The Capitol Dome

THE CAPITOL DOME 31 Doric columns on the outside and the Ionic columns in the interior reflect the design of the original Parthenon. e names of the states in the Union at the time of Lincoln's death are inscribed in the frieze above the thirty-six Doric columns with festoons of the forty-eight states on the attic representing the states at the time of the Memorial's completion. At the time of the dedication of the memorial in 1922, Lincoln had clearly become the symbol of reunion rather than the northern hero of emancipation. He had become god-like, larger than life, as the "preserver of the nation." e speakers at the dedication made few if any references to the Civil War and the grizzled veterans were from both sides of the conflict. It may then not be surprising that there had been segregated seating of the audience and only a single black speaker. Robert Moton was Booker T. Washington's successor as head of Tuskegee Institute, an "accomodationist" in the tradition of his predecessor. His speech mentioned the tension in Ameri- can society between its principle of liberty and that of bond- age. As the only reference to slavery, it was ignored by the press. e dedication was a microcosm of its times, when the Ku Klux Klan paraded openly down Pennsylvania Avenue and frequent lynchings occurred throughout the South. In dim light like a mausoleum, the huge seated statue (fig. 7) by Daniel Chester French is enshrined like a god on a throne-like seat. Born in 1850 in Exeter, NH, French trained both in the United States and in Italy under omas Ball. e image engrosses most visitors. Somber and pensive, Lincoln is the very image of a martyr who suffered under the tragic flaw of slavery the Founders had left in the Constitution. Yet the words are important. e statue is flanked in adjacent rooms by his Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural Address. In the first he invoked the Declaration of Independence as the touchstone of the American experiment. In the latter, he used Biblical phrases of mutual guilt for a plea for "binding wounds" and reconciliation. Prominently displayed on the arms of the chair and elsewhere are the Roman fasces, a bun- dle of rods bound around a battle axe, traditionally a symbol of authority and justice but also of unity. Completing the symbolism of reconciliation was the Memorial Bridge connecting the Lincoln Memorial to the Lee-Custis Mansion, home of Robert E. Lee in the Arlington National Cemetery. Indeed a very tall Confederate Soldiers Monument had been placed in Arlington National Cemetery in 1914. Funded by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, Fig. 7. Marble statue of Lincoln by Daniel Chester French, Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C. PHOTO GR APHY BY JEFF CUBINA

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