Although now one of the world’s great icons of freedom, the Liberty Bell was not always a symbolic force. Originally used to call the Pennsylvania Assembly to meetings, the Bell was soon adopted not only by abolitionists and suffragettes, but also by civil rights advocates, Native Americans, immigrants, war protesters, and many other groups as its symbol. Every year, two million people travel to the Bell just to look at it and reflect on its meaning.
Humble beginnings
The bell now called the Liberty Bell was launched at the Whitechapel foundry in London’s East End and shipped to the building now known as Independence Hall, then the Pennsylvania State House, in 1752. It was an impressive-looking object, 12 feet in circumference. around the lip with a 44 pound clapper. Inscribed at the top was part of a biblical verse from Leviticus, “Proclaim liberty in all the earth to all the inhabitants of the same.”
Unfortunately, the clapper broke the bell on its first use. A couple of local artisans, John Pass and John Stow, recast the bell twice, once adding more copper to make it less brittle and then adding silver to sweeten its tone. Nobody was very satisfied, but he was put in the tower of the State House anyway.
From 1753 to 1777, the bell, despite its sound, rang primarily to call the Pennsylvania Assembly to order. But in the 1770s, the bell tower began to rot and some felt that ringing the bell could cause the tower to collapse. Therefore, the bell was probably not rung to announce the signing of the Declaration of Independence, or even to call people to hear its first public reading on July 8, 1776. Still, officials felt it was sufficiently valuable enough to move, with 22 other great bells from Philadelphia, to Allentown in September 1777, so that the invading British forces would not confiscate it.
It was returned to the State House in June 1778.
While it is unknown what exactly caused the first crack in the Liberty Bell, presumably each subsequent use caused more damage. In February 1846, repairmen attempted to fix the bell using the stop drilling method, a technique in which the edges of a crack are filed to prevent them from rubbing against each other and then riveted together. Unfortunately, in a subsequent call for Washington’s birthday later that month, the upper end of the rift grew and officials decided not to ring the bell again.
At that time, however, he had stayed long enough to earn a reputation. Because of its inscription, abolitionists began using it as a symbol, first calling it the Liberty Bell in the Anti-Slavery Registry in the mid-1830s. By 1838, enough abolitionist literature had been distributed that people stopped calling it the bell of the State House and turned it forever into the Liberty Bell.
In the path
Once it was no longer used as a work bell, especially in the years after the Civil War, the symbolic position of the Liberty Bell was strengthened. It began with what were essentially wide-ranging patriotic trips, primarily to world fairs and similar international exhibitions where the United States wanted to display its best products and celebrate its national identity. The first trip was in January 1885, in a special railroad car, making 14 stops en route to the World’s Cotton and Industrial Centennial Exposition in New Orleans.
After that, he went to the World’s Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World’s Fair, in 1893, where John Philip Sousa composed “The Liberty Bell March” for the occasion. In 1895, the Liberty Bell made 40 celebratory stops en route to the International and State Cotton Exposition in Atlanta, and in 1903, it made 49 stops en route to Charlestown, Massachusetts, for the 128th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill.
This periodic itinerary show of Liberty Bell continued until 1915, when the bell made a long journey across the country, first to the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco and then, in the fall, to another such fair in San Diego. . When it returned to Philadelphia, it was relocated to the first floor of Independence Hall for another 60 years, during which time it only moved to Philadelphia once to promote war bond sales during World War I.
Freedom to vote
But again, a group of activists were eager to use the Liberty Bell as their symbol. Women suffragettes, fighting for the right to vote, put the Liberty Bell on banners and other collateral materials to further their mission to make voting in America legal for women.
There is no place like home
After World War I, the Liberty Bell stood primarily in the lobby of the Independence Hall Tower, the climax of visitor visits to the building. But city fathers fear that the 1976 bicentennial celebration of the Declaration of Independence will bring undue tensions from crowds to Independence Hall and, consequently, the Liberty Bell. To meet this impending challenge, they decided to build a glass pavilion for the Bell across Chestnut Street from Independence Hall. In the extremely rainy hours of the early morning of January 1, 1976, workers dragged the Liberty Bell across the street, where it hung until the construction of the new Liberty Bell Center in 2003.
On October 9, 2003, Liberty Bell moved into its new home, a larger facility with an interpretive exhibit on the meaning of Bell over time. A large window allows visitors to view it against the backdrop of its former home, Independence Hall.
Visit Philadelphia is a non-profit organization dedicated to raising awareness and visits to Philadelphia, Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery counties. For more information on trips to Philadelphia and to see the Liberty Bell, call the new Independence Visitor Center, located in Independence National Historical Park, at (800) 537-7676.
