Page:The national monument to Abraham Lincoln.djvu/4

 THE NATIONAL MONUMENT TO ABRAHAM LINCOLN

BY JUDSON C. WELLIVER

HEN Congress, a few days before the end of the last session, passed the legislation providing for the erection of a memorial to Abraham Lin- coln, it made, me and for all, the deter- mination that our national capital is to be unique among cities, and of them all the

ONE OF THE TWO SMALLER HALLS OF THE LINCOLN MONUMENT, CONTAINING THE GETTYSBURG ORATION.

This is true, not because the particular memorial that is provided for is in itself of such transcendent importance in the ar- tistic development of Washington‘s "city beautiful" scheme, but because the evolu- tion of the general plan had reached a point where an important variation from it might have been a first step toward its ultimate abandonment. Moreover, there was a de- termined effort to commit Congress to an 541