Freedom's Cap

Review by William C. Davis

When Jefferson Davis arrived in Montgomery, Alabama, on February 18, 1861, to become president of the new Confederate States of America, he found that those who got there before him had already arranged for the rental of a house to act as an executive mansion. Davis would not have been human if he did not feel a brief moment of hesitation when he first approached that house, for if he was observant at all he must have noticed something on the exterior cornice that had stirred his ire not too many years since. Decorative attic vents were set into the cornice at regular intervals along the front of the house. They were in the shape of a Phrygian cap, a so-called “freedom’s cap” that in Roman times signified emancipated slaves receiving their freedom.

In a delicious irony, when Davis was Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce, one of his responsibilities had been overseeing the United States Army Corps of Engineers as it attacked the mammoth task of an expansion of the Capitol, with new Senate and House wings, and a massive new dome to be crowned with a magnificent statue. To Davis’ chagrin, the design called for a Phrygian cap atop the statue. As a slave-holder from slave-holding Mississippi, and a champion of the propriety of slavery in America, Jefferson Davis could hardly endorse a symbol of slaves rising to freedom at the very pinnacle of the nation’s capitol. Davis himself oversaw the redesign of the cap into today’s bizarre amalgam somewhat resembling a cross between an Indian headdress and an eagle’s wings.

In Freedom’s Cap, Guy Gugliotta delivers a wonderfully detailed narrative on the task Davis oversaw, of turning a crumbling hulk with sagging roof and rotting timbers, into the beautiful building of state that is today recognized immediately around the world. After securing a ludicrously modest initial appropriation of $100,000, Davis put a close friend, Captain Montgomery C. Meigs, in charge as supervisor of the project. Gugliotta’s research and narrative are outstanding, and one of the best aspects of Freedom’s Cap is the side alleys and byways of the story that he uncovers, such as Meigs’ introduction of photography for the task of copying plans and drawings, and the hiring of Constantino Brumidi to paint the interior walls and ceilings, surfaces still vibrant today. Meigs, who would rise to become quartermaster general of the Union Army in the war then just a few years away, launched into a project the like of which no engineer in America had yet undertaken. It would take years, and still be unfinished—like the Union itself—when the nation split in Civil War. It was not until November 30, 1863, that the dome was substantially completed and the statue bolted to the top. By that time, Meigs was with the army, and the tide of war was turning against the Confederacy.