English is so confusing well in my defense neither colossi or hippopotamuses come up that often in my daily life neither do cacti but of course portoldi unless he had a time machine didn't know about any of the things we were just talking about he was focused on the large statuary of antiquity.

And his mother got him a gig. She's a connected person. Yes, she was connected. And she really believed in her son. That's for sure. Well, so he got a gig making a municipal statue of a hometown hero at 19. He beat out several more experienced sculptors, which I think was a little bit of bad blood. But hey, that's nepotism, kids. That's the art world. I don't know what to tell you. Exactly. I mean, he had the skill and the talent. He did not have the experience, but he had mama in his corner who was, you know, talking to the right people. So, hey, look, he got the commission. So he built it to within an inch of not being able

to get it out of his workshop at all. So he built it literally as large as he could. And Mother pulled some more strings and got this work into kind of a World's Fair type of exhibition, but it was too big to fit inside. So guess where they put it? Right at the entrance where it got more attention than it should have gotten, say the art critics. But Niener, I got a third place prize. And he got his name known because, you know, if you had to go into the exhibition, you weren't, you know, just the guy walking on the street. So there, every Tomas, Richard, and Henri could see it outside. I'm sorry, that just tickled me. All right, that's really funny. There was another statue there called the France crowning art and industry. And if that figure in

the middle doesn't look familiar to you, I don't know what. I have to tell you, this is so frustrating for me because I keep wanting to show you pictures and I will, and they'll be on the Pinterest board. But that figure in the middle is a dad ringer for someone that you know. Yes. Well, maybe not a dad ringer, but at least similar enough to be her older sister. But you can decide for yourselves what you think of their resemblance. Some people say that the future Lady Liberty looks like Bartholdi's older brother, Charles. Could be. It's commonly said that she was modeled after his mother. But if you look at his mother and Liberty's faces, they're not really similar, I don't think. No, no, no.

Charles, his older brother, might have a shot at being an inspiration. But once you see that statue, have you seen it? Actually, no, I don't even know which one you're talking about. So actually, I'll look it up. Let's see. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. Did you see the close up?

Yep. I'm looking at the close up right now. Yeah. I mean, we're supposed to get inspiration for our art from our lives, right? I don't know about copying, but. Well, I'm just saying. See, now that you've seen it, you're with me. I'm totally with you.

Completely with you. I can't not be with you on this one. Yes. Well, Bartoldi's dream was to see the wonders of Egypt, particularly the Colossi of Memnon, which are two sitting statues in modern day Luxor that flank the entrance to a temple that's no longer there. This place floods like crazy. And also people harvested, like they did in Rome with the Colosseum, they harvested the pieces of the temple to build other things. So that's a super bummer, but at least the colossi are still there. And so, like you do when you have a wish and a pocket full of money, he took off to be inspired. Side note, at this point when he was 21, the

Sphinx was still just, I say just, I mean, just a big head. It's a big head, but as far as anyone was concerned, it didn't go much past the collarbones. People hadn't seen its paws or lower body in over 3,000 years. So Bartoldi made good use of his time. He made hundreds of paintings and, again, helps to be a rich man, had a hold of a new camera that made these things called calotypes that only took two minutes to expose. Unlike daguerreotypes, which are the other thing available, took 15 minute exposure. But this one, you could get done very quickly. You just had to be kind of careful and keep your boxes free of sand and stuff because you couldn't develop them until you got back. You had to put all these like

wet exposed things in a box. I love that though, he's like into new technology for the era. You know, he's not just sitting there sketching what he's seeing. He's taking a photograph to bring back to his studio. I think that's a very young artist with a lot of enthusiasm. Well, and I think that's just how young people are throughout history. I think it helps to not be afraid to be a beginner at something. That's the same thing about his paintings, too. The friends that he was traveling with mocked his paintings the whole time. And then toward the end, they realized, hey, wait a minute, we're supposed to

be these painters and we didn't paint anything. And he's the one that filled boxes full of paintings and got so much better while we were making fun of him. Whoops. So, you know. I love the image of this group of artists, you know, just taking this cruise of the Nile and stopping and seeing stuff. Just sounds like a fun adventure. And I think had he not become a sculptor, Bartoldi would have been a good photographer. He is very chauvinistic and said it was hard to take pictures of ladies and girls because they just kept moving. Even after he told them not to, they had to dance around. Well, in some of his pictures, there's men that are moving and they appear as if they're two people in some of his photos. So how come the

ladies came in for the criticism? I don't know. I don't know. Well, closer to home on the way back, he was just gobsmacked by a statue in Munich called Bavaria. And yeah, I would, again, like you to go to our Pinterest board and look at all these works I'm mentioning. It's super hard. Well, to make you see it, this lady is classically draped on a very tall pedestal, and she's holding above her head a sheaf of wheat. Again, a similarity to themes in his later work.

