Abraham Lincoln

Full-length sculpture of President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), 16th President of the United States until his assassination on April 14, 1865, by John Wilkes Booth. This macquette was created from a plaster macquette of the full-size bronze statue located in Lincoln, Nebraska. Sculptor Daniel Chester French was interested in the commercial potential for reproductions of his larger works and made plaster replicas of his three-foot-tall clay model of the statue. President Lincoln is shown with his head bowed and hands clasped, as if looking solemnly downward into the graves of fallen soldiers from the American Civil War. The original statue stands in front of a large granite backdrop that illustrates the text of the ”Gettysburg Address” read on November 19, 1863, at the dedication ceremony for a national cemetery for Union and Confederate soldiers who died at the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863. There is a founder’s mark on the reverse of the base that reads, ”Roman Bronze Works N. Y.” Inscribed on base at right: ”Original for the statue erected in Lincoln, Nebraska.”