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 his aide, Captain Montgomery Meigs, with orders to remove the cap, saying that "its history renders it inappropriate to a people who were born free and would not be enslaved". A military helmet, with an American eagle head and crest of feathers, replaced the cap in the sculpture's final version. (Today many casual observers take the statue, with its eagle and feathers, to be a Native American.) Execution Crawford died in 1857 before the full-size plaster model left his studio. The model, packed into six crates, was shipped from Italy in a small sailing vessel in the spring of 1858. During the voyage, the ship began to leak and stopped in Gibraltar for repairs. After leaving Gibraltar, the ship began leaking again to the point that it could go no farther than Bermuda, where the model was stored until other transportation could be arranged. Half of the crates finally arrived in New York City in December, but all sections were not in Washington, D.C., until late March 1859. Beginning in 1860, the statue was cast in five main sections by Clark Mills, whose bronze foundry was located on the outskirts of Washington. Work was halted in 1861 because of the Civil War, but by the end of 1862, the statue was finished and temporarily displayed on the Capitol grounds. The cost of the statue, exclusive of installation, was $23,796.82. While Freedom was being cast at Mills' foundry, the foreman in charge of the casting went on strike. Instead of paying him the higher wages he demanded, Mills turned the project over to Philip Reid, one of the slaves working at the facility. Reid presided over the rest of the casting and assembly of the figure. Late in 1863, construction of the dome was sufficiently advanced for the installation of the statue, which was hoisted by former slaves in sections and assembled atop the cast-iron pedestal. The final section, the figure's head and shoulders, was raised on December 2, 1863, to a salute of 35 guns answered by the guns of the 12 forts around Washington, D.C. Restoration On May 9, 1993, after being in place almost 130 years, the statue was brought