The Quasquicentennial of the unveiling of Abraham Lincoln atop the Soldier’s and Sailor’s Monument in Washington Square Park.

Situated in the heart of Rochester’s financial and cultural district — with the Xerox Tower looming and GeVa theatricalizing — Washington Square Park is quintessential downtown.

Last year, in Memorial Day, 1892, when President Benjamin Harrison dedicated the Soldier’s and Sailor’s Monument in Washington Square Park with Frederick Douglass. And Occupy Rochester we reported on the rich history of the Square. And much more has happened since.

First, in past MAG director Grant Holcomb’s May 24th letter to the City editor, “Lincoln in Rochester,” Grant reminded us that this Memorial Day is the Quasquicentennial (125th anniversary) of the unveiling of Leonard Volk’s monumental public sculpture.

I contacted Grant about his letter — Grant subsequently became a Talker subscriber! — learning that he is an avid scholar of artistic representations of Abraham Lincoln.

A few months ago, Grant delivered a lecture, “The Image of Lincoln in American Art,” at the Brighton Memorial Library, for the Friends of the Library, University of Rochester and at Valley Manor.

Grant pointed me to two other Volk Lincoln representations held by the Memorial Gallery. Although no longer displayed, the MAG has a 4ft tall Lincoln bronze statue created by Volk in 1891.

Also, still on display at the MAG is Volk’s Life Mask and Hands of Abraham Lincoln, 1886.  The Mask and Hands were featured in the November 30th, 1998 Democrat and Chronicle, “Face to Face with Abe” that includes Grant holding the life mask.

One detail in Grant’s letter was especially intriguing.  Grant mentioned that former and future President Grover Cleveland was, along with then President Benjamin Harrison, at the unveiling.

In my research for Washington Square Park with Frederick Douglass, I had not come across Cleveland’s appearance. Grant explained that another museum curator had sent him the information:

However, I went back into the Democrat and Chronicle archives and once again found no reference to Cleveland. Grant’s source must have been in error.  Cleveland had been in Rochester on June 10th, 1884 for the city’s Semi-Sentential but not for the unveiling.

On Memorial Day, 1892, former President Cleveland and then President Harrison were gearing up for their November rematch. In 1888, although losing the popular vote, Harrison had unseated Cleveland.  In ’92, Cleveland won the rematch.  Had Cleveland been on the Square stage, it would have made for compelling political theater. But no such luck for Rochester history buffs.

A lot has happened since last year.

In On Abraham Lincoln in Rochester, Michael Nighan provided a thorough history of Lincoln’s visits to Rochester — in life and death.

In Rachel’s Rebel Roots, we were in Washington Square Park with Rachel Barnhart.

In In Washington Square Park remembering the first March for Woman’s Lives, April 1989, we were in Washington Square Park for the People’s Solidarity Rally.

And in On the rally in Washington Square Park. Would Einstein Be Welcome in America Today? we were in Washington Square Park in support of refugees. Rachel was there again.

Memorial Day, 1892, when President Benjamin Harrison dedicated the Soldier’s and Sailor’s Monument in Washington Square Park with Frederick Douglass. And Occupy Rochester

Occupy Rochester protestors await arrest in Washington Square Park, about 20 minutes before midnight on Friday, October 28, 2011. The park closed at 11 p.m. from Reporter Online

In keeping with our Presidential visits to Rochester series, this Memorial Day Weekend, we revisit Benjamin Harrison’s May 30th, 1892 trip to Rochester.

As described in Today in History: A historical journal of life in Rochester, NY

The 23rd President Benjamin Harrison, New York Governor Roswell Flower, and Frederick Douglas gave speeches at the dedication of the Soldiers’ Monument commemorating civil war veterans in Washington Square Park, accompanied by a parade of 10,000 people. The monument includes bronze statues of infantry, cavalry, marine, and artillery soldiers with a central figure of Abraham Lincoln.

Harrison would also tour Kodak Park with George Eastman. See also “Booker T. Washington’s surprise visit with George Eastman.”

No doubt the percentage of Rochesterians who know that Harrison visited in 1892 is statistically insignificant. On the days I took pictures at Washington Square Park, in unscientific canvassing, not one person knew — without looking closely — that it was Abraham Lincoln atop the Monument.

 

Some of the ignorance of Harrison is due to his apparently undistinguished term as President (1889 – 1893).

In the last 18 presidential rankings by historians and political scientists, Harrison was in the fourth quartile 3 times, the third quartile 14 times, and only once in the second, at # 19.

Harrison’s sub par ratings were influenced by his two elections against Democrat Grover Cleveland. In 1888, Cleveland, the incumbent President, won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote to Harrison, a result that limited Harrison’s incoming political capital. In the 1892 rematch, Cleveland regained the Presidency by 46% to 43% in what was a referendum on Harrison’s term.

It looked like the people wanted Cleveland all along. Harrison did win Monroe County in both elections.

Harrison’s Memorial Day Speech itself was undistinguished standard fare.

