Sold – Bartholdi, Its Sculptor, Raises Funds to Build the Statue of Liberty

At dinner party in 1865, Edouard Laboulaye, chairman of the French anti-slavery society, proposed that France present the United States with a monument to liberty in the centennial year of American independence- 1876. Noted sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi was present and took to the idea. In 1870, he decided to move the idea forward and began sketching  figures of “Liberty” for such a monument. The following year, he toured the U.S.  promoting the idea of a Franco-American monument, to be placed on Bedloe’s Island in New York Harbor. In 1875, although the project could not be ready for the centennial, France determined to proceed and the Franco-American Union was created there. That committee approved Bartholdi’s plaster model of “Liberty Enlightening the World,” began fundraising the 600,000 francs necessary to build it, and Bartholdi began constructing the statue. The plan called for the people of France to donate the statue and the people of the United States to build the pedestal on which it would rest.

Although the Franco-American Union committee began its efforts to raise funds in America to build the pedestal at the same time as it did in France, very little progress was initially made. So in 1876, Bartholdi completed the hand and torch, and gambling on them exciting some interest in his project, sent them to the U.S. for display at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia that summer. He then came to America himself and threw himself headlong into fundraising, first in New York and then in Philadelphia, where the statue’s hand and torch on display were having the impact he desired of generating interest. Then Bartholdi returned to New York, where in September 1876 he was to unveil his statue of the Marquis de Lafayette in Union Square Park.

Despite the success in Philadelphia, Americans were not initially receptive to funding a portion of the Statue of Liberty, as the project seemed foreign and there was no clear vision for what the statue would come to mean. Bartholdi and supporters of the project were anxious that, regardless of their successful efforts in France, the statue might never be erected. In this letter, he lays out his game plan to raise the funds necessary to build the Statue of Liberty

Autograph Letter Signed, in French, 3 pages, New York, August 26, 1876, to an unknown recipient.  “I am sending you the prospectus of the Franco-American Union Committee and some letters of subscription in case you find a place for them. I regret I can no longer send the brochures, I had to give the last two to the New York Herald and to M. Perkins… If you can obtain for us any endorsements, even the most minimal of subscriptions, accompanied by a letter of encouragement to the committee, you would produce an excellent effect. A contrivance of a few dollars wrapped up in a slightly warm letter will be worth a hundred of them in Paris and would drive subscriptions. I have been promised and I hope that before long the expressions of sympathy made by the Americans will be discussed; it is absolutely necessary that we have them exonerated of the accusations of silent indifference. Independent demonstrations will produce a considerable impact, until they are better organized. I am leaving for Philadelphia, where I have things to do while I am awaiting the unveiling of the statue of Lafayette. Perhaps you will be in New York at this time. September 6, I will have an invitation ticket sent to your home, just in case.”

The money for the pedestal would not be raised for another nine years, and until then uncertainty about the project continued. What could be more ironic – the American people resisted the Statue of Liberty for more than a decade. Yet it would prove to be the most inspiring symbol of American freedom ever erected, and sitting in New York Harbor, would greet millions upon millions of immigrants to the Golden Land, from whom so many Americans today are descended.