"Well, it took long enough. Lincoln had been dead for almost half a century before work finally began on his memorial in Washington, with a dedication ceremony occurring on his birthday in Washington DC in 1914. Plans to memorialize Lincoln in Washington had been mooted about since the time of his death, but in Washington, then and now, nothing moves swiftly. Controversies about cost and just what form the memorial should take had delayed the project for decades. The final plan to erect a Greek styled temple to house a Lincoln statue appalled some Lincoln admirers who thought a log cabin memorial would better suit a man as humble as Lincoln.
"The building of the memorial would take eight years, with it being completed and opened to the public on Memorial Day, May 30, 1922.
"The dominating feature of the memorial is of course the brooding statue of a seated Lincoln. Sculpted by Charles David French, the statue, standing 19 feet, dominates the memorial. Open 24 hours a day and free for all, the memorial is visited by six million visitors a year and has become a symbol of American freedom and union, the causes for which Lincoln lived and died." . . .
“The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” Abraham Lincoln
We still await the "better angels of our nature" to manifest themselves. At the time of this movie America still needed much forgiveness for the Jim Crow laws and the Japanese internment camps. Overcoming those, we now have such demagogues as the Al Sharpton's, Maxine Waters, the Jew-hating, keffiyeh-clad lap dogs on campus and the glowering, America - loathing Democrats now in Congress. TD
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