Urban Legends of the Lincoln Memorial - All With High Hope For the Euture

As we sign off for the week, let’s take a look at a couple of tidbits about the Lincoln Memorial that happen to be “true”, and use them to explore how the line between “true story” and “urban legend” is neither as wide nor as defined as academic historians (or National Park Service Rangers) would have you believe.

We’ll start with the the thirty-six columns. In their phone in guide program and on their website, the Park Service holds this up as an example of “true” symbolism in the Memorial:

Whereas there are a few symbolic representations in the details, such as the thirty-six exterior columns representing the number of states at the time of his death, many more suggested symbols are pure myth.

But how accurate is this? To begin with, there are thirty-eight Doric columns supporting the Memorial, although two are clearly set back from the others near the entrance. And there are clearly thirty-six states listed above the colonade. But how do we know that it’s not coincidence, as presumably the four score and seven steps are? One site even goes so far as to state; “as an afterthought, the 36 columns required for the design were seen to represent the 36 U.S. states at the time of Lincoln's death, and their names were inscribed in the entablature above each column.” What makes this symbolism “true”?

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Urban Legends of the Lincoln Memorial - Who Is Buried Here?

photo uploaded to flickr by NCinDCYears ago, when I took the exam to become licensed in Washington, DC as a tour guide, I was struck by one of the questions (actually, by many of the questions, but that’s a topic for another time). This particular section was photo identification, where you saw a picture of a landmark and answered a series of questions about it. Peering into the thrice photocopied test, I made out what was a blurred but yet still recognizable Lincoln Memorial. Among the other questions I had to answer: “Who is buried here?”

Now, that has puzzled me to this day. Was it a trick question, designed to tease out guide’s credibility for urban legends? Or did, honest to God, a Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs employee think that Lincoln was actually buried here?

If so, he or she must be in good company. I only get the question sporadically, but this must have been popular at some time, as it litters message boards throughout the Internet. Is Abraham Lincoln buried in the Lincoln Memorial? Or, more broadly, was the Memorial designed to someday be a tomb for Lincoln and foiled at the last minute?

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Urban Legends of the Lincoln Memorial - Fourscore and Seven Steps Ago

Yet another popular legend of the Lincoln Memorial lies in the number of steps to the top of the Memorial. As before, let’s start with the Park Service’s website:

No, this is another popular myth. The Lincoln Memorial steps actually extend to the Reflecting Pool, so at present count that would be 98 steps.  If one counts the steps from the road to the Memorial chamber, one would find 57.  There is no significance to either number.

Unfortunately, the Park Service doesn’t tell you what the popular myth is. Put simply, the legend states the number of steps are either Lincoln’s age (road to Memorial chamber) or “fourscore and seven” (all the way to the Reflecting Pool).

If you don’t check out their site, and I wouldn’t blame you if you don’t (it’s quite horrible), the Park Service offers a cell phone tour of the Memorial. Call (202) 747-3420 and listen to one of 13 recorded messages. Number 11 is entitled “Myths of the Lincoln Memorial” and addresses this one (as well as Lee’s face and Lincoln’s hands):

When you visit the memorial, you climb several steps to reach the Chamber. Many visitors assume the 58 steps they climb from the sidewalk below equal his age at his death. However Lincoln was only 56 years old when he was killed in April 1865.

So, it looks like the Park Service is dead on. As we all know, Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809 and died on the morning of April 15, 1865. He was clearly 56 years old at his death. I know, I know, the legend has morphed into 56 steps for his age and one for each term of his Presidency, but if we start playing with the numbers we’re just entering the realm of fantasy.

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Urban Legends of the Lincoln Memorial - Robert E. Lee as Voldemort

It’s not there. I just can’t see it. Some of you know what I’m talking about already.

The story goes like this. Daniel Chester French carved a profile of Robert E. Lee emerging from the back of Lincoln’s head a la Lord Voldemort in the Sorcerer’s Stone. If you go around to the right side of Lincoln (his, not yours), and look on the back of the head, you see Lee’s profile in Lincoln’s locks of hair. Lee is gazing across the river at his house, now preserved as the Robert E. Lee Memorial. Further elaborations have Daniel Chester French a secret Southern sympathizer, Klan member, or other such nonsense.

