Review

At Lincoln's death, War Secretary Edwin Stanton supposedly intoned: "Now he belongs to the ages." Christopher Thomas is interested in how those who planned the Memorial strove to make it so. Because we've come to realize that national icons may not always be "read" as their planners and creators intended, however Thomas is especially concerned with those who sought to manipulate the memorial. It was controversial even while it was being proposed and constructed. This narration, about purpose, politics, design, and subsequent symbolic tussles, necessarily involves sharp analysis of the monument's details as well as overall design and placement. Focus on Henry Bacon's Roman Revival architecture rather than Daniel Chester French's statue reveals how argumentative every stage of its authorization and evolution once was. Opponents of the Memorial not only proposed alternative sites, designs, and context, but ideological and vested interests even argued for a National Road (what eventually became the Lincoln Highway) rather than any commemorative temple. By including this extended controversy in his narrative, the author suggests that "the road not taken" reveals as much about a culture and an age as what would subsequently seem so obvious and timeless in meaning.	1
Profuse illustrations—photos, perspectives, maps, engravings, models, pencil sketches of alternative constructions, and sections—not only enrich the text but also reveal that a public architect must respond to public pressures as well as the aesthetic logic of design and materials. Choosing types of marble, the locations of quarries, and the letting of construction contracts involved issues of sectional and state pride as did their appropriateness to the Memorial site. Alternative designs by John Russell Pope, Bacon's chief rival, punctuate Congressional committee wrangling, and elucidate what was then considered to differentiate the symbolic meaning of Greek and Roman temples. Bacon and Pope also carried on a continuation of the American argument over Neoclassicism versus more "American" references. To satisfy critics, Bacon, who won the contract integrated corn-cobs, tomahawks, and pinecones into his decorative details. (The defeated Pope later designed a tribute to Lincoln in Hodgdensville, Kentucky, which enclosed the putative "Birthplace Log Cabin" awkwardly within a circular Greek temple.)	2
Memorials are as much reflections of their age as of universally applicable values, and Thomas reveals that this applies here. The Teddy Roosevelt-William Howard Taft era Establishment in power when the monument was built intended to express monumental grandeur—an American Empire—while also bespeaking sectional reconciliation through location and placement as well as size and sobriety. This intent, as well as partisan political crotchets, explain its opponents' proposed alternate designs and locations.. Farm Bloc Progressives and the American Automobile Association plumped for a road to symbolize the "coming" nation rather than anchoring the past. Mount Rushmore's Gutzon Borglum already was championing rough-hewn gigantism over staid neoclassicism. Thus, bitter debates over what the Memorial should convey were as characteristic as budgetary or partisan disputes.	3
Other historians, such as Scott Sandage and Albert Boime, have examined the Memorial's subsequent meanings and uses in greater detail than does the author of this book. For him the sections on design and construction form the heart of his study although he does provide a final chapter on its "deconstruction"—how the Memorial has been appropriated by groups for whom its official meanings have not been self-evident. For example, nowhere in the Memorial is slavery's end celebrated: Lincoln seems to meditate somberly on the Gettysburg and Second Inaugural Addresses, not the Emancipation Proclamation. At the memorial's dedication, the only African-American speaker was Robert R. Moton, Booker T. Washington's successor as accomodationist spokesman. Recognizing this, the book's conclusion traces briefly how African-Americans and other advocates have used the Memorial as an emotive reference or prop for their causes. Marian Anderson's concert at the Memorial was contemporary with, and as resonant as, Frank Capra's "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" patriotic montage. As evocative as Bill Mauldin's cartoon of Lincoln, head in hands over John Kennedy's assassination, was Rev. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech from the Memorial.	4
Some readers may be puzzled by Thomas's opening pugnacity about his reliance upon semiotic analysis; scholars no longer need be as defensive or oracular about terms such as "signifier" and "deconstructive" as the author is here. But Thomas's book otherwise is very comfortably written; its wealth of detail about bygone politicians and architectural terminology makes it most appropriate for American Studies reading lists. Instructors in less advanced courses may also use the book rewardingly through its visual strengths because of the generous illustrations of how the building was conceived and constructed. Finally, the book offers another reminder that even the most apparently straight-forward statements will not mean the same thing to all people (stone engravings are not graven in stone). Thomas's anatomy of the Lincoln Memorial's "meaning" also suggests how an icon may be appropriated for self-serving purposes, for example, Bill Clinton's use of the Memorial as a background for his 1993 Inaugural concert. Mention of this might have been included had the book not already gone to press, but students might be referred to Chip Bok's 2002 cartoon for the Akron Beacon Journal imagining the Seated Lincoln, remote control in hand, wryly contemplating a Bill Clinton TV talk show!	5
Emeritus, Fairleigh Dickinson University Kalman Goldstein

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