Deed of Gift

Details of broken shackle and chain.

Translated, the Deed of Gift (reproduced above) reads:

The Fourth of July, 1884, Anniversary Day of American Independence.

In presence of M. Jules Ferry, Minister of Foreign Affairs of France, and President of the Council of Ministers.

Count Ferdinand de Lesseps, in the name of the Committee of the Franco-American Union, and of the national manifestation of which that Committee has been the organ, has presented the colossal statue of "Liberty Enlightening the World," the work of the sculptor Bartholdi, to His Excellency, Mr. Morton, United States Minister at Paris, praying him to be the interpreter of the national sentiment of which this work is the expression.

Mr. Morton, in the name of his compatriots, thanks the Franco-American Union for this testimony of sympathy from the French people; he declares that, in virtue of the powers conferred upon him by the President of the United States, and the Committee of Work in America, represented by its honorable president, Mr. William M. Evarts, he accepts the statue, and that it shall be erected in conformity with the vote of Congress of the 22nd of February, 1877; in the harbor of New York, as a souvenir of the unalterable friendship of the two nations.

In faith of which there have signed:

In the name of France:
     Jules Ferry—Jules Brisson.

In name of the Committee of the Franco-American Union:
     Ferdinand de Lesseps—Edmond de Lafayette.

In name of the United States:
     Levi P. Morton.

Above is a reproduction of the proces-verbal, signed by those taking part in the presentation of the Statue of Liberty by France to the United States in Paris, July 4, 1884.

When the Statue of Liberty was shipped to the United States and erected on its pedestal at Bedloe's Island, in 1886, photographs, which are now in the Library of Congress, of both Deed of Gift and the proces-verbal were sent with it. The originals are in the Paris Archives.