Memorializing Lincoln

The Lincoln Memorial

It's on the back of our pennies and our five dollar bills, but have you ever really looked closely at the Lincoln Memorial?   Most visitors climb up the memorial's 98 steps (sadly, not the "fourscore and seven" number of 87 steps that a persistent monumental myth alledges) from the Reflecting Pool, snap a quick photo in front of Lincoln's statue as evidence of their visit, and then, scurry on to the next sight on their itinerary. Yet, this monument to our 16th President warrants a closer look. 

My son Richard inside the Lincoln Memorial

My son Richard and I visited this familiar Washington landmark over the holidays.  This past Friday I returned once again to scrutinize it more carefully and to hear a National Park Service ranger talk about Lincoln and the memorial's history.

In 1867, plans to commemorate Lincoln began when Congress incorporated the Lincoln Monument Association just two years after his death, but nothing was actually done until Congress approved construction funds for the memorial in 1910.  Land reclaimed from swampy marshlands at the west end of Potomac Park, now known as the National Mall, was chosen for the memorial's site. 

36 columns represent the 36 states in the Union at the time of Lincoln's death.

To honor Lincoln, a humble backwoods lawyer-turned-President, architect Henry Bacon submitted a design of a Greek temple with 36 columns representing the 36 states in the Union at the time of Lincoln's death; the names of these same 36 states are carved in the memorial's frieze.

This plaque laid in the sidewalk at the bottom of the Lincoln Memorial is a tribute to the two states that joined the Union after the Lincoln Memorial was completed in 1922.

Just above the frieze on the memorial's exterior attic walls are the names of the 48 states comprising the United States at the time the memorial was completed in 1922, along with the year each entered the Union.  Bacon's design was approved by Congress and on Lincoln's birthday, Feb. 12, 1914, construction began.

Daniel Chester French's Lincoln sculpture

Initially, the government's contract called for a 10-foot-high sculpture of Lincoln, but when Bacon and sculptor Daniel Chester French took a 10-foot model to the memorial, they realized that its scale was too small. The French's statue would be dwarfed by the immensity of Bacon's chamber. So, French increased the statue's height to 19 feet instead and placed it even higher upon an 11-foot pedestal. Thanks to this larger size, French's attention to details such as the button caught on Lincoln's coat lapel can be clearly seen. Befittingly, the statue's larger than life size suits Lincoln for he was a larger than life leader in our country's history.

Lincoln's Statue by Daniel Chester French

For the first seven years after the Lincoln Memorial was finished, Lincoln's statue remained in a shadowy chamber.  However, Congress approved additional funding, allowing an elaborate lighting system to be installed by 1929.  Custodians may now adjust the louvers in skylight above the ceiling to allow additional light to enter the chamber, depending upon the cloudiness outside.

The ceiling of the Lincoln Memorial

Abraham Lincoln was a polarizing figure to Americans at the end of the 1850s.  He barely won the Republican Party's presidential nomination from the front-runner, U.S. Senator William H. Seward of New York, winning the convention's third and final ballot by only a few votes.  Later when he was elected president, Lincoln would appoint his rival Seward to his Cabinet, along with other Republican presidential candidates, Salmon P. Chase and Edward Bates, a team that historian Doris Kearns Goodwin labels a Team of Rivals in her 2005 same titled best-selling book. 

His Republican Party platform clearly stated that slavery would not be allowed in any new states subsequently added to the growing Union, a plank that alienated Southern voters.  Yet, the Democratic Party was also splintered into factions with the northern Democrats supporting Stephan A. Douglas while the south nominated their own candidate, the incumbant U. S. Vice President, John C. Breckinridge from Kentucky.  A fourth candidate was John Bell of the Constitutional Union Party.  Although Lincoln received less than 40% of the popular vote, he won 180 electoral votes.  Breckinridge, Bell and Douglas received only 72, 39 and 12 electoral votes respectively. 

Ominously, Lincoln did not carry a single Southern state nor was his name even listed on the ballot in Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee or Texas.  With his victory, Lincoln not only won the presidency, but also the enmity of Southerners who feared his abolitionist beliefs threatened their way of life.  Lincoln became a marked man.

Lincoln's election on November 6, 1860 caused seven southern states, beginning with South Carolina on December 20, 1860, to secede from the Union with four more leaving after shots were fired on Fort Sumter in April 1861.  Traveling by train from his home in Springfield, Illinois to his inauguration, Lincoln was smuggled into Washington, D.C. when detective Allan Pinkerton became convinced that assassins would try to stab Lincoln on February 23 as he changed trains in Baltimore, Maryland, a Southern-sympathizing state.  Instead, Lincoln traveled safely through Baltimore the night before and arrived unharmed in a capital, rife with rumors of assassination plots. 

New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley later described his unease at Lincoln's inauguration on March 4, 1861 with these words:  "I sat just behind him as he read [the inaugural address] on a bright, warm, still March day, expecting to hear its delivery arrested by the crack of a rifle aimed at his heart, but it pleased God to postpone the deed, though there was forty times the reason for shooting him in 1860 that there was in '65, and at least forty times as many intent on killing him or having him killed.  No shot was fired then, however; for his hour had not yet come." (The Autobiography of Horace Greeley: or, Recollections of a Busy Life)

When his hour did come four years later on April 15, 1865, his death occurred just six days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Virginia on Palm Sunday, April 9th.  Jubilant Washingtonians celebrated the end of the cruel Civil War.  On Good Friday, President Lincoln and his wife Mary celebrated, too, by attending an evening performance of "Our American Cousin" at Ford's Theater where a defiant Southern conspirator, John Wilkes Booth, entered the presidential box and shot Lincoln in the back of his head.  That same night, Booth's co-conspirators also attacked Secretary of State Seward who survived the stabbing, but the third planned victim, Vice-President Andrew Johnson, was not harmed.  Tragically, Lincoln died early the next morning.

