France's gift to the United States, a copper colossus designed by sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi with an iron framework by Gustave Eiffel, was unveiled on Bedloe's Island. Rain and fog blanketed the harbor, but hundreds of thousands turned out to watch warships fire salutes as Cleveland accepted the statue on behalf of the nation.
The unveiling almost went wrong before it began: as Bartholdi climbed to the statue's crown to release the veil covering her face, a premature signal from the crowd below caused the drape to fall too early, cutting short a congressman's speech in progress. Nobody seemed to mind. Ships in the harbor blasted their horns in such a deafening cacophony that officials later said they could barely hear the official remarks.
The statue itself had been shipped from France in 214 crates the year before, having sat partially assembled in a Parisian workshop where Parisians paid to view it before its journey across the Atlantic. Fundraising for the pedestal had nearly stalled until publisher Joseph Pulitzer shamed wealthy Americans into donating through his newspaper, ultimately raising the needed sum from more than 120,000 mostly small donors.
Women were barred from the dedication ceremony on the island itself, a decision suffragists protested by circling the island in a boat, shouting that it was ironic to celebrate liberty as a woman while denying women their own rights. Emma Lazarus's poem 'The New Colossus,' with its famous line about the 'huddled masses,' wasn't yet associated with the statue; it would only be added to a plaque inside the pedestal in 1903.
Key people: Grover Cleveland, Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, Gustave Eiffel, Joseph Pulitzer