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14 Lincoln Memorial: Shrine to an American Hero

sculpture of Lincoln surrounded by 31 Union Army foot soldiers and six mounted cavalrymen. The Lincoln Monument Association quickly accepted Mills’ design, but Congress balked at providing money for the project. Instead, Congress authorized the nation’s postmasters to collect voluntary donations from people for the purpose of financing construction of the monument. The postmasters collected little money. Part of the problem was that the monument to Abraham Lincoln was in competition for private money with the Washington Monument. Construction of the obelisk honoring the nation’s first president had started in 1848 but had stalled during the Civil War. Now that the war was over, sponsors of the partially finished monument on the National Mall were again seeking donations but were making little progress. Eventually, the United States Army Corps of Engineers would take on the job of completing the Washington Monument, which was finally finished in 1885. The Lincoln Monument Association received no such help from the federal government. Soon, the idea of building a memorial to the Great Emancipator was for- gotten. The Lincoln Monument Association disbanded, and the plans of Clarke Mills were forgotten. Years passed before the idea was revived. In 1911, U.S. Senator Shelby Cullom of Illinois, who had known and admired Lincoln, drafted a Senate bill authorizing the use of federal money for the construction of a Lincoln