How Do We Remain Civil And Still Hope To Win An Unending Civil War?

The Jefferson Memorial doesn’t get nearly the glory from our culture compared to its nearby National Mall monuments memorializing Lincoln or Washington.

Perhaps that’s a function of both historical comedy (timing!) and real estate (location, location, location). When it opened in 1888, the phallic 555-foot tribute to the legacy of America’s first president, George Washington, was the world’s tallest obelisk. The Lincoln Memorial, with a reflecting pool more than 2,000 feet long, sprung up directly west of the Washington Monument, completed in 1922-23. It’d take another two decades for a site across the Tidal Basin from the Mall to become home to the Pantheon-style dome for Thomas Jefferson. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt dedicated the Jefferson Memorial on April 13, 1943, the 200th anniversary of Jefferson’s birthday. The bronze statue of Jefferson arrived finished four years later.

But that’s not why we think of Jefferson today.