Photo of the Day: Lincoln Memorial, Washington DC

While vacationing in Washington in November 2013, I took this photograph of the Lincoln Memorial. Behind the famous sculpture of Abraham Lincoln by Daniel Chester French is the inscription: “In this temple, as in the hearts of the people for whom he saved the Union, the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever.”

The two key words, aside from Lincoln’s proper name, in that sentence are “temple” and “Union.” Although for much of his life Lincoln was not a conventional religious believer, he had come, as he struggled with the greatest crisis faced by the United States since its founding, to affirm more strongly in a divine Providence guiding his actions throughout the war. In a way, then, it’s, as he might put it, “fitting and proper” that this secular temple of freedom be erected in his memory.

I discussed, in a prior post, why, at the time of the memorial’s construction between 1914 and 1922, the concept of union, rather than emancipation, became the governing theme of this shrine. It is absolutely true—and to the credit of this country—that the memorial, like the Civil War itself, has become more associated with an expanded understanding of freedom than with strictly an association among states.

But, in another sense, “Union” cannot be forgotten in our understanding of Lincoln and the war he was prepared to undertake for its preservation. When Fort Sumter was attacked, the split of this country in two was desired by more than just the Confederacy. The presence of this large North American country—the world’s only significant republic at the time—posed a mortal threat to nations in which unquestioned rulers, or others holding to established hierarchies, held sway.

That is why Great Britain, for instance, though it had abolished slavery throughout its empire three decades before, was ready to recognize, hypocritically, a Confederacy whose own hierarchy was an aristocracy founded on bondage. Lord Palmerston, that nation’s Prime Minister, snorted that the North’s reverses early in the war showed that “Power in the Hands of the Masses throws the Scum of the Community to the surface.”

Palmerston was refuted not just by the progress of Federal arms, but also by changing sentiment in his own country. Even while the upper classes continued to identify more with the genteel manners of Southern aristocrats, mill workers in the British cotton trade mobilized in support of the Emancipation Proclamation. The latter cause carried the day. 

In London’s Parliament Square today, Palmerston has a statue erected in his memory, but so does the Rail Splitter of humble American origins who, by saving republican government, assisted at “a new birth of freedom.”

Photo of the Day: Mandela, Liberator, in Parliament Square

I took this photo back in January, on my first trip to London. While I was snapping pictures right and left, I had to make sure that I captured digitally this statue of Nelson Mandela. There were already constant news reports that the former South African leader was seriously ailing (indeed, the wonder is that he lasted until his death Thursday).

I took several other photographs in Parliament Square that late Friday afternoon, including ones posted to this blog about Winston Churchill and Sir Robert Peel. But this nine-foot bronze statue of Mandela by sculptor Ian Walters was special. He is not set as high as the other figures in the square, and in his characteristic floral shirt he looks as if he shares more of the air of the common man than anyone else here. Moreover, unlike the others here (including the lone American, Abraham Lincoln), Mandela was the only figure alive for his statue’s unveiling, having lived long enough to pass from heated controversy to something approaching secular canonization.

Mandela shares one other thing with Lincoln. Both were, in essence, liberators—men responsible, through political guile, persistence, and moral passion, an entire class of human beings from the worst kind of legal shackles and inhumanity. They were, in the truest sense, fathers of their reborn nations.

When the statue was unveiled six years ago, Mandela noted: “Though this statue is of one man, it should in actual fact symbolize all of those who have resisted oppression, especially in my country."

Photo of the Day: The Bobby Who Made the Bobbies

It seemed a shame to waste this photo I took in London a week and a half ago, given that the fellow in this Matthew Noble statue in Parliament Square, Sir Robert Peel, was born on this date 225 years ago. I’ll bet that, if we Yanks know anything about him right now, it is as an answer to a Jeopardy-style question: “Which politician are the ‘Bobbies’ of London’s police force named after?” Indeed, “Bobby” Peel did, in 1822, as Home Secretary, create the Metropolitan Police—and a good thing, too, considering the crime about to overwhelm Britain’s capital as a result of urbanization and the Industrial Age. He would go on to even greater prominence in his country’s history as a two-time Conservative Prime Minister (1834-1835, 1841-1846).

Photo of the Day: The Last Lion, Facing the Gathering Storm

London, I discovered late last week, in a short tour of the British capital, is a city of varied and multitudinous statuary. Parliament Square—dotted with sculptures of the men who led the government, just across the street—is a particularly striking example, with the likes of Robert Peel, Benjamin Disraeli and David Lloyd-George represented.

But one bronze statue in the northeast corner of the square, above all, was instantly recognizable—so much so that I could easily figure out the likeness from the back, without even a hint of the familiar bulldog expression. There was the naval overcoat, of course, ready not just for that damp London weather but even those occasions when he had to venture overseas to confer with allies in a war of the highest stakes.

The bald head and stocky frame might have led some of the unsuspecting to see elements of a contemporary, the authoritarian Benito Mussolini. But instead of il Duce’s cocky lift of the shoulders there was also that frame, already slightly bent from years in the public eye and the full weight of four decades of his own mistakes and disappointments. And now here he was, with not only the fate of a nation but even that of Western civilization and representative government resting on his shoulders. 

“The Last Lion,” William Manchester called him. There's only one word in the inscription on the base of the sculpture, but we don't even need that for identification. The greatness of Winston Churchill, as man and statesman, lies in the fact that it surmounts all the true faults charged by detractors. He was an arch-imperialist, with little sympathy for the nationalist aspirations of India and Ireland. He did support feckless King Edward VIII in the abdication crisis. He did display an overaggressive streak—a desire to strike anywhere (e.g., as First Lord of the Admiralty in WWI, at Gallipoli; in WWI, in Norway, again at the Admiralty, then, as Prime Minister, in Italy, the “soft underbelly of Europe”) that appalled his military advisers and meant unnecessary loss of lives.

None of that mattered during his nation's darkest hour--but his own finest one. He was right, nearly before everyone else in the West, on the preeminent issue of his time: the rise of a totalitarian state in the middle of Europe that was not only a danger to its own people but to the peace of the world. And when, because of predecessors' errors, Britain and its empire stood alone against this menace, he steeled its spine with oratory still remembered nearly three-quarters of a century later.

All the figure in Parliament Square (created by sculptor Ivor Roberts-Jones, and installed in 1973) has for support is a cane, which Churchill seems prepared to use, nonetheless, to propel him and his country towards their destiny. He might be aging, but he’s not undone—only alone, the way he’s been so often, and while he might not be smiling, his gaze is resolute.

The army might have fled back across the English Channel from the disaster at Dunkirk, leaving Churchill only with words, but what words they are: “We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and the oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”