It seems Abraham Lincoln is everywhere. Our continuing “unexpected Lincoln” series takes us to Concord, Massachusetts, home of Henry David Thoreau and just steps away from “the shot heard round the world.” I stopped in Concord on a recent road trip to see a special Lincoln Memorial Centennial exhibit at Concord Museum. Not only was Lincoln there, but it turns out Concord was a hotbed of abolitionist fever – and famous thinkers so thick you couldn’t help running into one in the 1840s-50s.
The museum was sponsoring an exhibit called “The Lincoln Memorial Illustrated.” A collaboration by Daniel Chester French’s studio at Chesterwood and the Norman Rockwell Museum in western Massachusetts (which hosted the original installation throughout the summer of 2022); the exhibit is only in Concord until February 26, 2023. As the title suggests, it focused on illustrations, sculpture, archival materials, and ephemera as it traced the Lincoln Memorial’s role as a symbolic site for some of the nation’s most important events and movements. Many of the pieces are political cartoons, often showing how the famed Lincoln statue reacted to key historical events. Included are Bill Mauldin’s depiction of Lincoln crying upon hearing of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, John Darkow’s Lincoln giving a thumbs up to the newly elected President Barack Obama, and Matt Davies’s Lincoln and his chair flipped over backwards in disbelief after the 2016 election results.
I was fascinated by one additional item on display – the account book kept by Daniel Chester French, a detailed record keeper, who recorded his contract payments for the Lincoln Memorial statue ($45,000 increased to $88,400), along with records of payments to the Piccirilli Brothers for marble carving and other work.
A bonus – Daniel Chester French not only designed the statue of Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial, he created the Minuteman statue that sits just of North Bridge. Emerson’s childhood home overlooks the statue and the park. You can almost hear that mighty shot ring out as you soak in American history bridging the beginning of the nation and Lincoln’s saving of the nation.
All photos by David J. Kent
[NOTE: This article originally appeared at Lincolnian.org]
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David J. Kent is President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.
His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.
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