Episode 5: Eagles Everywhere

by Kitty Felde

Fina identifies two of the eagles in the House chamber of the U.S. Capitol: the one in the ceiling over the House Floor and the one on top of the ceremonial mace on the House Floor.

(Mace image courtesy of Capitol Visitor's Center;                         Eagle image courtesy of NASA HQ via Flickr)

There’s another eagle on top of the Capitol itself.

Freedom is a bronze statue of a woman, 19 ½ feet tall. She looks like an Amazonian warrior – a flowing gown topped with a robe fringed in fur. In her left hand, she holds a victory wreath and a shield with 13 stripes for America’s original 13 colonies. She stands atop the Capitol Dome. Sculptor Thomas Crawford created the piece in the middle of the Civil War: 1863.

(Freedom image courtesy of the Architect of the Capitol)

She wears an unusual helmet: one topped with an eagle.

And yes, those are bird feet hanging down over her ears.

(Self Portrait with a Phrygian Cap - Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson. Public Domain)

It’s likely that Freedom would have worn a liberty cap – a knit hat with a point that bends to the side. It looks a bit like the hat on a garden gnome.

In ancient Rome, such a hat would indicate that you were a freed slave. However, the construction of the Capitol – including the statue on top of the dome – was under the supervision of the Secretary of War. His name was Jefferson Davis.

Yes, that Jefferson Davis, who became President of the Confederate States – states that broke away from the United States over the issue of slavery. Secretary Davis nixed the Liberty Cap, saying “its history renders it inappropriate to a people who were born free and should not be enslaved.”

Or perhaps he worried that such a cap might give ideas to the nearly four million enslaved in the United States at the time – many of whom had helped build the U.S. Capitol.

Secretary Davis proposed topping Freedom with a helmet surrounded by stars. The sculptor instead suggested an eagle’s head and “a bold arrangement of feathers, suggested by the costume of our Indian tribes."

But why the eagle?

That’s a story for another time.

Here’s the fiction inspired by the facts:

In episode 5 of The Fina Mendoza Mysteries podcast, everyone assumes the bird that pooped on the President is an eagle. Fina’s 4th grade class is even assigned a homework project: find all the eagles in Washington, DC.

MS. GREENWOOD: Now, class, because the Bald Eagle is our national symbol, eagles can be found all over Washington. Your assignment: find some of those eagles. And write a three paragraph report about them.

LOTS OF GRUMBLES

MS. GREENWOOD: Yes, Fina?

FINA: There’s lots of eagles in the Capitol. I already know about the eagle in the ceiling over the House floor. And there’s a second eagle that sits on top of a metal stick next to the Speaker’s chair. Papa says the stick is called a mace. I wonder if there are more eagles inside the Capitol.

MS. GREENWOOD: Why don’t you find out, Fina?

Claudia tells Fina that there’s another eagle: on he head of a statue called Freedom who sits atop of the Capitol itself.

Fina: Freedom really does look silly with a dead bird on her head.  

Senator Something woof laughs.  

Fina: And what’s with those feathers on top of the bald eagle’s head? And are those bird feet hanging down around her ears?