If you visit the National Mall, the Lincoln Memorial feels like it’s always been there.
It feels like the anchor.
But there was a ten year battle before construction could even begin.
When journalist Susan Mandel investigated it in 2008, she was dumbfounded.
“I can’t think of anything that seems less controversial than the Lincoln Memorial.”
“It just belongs.
And it’s so magnificent...and, you know, beautiful.
It’s like, what’s there to object to?”
She found one person at the center of that conflict, somebody who may have been the most
powerful Speaker of the House — ever.
And he was a Republican — just like Abraham Lincoln.
Why would a Republican fight the temple that immortalized his party’s most famous leader?
The reason behind the fight isn’t just one stubborn Congressman.
It’s the same dynamic that holds back all monuments at the National Mall, even today.
And it shows why we’ll always have trouble asking politicians to envision greatness.
There’s a story that in the early 1900s, one voter asked their Congressperson for a
copy of the House rules.
He got back a picture of Joe Cannon.
In this picture, by the way, he’s explaining how to use toothpicks as suspender buttons.
Joe Cannon was like the love child of Frank Underwood and a corn maze.
His background was like Lincoln’s.
He was a Republican from Illinois.
(Danville, specifically.)
And he even met Lincoln as a boy.
Yet he was the reason that the Lincoln Memorial proposal stalled from 1902 on.
“He fought tooth and nail every step of the way against putting the Memorial there.”
But the problem wasn’t that he hated Abraham Lincoln.
It was that he admired him.
Part II The National Mall didn’t always look like
this.
In 1870, the Army Corp of Engineers started dredging the shallow, swampy Potomac river.
See how there used to be water where the National Mall extends today?
Look at this map from 1861.
Watch the Potomac River shrink as it transitions to a satellite picture from today.
The Army Corps of Engineers significantly changed the Washington landscape.
When Republicans took control of all three branches of government in 1896, they had a
new opportunity to move past the Civil War and memorialize Lincoln.
Some wanted to use that new space to do it.
In 1902, a plan proposed remaking the mall by incorporating the new extra land.
But the area was still a recovering swamp...
“That land was relatively shabby looking.
I mean, it had just been dredged, there was stuff growing on it but it wasn’t uniform,
it wasn’t kept.”
“There was definitely opposition to the Lincoln Memorial.”
Joe Cannon was a pragmatist who was happy on a small town porch.
A $2 million Greek temple scared him.
Putting it in a neighborhood — Potomac Flats — known for being a rundown former swamp
— seemed even more absurd.
“Congress had discussed turning Potomac Flats into a park, well he wanted there to
be a garden for the poor.”
“When Congress needed new space for office buildings, he suggested putting skyscrapers
on both ends of Congress So he didn’t have an artistic sensibility.
He was very practical.”
So for a decade, Cannon blocked putting Lincoln on the Mall.
He couldn’t see the potential of the National Mall.
He once said, "So long as I live, I'll never let a memorial to Abraham Lincoln be erected
in that goddamned swamp."
The only way to build the Memorial was to remove the obstruction.
Joe Cannon had solidified power by controlling the House Rules Committee, which helped him
keep legislation off the floor.
In addition to the relatively minor fight over the Mall, Cannon was a powerful ruler
in general.
His grip on the House was so strong that his own party rebelled.
“What essentially forms is this insurgent bloc, but those insurgents were all motivated
by different things.
Some of them are motivated by policies that Cannon is keeping off the table, others are
simply POed that the speaker is using all that power by gumming up what they thought
of as the legislative process.”
In 1910 he was overthrown as Speaker.
Insurgents had organized their opposition so they’d know what to do when opportunity
struck.
“Part of what makes Congress work is that there’s all this stuff going on in the background
and you have to be ready for your moment.
And what the organization did was allow all these people...to vote together on whatever
they agreed to do.”
With Cannon weakened, more ambitious plans could succeed despite his protests.
Stripped of power, Cannon still frantically promoted other plans, like a Memorial near
a relatively far away park, Meridian Hill.
But with Democrats incoming in 1912, they had to hurry to memorialize Lincoln.
The Lincoln Memorial location we know was finally approved.
Thanks to swift action, it was built, even though Cannon still couldn’t see the potential.
“I think he lacked the vision to see how the architecture of the Memorial would be
powerful and symbolic, but I also think he failed to see the power of that place.
He saw it as a place no one had gone, and why would they?
It was brand new land, it was overgrown and kind of on the banks of the Potomac.
It didn’t have anything there, so why would anybody go there?”
Joe Cannon was temporary.
A major historical figure who’s still now largely forgotten.
Today he has an office building named after him.
It’s not a skyscraper.
But even though Cannon’s gone, we still ask our politicians to be visionaries.
Today, we can see the Lincoln Memorial’s greatness because it’s already great.
But when it comes to change...
“Lack of vision, fiscal conservatism, and lack of political will all coming together
in kind of like the perfect storm of nothing happens.”
Before icons are iconic, they’re risks.
All of them.
The powerful hayseed named Joe Cannon had a change of heart.
He later said, “We tenderfeet perhaps ought not to have our way in matters of art.”
But for the time being, they still do.
We can see what’s always been there.
Seeing what’s next is the tough part.
Henry Bacon designed the Lincoln Memorial and it was dedicated in 1922.
But I wanted to show you one more of the rejected designs, like that one on Meridian Hill.
This one from John Russell Pope is the Lincoln Pyramid.
Yes, the Lincoln Memorial could have been a pyramid, and oh how sweet it would have
been.