Statue of Liberty defeat by the Prussians. One of these was the "Lion of Belfort", a monumental sculpture carved in sandstone below the fortress of Belfort, which during the war had resisted a Prussian siege for over three months. The defiant lion, long and half that in height, displays an emotional quality characteristic of Romanticism, which Bartholdi would later bring to the Statue of Liberty. Bartholdi and Laboulaye considered how best to express the idea of American liberty. In early American history, two female figures were frequently used as cultural symbols of the nation. One of these symbols, the personified Columbia, was seen
Statue of Freedom the new cast-iron dome, which was authorized in 1855. Walter's drawing showed the outline of a statue representing the Goddess of Liberty; Crawford proposed instead an allegorical figure of "Freedom Triumphant in War and Peace". Crawford was commissioned to design "Freedom" in 1854 and executed the plaster model for the statue in his studio in Rome. Mississippian U.S. Senator and U.S. Secretary of War Jefferson Davis (who would later become President of the Confederacy) was in charge of the Capitol construction and its decorations. According to David Hackett Fischer in his book "Liberty and Freedom", Crawford's statue was... Davis sent