Consecrating Words
July 13, 2005
A woman within my hearing described the Jefferson Memorial as prettier, but the Lincoln Memorial as more emotional. It lies at the further end of a straight line extending from the Capitol Building, yet it is nevertheless the emotional center of the mall. Washington takes pride of place as the first president, and the writers of the Constitution get called “fathers”, but when we look to our hearts as Americans, it is Lincoln that holds out attention.
When I looked at the original plans for the capital drawn up by L’Enfant in 1791, I looked for what he envisioned as standing in the place of the Lincoln Memorial. To my surprise, he envisioned nothing, because this whole western end of the mall was then under water.. part of the Potomac. The capital was envisioned more like a large L turned on its back. Not only was this area once part of the river, but a canal allowed for water traffic along the side of the mall up to the Capitol itself.. Last week I ran into a small stone house, certainly not a tourist stop.. yet this was the station where boats once stopped in order to enter the canal.. The little house is landlocked at 17th and Constitution.
An oddity about Washington is the way there is not much energy expended to clarify the relative ages of the monuments.. The memorials are not built with a clear date of construction on them.. in 100 years I have no doubt that most people will believe that the World War II Memorial was constructed before the Vietnam Memorial.
It turns out that the land upon which the Lincoln Memorial, the reflecting pool, and so many other memorials now stand was not reclaimed until 1901. The Lincoln Memorial was not opened until 1922..
Once within the Lincoln Memorial I stepped to the side and watched the lines of people walk forward and take their ritual photographs. Some also stood for a while looking up at the larger than life man sprawling in marble, or looking back at the Washington Monument and the Capitol in the distance. I turned my attention to the words inscribed on the walls of this temple. To the right as one enters is the Second Inaugural and to the left the Gettysburg Address.. Lincoln’s brevity was convenient for the designers of the memorial.. no need to cut and pare..
I knew the opening line for the Gettysburg Address.. “Fourscore and seven years ago..”, but somehow I had never considered the speech carefully. Lincoln addressed the issue of consecrating a place.. which was the purpose of his visit to Gettysburg after the great battle. Having noted that purpose, he cuts against the grain:
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot 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.
Remember, this is written on the walls of a memorial that stands on land that was under water when Lincoln lived. When Lincoln refers to what “they did here” one must supply Gettysburg. His claim is for the primacy of action over words.. the actions of the soldiers have consecrated the place more than his words ever could.. which gives a logic to the brevity of the speech. Yet in this case, here in the Lincoln Memorial, it is the words themselves, and not the actions, which are consecrating the ground, converting the building into a sacred national temple. The world did long remember what Lincoln had to say, and will perhaps remember those words longer than any deeds at Gettysburg.
At the end he expresses the need for self-consecration to the great experiment which our nation represents.. a nation which was then fourscore and seven years old. This self-consecration will ensure that that “these dead shall not have died in vain.” Again it is a funny denigration of words.. it is the self-consecration that will ensure this result, in Lincoln’s view.. but it is actually the words themselves, spooling out a narrative which gives coherence and meaning to those deaths, which best insures that those soldiers "shall not have died in vain."
If one needed any more proof about the power of words, one can just look closely at the well-trodden granite and find the words which mark the spot from which Martin Luther King, Jr, gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. Somewhere out there on this land reclaimed from the river they are going to erect a memorial for him too.. due to open in 2006.
