Tori's Tour-The Lincoln Memorial

Finally!!!

The Lincoln Memorial is Great! If you look at the map of the National Mall you can see that it is all laid out in the shape of a cross. At the four ends of the cross are the White House, the Capitol Building, the Jefferson Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial. The Washington Memorial is at the center. The Lincoln Memorial was built in Honor of Abraham (Abe) Lincoln, the sixteenth President of the United States. Abe Lincoln was born in Hardin County, Kentucky on February 12, 1809. He was Christian that attended the local Baptist church. He went to school with his sister and was always know as a hard worker. “Honest Abe” Lincoln did not come from a wealthy family and so when he decided he wanted to be a lawyer he could not afford to go to an expensive law school and so he taught himself the law and soon became a successful lawyer. He married Mary Todd and had four children: Robert, Eddie, Willie and Tad. Sadly, only Tad lived past the age of twenty.

After serving for a short time in the military during the Black Hawk War, Lincoln became a practicing lawyer and soon made a name for himself. He ran for the Illinois state legislature in 1832 and lost. Many people told Abe that he should give up, but he would not. He ran again and won. He won the seat four consecutive times. He ran for the US House of Representatives in 1846 and won. After his two year term was over he returned home and started practicing law again. He really had no interest in returning to politics after this but one issue kept coming up. Slavery was a very sad reality for blacks living in the United States. Even though the Founding Fathers had said that “All men were created equal,” many people did not feel that that included black people. Abe did not agree. From the earliest parts of his life Abe had believed that God loved everyone and so he should too. When he was seven his parents switched churches to attend one that disagreed with slavery, and all these years later Abe still felt that slavery was wrong. This made him decide to run for President of the United States and in November of 1860, He won.

Lincoln Presidency was to be the only presidency in the history of the United States that was defined by war. Even before Abe was really President people started trying to break up the United States so that they could keep their slaves. But President Abe wanted everyone to be free. This began what is known as the “United States Civil War.” A “Civil” war means a war between two different groups of people in the same country. Lots of countries have had civil wars but the United States Civil war was really bad. Basically, a lot of people in the South wanted to keep slaves to run their farms and businesses and the people in the North wanted to set everybody free and so a fight broke out between the North and the South. . The Army from the North was led by a man named Ulysses S. Grant and the Army from the South was led by a man Named Robert E. Lee (We will learn more about these men when we visit the Capitol Building and Arlington National Cemetery). This fight lasted for over four years and many people died. In the end, the South gave up and the North won. Near the end of the war, President Lincoln wrote a letter, known as the Emancipation Proclamation, which set all of the slaves free.

But not everyone was happy with how the war ended. Soon after it was over President Lincoln was killed by people who had wanted to the South to win. Many people were so sad that he was gone and yet thankful for what he had done that they decided to build a memorial to him in Washington DC.

The Lincoln memorial was finished in 1922.

These are the steps leading up to the MemorialThis is the Marble statue of President Lincoln that is in the center of the memorial

On the wall to the right of Lincoln's statue is his Second Inaugural Speech.

To the left of the Statue is a copy of President Lincoln's most famous speech, The Gettysburg Address

This is the view looking out from the memorial, You can see the Washington monument in the distance

I love you so much and can't wait see you.