How different would the United States be if another man instead of Abraham Lincoln was in the White House during those fateful years? Would there even be a United States? True, Lincoln’s outspoken opposition to slavery was one of the critical factors that gave the Southern states impetus to secede. If not for his election, it’s possible there would have been no Civil War, and the land of the free might have kept slaves for a while longer. Still, Lincoln managed to preserve the union while abolishing slavery. No ordinary feat; but then, Lincoln was no ordinary president.On this day, February 12, in 1914, ground broke in West Potomac Park in Washington on the first memorial to the president. While ideas for one were floated as early as 1867, just two years after his assassination, no progress came until the first years of the 20th century, when a location and design were finally chosen.

Today the Lincoln Memorial stands at the west end of the National Mall, a figure of the president in contemplation surrounded by a peristyle of 38 columns, one for each of the thirty six states in the Union at the time of his death, plus two more at the entrance behind the colonnade. The original plan was for Lincoln’s figure to be only ten feet high, but plans changed so that the he would not be dwarfed by the size of the chamber. To either side of the contemplative Lincoln are carved inscriptions of his most famous speeches, the Second Inaugural Address and the Gettysburg Address.