Ninety-four years ago on Memorial Day May 30, 1922, the Lincoln Memorial was dedicated. Then Memorial Day was always celebrated on May 30 regardless of the day of the week. The change was made in 1968 and took effect in 1971. In a year in which we are having a Presidential election, it does seem fitting that the anniversary of the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial should fall on Memorial Day. What began as remembrance for those who gave their lives to save the Union has become a day to remember those who gave their lives in military service for our country. But we must not forget the original reason, the Civil War, especially not now when we are still a country divided. We must never forget the President who also gave his life to preserve the Union, to preserve the freedoms we had then and who called for “a new birth of freedom” in the Gettysburg Address.
The keynote speech at the dedication was given not by former President Taft or current President Harding or even Robert Lincoln, the deceased President’s son. Rather the speech was given by Dr. Robert Moton, then president of Tuskegee Institute. Among his remarks, he said:
With malice toward none, with charity for all we dedicate ourselves and our posterity, with you and yours, to finish the work which he so nobly began, to make America an example for all the world of equal justice and equal opportunity for all.
Robert Russo Moton,
Address at the Lincoln Memorial dedication, May 30, 1922
We are still not finished, are we? There are still groups fighting for “equal justice and equal opportunity“. There are still groups fighting to prevent others from receiving that “equal justice and equal opportunity“. The rhetoric we have heard from the Republican nominee and his supporters not only reminds us that we have far to go, but echoes the language in the years leading up to the Civil War. How ironic that those voices come from within the party of President Lincoln.
The inscription behind the Statue is
IN THIS TEMPLE
AS IN THE HEARTS OF THE PEOPLE
FOR WHOM HE SAVED THE UNION
THE MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
IS ENSHRINED FOREVER
What about us? Is President Lincoln’s memory “enshrined forever” in our hearts? Or has he become part of a distant past we need not concern ourselves with in the twenty-first century. Does he still matter? Should he still matter? If keeping our country united matters, if continuing to move forward, however slowly, to what we can become matters, if finishing the work he and the soldiers gave their lives for matters, then yes, President Abraham Lincoln still matters. Now perhaps even more than at any other time in history since he lived and kept our country united. We are surely at a crossroads. We must choose where we want to go as a country.
Do we continue to move forward and continue to, as President Lincoln called on every citizen to do: “to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” Or do we retreat to some imagined past that never was and let those who died to preserve our freedom die in vain. The choice is ours. The time to decide is now, on Memorial Day, on the ninety-fourth anniversary of the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial.
Moderately liberal, liberally moderate, American flag waving Democrat! Bachelor of Arts in History with concentration in Early American History and Abraham Lincoln
Graduate student pursuing a Master of Arts Degree online in American History at Southern New Hampshire University