When construction of the Capitol began in 1793, Washington, D.C., was little more than a rural landscape with dirt roads and few accommodations beyond a small number of boarding houses. Skilled labor was hard to find or attract to the fledgling city. Enslaved laborers, who were rented from their owners, were involved in almost every stage of construction. Philip Reid may be the single best known enslaved person associated with the Capitol’s construction history.
Reid was an enslaved laborer in the foundry run by the self-taught sculptor Clark Mills, who cast the
Statue of Freedom. Mills was a former resident of South Carolina, where he had purchased Reid for $1,200. Mills brought Reid with him when he moved to Washington in the late 1840s when Mills won the competition for an equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson commissioned for Lafayette Park.
In order to construct the Jackson statue, a temporary foundry was erected south of the White House and, through trial and error, Mills, Reid and other workmen produced the first bronze statue ever cast in America. The accomplishment was extraordinary due to the absence of any formal training of any of the participants.
In 1860, the success of the Jackson statue prompted the secretary of war to give Mills the commission for casting Thomas Crawford’s Statue of Freedom for the top of the Capitol’s new dome. A financial agreement was reached whereby the government would rent Mills’ foundry, pay him $400 a month for his services and pay for necessary materials and labor. The government compensated Reid at the rate of $1.25 a day for working on Sundays.
View his original pay voucher signed by the Architect of the Capitol in 1862. While unable to read or write, Reid was described as being “smart in the mind and a good workman.”
The original plaster model of the statue sculpted by Thomas Crawford, shipped from Rome to the United States in five main sections, was used to make the mold for the final bronze that stands atop the Capitol. An Italian sculptor was hired to reassemble the five sections of the model at the Capitol upon its arrival. However, when the time came to move the plaster model from the Capitol to the foundry for casting, no one knew how to separate it and the Italian sculptor refused to help unless given a pay raise. Reid solved the mystery by attaching an iron hook to the statue’s head and, with block and tackle, gently lifting the top section until a hairline crack appeared, indicating where the first join was located and where the interior connection could be found. The statue was successful separated into its five sections and transported to the foundry. Reid also worked to keep fires going under the statue's molds.
Philip Reid received his freedom on April 16, 1862 when President Abraham Lincoln signed the Compensated Emancipation Act that released certain persons held to service or labor in the District of Columbia. It is not known if he witnessed the event, but Reid was a free man when the last piece of the Statue of Freedom was put into place atop the dome on December 2, 1863.
