David Lewis Schaefer: Deconstructing the Lincoln Memorial

[David Lewis Schaefer is professor of political science at Holy Cross College and author of Illiberal Justice: John Rawls vs. the American Political Tradition.]

... Should any such Americans wish to learn more about our country's greatest and most reverence-inspiring monument, the Lincoln Memorial, by looking for information to the National Park Service website, here is what they will find under the heading "Symbol of Democracy":

One of the interesting things about monuments and memorials is that they often say more about the generation that built them as they do about the person or period they were originally intended to commemorate. Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of the Lincoln Memorial. The Lincoln Memorial really says much more about this nation in the wake of the Civil War.

The generation that designed the Lincoln Memorial essentially constructed a highly idealized, colossal white-marble memorial to American democracy. The period between 1865-1909 was a period marked as a time of incredible technological advances, rapid industrial growth, and imperialistic expansionism; of enflamed patriotism during and after the Spanish-American War; and a continuance of Jim Crow laws, the exploitation of the working class, and Tammany Hall-style politics. Perhaps it should come as little surprise that the predominately white, classically minded and university educated, upper-middle class generation of architects and engineers that built the Lincoln Memorial would stress the theme of National Unity over that of Social Justice.

Completed in the wake of the First World War, the Lincoln Memorial was seen by its designers chiefly as a victorious symbol of American democracy over the dark forces threatening the world at the beginning of the twentieth century, whether they be in the form of saber-rattling autocratic monarchs or fledgling bolshevism. It would be left to future generations of Americans to restore balance to the twin themes of National Unity and Social Justice. It seems fair to suggest that another thing that makes the Lincoln Memorial unique is its power to continue to evolve as a symbol.

So much for the bloody battle to end slavery and repair the Union on a new, more moral foundation, exemplified by the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution. So much for the millions of immigrants who flocked to this country's shores throughout the nineteenth century and through the first quarter of the twentieth—only to be "exploited," it turns out. So much, indeed, for the American Expeditionary Force that brought about the defeat of the "saber-rattling" Central Powers, and for the heroic efforts of American G.I.s and statesmen to vindicate the cause of liberty against Nazi Germany and its allies and then the power of a no-longer fledgling Bolshevism.

What we really need to know, according to the National Park Service, is that the United States was nearly as evil, in its own way, as the anti-liberal forces it defeated, from the Confederate States to the Soviet Union. How much, after all, did "national unity" contribute to the cause of justice, considering the practices of imperialism, racial segregation, corrupt politics, and worker exploitation for which it paved the way? And who knows in what way the Lincoln Memorial may yet "evolve" as a symbol:  perhaps, for the sake of achieving "social justice," in the direction of socialism and pacifism? ...