The Liberty Bell

There has been, since the very beginning, many tributes to the Liberty Bell.  This chair, I thought, was one of the most unique.  The landscape is what the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania State Hall looked like at it's earliest.  The State House bell, now known as the Liberty Bell, hung first in the bell tower over the State Hall.

This is the actual Liberty Bell.  It was originally cast in England by Whitechapel Foundry in 1751, arrived in Philadelphia in 1752, and was hung in March, 1753 to commemorate Pennsylvania's 50th birthday.   The clapper broke the bell as it was hung up to try the sound.  Pass and Stowe (think about the movie, "National Treasure") were given the bell to melt down and recast.  Hoping to make it less brittle they added some copper to the original metal, but this resulted in a sound that was not at all pleasing.  Pass and Stowe again broke up the bell, melted it down, recast it a second time and hung - all 2,080 pounds of it - in June, 1753.

The sound was still not acceptable, so Whitechapel was asked to cast a completely new one.  When it arrived from England it's sound was no better, so they hung the new one elsewhere and kept what we now know as the Liberty Bell in the State House belfry.

The Liberty Bell was rung often, but it specifically "tolled when Benjamin Franklin was sent to England to address Colonial grievances, it tolled when King George III ascended to the throne in 1761, and it tolled to call together the people of Philadelphia to discuss the Sugar Act in 1764 and the Stamp Act in 1765...
It continued tolling for the First Continental Congress in 1774, the Battle of Lexington and Concord in 1775 and its most resonant tolling was on July 8, 1776, when it summoned the citizenry for the reading of the Declaration of Independence."

"In October 1777, the British occupied Philadelphia. Weeks earlier all bells, including the Liberty Bell, were removed from the city. It was well understood that, if left, they would likely be melted down and used for cannon. The Liberty Bell was removed from the city and hidden in the floorboards of the Zion Reformed Church in Allentown, Pennsylvania." 

The bell rang last in February, 1846 to honor the birthday of George Washington.  Cracked again, they filed the edges of the crack to prevent them from vibrating against each other when the clapper struck the bell, and continued ringing it.  About noon on that day it cracked in a zig-zag compound way and essentially silencing it.


X-rays show attempts to repair the final crack, and another photo shows a "spider" that was installed to help the bell support it's own weight:

Surprising to me is the fact that the American Revolution was not responsible for the State House bell becoming the "Liberty" bell.  The fact is, the abolitionists gave it that name in 1837, referencing the inscription on it from the Bible book of Leviticus, chapter 25, verse 10: "...proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof."  


The Liberty Bell has since become THE symbol of liberty for the WHOLE world - not just America.


There is so much more to this story.  The Liberty Bell Center, located in front of the Pennsylvania State House/Independence Hall, has an enormous amount of information concerning the Bell.  What you have read here is just the tip of an iceberg of information.  It's a must-see for yourself.