The Park Service addresses this on their site:

No such carving was done intentionally, but the myth persists to this day. The fact remains that several visitors claim to find all sorts of profiles within the tufts of Lincoln's hair.

While I quibbled with them yesterday regarding the A and L in Lincoln’s hands, they’re absolutely right here (insofar as one can disprove a negative).

The idea that Daniel Chester French might harbor some Confederate fetish is just downright odd. The man was born in New Hampshire and steeped in New England Yankeedom from birth onward. Fun fact of the day his father, Henry Flagg French laid out in his 1859 book Farm Drainage detailed plans for a trench filled with gravel that redirects surface water away from retaining walls. You may know it better as a “French Drain”, which is perhaps why it was never renamed a Freedom Drain.

Daniel French was eleven when the Civil War began, and moved shortly thereafter to Concord, Massachusetts. He was a neighbor to the Alcott's (you know, of Little Women fame) and Louisa May Alcott’s youngest sister May (Amy in the book) fostered his artistic tendencies by giving him modeling clay and lending him sculpting tools. French went on to study at MIT for a year before embarking on his sculpting career in Boston, New York, and Florence. Hardly the stuff of secret Confederate sympathies.

Now, even though French designed the statue of Abraham Lincoln, he didn’t necessarily carve every bit of it. For the grunt work, French hired the famed Piccirilli Brothers of New York. Well, of Tuscany originally, but they had set up shop in 1882 in the Bronx. French’s daughter Margret French Cresson described them as “so in harmony were they, each so gifted, and so perfectly trained, that any one of them could pick up the tools and go on with the work that another had laid down.” No, it’s hard to see all six Piccirilli Brothers as likely suspects in secretly carving Lee’s face in the back of Lincoln.

And secret it would almost certainly have to be. It’s fashionable today to downplay the hatred and animosity that existed for years afterword. We hear a great deal about “brother fighting brother”, and my guests from southern states gently correct me as to the “War Between the States”. Heck, I purchased a book at Gettysburg a few months ago and the bag read “Our Country’s Common Ground”.

This would NOT have been the sentiment in Washington, DC in 1914 when French started sketching out his designs. Granted, tensions weren’t quite as high as the 1880s, or even a few years prior in 1902 when Virginia had attempted to select Gen. Lee as one of their two statues every state places in the Capitol. The public outcry, spear headed by the Union veterans organization, the Grand Army of the Republic, was overwhelming and it wouldn’t be until 1934 that Virginia quietly got it’s way.

And, on the surface, reconciliation had progressed quite a bit. The last actual veterans of the war were dying off and the nation had elected it’s first southern President since the Civil War, Woodrow Wilson. In June of 1914, the nation took the then radical step of dedicating the new Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, surrounded by re-interred remains of southerners previously buried in the Washington, DC area.

However, while public opinion was moderating enough to allow honoring the valor and sacrifice of common soldiers, it did not go so far as to accept recognition of their leadership. As late as the 1930’s, Representative Hamilton Fish of New York proposed an equestrian statue of Lee at Arlington. He received letters condemning the idea of a rebel leader, be it “Robert E. Lee or any other traitor” (more about this topic can be read at Kathryn Allamong Jacob’s excellent book Testament to Union: Civil War Monuments in Washington, D.C.).

So, yeah, I just don’t see Daniel Chester French deciding to add a profile of Robert E. Lee in the back of Lincoln’s head. Which is fine, because I don’t see anything back there anyway.

Urban Legends of the Lincoln Memorial - A and an L?

photo uploaded to flickr by bjackrianIt's been awhile since we've delved into the morass of DC's urban legends. Now that's we've scratched the surface of the Capitol, why don't we head to the other end of the Mall this week and discuss a few of Old Abe's.

