On Independence Day 1918, Lieutenant Katcher and Sergeant Godfrey rang the Centennial Bell from the steeple of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Cast for the nation’s centennial after the Liberty Bell fell silent—its voice lost to a historic crack—the new bell was forged from four cannons: two from Saratoga, and two from Gettysburg.
The strategic melting of these specific weapons was a highly symbolic masterstroke of metallurgical reconciliation. By fusing weapons from the Revolutionary War with artillery from the Civil War, engineers literally melted down the instruments of America’s deepest internal divide to forge a single, harmonious instrument of total national unity.
