READ IT: Grover Cleveland’s Speech The Day Lady Liberty Was Dedicated

On October 28, 1886, then-President Grover Cleveland spoke at the dedication of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.

“The people of the United States accept with gratitude from their brethren of the French Republic the grand and completed work of art we here inaugurate,” Cleveland began:

This token of the affection and consideration of the people of France demonstrates the kinship of republics, and conveys to us the assurance that in our efforts to commend to mankind the excellence of a government resting upon popular will, we still have beyond the American continent, a steadfast ally.

Cleveland, the only president other than President Donald Trump to serve two non-consecutive terms in the White House, went on to talk about the statue itself and what it represented:

We are not here to day to bow before the representation of a fierce and warlike god, filled with wrath and vengeance, but we joyously contemplate instead, our own deity keeping watch and ward before the open gates of America, and greater than all that have been celebrated in ancient song. Instead of grasping in her hand thunderbolts of terror and of death, she holds aloft the light which illumines the way to man’s enfranchisement.

We will not forget that liberty has here made her home; nor shall her chosen altar be neglected. Willing votaries will constantly keep alive its fires, and these shall gleam upon the shores of our sister republic in the East. Reflected thence and joined with answering rays, a stream of light shall pierce the darkness of ignorance and man’s oppression, until liberty enlightens the world.

The massive copper structure, designed by French sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi and engineered by Gustav Eiffel, had been promised more than 20 years earlier in 1865 — as a gift celebrating the abolition of slavery, the end of the American Civil War, and the centennial celebrations of 1876.

Bartholdi began work on the statue in 1875, and it was officially presented to U.S. Minister to France Levi P. Morton nine years later, on July 4, 1884. It was not until late 1886 that it was finally delivered, assembled, and unveiled at its permanent home on Liberty Island.

On July 3, 1986 — 100 years after the statue was first revealed — then-President Ronald Reagan delivered a speech rededicating the statue and celebrating the lighting of Lady Liberty’s torch.

We are the keepers of the flame of liberty. We hold it high tonight for the world to see, a beacon of hope, a light unto the nations. And so with joy and celebration and with a prayer that this lamp shall never be extinguished, I ask that you all join me in this symbolic act of faith, this lighting of Miss Liberty’s torch.