Statue's Broken Chains Symbolize Abolition

At the Statue of Liberty's feet, a broken shackle and chain lie partly hidden beneath her robes and remain difficult to see from the ground. The chain rests beside her right foot, disappears beneath the drapery, and reappears before her left foot with its end link broken. French political thinker and abolitionist Edouard de Laboulaye proposed the statue after the Union's 1865 victory and the abolition of slavery, making the broken restraints symbols of freedom from servitude and oppression.

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