The Statue of Liberty Was NEVER About Immigration

The Statue of Liberty was never originally meant to be about immigration at all.

Today she stands as a welcome to newcomers, her torch raised over New York Harbor. But that is not the reason France gave her to America.

The idea came in 1865 from a French abolitionist named Edouard de Laboulaye. He wanted to celebrate two things: the friendship between France and America, and the end of slavery after the Civil War.

Look closely at her feet and you will find a broken chain and shackle, a symbol of emancipation, not migration. The famous welcome to the 'huddled masses' came from a poem by Emma Lazarus, written in 1883 and not mounted inside the pedestal until 1903.

Only in the twentieth century did she fully transform into the mother of immigrants. Her first meaning, freedom from slavery, had quietly slipped beneath her robe.

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