Freedom’s Cap: The United States Capitol and the Coming of the Civil War

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Description

The history of the modern United States Capitol, the iconic seat of the U.S. government, could also be the history of The united states’s most tumultuous years. As the majestic new building rose above Washington’s skyline, battles over slavery and secession were ripping the country apart. Ground used to be broken just months after Congress adopted the compromise of 1850. Workers began to bolt the Capitol’s 9-million-pound cast-iron dome into place in 1856. The statue Freedom was placed atop it in 1863, five months after the Battle of Gettysburg. Little known is the greater irony: the US owes the building’s scale and magnificence to Jefferson Davis, who remained the Capitol’s staunchest advocate up until the week he left Washington to develop into president of the Confederacy. Davis’s protégé and the engineer in charge used to be army captain Bernard Law Montgomery C. Meigs, who as Lincoln’s quartermaster general of the Union Army would never forgive Davis’s betrayal of the nation. The Capitol’s brilliant architect, and Meigs’s longtime rival, used to be Thomas U. Walter, a Southern sympathizer who would turn fiercely against the South and all who had betrayed the Union.

In Freedom’s Cap, Guy Gugliotta, an award-winning journalist, science creator, and creator, has captured with impeccable historical detail the clash of personalities in the back of the building of the Capitol and its bizarre design and engineering.

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