Lincoln's "Second Inaugural Address," March 4, 1865 is inscribed on the north wall.

Only six weeks earlier in his "Second Inaugural Address" given on March 4th, Lincoln had outlined a generous plan to lead the South back into the Union.  The entire text of this speech, with one typographical error, is engraved on the north wall inside the Lincoln Memorial. 

Engraving error in Lincoln's "Second Inaugural Address"

An E is mistakenly engraved in place of F to misspell "future" in the phrase, "With high hope for the future..."; the lower leg of this E, however, remains unpainted to minimize this error. 

"With Malice Toward None"

Lincoln ended his second inaugural address with these famous words, "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."  If only Lincoln had lived to put his words into action, perhaps the next century's struggle to grant civil rights to black Americans would have been won much sooner.

Richard reads Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address"

Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address" is engraved upon the south wall of the memorial.  At the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on November 19, 1863, President Lincoln gave this immortal speech after the famed orator, Edward Everett, had spoke to the assembled crowd for two hours.  The next day Everett wrote to Lincoln, "Permit me also to express my great admiration of the thoughts expressed by you, with such eloquent simplicatiy & appropriateness, at the consecration of the Cemetery.  I should be glad, if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes."

Jule Guerin's mural above the "Gettysburg Address"

Above each of Lincoln's speeches are large murals painted by Jules Guerin.  The one above the "Gettysburg Address" shows the Angel of Truth in the midst of recently freed slaves with their chains loosened. 

Guerin's "Reunification" mural

Guerin's mural above Lincoln's "Second Inaugural Address" also shows the Angel of Truth standing in the middle of representatives from the north and south, symbolizing the reunification of our country.

American sculptor Daniel Chester French chose to show Abraham Lincoln seated in the statue he designed for the Lincoln Memorial.  Perhaps French felt that the war-weary Lincoln deserved this resting place after leading our nation through its bitter Civil War.  Notice how Lincoln's arms rest upon rods bundled together?   Similar bundles called fasces were carried by Roman lictors to symbolize the Roman Empire's "strength through unity" as they accompanied magistrates in public appearances, only their fasces were bundled around an axe with the blade facing out, threatening quick and decisive blows should anyone dare to defy Roman rule.  Maybe French omitted the axe to honor Lincoln's compassionate leadership.

Lincoln's left hand

Look at Lincoln's hands as they rest upon the fasces.  One is clenched in a show of strength, representing Lincoln's first term of office when he was determined to win the war to keep the United States intact; the other hand is open and relaxed, reflecting the compassion of Lincoln's second inaugural address as he generously planned to welcome the rebels back into the Union.

Lincoln's right hand

There is an urban legend that Daniel Chester French, who supposedly had a deaf son, wished to honor Lincoln for his support of Gallaudet University so he sculpted Lincoln's hands to portray his initials in American Sign Language with his left hand forming an A while the right depicts an L.  Such a story might be true for Lincoln's left hand looks very similiar to the hand Daniel Chester French gave Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet in the 1889 statue that French designed for the Gallaudet campus.  That statue, "Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Alice Cogswell," shows Gallaudet teaching the letter A to a young girl whose hand repeats the letter back to him.  Certainly, in April 1864 Lincoln did sign the enabling act for Gallaudet University, the very first American institution to offer higher education to the deaf. 

Do you see the face of Robert E. Lee in the hair above Lincoln's ear?

One more monumental myth about Lincoln's statue is that French sculpted the profile of Robert E. Lee into Lincoln's hair above Lincoln's right ear as if Lee is looking backwards over Lincoln's shoulder towards his Arlington plantation, confiscated by Lincoln's War Department and turned into a cemetary for the Union dead.  However, the National Park Service ranger laughingly denied that he certainly couldn't see Lee's face and neither could I.

The Reflecting Pool is currently undergoing repairs and should be finished by June 2012.

Befitting Lincoln's role as our country's great Emmanicpator, the Lincoln Memorial has served as a venue in the civil rights movement.  Soprano Marian Anderson sang there in 1939 after the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to let her perform in their Constitution Hall.  First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, an outspoken advocate for social justice who resigned her DAR membership over this debacle, petitioned Harold Ickes, the Secretary of the Department of the Interior, to build a stage for Anderson at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial where she performed before a crowd of 75,000 on Easter Sunday.

Plaque on the 18th step honors Martin Luther King, Jr.'s delivery of his "I Have A Dream" speech on August 28, 1963

On August 28, 1963, 250,000 people listened to Martin Luther King, Jr. as he delivered his "I Have A Dream" speech from the 18th step below Lincoln's statue at the Lincoln Memorial.  King's speech concluded the March On Washington for Jobs and Freedom organized by A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin.  Many historians credit King's "I Have a Dream" speech for the successful passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

I have no doubt that Lincoln would have been very pleased to witness the passage of both pieces of legislation.  In a way, from his seat within the Lincoln Memorial facing the U.S. Capital at the opposite end of the National Mall, Lincoln did.

View of the National Mall from the Lincoln Memorial