Each State is now permitted to place in Statuary Hall two statues of its most renowned sons.
Virginia has Washington and Jefferson. Think of that! New Hampshire has Daniel Webster, who made these walls echo with his thrilling, patriotic sentences, and John Stark, of Bunker Hill fame, who cried: “See those men? They are the redcoats! Before night they are ours, or Molly Stark will be a widow!”
Pennsylvania has Robert Fulton, the inventor, and John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg, the preacher, Major-General in the Revolution. He was also Senator and Member of Congress. New York has Robert R. Livingston, of the Continental Congress, and Alexander Hamilton. The latter was Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury during both of his Presidential terms. He had much to do with securing a good financial system for the new government. His pathetic death enhanced his fame and ruined Burr; but under the search-light of history one can not help wondering had Burr been killed and Hamilton survived that duel, would the halo of the latter have faded? The statue of Hamilton is one of the best in the Hall. It was made in Rome by Horatio Stone.
The Illinois memorial is the famous Vinnie Ream statue of Lincoln. I wish, because it was done by a woman, that I could like it, but it is weak and unworthy. In every line of his strong, patriotic face lived the gospel of everlasting hope. This figure might well stand for one vanquished in the race. (Was Jesus vanquished? Was Paul? Was Luther? Was Lincoln?)
There is a small bust of Lincoln, by Mrs. Ames, which approaches nearer the true ideal of the great apostle of Liberty.
Illinois is further represented by James Shields, Senator. It would seem that men like Washington and Lincoln, who were the product of national influences, should be venerated as representatives of the nation rather than of individual States.
Missouri is represented by Frank Blair and Thomas H. Benton; Vermont, by Jacob Collamer and Ethan Allen, the hero of Ticonderoga; Oregon, by Edward Dickinson Baker, whose fine statue is by Horatio Stone.
Jacques Marquette (by G. Trentanore), in the garb of a Catholic priest, represents Wisconsin. Ohio has President Garfield and William Allen.
Roger Sherman and John Trumbull represent Connecticut, and Rhode Island memorializes Roger Williams and General Nathanael Greene, of Revolutionary fame—the former, in his quaint sixteenth century garb, standing as well for religious freedom as for the State which he founded.
Massachusetts presents Samuel Adams’s statue, by Annie Whitney, and John Winthrop’s, by R. S. Greenough. What a goodly company they are, those New England heroes!