Washington waited 49 years
On the Lincoln Memorial, landslide elections, and the case for waiting until politicians are long dead before naming anything in their honor
George Washington attained a near-mythological status in his own time. Leading a militia to an unlikely victory in a war for independence, attaining the nation’s highest office in a true landslide vote, and then voluntarily stepping aside from power when powerful people were openly willing to hand it over in perpetuity certainly make reasonable ingredients for such a mythology to take shape.
■ Despite this, construction work on a permanent monument to Washington didn’t begin until 1848, 49 years after his death in 1799. The monument wasn’t completed until 1884, or 85 years after his death.
■ Greatness is not established by monuments; monuments only seek to enshrine greatness already demonstrated by deeds. And it should take some passage of time before monumental works are erected: Ground for the public memorial to Abraham Lincoln wasn’t broken until 1914, even though Lincoln’s Presidential deeds were certainly the most heroic since Washington’s.
■ Washington and Lincoln would be remembered even if nothing had been constructed in their names. In the words of Ben Franklin, “If you would not be forgotten / As soon as you are dead and rotten, / Either write things worth reading, / Or do things worth the writing.”
■ No public figure of real honor needs to have anything named for them in life. Let their deeds be the memorial, then build the memorial tributes later -- not for the good of the dead, but for the good of the living.
■ As Warren Harding said at the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial, “this Memorial is less for Abraham Lincoln than those of us today, and for those who follow after.” If America could wait half a century to break ground on tributes to Washington and Lincoln, so too could (and probably should) a 50-year post-mortem cooling-off period apply to naming anything monumental for any politician.