Although the face is not the same. Well, he already had the face in his mind. Well, so he decided that this was his thing. This kind of giant municipal art was where his heart was going to be. Okay, that's fine. It's all well and good to have a dream. But the challenge common to artists throughout history, I believe, is to get someone to pay for it. So Bartoldi looked around at what was happening in the world and decided on his target, Egypt. Did we trick you? You didn't trick me. What was happening with Bartoldi as he was establishing himself as a

sculptor is that the Suez Canal was being built. This was a super big deal. And Egypt was pouring a lot of money into this to connect the Mediterranean to the Red Sea. It was something he wanted to get in on. And he felt that the Suez Canal needed a lighthouse. And he was the guy to make it. Well, it would kind of be an homage to the great lighthouse of Alexandria. So how would that be for a legacy? Kind of the new colossus on a new lighthouse of Alexandria. So the ruler of Egypt agreed to look at a proposal, and so Bartholdi set to work. And we have the drawings. This one would be a woman standing on a pedestal holding a lighted torch over her head about a 100 feet high, entitled Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia. Or you know what? If you prefer, big boss, we'll just call it progress. That's fine too.

It's up to you, the name. Let me do a little dance. So she started out as a peasant woman, but morphed into a goddess. It was more dignified, whose light came not from her torch, as you're probably thinking, but from her crown. Bartholdi made a miniature to go along with it because, you know, clients, man, sometimes they have no vision. And so he had to have a 3D model. He spent a lot of time on this proposal because this was going to occupy years of his life if the guy took it.

In this case, the client, I don't know if he had vision or not, but he had no money. Egypt was just mired in debt. Like, why did you waste my freaking time then? How frustrating is that? I don't know. It's probably like someone going into a high-end car dealership, you know, and the salesman going, oh, we have a customer here. And then finding out after hours and a test drive that they don't have the money for it.

Oh, my gosh. Bow and smile. Bow and smile. You don't want to burn a it. Oh my gosh. Bow and smile, bow and smile. You don't want to burn a bridge, but dang it. And so now what? Now he's got to hustle for commissions. And during one of these jobs, he met Edouard René de Laboullet, host of the dinner party we spoke of

at the beginning of this episode. He was hired to make a bust of this man. That's, see, this is like little commissions now he's having to take because his big ones aren't panning out. This guy, Laboulaye, and his circle of friends were super fans of the American Republic. They collected all kinds of stuff about Thomas Jefferson

and George Washington and any book that came from America they tried to collect. They were like those comic book collectors, but kind of like before you could get Funko Pops of Benjamin Franklin and all that kind of thing. So they had to spend a lot more money. France, since the revolution, had never gelled into a functioning system,

but America had. And the Laboulaye party really idolized what they saw as this shining example of how civilizations could be if only humanity would get the crap together. As if on cue, the Franco-Prussian war erupted because France cannot be at peace for five minutes. Bartholdi had to fight as a soldier. He was, well, he wanted to because his province was in danger. I have to tell you that province of Alsace switches places between Germany and France every dang time there's a war, I think. And France itself turned into kind of a civil war, which left both Bartholdi's home in Alsace

and his part of Paris sort of left in his opponent's hands. He's kind of functionally homeless right now. Babelé had an idea. What about America? You know, because what else is he going to say? But what about America? This new upcoming world power is cozying up to Germany. Well, we were coming up on the 100-year anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. What a great time to show America that we are their friends here in France. We are aligned with them. We should give them some type of a gift.

