Epilogue

Abstract

Standing between two fluted Doric columns on a platform made of cool, snow-white Colorado-Yule marble, Edwin Markham looked out onto the National Mall. Some 50,000 people had congregated, including Civil War veterans clothed in their blue and gray, with an estimated two million more listening to the ceremonial proceedings by radio. He recited “Lincoln, Man of the People,” originally composed in 1899 and revised for the occasion. Sitting behind the poet on that May day in 1922, was the sole surviving son of the sixteenth President, Robert Todd Lincoln, who, as a young man had served on the staff of Ulysses S. Grant and stood witness to Robert E. Lee’s surrender at the Appomattox Court House, just days before his father’s assassination. Other speakers included President Harding and Chief Justice William Howard Taft, who headed the ceremonial committee. Members of that body also edited the speech prepared by the only African-American speaker on the platform, Dr. Robert Moton—who had taken over as principal of the Tuskegee Institute after the death of Booker T. Washington—excising his criticisms of continued discrimination throughout the country and toning down his note of defiance.²

Till change hath broken down

All things save Beauty alone.¹

—Ezra Pound, “Envoi” (1919)