(DailyExpertNews) — It seems so eternal, doesn’t it?
The glossy white marble. The massive columns. The huge statue of a man sitting upright with purpose and solemn dignity. The face is wise and weary, staring resolutely ahead. The hands – one gripped and the other relaxed. The inscribed speeches call on us to find our better angels and move on.
It has certainly been there forever, reminding us and humiliating us and guiding us.
Yet the Lincoln Memorial has only been with us for 100 years. It opened on the National Mall, the Potomac River that flows behind it, on May 30, 1922. That was 57 years after President Abraham Lincoln was felled by an assassin, just days after the Civil War had officially ended.
Since then, millions of visitors — American citizens and people from all over the world — have flocked to bask in the majesty of the ancient Greek-inspired temple and learn some wisdom from the 16th President of the United States.
In November 1981 I was one of those people.
‘Remember this moment’
A visit to the Lincoln Memorial can inspire awe and hope.
DeAgostini/Getty Images
It was a surreal experience. I had ventured out of the Deep South only once before in my life when I looked up in awe at the statue of Lincoln.
My college journalism sorority had sponsored a DC trip during my sophomore year. Much of that journey is now lost in the mists of time. I even had to consult a college friend to determine the time with certainty.
But the memory of my first visit to the Lincoln Memorial itself remains as clear as the cold, moonlit night I made it.
Our hotel was not far away, and I snuck away from the group to see it. There was hardly anyone else there. Being in near solitude with no distractions improved it all.
I was not prepared for what I saw. Or felt.
Engulfed in the light at night, I was moved by the beauty. But it was the inscriptions that overwhelmed me emotionally — especially the closing lines of the second inaugural address on the north room wall.
With malice to none, with charity to all, with determination in justice as God gives us to see justice, let us endeavor to complete the work we are in to bind up the wounds of the nation, to care for him who shall have borne the strife and for his widow and his orphan ~ to do all that can attain and cherish a just and lasting peace among us and with all nations.
In the fall of 1981, we faced our own problems. The United States was in a deep recession. The threat of nuclear war with the Soviet Union was a constant underlying fear. And Another Assassination was in the Air — Egypt’s Anwar Sadat had been assassinated just weeks earlier, and President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II survived attacks on their lives in the spring.
It was easy to worry about the future – mine, the nation and the world’s. But there sat President Lincoln, carrying burdens few would ever understand during America’s greatest crisis, pointing the way forward.
I stopped on the way out to sit on the steps of the monument, all alone, but I felt the arms of my country around me and almost giddy with hope, bolstered by youthful optimism. A bright moon lit up the mall with the Washington Monument and the United States Capitol in the background. And I said to myself, “Remember this moment. Remember this moment. …”
The nation in 1922
Lincoln was a controversial figure, especially in the defeated South.
A groundbreaking one took place in 1914, on land that some critics have labeled a swamp.
I wonder what personal emotions and thoughts they would have had seeing the brand new structure so long in the making.
The monument is of neoclassical design and based on the Parthenon in Athens, Greece. Maybe that gives it that atmosphere of sustainability.
According to the NPS, “It consists of a main level on a high elevated basement with a sunken attic above. The building is beautifully isolated in a landscaped circle on the west side of the National Mall.
“A colonnade of 36 Doric columns, representing the number of states in the Union at the time of Lincoln’s death, surrounds the memorial room.”
Inside, the 19-meter statue towers over the visitor, just as his legacy towers over the land.
Americans were in a period of progress and setbacks in May 1922. The United States was victorious over the Allies in World War I, but the Communists were about to officially form the USSR.
America was one nation again, but much work remained.
The next 100 years
Contralto Marian Anderson made history when she sang at the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday in 1939.
Universal History Archive/UIG/Shutterstock
In the 100 years since its opening, the Lincoln Memorial has been the setting for national celebrations and witness to pivotal and emotional moments in American history. This is especially true in the area of civil rights.
And as we celebrate the 100th anniversary on May 30, which falls fittingly on Memorial Day, our problems remain.
A climate crisis Lincoln could never have imagined hangs over us. Moscow is again an enemy. The scourge of inflation is back. Violent crimes are on the rise. The pandemic may not be over for us yet. And from a church in Charleston, South Carolina, to a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, the hateful and murderous legacy of slavery continues more than 150 years later with no end in sight.
On July 4, 2019, fireworks will go off over the Lincoln Memorial. It is the setting of many national celebrations.
Susan Walsh/AP
It really feels like a divided country and I’m more worried about the future than ever. Youthful optimism has been replaced some 40 years later by hard-earned disappointment and apparently justified pessimism.
Still we go to the monument. And hope. What else can we do? Giving up? Lincoln didn’t. Millions will continue to climb those stairs, and some will find wonder and insight. On the wall of the south room are these words from the Gettysburg address:
Rather it is up to us here to be committed to the great task ahead ~ that we take from these honored dead more devotion to that purpose for which they have given the last full measure of devotion ~ that we are here determined that these dead shall not have died in vain ~ that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom ~ and that the government of the people by the people for the people shall not perish from the earth.
This enduring monument, born of crisis and war, is a bastion of hope. Perhaps our solutions lie there. If not solutions, then encouragement to endure fiery trials.
How to visit the Lincoln Memorial?
It is open 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. The NPS says that “early evening and morning hours are nice and quiet times to visit.”
The monument is located at the western end of the National Mall, a two-mile walk from the US Capitol with the Washington Monument in between.
Forrest Brown attended the University of South Carolina from 1980 to 1983 and joined DailyExpertNews Digital in 2008.