After months of rehabilitation work, D.C.’s Freedom Plaza has reopened and features several new additions, including over a dozen statues.
The area in front of the west-end fountain is now home to the Prison Ship Martyrs鈥� Monument, a tribute to the thousands of patriots who died on prison ships during the American Revolution.
鈥淢ore Americans died in these ships than in all of the revolution’s battles combined. Many willingly went to their death rather than betray the cause,鈥� said Vince Haley, director of the Domestic Policy Council of the United States, speaking at Tuesday鈥檚 ribbon cutting ceremony.
Visitors will also notice several new statues and memorials including life-sized likenesses of 12 Revolutionary War heroes. The new exhibit is titled 鈥淔reedom Assembled.鈥�
鈥淭hese were farmers, ministers, laborers, young volunteers, and ordinary citizens who answered an extraordinary call. They’re ordinary citizens like all of us that are here today,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said.
Haley highlighted each soldier depicted, including Samuel Whitmore.
“This 78-year-old retired veteran attacked British troops retreating from the battles of Lexington and Concord, killing and wounding several before the enemy shot him point blank in the face and bayoneted him 13 times, leaving him for dead. Hours later, locals found him alive and still trying to reload his musket.”
Another soldier depicted is Caesar Glover. He was enslaved in Africa in 1750 at the age of 8 and sold in Massachusetts at the outbreak of the war.
鈥淗e joined the famous Marblehead men of Massachusetts, the unit that miraculously rescued George Washington’s army from Brooklyn Heights and later moved the Continental Army across the icy Delaware on Christmas Day, 1776 and saved the revolution,” Haley said.
There are six on either side of a statue of Caesar Rodney, a declaration signer from Delaware. His statue was removed from Wilmington in 2020 because Rodney was a slave owner.
The Freedom Plaza fountain has also been refurbished and is working for the first time in a decade, according to the National Park Service.
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