Welcome to the beautiful Lincoln Memorial.
The monument is built in honor of the 16th President of the United States; Abraham Lincoln.
While it is only one of several monuments built to honor an American president, many
regard this one as the very finest one.
Partly because of the beauty of the monument, but also because of the man it is built to
honor.
Before going into details about the monument itself, I want to give you a brief summary
of who Abraham Lincoln was.
Abraham Lincoln was born in 1809 on a small farm south of Hodgenville, Kentucky.
He was raised in a poor home, being the son of two uneducated farmers.
Abraham himself however, quickly developed an interest in studies.
While his formal education consisted of about 18 months of schooling from unofficial teachers,
he still mastered the Bible, William Shakespeare's works, English history and American history.
He was very much self educated, reading every book he could get his hands on.
He soon developed a plain writing and rhetorical style that puzzled audiences.
This brought him into politics at the age of 23, when he became a member of the Whig
party, and later elected to a term is the US House of Representatives in 1846.
With his unorthodox rhetorical style he made both enemies and friends and left the politics
after one term and began working as a lawyer.
He later returned to politics, and this time got a much more central role, as he won the
Republican Party nomination in 1860 and was elected president the same year.
Lincoln's hatred for slavery made the already strained relation between the northern and
southern states even more problematic.
The civil war broke out the very next year.
Throughout the civil war, Lincoln was the political leader for the Union and his leadership
qualities helped to preserve the Unites States to what it is today.
Lincoln rallied public opinion through the powerful rhetoric of his messages and speeches.
His "Gettysburg Address", the speech he gave a few months after the Union victory at Gettysburg,
is a prime example and one of the most quoted speeches in US history.
Lincoln is however most known for issuing his Emancipation Proclamation and his contribution
in passing the Thirteenth Amendment which permanently abolished slavery in the US.
In 1865, shortly after the war was won, Lincoln was assassinated while watching a theatre
act.
This made him a martyr for the ideal of national unity and he's today one of the most famous
and highly ranked of all US presidents.
The first planning of constructing a memorial to Lincoln started in two years after his
assassination.
However, the site for the memorial was not chosen until 1902.
Congress formally authorized the memorial in 1911 and the first stone was put into place
three years later on Lincoln's birthday, February 12.
The monument was dedicated in 1922, with Lincolns then only surviving child, Robert Todd Lincoln,
attending the ceremony.
The building you are looking at is made out of Indiana limestone and Yule marble, which
gives the memorial its shining white color.
The building is heavily inspired by the ancient Greek Temple of Zeus.
This is not only evident because it is surrounded by massive columns, but also because it is
centered around a large statue of a man sitting on a throne.
In the Temple of Zeus it was Zeus sitting on the throne; in this case it's Abraham Lincoln.
The 36 columns are interpreted as representing the 25 U.S. states at the time of Lincoln's
death, as well as the 11 Confederate states.
If you take a look above the columns, you will the see name of the states inscribed
in the order that each state joined the Union along with the year of their joining in Roman
numerals.
The names of the remaining 22 states that had joined the Union when the memorial was
completed are carved on the exterior attic walls in the same manner, even though it can
be hard to see from the ground.
A plaque in front of the monument also honors the admission of Alaska and Hawaii in 1959.
While the outside itself is very beautiful, the focus of the memorial is Daniel Chester
French's sculpture of Lincoln, seated on a throne, stoically looking east over the reflecting
pool towards the Washington Monument.
The statue was carved from 28 blocks f white Georgia marble and stands six meters high
and six meters wide.
Behind the statue on the wall, you can read the phrase:
IN THIS TEMPLE AS IN THE HEARTS OF THE PEOPLE
FOR WHOM HE SAVED THE UNION THE MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
IS ENSHRINED FOREVER You can also find some of Lincoln's speeches
inscribed on the walls inside the memorial.
On the south side you can find his famous speech at Gettysburg and on the other side
his second inaugural speech.
This site itself has also been the place for several famous speeches.
The most famous one came in 1963, during one of the greatest political rallies in US history;
the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom which gathered more than 250.000 people in
the area surrounding the memorial.
They came to hear Martin Luther King, Jr. deliver his memorable speech, "I Have a Dream,"
before the memorial honoring the president who had issued the Emancipation Proclamation
100 years earlier.
If you take a look at the steps just in front of the building, you will see an inscription
in the ground, marking where King stood when he held his speech.
The Lincoln memorial is today a very popular place for visitors, not only typical tourists,
but also many schools take field trips to the memorial in educational purpose.
In total, an estimate of more than 3.5 million people visits the site annually.