Given 27 years after Appomattox, Harrison’s Speech exuded conventional post-Reconstruction sentiment. The Civil War was fought for the restoration of the Union by those “who [Southerners] had mistakenly sought to destroy it.” Rhetorically skipping over Reconstruction, Harrison extoled that, “We [the North] brought into full participation [the South] in the glories of restored Union.” And now, in 1892, the “love of the old flag is so revived in these Southern hearts that they would vie with martial ardor to be in front of the charge if we should ever be called to meet a common enemy.” Even with Frederick Douglass seated next to the podium, Harrison did not, of course, mention that slavery or its abolition had any bearing on the history of the Civil War.

But, despite his commonplace nationalist rhetoric of North and South once again as brothers, Harrison was, in fact, noticeably progressive on racial issues. When we look closer at his presidency, we might hold Harrison in higher esteem, and might better see his visit to Rochester as worth remembering.

In “Benjamin Harrison and the Matter of Race” (1969), George Sinkler describes the vexed post-Reconstruction response of the Republican Party to the “Negro Question.” How far should the Republican Party go — if at all — in protecting black franchise in the South, extending Federal law to protect southern blacks against lynchings, and to offer Federal aid for black education? Or should the South be left alone and southern black Republicans subordinated to a white dominated party.

Sinkler’s claim is that, at least rhetorically, Harrison “unlike many “Presidents] before or after him, took the position that the Negro problem should not be sidestepped.” In his first annual message to Congress:

Harrison also had much to say on the subject of the Negro in American life. He absolved the Negro of any blame for his presence in the United States, his poverty, and his ignorance. These were “our shame not theirs,” he told the country.

Assessing Harrison’s statements during the 1888 campaign and in office, Sinkler concluded: “A stronger plea for the Negro would be difficult to find in the presidential rhetoric of the period.”

Then there is Frederick Douglass.

According to Sinker, Douglass was initially skeptical that Harrison would at all carry the mantle begun by Lincoln:

“Neg Mawon” Also named “Marron Inconnu” or “Runaway Slave” Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Frederick Douglass, former Maryland slave turned abolitionist, orator, and political spokesman for his race, was not pleased with the thought that Harrison might give his blessing to white men’s parties in the South. In an interview granted approximately one month after Harrison’s inauguration, he spoke of the administration’s “lack of vigor and courage in enforcing the law.

But Douglass seems to have changed his mind. In June 1889, Douglass accepted Harrison’s offer — a bold move — to serve as ambassador to Haiti, a post Douglass held until July 1891. True, Haiti was a black Republic and Harrison had not been bold enough to appoint Douglass to a white nation. Nonetheless, Douglass became the first African-American to serve as a U.S. Ambassador.

Upon returning from Haiti to Rochester, Douglass worked hard for Harrison’s hoped for re-election, employed in 1892, as Sinkler says, “to keep colored delegates in line for Harrison’s attempt for a second nomination and was apparently successful.”

So what did Douglass think of Harrison that Memorial Day as he listened to the dedication speech with Lincoln standing atop the Monument?

Perhaps Douglass agreed with Sinkler’s concluding words:

Although Harrison considered himself powerless in the face of violation of Negro rights on the state level, further investigation might well show that in his strong advocacy of the Federal Elections Bill, the Blair Education Bill, and antilynching legislation, Harrison exerted greater leadership, no matter how unsuccessful, in matters of race than any of the post-Reconstruction Presidents prior to the twentieth century.

No doubt, Douglass — like Harrison himself — knew the Harrison administration could never match the transformational martyr peering down at the dedicators.

But perhaps Douglass reckoned — as we might 124 years later — that Harrison can be said to have stood on the right side of history.

And so much more history in Washington Square Park. In The WWI Austrian cannon is back — or not — in Washington Square Park you read of the-then mysterious reappearance of the Austrian cannon last summer. And then More on the Austrian canon monument including from Rachel Barnhart. And the now good news is that the Military History Society of Rochester is advancing a capital campaign to restore and return the cannon.

The Soldier’s and Sailor’s Monument itself has some interesting features. The panels represent key moments in the Civil War: Ft. Sumter, Gettysburg, Appomattox. Also included is the 1862 naval engagement between the ironclads USS Monitor and CSA Virginia. The battle itself was dramatic but fought to a standstill. But, in those first two ironclads, the monument architects might have seen the precursor of their own times. In 1892, the USS Texas was christened as the first U.S. dreadnaught, or today’s battleship.

And culture too. Atop the granite block honoring Franklin Delano Roosevelt is one of our theater critics.

And cupid’s arrow can strike in Washington Square Park. During our Monument photo-op visit, a bride was having wedding pictures taken.

And in Washington Square Park — a topic soon to be covered extensively by those who were there — was Occupy Rochester, a protest movement begun in October 2011, allied with and part of the international Occupy movement. By March 2012 Rochester was the last Occupy encampment still active in New York State and possibly the longest operating one at 139 days.

For most Rochesterians, the most vivid memories are brave souls weathering the winter, candlelight vigils, and the ubiquitous 1% and 99% signs of many types. Those numbers — 1% and 99% representing the powerful and the people — became the signature slogan or phrase of the movement whose multiple meanings still permeate political discourse.

Not to credit, I did not participate deeply in the Occupy, wimping out on a vow to stay overnight under the imperfectly propane warmed tents. To the lending library consisting of both heavy duty political tomes and light reading by the propane fire, I did donate my undergraduate copy of Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844). I remember one highlighted passage: