Lincoln Memorial ⓘ

After Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in 1865, artists across the country worked to capture his likeness to memorialize the martyred president in Washington, DC.

Vinnie Ream , a 17‑year‑old sculptor, met with Lincoln during short sittings in 1864–1865 and created a marble statue that the U.S. Capitol unveiled in 1871.

Lot Flannery sculpted another early statue, which leaders unveiled in Judiciary Square in 1868.

As more statues appeared, Congress began planning a major national memorial to honor Lincoln’s leadership and legacy.

In 1867, Congress created the Lincoln Monument Association and hired sculptor Clark Mills to design a huge bronze monument with 36 figures and Lincoln seated at the top. Fundraising started, but political disagreements and practical problems stopped the project before construction began.

By 1901, Senator James McMillan pushed for a new plan to redesign Washington, DC. He formed the Senate Park Commission, which included architect Daniel Burnham, architect Charles McKim, landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., and sculptor Augustus Saint‑Gaudens. In 1902, the Commission proposed placing a new Lincoln Memorial at the edge of the Potomac River as the western end of the National Mall.

The Commission chose this location to symbolize national unity. A new bridge—later called the Arlington Memorial Bridge—would connect the Lincoln Memorial to Arlington National Cemetery, linking former Union and Confederate regions.

Congress debated the plan for nearly ten years. To guide decisions, Congress created the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts in 1910 and the Lincoln Memorial Commission in 1911. When both groups supported the riverfront site, Congress finally approved the project.

Workers began construction on February 12, 1914. Because the memorial sits on filled land, engineers designed a very strong foundation. Workers poured 122 concrete piers anchored deep into bedrock. They built a second layer of piers and concrete arches to form the base floor. Then they added marble on top of the substructure.

Workers finished the foundation in 1915 and continued building the main structure. During World War I, shortages of workers and materials slowed progress, but crews kept the project moving. In 1918, designers doubled the size of the planned Lincoln statue so it would not look too small inside the large chamber. Crews added steel supports under the floor to hold the extra weight.

Architect Henry Bacon chose building materials from many states to show how the reunited nation could work together:

Inside the memorial, artists painted murals and carved Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural Address into the walls.

Crews assembled the statue in late 1919 and early 1920. Workers checked the building for settling and strengthened walls and foundations when needed. In 1921, crews built roads, walkways, lawns, and plantings. They also began work on the Reflecting Pool between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument .

Leaders including presidents Taft, Harding, and Coolidge, as well as Abraham Lincoln's son Robert, dedicated the Lincoln Memorial on May 30, 1922. Crews had completed most of the work by that date, and they finished the Reflecting Pool and interior lighting soon afterward.

Today, the memorial stands as a symbol of unity, strength, and the nation’s ongoing effort to live up to the ideals Lincoln expressed in his speeches.

The grand entrance to the Lincoln Memorial begins at the edge of the Reflecting Pool, and rises up to the former roadbed of the circular roadway that surrounded the memorial - now a plaza. The steps then continue upward toward the memorial entrance. Flanking the steps, two buttresses each crowned with an 11-foot-tall "tripod" carved from pink Tennessee marble rise above those who ascend the stairs.

The Lincoln Memorial steps have been the site of many history-making moments such as Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech in 1963, and Marian Anderson's concert in 1939.

Above the colonnade inscribed on the frieze are the names of 36 states and the dates in which they entered the Union. Their names are separated by double wreath medallions in bas-relief. The cornice is composed of a carved scroll with lions' heads in between them and ornamented with palmetto. The next step up on the memorial above the colonnade is called the attic frieze. Here, at the top of the memorial, the names of the 48 states present at the time of the dedication are inscribed (Alaska and Hawaii are acknowledged with a plaque on the plaza). A bit higher is a garland joined by ribbons and palm leaves, supported by the wings of eagles. Ernest C. Bairstow created the friezes and cornices.

Perhaps the greatest vista is that which extends east from the heart of the memorial chamber. The Lincoln Memorial proudly crowns the National Mall’s post-Civil War western terminus, sharing prominence with the Washington Monument. From within his temple to the secured Union of States, the marble Lincoln confidently gazes eastward, across ground that stretches like the stripes of the American flag toward an always rising sun. The Washington Monument dominates the view, testament to American ability to overcome exclusion, while beyond, lies the commanding heights crowned by the United States Capitol whose completed dome symbolizes the strength of the American union.

At the foot of Capitol Hill, two miles distant, stands the memorial to General Ulysses S. Grant, astride his warhorse Cincinnati. Lincoln looks to Grant and Grant looks to Lincoln, while between them stands the monument to George Washington—this is not a random setting. Lincoln, the political savior, and Grant, the military savior, relied on each other during the Civil War and together they saved the Union—the union that George Washington helped to create during the American Revolution and to maintain as the first president of the United States.

Though not completed in time for the memorial's dedication in 1922, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has become one of the most recognizable and filmed sites in Washington, DC. The Reflecting Pool and the long promenade of elm trees on either side are key features of the Lincoln Memorial landscape.

Historical Context On Independence Day in 1848, Illinois Congressman Abraham Lincoln attended the cornerstone-laying ceremony for the Washington Monument at the western terminus of the Mall in Washington, DC. The promise of the monument’s rise paralleled that of the nation as the Union continued to grow. Even as the United States pushed west, internal forces were pulling it apart and exclusionary politics reigned. As a symbol of the lack of unity, the Washington Monument construction came to a halt after just six years and less than a third of its intended height.

Twelve years later, Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the United States. He returned to Washington at a time when the country was divided along sectional and party lines. In fact, several southern states had already seceded from the Union, later to form the Confederate States of America. For Lincoln, the Union had to be maintained and the experiment of a representative form of government — one for which previous generations had suffered and sacrificed — had to be preserved. As if to call attention to the collapsing Union, its premier symbols--the Washington Monument and the new Capitol dome each stood unfinished.

A great civil war had come to the republic pitting north against south, brother against brother. President Lincoln recognized the symbol of a safe, secure Washington, and sought to protect it with powerful armies, naval forces, and a ring of fortifications. Just as President Lincoln sat securely within the White House surrounded by a ring of forts, a large marble statue of Abraham Lincoln now sits within an enormous white marble memorial surrounded by thirty-six columns symbolizing the states of the Union and those states’ soldiers who marched to Washington to fight in Lincoln’s armies and guard his forts. The dominant placement of the memorial accentuates the prestige of the lofty figure but the memorial’s influence extends far beyond its four walls and surrounding grounds.

Inscriptions are engraved on three walls of the Lincoln Memorial's interior. Two are from Lincoln's famous speeches: the Gettysburg Address and Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address. The third is found directly behind the statue of Abraham Lincoln as a sort of mission statement for the memorial:

Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863, during the dedication ceremony for the Soldiers' National Cemetery. In the address, Lincoln acknowledged the sacrifice on the battlefield, invoked the founding principle that "all men are created equal," and vowed that the nation will have "a new birth of freedom." Ernest Bairstow completed the engraving. The adjacent depictions of palm fronds and eagles are the work of Evelyn Beatrice Longman .

Lincoln's March 4, 1865, Second Inaugural Address is depicted in the north chamber of the memorial. This speech, delivered just one month before the conclusion of the Civil War, creates the policy for reuniting the divided states. The reelected president firmly believed that the northern states should welcome their southern sisters and brothers back into the Union with open arms. Lincoln's willingness to show compassion, "…with malice towards none; charity for all," meant to quell any lingering hostility. Ernest Bairstow completed the engraving. The adjacent depictions of eagles and bundles of rods (fasces), carved by Evelyn Beatrice Longman , symbolize the union of the states.

President Lincoln’s only surviving son was a special guest at the May 30, 1922 dedication ceremony for the Lincoln Memorial, receiving an ovation when he reached his seat. Robert Todd Lincoln did not deliver remarks but listened with great interest as other speakers paid tribute to his father. Robert took great interest in the memorial as it emerged within Potomac Park and frequently requested that his driver pass the site so that he could observe the progress; he even secured permission once to visit the site in the midst of ongoing construction.

Born in Springfield, Illinois in 1843, Robert was the eldest of the four Lincoln sons. He was graduated from Harvard College, and then served briefly with Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, being present at General Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House . Robert went on to have a successful career as a lawyer and businessman, and served as Secretary of War under Presidents James Garfield and Chester Arthur. During Benjamin Harrison’s administration, Robert served as Minister to Great Britain. He died at his home in Vermont in 1926 and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery within sight of his father’s memorial.

At the Lincoln Memorial dedication ceremony, Dr. Moton delivered the keynote address, promoting equality among the races, even as he spoke to a largely segregated audience. Dr. Robert Moton had succeeded Booker T. Washington as the second president of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. During his tenure, from 1915 to 1935, he contributed to the growth of the Institute by adding a department for training teachers and led a fight for black doctors and nurses at the Tuskegee Veterans Hospital. In 1921, Moton wrote a letter to President-Elect Warren G. Harding with a list of suggestions for improving race relations. Interestingly, Harding and Moton would share a platform just a year later, as both took part in the Lincoln Memorial dedication on May 30, 1922.

President William Howard Taft signed the bill to create a memorial to Abraham Lincoln in February 1911. When the Lincoln Memorial was dedicated on May 30, 1922, now Chief Justice William Howard Taft was there to officiate over the ceremony.

Taft was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1857, the son of a distinguished judge. He was graduated from Yale, then returned to Cincinnati to study and practice law before embarking on a diplomatic and political career. As the Twenty-seventh President of the United States, Taft was in a position to appoint member of the Lincoln Memorial Commission as well as the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts; both bodies were instrumental in choosing the design and the location of the new memorial.

Having lost his bid for reelection in 1912 to Woodrow Wilson, Taft left the presidency and became a law professor at Yale University. President Warren G. Harding appointed Taft Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States in 1921; this had been Taft’s ultimate career goal.

While speaking at the Lincoln Memorial dedication ceremony, Taft remarked on the memorial’s emphasis of national unity, an important goal of the Lincoln presidency, "Here on the banks of the Potomac, the boundary between the two sections, whose conflict made the burden, passion, and triumph of his life, it is particularly appropriate that it should stand."

The twenty-ninth President of the United States accepted the Lincoln Memorial on behalf of the American People. Born near Marion, Ohio, in 1865 during the last year of the Civil War, Harding became the publisher of a newspaper before inaugurating his political career. Known for his speaking ability, Harding did not disappoint the crowd during the memorial dedication ceremony as he praised Lincoln as the essential American leader who “rose to colossal stature in a day of imperiled union.”

The vice president of the United States in 1922, Coolidge attended the May 30 dedication ceremony for the Lincoln Memorial. Born in Plymouth, Vermont, on the 4th of July, 1872, during the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant, Vice President Coolidge had presided over the April 1922 dedication of the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial on the opposite end of the National Mall within the view from the Lincoln Memorial.

The well-known opera singer performed at the Lincoln Memorial for a 1939 Easter Sunday concert after the Daughters of the American Revolution denied her the opportunity to perform at nearby Constitution Hall because of her race. As the crowd of 75,000 people listened to her sing, the Lincoln Memorial shifted from being solely a place to venerate Abraham Lincoln into a space that represented the struggle to extend freedom to every American citizen.

King was a civil rights leader who sought to improve race relations and guarantee for every American those fundamental rights for which Lincoln had fought and that had been denied for far too long. His devotion to equality and human rights brought King to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963 for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom during which he delivered one of the more memorable and moving speeches in American history. A stone on the landing below the white marble steps leading to the Lincoln Memorial marks the location of this landmark speech. The nearby Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial honors King's life and legacy.

On March 4, 1865, only 41 days before his assassination, President Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office for the second time. Lincoln's second inaugural address previewed his plans for healing a once-divided nation. The speech is engraved on the north interior wall of the Lincoln Memorial, opposite the inscription of the Gettysburg Address .

Read Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address "Fellow countrymen: at this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends is as well known to the public as to myself and it is I trust reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

"On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it ~ all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place devoted altogether to saving the Union without war insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war ~ seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.

"One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves not distributed generally over the union but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen perpetuate and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered ~ that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. 'Woe unto the world because of offenses for it must needs be that offenses come but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.' If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which in the providence of God must needs come but which having continued through His appointed time He now wills to remove and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him. Fondly do we hope ~ fervently do we pray ~ that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword as was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'

"With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan ~ to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

Among the inscriptions at the Lincoln Memorial, perhaps Lincoln's most famous speech, the Gettysburg address, is enshrined in the memorial on the south wall. There are five known manuscript copied of the Gettysburg Address, each varying slightly in wording and punctuation. The version engraved on the south wall of the Lincoln Memorial is from what is know as the Bliss copy, so named after Colonel Alexander Bliss, publisher of Autograph Leaves of Our Country's Authors , written by his stepson, George Bancroft. Bancroft requested a handwritten copy of the Gettysburg Address for inclusion in his book, and the president obliged. The Bliss copy is the only version to which Lincoln affixed his signature, and because of the care in its preparation (including a title, the signature and date) it has become the standard version of the address and the source for most facsimile reproductions of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives, that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate ~ we can not consecrate ~ we can not hallow, this ground. The brave men living and dead who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us ~ that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion ~ that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain ~ that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom ~ and that government of the people by the people for the people shall not perish from the earth."