holzer to discuss. what sets it apart? guest: one is just the beauty, the building and the magnificence of the marble statue, the largest marble monument portrait in the united states, then and now. what further has set it apart is the use of this space i am sitting on all the way to the steps as a platform for the discussion of grievances, for the aspirations for a more perfect union, for what reagan called unfinished -- what lincoln called unfinished work. it has evolved into the setting for demonstrations, gatherings, meetings, concerts that all point to completing that unfinished business of his. host: describe where you are and for those who haven't been there, with the should know. guest: i am sitting about 50, 40 feet from the reflecting pool on the far end of the monument. and of course the memorial is behind me up 87 steps, i think i have that right. finished in 19 and they waited for it to settle on the soft ground before it settled -- for it to settle before they had the dedication. 100 years ago, the african-american community of washington came out to the spot early to get good seats to see this tribute to a man they still regarded as the great emancipator. for the ceremony started, the park police rousted the african-americans out of their seats and moved them all back to right around where we are sitting, to the reflecting pool, a long way away from the mario in a roped off section and cheers without backs. what started as a tribute to the greek emancipator ended as a reflection of segregated washington and a separate but unequal society that still existed in washington and the united states. host: a history of the lincoln memorial and what it means today is what we are going to talk about in this hour. you can join the conversation peered the phone lines are split in the eastern and central time zones (202) 748-8000, in the mountain or pacific (202) 748-8001, and a special line for those who visited the lincoln memorial. we want to know why you came in what you felt when you came, (202) 748-8002. you can go ahead and start calling. we are joined with harold holzer , live from the steps of the lincoln memorial. take us back before that date. how did this memorial come to be built? was there any pushback against building a memorial at the time to the great emancipator, abraham lincoln? guest: the project was first conceived in 1866, a year after lincoln was assassinated, or you would've thought there would have been a coalescence. as i wait for a plane to go across, a unity. but i just didn't happen. 40 years went by before congress finally in 1905 appropriated the funds, $5 million, to build a memorial to abraham lincoln, and then the debate started on where to put it. this site in the swamps of west potomac park was not the first choice. people talked about union station, the base of the capital, the park near the maryland border, the soldier's home where lincoln spent his summer, and finally his former private secretary, later secretary of state, suggested this spot to be remote but not too remote. and the sculptor was the head of the mission in washington, put the rubber stamp on this area. the speaker of the house, joe cannon, said famously, "i will never let a memorial to mike he wrote be -- i will never let a memorial be made here. french picked his collaborator, henry bacon, as the architect. there was no competition, but the design was so beautiful. bacon had so right to pick sculptor, so he picked the fellow who had picked him. at that time it was washington dealings and that is what it was. it worked out so magnificently. host: once you get inside lincoln memorial, for folks who haven't been there, explain what you see when you get in and why it was designed that way. guest: it was principally designed as a kind of credo -- cradle for this at one point that was going to be a statute. french objected because he wanted people to see the face of lincoln from down here at the reflecting pool all the way up, constant confrontation of lincoln from different angles. what else is the inscribed words of the gettysburg address and the second inaugural address. also some ornaments by beatrice longman, a sculptor associated with daniel chester french. decorative murals by a painter named ernest garin that no one sees because there wait about i level. and finally an epigraph, kind of a caption to the image, supplied by a new york art could tick who had always praised daniel chester french -- a new york art critic who had always praised daniel chester french he wrote in this temple as in the hearts of the people for whom he saved the union, the memory is enshrined forever. host: if your subscribers to the wall street journal, and today's review, a column by our guest, harold holzer, the headline, the changing meanings of an american shrine. what are the changing meanings? guest: on dedication day 100 years ago, not just because the african-american visitors were herded off to a segregated area, but for other reasons, the speeches that were given by william howard taft, hurting, the president, made it -- harding, the president, made it clear that it was the reunion between north and south. 36 states named, 36 class columns circumventing the memorial structure to symbolize 36 states readmitted to the union after lincoln's presidency and the civil war. there was one african-american speaker, the principal of tuskegee. he had a fiery speech ready, talking about the fact that if equality wasn't the goal of the country than this memorial was an hypocrisy. taft told him in no uncertain terms, we don't allow propaganda at this sacred event, either cut it or we will cut you. from there, you go to marian anderson's concert 17 years later singing my country tis of the, of the weise sing, a statement about integration. she had been barred from constitution hall you the white house and after that, in august 1963, martin luther king says i am standing inside the shadow where a hundred years the negro league still not free. -- the need grow is still not free -- the negro is still not free. it morphed into an icon there are cartoons of the lincoln memorial weeping. it goes on and on. and as the viewers know, the ground for the night before the inaugural celebration where president elects come for the last night for they come president for your gigantic rallies and as for the case for president biden, a very quiet tribute to the dead from covid. he came in front of the reflecting pool for those who died from covid. host: we see behind you the various people come to the memorial, not just visitors but graduates in downs and adjusted to hear