Megan shares with me a file containing Reed’s biographical information, including an 1870 census report that proves his D.C. residency and Clark Mills’s own handwritten records detailing how much he initially paid for him. Reed—one of the individuals most responsible for crowning the U.S. Capitol with the Statue of Freedom—was a slave. In 1862, Mills wrote that he had purchased Reed for $1,200 “many years ago when he was quite a youth” and described him as “mulatto color, short in stature, in good health, not prepossessing in appearance, but smart in mind, [and] a good workman.”
