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Reviews
| Summers with Lincoln: Looking for the Man in the Monuments, by James A. Percoco. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008. 241 pages. $24.95, cloth.
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| Blending a lifelong interest in monumental sculpture with scholarly inquiry into the meanings of public imagery and memory, high-school history teacher James Percoco examines seven monuments depicting Abraham Lincoln, the context of the time in which they were created and dedicated, and the forces in society that changed how Americans have responded to the memorials and to Lincoln's legacy. Percoco presents three broad categories of monuments from the early post-Civil War period through the opening of the Lincoln Memorial in 1922 on the D.C. mall and into differences among memorials created in the 1930s. The earliest monuments portrayed Lincoln as an emancipator and then as the preserver of the Union; by the early twentieth century, sculptors sought to embody a more complex statesman and role model, a leader who made difficult decisions in uncommonly complicated circumstances guided by his deep sense of morality. |
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Often traveling in the company of others, including some of his students, Percoco combines accounts of his visits to the memorials with narrative examination of the sites' creation, changes in American perceptions of Lincoln and his role in Civil War, and the larger purposes of public commemoration. He provides a wealth of detail, including brief biographies of the sculptors, description of the social and political contexts in which they worked, background on the sculptures' funding and the varied intentions of their patrons, and excerpts from primary sources (e.g., sculptors, critics' reviews, and poetry, especially that of Walt Whitman). Percoco further enlivens the monuments' histories with quotations from Lincoln that either support or contradict the ways in which he was later portrayed, as well as with responses to the sculptures from contemporaries who knew him during his presidency and from Lincoln's surviving son Robert, who saw himself as guardian of his father's legacy. Percoco reminds his readers that the monuments arose in a time when American culture was less saturated by images and marketing, when icons were of a different scale, and that there continue to be changing and diverse uses of Lincoln's image. |
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Throughout the work, Percoco delves into the complex layers of symbolism and changing American interpretation regarding the monuments. He considers the commemorative sites a challenge "to figure out where the monuments end and the real man begins" (p. 146). The seven selected memorials offer often conflicting portrayals of Lincoln and no simple answers to lingering effects of the Civil War or to the issues of slavery and civil rights. Percoco discusses a statue of a younger, forward-looking Lincoln outside an insurance company in Indiana, which is the destination of Boy Scout pilgrimages; one in Cincinnati of Lincoln looking rumpled, tired, and emblematic of the 1917 rift between elite patrons of classical art and the modern representation of the "common" man in society; and an early post-war emancipation sculpture of Lincoln with a freed slave, perhaps the most complicated and controversial of the commemorations described. Regardless of the site or the particular artistic depiction, the monuments allow Percoco to explore the central role of Lincoln in the nation's "civil religion" for which the memorial in Washington, D.C. serves somewhat as a temple and as a central public stage for speeches, rallies, and other expressions of what it means to be American. |
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Not surprisingly, Percoco's book would be especially useful for high-school teachers, both in content about Lincoln and for analysis of the relationship of American history and memory, and excerpts could easily be used in high-school classes to spark discussion. Additionally, he asks important questions about public imagery that can apply to other historical figures and symbols. The work could serve as a good text for undergraduate courses on popular American culture, public commemoration and political representation, or art history courses on public sculpture. Percoco is clearly an inspired teacher and accordingly, the book is at its most engaging in chapters in which he is with students at the monuments. He encourages both his students and his readers to interpret the memorials for themselves and to address questions of what their creators intended and how perspectives on Lincoln and on his commemoration have changed with time, making this a good addition to the literature on how Americans use memorials to construct shared beliefs about their nation and its past. |
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| Bates College, Lewiston, Maine |
Sally J. Southwick |
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