from our callers about what the lincoln memorial means to you and your visits there could we have a special line. ryan is calling from -- bob and texas is on that line. go ahead. caller: thank you for taking my call. one of the very early images i can remember growing up is watching mr. smith goes to washington where he would look at it and he knew nothing about the taylor machine and bad things going on. it was just the ideal. when my son got old enough, i wanted to take him and show him this to me represents, if you look at it you can make your own waves. but we have to acknowledge all of the things that have not been right for all sections of our population. we can speak out about that and try to promote things that are good for all areas. david small wrote a book called so you want to be president and he was a longtime cartoonist for the new yorker and i can remember an image of bill clinton walking up the steps after he had been impeached with his head down and they put that in the book. i thought, it is like lincoln comes the ideal that people work off of. i have just one question. my question is, when i walked in and saw the word under god on the left side, are there other places in the memorial that show a spiritual emphasis as far as how our country began? host: thanks for the call. guest: you packed so much in that statement so thank you. the same year marian anderson saying on the steps, mr. smith goes to washington opened around the united states. to prepare for tomorrow's rededication, fruman listening in the region, there will be a ceremony on the steps at 10:00 a.m. re-creating the ceremony, to some degree, and i am going to be speaking if that is an attraction, don't let it keep you away. mr. smith opens the same season as marian anderson. and the scene you talk about, he is a child reading the gettysburg address out loud from the wall. then the film cuts to a black man with tears falling down his cheeks as he hears the words of the promise of equality under god. god is mentioned in lincoln's other speech and is on the gettysburg address portion. lincoln added those, they were not in the original text. when he rewrote it, he inserted the words he spoke at gettysburg. the other mention of god is harsher. in the second inaugural address where that is written into panels on the wall, there is a fiery paragraph saying that after all these centuries of oppression, slavery, every drop of blood drawn with a lash has to be repaid by those drawn with the sword, that as we said 3000 years ago, so must it be said today, the judgments of the lord are true and righteous altogether. so it was evoking god for quality and also for retribution of the sin of slavery. host: you have written 50 books about lincoln and the civil war, do you think lincoln would have been happy the two documents picked to be on the wall, his gettysburg address and the second inaugural address? guest: daniel chester french wanted to add lincoln's farewell address to springfield, illinois from 1851 and also his condolence letter to the widow, lydia bixby, from 1864, neither of which made the final cut. i think, and i say this in the wall street journal, that lincoln might have been equally interested in seeing the words of the emancipation inscribed on these walls, not because he wrote them as a rhetorical masterpiece, in fact the document was written in legalese , the words were meant to be binding legally and not necessarily for rhetoric. lincoln regarded the emancipation as the essential act of my administration could when he signed his name, he said if my name ever lives it will be because of this act. i-19 20 with jim crow -- by 1920 with jim crow still in effect and still with segregation and african american speakers censored, the emancipation proclamation was not the thing to celebrate. the white leaders who created the lincoln memorial emphasized the reunion of northern and southern states and that did not really take proper account of black lives. host: from the steps of the lincoln memorial out to california, good morning, you are on with harold holzer. caller: thank you for taking my call. host: go ahead with your comment or question. caller: i have been to the lincoln memorial several times. i live in california, and it is always been a special occasion getting to know the history. i have been there more than once and have actually just seen -- host: gary in reno, nevada is next. caller: thank you for taking my call. i am curious with so many things being wrong, and it seems like nothing is being fixed, has anyone in washington heard of invoking the 25th amendment? host: we are talking about the lincoln memorial and the 100th memorial, do have a comment about that? caller: i like the structure. i hope people don't demonize it. host: harold holzer, on that point, hoping it doesn't get demonized, we are in an era in which there has been a rethinking of history, has there ever been a rethinking of the lincoln memorial? host: not yet, happily. during some of the protests over the summer of 2020, proactive fencing was erected along this plaza. protests were staged here as they have for decades without incident, but there was a photoshop image of a vandalized graffiti lincoln memorial statute that made it onto the web and scared people for a few hours before it was discovered it was not genuine. a few miles from where we are down past the capitol lincoln, i think the official title is the emancipation group, lincoln with his arm outstretched in a kneeling or rising for the beneficiary of the great liberating moment of the proclamation. that said you had come under protest. people tried unsuccessfully to bring it down during some of the protests of the summer. it is worth talking about all of the statues, in washington, the south, the west. i personally don't believe lincoln should be subjected to that kind of revisionism. i will always quote the c-span historians pull conducted every time a new president takes office and that pull has once again marked abraham lincoln as our greatest presidents in i think he deserves it. president come here at the moment when they are reflecting the most, whether bill clinton at the moment of impeachment or ronald reagan when he is coming to the presidency or frank on eleanor roosevelt when he got to washington, he can't walk up the steps, he never did, but every separate 12 his car came and he managed to stand leaning on his son on one side and his military aid on the other and take his hat off in the presence of the lincoln memorial. so it appeals to leaders and that is the healthy thing. we can all find something in the