Lincoln Memorial

Due to my job, I was able to spend some time down in Washington, DC yesterday. The day was the perfect day for sightseeing....70+ degrees, no clouds in the sky, lots of sunshine. And many, many people were walking around looking at our nation's Capital. During my time down there, I spent quite a bit of it looking for Civil War history. Civil War history abounds down there and you don't have to go looking for it, it just shows up.

One of the key places to find Civil War history is none other than the Lincoln Memorial. The memorial is one of the most recognizable places in Washington. When you walk inside, there is a large sculpture of President Lincoln sitting in a chair right in the middle of the room. Lincoln had everything to do with the Civil War: the acting president during the war, commander in chief of the Union forces, delivered the Gettysburg Address, and the list goes on and on and on. When you walk into the memorial, if you move to the room on your right, engraved into the wall is Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address. The room on the left has the Gettysburg Address engraved into the wall.

I stood and watched the people reading the Gettysburg Address. I guess this has more importance to me because of the close proximity of Lincoln actually giving that address to my home. But watching the people (most of whom did NOT speak English...at least not out loud), I was struck by how they seemed to fully understand the importance of that short speech. They stood, quietly, seemingly reading and comprehending those few words that Lincoln spoke on that day in November, 1863. But do they? I'm not sure. One thing that I have noticed, both by being a tourist and by speaking to tourists, people from country's other than the United States seem to understand our history better than those who were born and raised here. I find this sad. Our students in our schools do not know who most of our early leaders were nor do they seem to care. Occasionally, you will find a student who does care and does know and when I stumble across one of these kids, I realize that maybe it isn't all a lost cause.

In the upcoming days, I will share some of the pictures that I took of Washington and things that I found that were affiliated with the Civil War. I learned quite a bit about the city this particular day and look forward to sharing it with you.