Perhaps the most common question I get about the Lincoln Memorial is "do his hands form a “A” and an “L” in American Sign Language?" The killjoys at the National Park Service categorically deny this, giving the explanation:

No, this is yet another myth. The artist studied casts of the former President's hands to get the proper appearance. They were both in a closed shape for the casting, the artist decided to open one up a bit to give a more life-like aspect.

Well, that was simple. Now that I’m done with this post, I'm hitting a bar.

Wait, what’s that I see? There’s more to the story? Well, crap, ok, I’ll dig a little deeper.

First off, is it really an “A” and an “L”? Not being fluent in ASL, let me defer to the experts. Handspeak.com, a site that discusses all things ASL, analyses it thus:

The left handshape of the statue can be ambiguously read as a rudimentary letter a, but the other handshape is more vague. Even though it is not close to the form of the letter "L", it is closer to the letter "L" than any of the other manual alphabetical letters. The index finger appears to be vaguely lifted while the other fingers remain on the seat arm.

Ok, so right off the bat, we're not talking about a clear "L". Let's take a look at the history of the Memorial itself.

The sculptor of the Lincoln statue, Daniel Chester French, was not unaware of sign language. Decades prior to the Lincoln Memorial, in 1889, he had designed a sculpture for Gallaudet University, then the Columbia Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb (actually, he sculpted two; he had completed a bust of President Garfield in 1881). But the one of interest to us today depicts early deaf educator Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet teaching his first student, Alice Cogswell to sign. The letter being signed by both Gallaudet and Cogswell? That’s right, “A”.

So, undoubtedly, Daniel Chester French had a familiarity with signing, or at the very least the letter “A” and it’s not unreasonable to assume that he knew enough to find out what “L” was if interested.

Digging a little deeper, we come across National Geographic’s On This Spot: Pinpointing the Past in Washington, D.C., which doesn’t mince words when it notes:

French had a son who was deaf and the sculptor was familiar with sign language, so Lincoln’s left hand, resting on the arm of the chair, is shaped in the sign for “A” while his right hand makes an “L”.

This is great! A deaf son would certainly provide further motive to French to want to quietly include ASL in his statue. Unfortunately, French had but one child, Margaret French Cresson, who went on to be both female and not deaf.

But perhaps Margaret can help illuminate some items. In her book about her father The Life of Daniel Chester French - Journey Into Fame she specifically references the Galludet statue, saying father reviewed it before beginning work on Lincoln. She also notes her father’s interest in Lincoln’s hands:

He put a great deal of thought into the hands. Dan always felt that hands were richly expressive of personality and he wanted these hands of Lincoln to show the strength and power and tension as well as the relaxed character that he was trying to put into the whole figure.

She also describes the casting process for the right hand, noting that French was not pleased with the first castings. He had been using the casts of Lincoln’s hands now on display at the Smithsonian as his model, but did not feel the right hand was working. He made a plaster model of his own hand, and draped it into the position he desired.

This dovetails with the Park Service’s point that the artist wished to open the hand up to create a more lifelike appearance. However, Galludet Reference Librarian Tom Harrington had this to say about that topic:

I have independently found that in photographs of early working models of the Lincoln statue, the right hand is a simple claw shape gripping the end of the chair arm, without the subtle finger placements that on the final statue say "L" to us. If French intended that hand to be a manual "L", it must have been a late decision. However, in support of the theory, the left hand remains in the supposed "A" handshape throughout all the preliminary sketches and models, never changing shape or position.

That French was dissatisfied with the original hand and changed it is undisputed. That the resulting right hand bears some resemblance to an ASL “L” is less clear, but not without merit. French himself had nothing to say on the topic, but his daughter did say after his death it was a coincidence.

So where does that leave us? In the absence of documentary evidence, it would be incorrect to say Daniel Chester French deliberately carved an A and an L into the Lincoln Memorial. However, I think it’s not that cut and dried. French was intimately familiar with American Sign Language, left one hand clearly making an “A”, and reworked, at great length, the other hand so that a “L” is visible, if admittedly not exact. French was a deliberate man; it’s a bit of a stretch that the thought would not have passed through his mind. I think an intellectually honest “I don’t know” is called for here.