lincoln memorial to inspire us and make us really feel hopeful about the country. host: that historian at survey, and thank you for bringing it up, putting linking -- lincoln as the top president, every time the survey has been done, 2017, 2009, 2000, abraham lincoln always comes in first in that survey ahead of george washington, franklin roosevelt, theodore roosevelt, dwight eisenhower, the top five in the latest survey paired why do you think lincoln is always number one? guest: because he not only saved the union at its most precarious moment, he also articulated the vision of the american dream in his writing, and aside from that, represented the american dream in his own rise from impoverished remote circumstances all the way to the white house. he lived there team -- the dream, articulated it for everyone else. if it had been a vulcanized, we might have been five countries. how would we have fared against the nazis if we were not a united and strong country, the one lincoln left to us? host: grand rapids, michigan, this is brian, good morning. caller: a lot, i am from minnesota but that is ok. -- thanks a lot, i am from minnesota but that is ok. stir holzer, -- mr. holzer, thank you for doing the show paired i did not know this was built so late, 1920. mr. smith goes to washington is one of my favorite movies. i was there meant by brother invited me and my folks there, and i hate to be so flippant, but 27 years ago they had a problem with pigeons getting in there and doing their business. you still have a problem with pigeons in there? guest: it is not flippant, they do damage to statues. i must say i haven't seen any birds in there, so they must have figured out. i think it was doing things with shortwave vibrations that inhibit birds. whatever they are doing, it is working in flee. the statue was even washed down with hot water the other day. the picture was in the washington post to get ready for the rededication on sunday. the park service takes magnificent care of the structure. i think you are overdue for another visit. you have to come back. host: in talking about the changes of the lincoln memorial, you talked about a key moment being the march on washington in august 1963. i want to show a clip from a u.s. agency about the march on washington that gives a sense of the scene there at the lincoln memorial. this is about a minute and a half long. [video clip] [applause] >> 150 members of the congress of the united states arrived at the rally to add their support, and the support of the people of the states they represent to the spirit of the march in washington. [applause] >> i want some of you to help me win a bet. i want everybody out here in the open to keep quiet, and i want to hear a yell and thunder from all those people who are out there under the trees. let's hear you. [cheers and applause] there is one of them in the trees. [laughter] [applause] [chanting] host: some of the images there, mr. holzer, of the 200,000, maybe 300,000 there for march on washington. what that moment meant for the civil rights movement and why the lincoln memorial was for that event. go through that's a little bit. guest: there was a little bit of a distraction. host: can you talk about the importance of that moment, the march on washington? guest: with apologies for that. it was transformative. not an automatic give me. i think president kennedy, who did not attend the rally, was ordered that this public space be made available to the public that wanted to use it on that day. we were talking hundreds of thousands of people stretched back on as the speaker said, into the trees. once dr. king invoked the unfinished promise of the emancipation, i think frankly it was a watershed meant, principally for the civil rights movement but also for the lincoln memorial. it now became the symbol of what lincoln himself called, in the words of the gettysburg address, the unfinished work of equality in america. host: back to the phone lines. we had the special phone lines for those who visited the lincoln memorial on the west end of the national mall. ted on the line from ocean, hawaii. caller: thank you for taking my call. i was just joining the merchant and washington and i remember it was close to midnight going to the memorial and just being in awe, just stood there and looked at all of the things he accomplished and what a great president he was and he absolutely deserves to be number one. i was lucky to be there. that is what i wanted to say. guest: that's a beautiful sentiment. the reason point worth sharing. though he did not know it when he installed the statue here in 1919, three years before the dedication, the statue is open, the memorial is open day and nights. it is beautifully lit with the highest grade electric lighting which french thought of. when he came to the dedication, he noticed the skyline had been lacquered over and front doors would be open all the time so he quickly did remedial work to make sure it showed to wonderful advantage at night. it -- for those who have only come during the day, i would urge them to try visiting at night. it is a totally different almost mystical experience to see lincoln in the light, the shrouded light against the white background. in the darkness of washington. quite beautiful. host: if daniel chester french is somebody you're intrigued by, monument man, the author of the book is carol holzer. up next, good morning. caller: good morning. two points, my wife who died a while ago, used to work for the department of interior and i know they use to -- i don't know if they still do -- give tours into the monument underground, to other recesses but typically would not be apparent and the other point just last week i was listening to testimony by deb haaland about the atrocities that have happened to the indigenous people here and it should be duly noted and recognized that it was under lincoln that i think the largest mass execution of people were done, so we just have to be able to tell all of the history. guest: i agree. i would love to talk about both of those things. first, i think the caller is referring to what people call the under croft of the lincoln memorial. the memorial itself is 99 feet high. the undergirding, the basement, call it the under croft, is 67 feet deep i believe. the reason it is so deep is because this use building, i don't know the weight of it, but i know the weight of the statue, 200 40 tons, that is pretty heavy, and a very deep basement was dug, all sorts of artwork, brilliantly engineered, and it still rests on this musty clay surface, like an unfinished basement. ther