Lady Liberty

1217 words

Lady Liberty

The women crowded onto their chartered red barge, shadowing President Cleveland’s boat as closely as they could in New York harbor without overtly challenging the security boats around him.  Josephine Swenson, age 10, was almost crushed among the women’s bodies. Marrianne, her mother, did her best to protect her.  Marianne wanted her daughter to share in this important endeavor by these brave women. 

The suffragettes had turned out in force with homemade signs and banners to make it known that, while they supported the symbolism of Lady Liberty, they wanted to make it clear that the real-life liberty of real live ladies was made all the more obvious by its absence in the real world. Not even one woman was included among the VIPs allowed on the island for the ceremony. 

Young Josie was both excited and afraid as she looked up through all those bodies into the fog and rain.  It was chilly but she didn’t feel it, warmed nearly to the point of suffocation by the others. Her mother looked down, smiled, and squeezed the child’s hand. “You will remember this when you grow up and vote.” Josie was a thoughtful little girl. She did her best to absorb the moment.  

Her mother had told her the dismal history of women’s efforts to get the vote; nevertheless, Josie was a true believer, her optimism absolute. She trusted her mother and these women on this boat. She was confident about the future.  

The women cheered each other for encouragement, shouting to be heard over the cannon fire from the celebrating tall ships, exchanging smiles and chanting, others calling out to the Presidential vessel, calling out slogans through the dense fog, slogans like ‘Lady Liberty Demands the Vote,”  “Give Mother the Vote,” and “Liberty for All, Women Too.”  

Cleveland and those privileged to share his boat ignored the women. Instead, the men were looking to the sky, holding their hands palms-up to test the rain, much more of a bother than women in a boat. They must be near the island but still could not see anything through the fog.

The President, who led the parade and then had to sit on the reviewing stand as thousands of paraders trooped by, was soaked to the bone despite staff offering panchos and taking turns holding umbrellas over his head.  He did his best to keep smiling through it all, smiling at and saluting each of the coteries as they saluted him in return.

 Only VIPs were allowed on Bedloe's Island for the ceremony. Augustus Swenson, Josie’s father, was the owner of Swenson Lighterage and had been focused since back in June on getting all 214 crates containing the statue’s pieces safely out to the island. Her mother had told her of her father’s struggles. Now Josie knew he was among the privileged few spectators. She was proud that, unlike the millionaires and other big wigs, as her mother called them, her father had earned his way there. She knew he was happy with his company’s contribution to the massive undertaking,  relieved that they had gotten the lighters safely on shore with all the copper sheets that had now been reassembled into the colossus hidden under the shroud.  

What she couldn’t have known, however, was that, at that very moment, Gus Swenson was growing weary of the drone of speaker after pompous speaker as they awaited the arrival of the President. 

Willliam Fitzhugh was worried.  As an aide to the President, one of the major planners of the day, he desperately wanted everything to go by the numbers. The fog, the chill wind, the choppy waters, the incessant drizzle did not dampen his concern. The shroud over the statue itself was billowing in the wind. 

Fitz was paying little attention to the Senator now speaking on the dais when, suddenly, he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.  The billowing shroud gave way (it must have been a mistake, a false signal from the boy with the handkerchief ) revealing the gigantic copper figure of Liberty way ahead of her scheduled time.  The boy was to have waited for Cleveland, but there was Liberty in all her awe-full glory. 

“Blast,” whined Fitzhugh, “Blast, blast, blast!”

The assembled VIPs first gasped and then erupted into hear-hears and bravos and hip-hip-hoorays. The President who had just disembarked and was not yet on the stage lifted his eyes to the sky and held his hands up in triumph. His wide smile showed he was going to make the best of it all. 

Cannons, steam-whistles, and fireworks filled the fog-bound sky with noise and smoke as he ascended the stage where he waited patiently for the crowd to settle down.

Hands held high again, he looked one more time to the Goddess of Liberty, and began speaking, concluding with:

We are not here today to bow before the representation of a fierce and warlike god, filled with wrath and vengeance, but we joyously contemplate instead our own deity keeping watch and ward before the open gates of America, and greater than all that have been celebrated in ancient song. Instead of grasping in her hand thunderbolts of terror and of death, she holds aloft the light which illumines the way to man’s enfranchisement. We will not forget that Liberty has here made her home; nor shall her chosen altar be neglected. Willing votaries will constantly keep alive its fires, and these shall gleam upon the shores of our sister republic in the East. Reflected thence, and joyously with answering rays, a stream of light shall pierce the darkness of ignorance and man’s oppression until liberty enlightens the world.”

Just offshore, Josie knew the suffragists on the red barge were not so sure. There was not one woman on the island.  One of the women held a sign that read, “Lady Liberty wonders why she can’t vote.” Later, Matilda Gage protested, “It is the sarcasm of the 19th century to represent liberty as a woman, while not one single woman throughout the length and breadth of the land is as yet in possession of political liberty.”

As before they blasted their words as loud as they could. But no one could see or hear them through the fog and the din as Cleveland concluded his remarks.  

 Finally, after years of work and planning and fundraising on both sides of the Atlantic from Auguste Bartholdi to Joseph Pulitzer and many others, the statue officially named “Liberty Enlightening the World” now shone its 151 feet one inch of copper glory atop its 105-foot pedestal.

The next day, day Marriane read this to Josie from an article quoting an African American newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio: "Liberty enlightening the world," indeed! The expression makes us sick. This government is a howling farce. It can not or rather does not protect its citizens within its own borders. Shove the Bartholdi statue, torch and all, into the ocean until the "liberty" of this country is such as to make it possible for an inoffensive and industrious colored man to earn a respectable living for himself and family, without being ku-kluxed, perhaps murdered, his daughter and wife outraged, and his property destroyed. The idea of the ‘liberty’ of this country ‘enlightening the world,’ or even Patagonia, is ridiculous in the extreme.”