Well, yeah, they didn't want to be left out of this power click. Paris was known for art and culture. Germany, to the French chauvinist, was not. And they should perhaps put forward the idea of some kind of jointly sponsored monument for the 100th birthday. That's just the ticket. Dude, though, this is going to be spade work. You have to go talk to people. You're going to have to be the top regional salesman of 1871. So Laboulaye, who seems to know everyone, everywhere, kind of like his mom in Europe,

wrote him letters of introduction to prominent Americans. While those letters were being written, Bartholdi got busy. He started sketching. He had, of course, this image that he had created for Egypt. He will later deny that that was the source of his inspiration for the Statue of Liberty. He'll deny that. But he was morphing that Arabic goddess into more of a Greek goddess. In some of his illustrations, her arm is at her waist.

Some of it's raised up. It's usually her right hand. Her robes changed. She got chains around her legs, broken to symbolize slavery. The crown morphed into a seven-spoke diadem. Again, the light is emanating from that crown, but it looked an awful lot like the one from Egypt. I'm sorry. Well, it's supposed to be the personification of the Roman goddess Libertas. And there was in this country, I mean America, also a tradition

of a patriotic figure called Columbia, as in Columbia University, Washington, the District of Columbia. Our country here, instead of being called America, just might have been called Columbia. That name was in the running after the Revolutionary War. She stood for peace and wisdom and plenty and justice. And though she didn't invent her, an enslaved African American poet named Phyllis Wheatley is given credit for personifying her, making her into a character. I mean, Uncle Sam would take over later, I think, as, you know, what we think of when we think of America. But at this time, it was a female form of Columbus, Columbia. Similarly, Britain had Britannia and France had Marianne. Very similar in drapery and in accoutrement. One of our very first anthems, in fact, until the 1930s, was Hail Columbia. I don't know all the words, but I do know who fought and bled in freedom's cause,

ringed through the world with loud applause. Down came the rain and washed the spider out. I'm sitting here going, I know this tune. What is this tune? Yeah, you do know this tune. That is just Itsy Bitsy Spider in a new package. That's what I think. Or vice versa. I don't know. Similarly to Columbia, there was a tradition of this female personification of liberty in American art and literature. And liberty in Columbia started to become sort of interchangeable and indistinguishable from each other. In fact, liberty was on the first coins ever minted

by the US government in 1793. She did not spring out of the mind of Auguste Bertoldi fully formed. This was to be a monument to an existing concept rather than a mere piece of sculpture or art. You know what I mean? I like that it also cast a little shade on the developing government of France, because giving this gift to the United States of this big symbol of liberty and democracy kind of says, oh, look, we really love this, don't we? So it was kind of shade to what was happening in France, which was not aiming itself towards the more democratic way of governing.

Like a prod in the back of France. You can do it. We would have given this to you, but you suck. So, you know. So Bartoldi with his sketches and a small statue of his proposed sculpture. And a mere $820,000 in his pocket. How is he going to make it? I don't know.

This is what he said. I will try to glorify the Republic and liberty over there, meaning the United States, and hope that someday I will find it here again. Oh, look, that's more shade, isn't it? It definitely is. That was a sample from the History Chicks episode on the Statue of Liberty. You can catch the rest of the episode on their website, thehistorychicks.com, or on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening to this right now.

American History Tellers is taking the next week off, but then we'll be back on July 17th with a new six-part series about Nazis, the atomic bomb, and the Allied soldiers that kept the most destructive weapon in history out of the hands of Adolf Hitler. From Wondery, this is a special update episode of the Tulsa Race Massacre from American History Tellers. In our next new series, as World War II begins, all the pieces are in place for the Germans to develop a nuclear weapon. Desperate to stop Hitler from getting his hands on the bomb, the Allies assemble a team to spy on, sabotage,

and even assassinate members of the Nazi atomic project. If you like American History Tellers, you can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. And before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. American History Tellers is hosted, edited, and produced by me, Lindsey Graham, for Airship. Sound design by Derek Behrens. This episode was produced by Lee Hernandez. Our executive producers are Jenny Lauer Beckman and Marshall Louis.

Created by Hernán López for Wondering. about Dracula is that not only is it this wonderful snapshot of the 19th century, but it also has so much resonance today. The vampire doesn't cast a reflection in a mirror. So when we look in the mirror, the only thing we see is our own monstrous abilities. From the host and producer of American History Tellers and History Daily comes the new podcast, The Real History of Dracula. We'll reveal how author Bram Stoker rated ancient folklore, Thanks for watching.