Recasting History: The 1893 Columbian Liberty Bell

In 1893, the Daughters of the American Revolution proposed a radical monument for the upcoming World’s Fair. The “Columbian Liberty Bell,” a functional copy of Philadelphia’s famed Liberty Bell, would be cast not from standard bell metal stock, but rather from an amalgamation of artifacts contributed by hundreds of people: copper pennies saved by schoolchildren, bullets from American battlefields, a brass kettle from Valley Forge. Organizers also solicited “relics” linked with notable personages and historical events: a pike used in John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry, Lucretia Mott’s fruit knife, links from Abraham Lincoln’s watch chain. As one supporter explained, the bell “embodies the most beautiful ideas if we know how to interpret them. It is fused of gold, silver, brass, copper, nickel, an alloy of the fine and the baser metal... all are worked together into a perfect and harmonious whole.” Many saw the Columbian Bell as an embodiment of ‘e pluribus unum,’ a metaphorical gathering of the population of the United States across differences of race, class, gender, and religion—despite the DAR’s status as an exclusive, lineage-based organization. By gathering together and melting down, the Memorial Bell sought to reconstruct public memory and create unity, inviting the creative participation of everyday people in crafting an object that could emblematize their collective efforts and aspirations, even at a time of income inequality, disenfranchisement, and segregation. Might this work serve as a potential reparative model for memorial-builders and -makers of the future?