The Capitol Dome

THE CAPITOL DOME 28 Remembering Abraham Lincoln in the Nation's Capital Mark N. Ozer A braham Lincoln was not the first to lie in state in the Rotunda of the United States Capitol. at honor goes to Henry Clay on his death in 1852, in the old Rotunda under the Dome designed by Bulfinch. However, the very next person to be honored was Abraham Lincoln, who lay in state under the new Dome from April 19 to 21, shortly after his death on the morning of April 15, 1865. After the funeral obsequies on April 19 in the East Room of the White House, at the stroke of two o'clock accompanied by the tolling of church bells and the booming of guns, his coffin was conveyed to the U.S. Capitol. (See Jane Hudiburg's article in this issue.) Brought into the Capitol by members of the Veteran Service Corps, the various works of art and statues in the rotunda were covered in black, except for the statue of Washington, which was draped with a black sash. e specially-made catafalque bearing his coffin on display in the Rotunda was hastily made of pine boards nailed together covered with black fabric. Stored below the empty crypt of the U.S. Capitol, the bier served to hold the coffins for many such subsequent occasions in the Rotunda. e memory of Lincoln lives on in or near the Rotunda to illustrate various aspects of his role in American history. Most prominent in the Rotunda is the standing marble Lincoln (fig. 1) holding the Emancipa- tion Proclamation, sculpted by Vinnie Ream (Hoxie). She was born in 1847 in the Wisconsin then-pioneer settlement of Madison; when she came to Washington, DC she was one of the first female employees of the U.S. Post Office. She was permitted to sculpt a bust of Lincoln during 1864 while he was living in the White House. In 1866, after Lincoln's death and when she was only eighteen years old, Ream expanded the bust into the standing statue to be carved in Carrara marble. Unveiled in 1871 in the presence of then-President Ulysses Grant, Lincoln the Emancipator was the role for which he was still being celebrated. e next memory of Lincoln, purchased in 1868, was a bust by Sarah Fisher Ames (fig. 2), now located in the east lobby of the Senate Gallery. A Civil War nurse, trained in art in Boston, and perhaps also in Rome where she lived for a time, she was said to have sketched and sculpted Lincoln from life. e massive bust (fig. 3) of Abraham Lincoln by Gutzon Borglum is in the crypt of the U.S. Capitol. It shows the tension of his inner life: the forceful executive intellectual right Fig. 1. Abraham Lincoln, marble statue by Vinnie Ream, 1871, Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. ARCHI T EC T OF T HE C API TOL

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