Remember the song from "Hair" ... Abie Baby - well here we are celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln. In the back of my head - running non stop all day -was "Happy Birthday Abie Baby, Happy Birthday to you..."
Last week, while scouting out some potential new adventures, I happened on Lincoln Park (also known as Lincoln Square). It's a few blocks from Eastern Market, east of Capitol Hill. One of the highlights of the park is this sculpture, The Emancipation. So, in honor of the Abe's birthday, I thought I would post a photo of the sculpture in Lincoln Park.
This sculpture was dedicated on April 14, 1876, the eleventh anniversary of Lincoln's assassination. It was commissioned by the Western Sanitary Commission of St. Louis entirely of funds contributed by emancipated slaves. The first contribution, five dollars, was made by Charlotte Scott a freed woman from Virginia. The slave in the sculpture was modeled after Archer Alexander, the last slave to be captured under the Fugitive Slave Act.
It is a lifesize bronze sculpture. The sculptor was Thomas Bell; the architect was Major O. E. Babcock. It is located in Lincoln Park on East Capitol at 11th Street NE, Washington, D. C.
4 comments:
this is a great find, Mary... and you did a great job digging into the history of the statue - fascinating!
Thanks Steve! I really love all the wondeful outdoor sculpture the Washington area has to offer. Researching the pieces and discovering little tidbits about how they came to be only enhances my appreciation of these works of public art.
Hey... I love this one. I used to live near Lincoln Park back in the 90s and ran here regularly. Great story behind the statue, also.
I liked this sculputre too. However, I was talking to a man in my walking group about it and he said that it was looked upon by the black commuity as a very demenaning piece of art. Apparently there has been a ground swell of discussion about Lincoln's true motives about the emancipatoin of slaves - that it was not done out of moral conviction - but was rather pure polical strategy necessary to "save the union" and win the war...
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