People from across the country came to the Mall last weekend for an early celebration of the centennial of the Lincoln Memorial, which turns 100 on Monday. Barely more than two miles away, the original Lincoln memorial stood lonely and ignored in Judiciary Square.
That monument, erected in 1868, is the oldest surviving public statue of Abraham Lincoln in the United States. Many consider it the best likeness of the Great Emancipator ever made in marble. The statue’s history is a story of survival: removed twice, renovated twice, damaged multiple times, abandoned for two years and replaced after a president’s intervention — yet still it stands, the tribute of the residents of the capital city to its fallen president.
“The statue forms a personal testimonial of those who knew and loved Lincoln and contains more sentiment than any other statue in the city of Washington,” said U.S. Rep. Edward J. King of Illinois in 1920, as he and others fought to restore the statue to its place in front of the D.C. courthouse after its removal the year before.
“It is a better likeness of Lincoln than anything in plaster, stone, marble, or bronze that I have ever seen, and I have seen about all that have ever been made,” artist Freeman Thorp said in 1921. “Some have been made that unquestionably are great works of art, but the best of them are not accurate likenesses of him. This one is to those who, like myself, knew Lincoln, pleasing to look at because it is accurately modeled, and in its simple truth is in keeping with the unassuming man we loved.”
As reporter George Kennedy stated in 1953, “The stone figure in front of the courthouse is a bit of the real Lincoln.”
The birth of a monument
Just nine days after Lincoln’s death on April 15, 1865, the Washington city council introduced a resolution to create a committee to “devise measures for the erection of a monument in the City of Washington to the memory of the late President Lincoln.” The resolution was approved, and the Lincoln National Monument Association (NLMA) was formed to carry out the task.
As implied by the association’s name, the monument was to be national and grandiose in scope, paid for by donations from U.S. citizens. Similar associations popped up in cities and states across the country, however, and the NLMA’s fundraising effort fell far short of its goals, with almost all the donations coming from D.C. residents. One of the few donations from outside Washington was an $1,800 contribution from John T. Ford, the former owner of Ford’s Theatre, where Lincoln had been shot.