“Freedom’s Cap: The United States Capitol and the Coming of the Civil War” by Guy Gugliotta

The United States Capitol, much like this citys other architectural glory, the National Cathedral, is as much a work in progress as a finished product. Completed nearly a century and a half ago, it has been repaired and improved almost nonstop. The famous statue of Freedom, the magnificent dome upon which it stands, the stunning paintings and frescoes by Constantino Brumidi, the hidden systems by which the vast building is heated and cooled all these and countless other features have been worked on and, wherever possible, modernized, a process that seeks to maintain the Capitols 19th-century grandeur while making it a hospitable environment in which to conduct the nations business when, that is, Congress is in the mood.

Still, the construction of the Capitol as the world has known it since Freedom was put in place in the late autumn of 1863 is a story unto itself the story of the buildings expansion in the 1850s and 60s from the comparatively small early 19th-century original and Guy Gugliotta tells it superbly in Freedoms Cap. He takes his title from the original design submitted in 1856 by Thomas Crawford, an American sculptor based in Rome, in which the elegantly draped figure of a woman wore a liberty cap, the symbol from classical antiquity of a manumitted slave. This was disagreeable to the secretary of war, Jefferson Davis, who had taken a powerful interest in the Capitols improvement but did not want anything associated with anti-slavery sentiments to be memorialized in the building. As Gugliotta explains, eventually the liberty cap was replaced by the somewhat bizarre crest of feathers and a birds head with which it has been adorned to this day, but he chooses, properly, to see the Capitol itself as the cap, worn by a nation whose people are now far more free than they were when the statue was installed.

(Hill & Wang) - Freedom's Cap: The United States Capitol and the Coming of the Civil War by Guy Gugliotta

Gugliotta is a freelance writer who has worked for a number of newspapers in various capacities including The Washington Post, though his path and mine never crossed. With this book, he joins that estimable group of non-professional historians who have revived the practice of narrative history, one cherished by serious readers but too often scorned these days in academic history departments. From time to time he strains to maintain narrative pace with unnecessary foreshadowing As time passed, Walter would have even more reason to worry about Meigs, Many things would happen to make Meigs repudiate those words but this may not annoy most readers as much as it does me. On balance, Gugliotta writes lucidly and engagingly, he brings to life a huge cast of characters, he captures the physical setting of Washington in the mid-19th century and the mood of a city where every transaction seemed to be poisoned by the issue of slavery, and he has done a stupendous amount of research.

What Gugliotta calls the seed of the Capitols expansion was planted in 1850 by Davis, then the junior senator from Mississippi, in communication with a Washington architect named Robert Mills. Davis wanted a set of drawings and estimates for an enlargement of the U.S. Capitol by adding new wings to either end of the existing building. Nothing as ambitious as that happens quickly in Washington, but the letter was the beginning:

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“Freedom’s Cap: The United States Capitol and the Coming of the Civil War” by Guy Gugliotta