Author:
Henry Hattemer

Date Written:
2/18/2003

1 Abraham Lincoln, Selected Speeches and Writings (The Library of America) (Vintage Books, 1992)

2 Garry Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America (Simon and Schuster, 1992)

3 Abraham Lincoln, Selected Speeches and Writings

4 Abraham Lincoln, Selected Speeches and Writings

5 Abraham Lincoln, Selected Speeches and Writings

Resources:

Abraham Lincoln

The Lincoln Memorial

Abraham Lincoln Statue

Abraham Lincoln

The Lincoln Memorial

The Lincoln Memorial, Temple of American Values

One man, and perhaps more specifically, one stern face, has come to represent a bundled package of the most revered and cherished American values. His actions as an individual were a microcosm of the values that the Founding Fathers espoused. The man followed the historic democracy laid out by the Constitution, created the present freedom, and fought for equality and unity for the future. A longing for civil rights and liberties is not the most remarkable feature of this man. A valiant individualist rose from illiteracy and poverty and ascended into the highest esteem of the American people. Upward mobility, however, is not the remarkable feature of this man, but, rather, upper residence. He has never descended from his high throne of liberty, equality, and unity. Few of even the greatest men ever achieve for a moment the sort of unending fascination, respect, and homage that this man has sustained indefinitely. From those few that have, though, a single phenomenon can be extracted. Personalities of great men become synonymous with the ideas and principles in which they believe. Ideals are endorsed by a great man, and eventually great ideals propel that great man towards great fame, perpetual fame. A mention of the name becomes equal to a mention of the ideal. A monument to the name, bearing the name, becomes a monument to the values that the name embodies. Such an occurrence has indelibly set one man’s name and face in stone, and in copper.

He was larger than one man, even than one large man, and he might have known that better than anyone else. Examine his, and history’s most famous speech. “We are engaged.” “We are met.” “We have come.” Whatever is happening in the speech, “we” is doing it. “He would not, in his own speech, name a single individual…” In fact, the only obvious personal singular subject in the entire body of words is “the world.” What is significant about a speech without singular reference, without an “I,” a “you,” or a “he”? Some would argue that the lack of specificity injects immortality and universality into the words. However, the speech clearly mentions “this ground,” and that “civil war.” The longevity of the words more likely comes from the plurality of the sense. No single man or woman is mentioned because none has a right to be glorified or condemned in the same two-hundred seventy-two word tribute to “Liberty,” and “[equality].” The speaker and the audience, and, later, the nation, realized that although one man was projecting his piercing voice over the crowd, the words and concepts which he was espousing were much larger, universal, and resilient than the sum of their definitions. Such qualities of oratory begin to transform a man into something larger.

To those who memorialized him, the phenomenon of depositing American values onto a uniquely American face must have been quite convenient. Surely one would be hard pressed to design a monument which embodied liberty, equality, and unity in one structure on the National Mall. As the designer Henry Bacon began his plans he was surely not thinking solely of the man or the personality of the American hero. The Greek-style stone memorial would probably not have had the approval of the staunch and humble subject; it too closely resembles a religious temple, it too quickly connotes idolatry. However, the subject would surely agree to such a vast temple if it were built in the name of freedom. Or in the name of democracy and equality. The monument was built in the name of our sacred American values. A true tribute to the lanky leader would have been in the middle of Kentucky or Illinois. It would have been humble and dignified, like a penny. It would not have made visitors feel small; it would have conveyed nobility in the least regal sense. The memorial that sits on the Potomac River is a temple, and nobody would suggest that it was a temple to a person; the United States does not erect temples to people alone. ‘Monument’ comes from the Latin root meaning ‘to remind.’ Bacon’s finished product is a reminder of the original American values, erected in the name of the man who most devotedly protected them.

The combination of his plural words, his focus on values dear to the hearts of Americans, and the decisions of those who memorialized him and his ideas in the same structure: a marriage of the name and the principles that carries the name higher than any other name alone. One must realize this to truly appreciate the monument. In fact, the best way to experience the monument would be to somehow start inside it, standing at the feet, literally, of the seated statue. The cavernous chamber and the two adjoining provide a peaceful portrait of the greatness of the single man. Then walk out down the stairs and turn around to inhale the awesome context, the giant unifying pillars, and the sturdy stone that shelters and protects the one man. He built a fortress of liberty, equality, and unity, and then, as his physical life dwindled, the retired inside the walls, that his work and his words be forever protected by the defenses of Democracy. Do not take a picture of the monument, for later you will see only a Greek stone temple built for a former president of the United States.

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