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TAFT, William H. Typed speech signed ("Wm. H. Taft"), as Chief justice of the Supreme Court, and chairman of the Lincoln Memorial Commission. Washington, D. C., 30 May 1922. Twenty-four pages, 8vo, small, color lithographic portraits of Taft on eight of the pages.
TAFT DEDICATES HENRY BACON'S AND DANIEL CHESTER FRENCH'S MAGNIFICENT LINCOLN MEMORIAL, a decade in the making and universally hailed as a great success not just in terms of its location and design, but also in terms of its political and cultural impact. Before his death, Lincoln's secretary John Hay endorsed the proposed site for the memorial with words that Taft quotes in his address: "Lincoln...was of the immortals. You must not approach too close to the immortals. His monument should stand alone, remote from the common habitations of man, apart from the business and turmoil of the city...This one, near the Potomac, is most suited to the purpose."
The Memorial, Taft notes, was an important symbol not only of the man it honors, but of the true reconciliation at long last between North and South. "Here on the banks of the Potomac," he says, "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." It "marks the restoration of the brotherly love of the two sections...The Southerner knows that the greatest misfortune in all the trials of that section was the death of Lincoln. Had he lived, the consequences of the war would not have been as hard for them to bear, the wounds would have been more easily healed, the trying days of reconstruction would have been softened. Rancor and resentment were no part of his nature..."
TAFT DEDICATES HENRY BACON'S AND DANIEL CHESTER FRENCH'S MAGNIFICENT LINCOLN MEMORIAL, a decade in the making and universally hailed as a great success not just in terms of its location and design, but also in terms of its political and cultural impact. Before his death, Lincoln's secretary John Hay endorsed the proposed site for the memorial with words that Taft quotes in his address: "Lincoln...was of the immortals. You must not approach too close to the immortals. His monument should stand alone, remote from the common habitations of man, apart from the business and turmoil of the city...This one, near the Potomac, is most suited to the purpose."
The Memorial, Taft notes, was an important symbol not only of the man it honors, but of the true reconciliation at long last between North and South. "Here on the banks of the Potomac," he says, "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." It "marks the restoration of the brotherly love of the two sections...The Southerner knows that the greatest misfortune in all the trials of that section was the death of Lincoln. Had he lived, the consequences of the war would not have been as hard for them to bear, the wounds would have been more easily healed, the trying days of reconstruction would have been softened. Rancor and resentment were no part of his nature..."