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Why did the French give the free Muse image to the United States?

Why did the French give the free Muse image to the United States? There have always been different opinions.

There is a saying that in 1865, after Napoleon III came to the throne, a group of bourgeois scholars in France hoped to end the French monarchy and establish a democratic country. Out of praise for the other side of the ocean and in order to enhance the friendship between the French people and the American people, they paid a sum of money and commissioned the sculptor Bartholdi to design the statue, which was given to the United States as a gift to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the United States.

Another saying is that the Muse of Liberty is related to the slavery system in the United States. It was established to celebrate the liberation of black slaves. Liberty refers to the freedom of slaves, so it refers to the nature of the Civil War and the victory of the federal government in the war. However, this statement has been put forward in recent years, and it is contemporary people who have given it a new meaning. It also expresses praise for President Lincoln’s liberation of blacks.

The third argument is that after the discovery of the American continent, the old empires of the world at that time rushed to enter the Americas, frantically took the resources of the American continent, slaughtered the local indigenous peoples, and used blacks as slaves. Among them, Britain and France fought for many years in Europe, and they did not give in to each other, especially the United Kingdom. At that time, they were relatively strong and wanted too much. Therefore, France was very dissatisfied with Britain. The United States became independent, and France strongly supported the United States in order to weaken Britain’s overseas power. The relationship between France and the United States was very good at that time. When the United States was independent for 100 years, the statue was given to the United States.

All three statements have certain meanings, but the third statement is more practical. Because we can see from the decoration of the statue: the statue holds the torch high in the right hand, which is more in line with the torch held by Muse in a famous French painting “Freedom Leads the People”, which symbolizes freedom, while Muse holds a book in the left hand, which is the “Declaration of Independence” of the United States, which shows that Muse guides the people to freedom by breaking the British colonization and gaining freedom. In this way, the French sending the statue to the United States should have nothing to do with the first two. The French love to talk about freedom, and they give their favorite and Muse to the United States, which is also the product of the struggle between France and Britain and mutual restraint.