Abraham Lincoln Birthplace Historic Resource Study

EARLY LINCOLN COMMEMORATION

Figure 11: Figure 11. Lincoln National Monument, Springfield, Illinois. Designed by Larkin G. Mead, 1874

The first major Lincoln commemorative project to be completed was his tomb in Springfield. In April 1865, a group of Illinois residents formed the National Lincoln Monument Association to plan Lincoln's burial in Springfield. At Mrs. Lincoln's request, suburban Oak Ridge Cemetery was selected as the site of the tomb. Larkin G. Mead, a Vermont sculptor, won an 1868 design competition sponsored by the association, and work on the tomb began the following year. Lincoln's remains were placed in the tomb in September 1871, and the tomb was dedicated in October 1874, upon the completion of Mead's bronze statue of Lincoln. Between 1877 and 1883, four bronze military groups representing the infantry, artillery, cavalry, and navy were added to the base. In 1895, the National Lincoln Monument Association donated the tomb to the State of Illinois. To correct foundation problems, the state rebuilt the tomb in 1900-1901, adding 37 feet to the height of the obelisk. [25]

The Federal government acquired Ford's Theatre through legislation enacted April 7, 1866, to prevent any inappropriate use of the assassination site. The government used the building for offices and storage until 1932, when it was converted to a museum displaying Lincoln memorabilia. The building was transferred to the National Park Service August 10, 1933. The NPS restored the theatre to its 1865 appearance in the 1960s, reopening it for theatrical performances and tours in 1968. The site was redesignated the Ford's Theatre National Historic Site in 1970. [26]

A number of American cities erected commemorative Lincoln statues between 1868 and 1900. Three statues were unveiled in Washington, D.C., in Judiciary Square (Lot Flannery, 1868), the Capitol Rotunda (Vinnie Ream, 1871), and Lincoln Park (Thomas Ball, 1876). Other notable Lincoln sculptures appeared in Brooklyn (Henry K. Brown, 1869), New York City (Henry K. Brown, 1870), Philadelphia (Randolph Rogers, 1871), and Chicago (Augustus Saint-Gaudens, 1887). Typically, these monuments featured a bronze statue mounted on a pedestal. Congress appropriated funds for the statue in the Capitol; private subscriptions or bequests paid for the other works. [27]

Figure 12: Figure 12. Freedmen's Monument, Washington, D.C., by Thomas Ball, 1876

During the 1880s and 1890s, Lincoln's home of seventeen years in Springfield and the house in Washington where he died became historic sites open to the public. In 1883, Osborn H. Oldroyd, a collector of Lincoln memorabilia, rented Lincoln's home in Springfield and opened it to the public as a museum. Lincoln's son Robert Todd Lincoln in 1887 conveyed the house to a board of trustees established by the State of Illinois. The state maintained the site until Congress authorized the Lincoln Home National Historic Site on August 18, 1971. In 1892, the private Memorial Association of the District of Columbia rented the Petersen house on Tenth Street where Lincoln died. Congress authorized the House Where Lincoln Died National Historic Site on June 11, 1896; it was consolidated into the Ford's Theatre National Historic Site on June 23, 1970. [28]

Surprisingly, no monuments to Lincoln other than statues were raised in the nation's capital in the nineteenth century. Of the three statues that were dedicated, however, the Freedmen's Monument by Boston sculptor Thomas Ball is notable for being funded mostly by African Americans, many of whom had served with Black regiments during the Civil War. [29] Dedicated in 1876, the statue depicts a benevolent Lincoln, his left arm outstretched over a slave rising from a kneeling position. In his other hand Lincoln holds the proclamation itself Explicitly adopting the theme of "the great emancipator," the statue's unveiling was accompanied by a speech from Frederick Douglass who tactfully noted that the slave's emancipation was not wholly the result of Lincoln's morality, love, and grace, but was also driven by political imperatives. [29] Douglas likely was trying to temper the statue's overtly paternalistic imagery of Lincoln and the kneeling slave with the less romantic realities of emancipation and reconstruction.

As early as 1867, Congress authorized a Lincoln Memorial Association to raise private funds for a monument in Washington, D.C. Nothing resulted from this effort or from numerous other proposals and bills introduced through the rest of the century. The pace of commemorative activity quickened as the 1909 centennial of Lincoln's birth approached. In 1901, the U.S. Senate established a commission (known as the McMillan Commission in honor of its principal sponsor, Michigan Senator James McMillan) to prepare a comprehensive city plan for the capital. Commission members were architects Daniel Burnham and Charles F. McKim, landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., and sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens. A key recommendation of the 1902 McMillan Commission Plan was for a Lincoln memorial to be erected on reclaimed marsh land at the western end of the Mall on axis with the Capitol and the Washington Monument. Congressional authorization for the memorial finally came in 1911, and the Greek-temple form Lincoln Memorial, designed by architect Henry Bacon, was dedicated in 1922. [30] Significantly, proposals for a Lincoln memorial in Washington were being debated in the same years that the Lincoln Farm Association was promoting its plan for a memorial at the birth farm in Kentucky.