Sitting high on top of the United States' Capitol Building, the Statue of Freedom was hoisted in place on December 2, 1863. The statue was designed and cast in plaster by a man named Thomas Crawford. He did a full size model at his studio in Italy in 1856. The statue was cast in bronze at a factory in Maryland. A slave named Philip Reid supervised the casting of the statue. Mr. Reid gained freedom shortly afterwards when the Emancipation Proclamantion was issued.