Statue of Liberty

French Influences, Design, and Dedication

Edouard de Laboulaye, an influential French political philosopher and France's leading expert on the U.S. Constitution, suggested the idea of presenting the United States with a monument symbolizing the special French–American friendship in 1865. France had been one of the United States’ staunchest allies during the American Revolution, and the democratic ideals and personal freedoms enshrined in the nation's founding documents inspired Laboulaye, who desired such liberal reforms in French society. A committed abolitionist, Laboulaye served as president of the French Anti-Slavery Society and an honorary member of the Philadelphia chapter of the Union League Club, an abolitionist group that supported President Abraham Lincoln and the Union cause during the Civil War (1861–65). Laboulaye regarded the Union's victory over the Confederacy and the subsequent ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, which abolished slavery, as fulfillment of American democratic ideals espoused in the U.S. Constitution. He also firmly believed that the construction of a French monument that valorized American democracy would muster public support for democratic reforms within France.

In 1870, Laboulaye commissioned the French sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi to design his monument to the United States. Bartholdi proposed a statue titled “Liberty Enlightening the World,” which featured a robed woman raising a torch overhead. During a trip to the United States in 1871, Bartholdi decided that the ideal location for his statue would be Bedloe Island in New York Harbor, because of the small island's location at the major U.S. point of entry. Bartholdi, Laboulaye, and American supporters founded the Franco American Union in 1872 to raise funds for the construction of the statue. The French agreed to build the statue, while Americans would bear the responsibility for constructing its base pedestal. Bartholdi hired Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, architect of the Eiffel Tower, to construct the statue's massive frame.

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