Given its history, I’m half-tempted to title
this piece The
Roam Stone. Har! - Jonah
The Rome Stone
By John Lockwood, the Washington Times,
1/24/04
There have been many efforts to commemorate Abraham Lincoln through the
years, especially in Washington. The best-known is the Lincoln Memorial, opened
in 1922, long after Lincoln's time. By contrast, one of the earliest attempts
to honor him here was ignored repeatedly and almost lost for good - the Rome
Stone.
Sometime early in 1865, just before Lincoln's assassination, the
Freemasons of Rome decided to express their respect by sending a block of red
sandstone to Washington, suitably inscribed. They chose the stone from a just-uncovered
section of the Agger, a wall built around the city in about 578 B.C. by an
early Roman king named Servius Tullius. The surviving section was 120 feet wide
and 25 feet high. The lower portion was made of sandstone, and the upper layers
were pumice.
The Romans of 1865 felt that the career of Servius Tullius paralleled
that of Lincoln. Both men were born poor, and each worked his way up to become
leader of his country. Both
sought to free society's least fortunate, whether the slaves of America or the
plebeians of Rome. A few months later, of course, there was to be another parallel - both men were murdered by those opposed to their policies.
The block itself was inscribed in Latin, of which a contemporary
translation read: "The citizens of Rome dedicate this Stone, taken from
the Tomb of SERVIUS TULLIUS, to ABRAHAM LINCOLN, President for the Second Term
of the United States of America, by which the Memory of either brave defender
of Liberty may be joined to that of the other. AD. 1865.”
The stone was given to the American consul at Leghorn, a Mr. Stielmann,
who in turn dispatched it to a British steamship named the Uhla. The ship, as
it happened, was commanded by a Capt. Lincoln. After the ship sailed on Aug. 4,
1865, a series of storms forced it to land at Bermuda. The ship and its cargo
were sold at auction, and the Rome Stone was left for a while on the beach.
None of the available sources say how, but eventually the stone ended
up in Washington in late 1865 or early 1866. Nobody seemed to know what to do
with it.
The Rome Stone sat outdoors on the White House portico for several
weeks. Then it made its way indoors and was used as a bench under a window.
After that, it ended up in the basement.
On July 19, 1867, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution
condemning how "the beautiful memorial has been allowed to remain in the
cellar of the White House, where it now lies surrounded with the usual rubbish
of such a place.” It urged President Andrew Johnson to send the block to
Congress to be placed in the old Hall of the House of Representatives.
Nothing came of this; the Feb. 6, 1869 issue of Harper's Weekly ran a vivid
article about how the stone was still stuck in the basement. According to the
magazine, the Rome Stone was in a storage room about 8 feet by 10 feet, a room
"nearly filled with a variety of trash.” There was only “one grated
window, dim with dust, looking out into an area under a porch.” The room's
contents included broken grates, old iron pipes, coal, kindling, a torn
cushion, musty feathers scattered about - and the Rome Stone.
This article must have had some effect - on Congress at least,
for on June 17, 1870, there was another resolution, ordering that the stone be
given to the Lincoln Tomb, then being built in Springfield, Ill. The tomb was
finished in 1874, and the stone was placed in a small museum there.
The Rome Stone's story was not quite finished, however. In 1912, the
March 24 issue of the Washington Evening Star ran a brief article on the
subject. It seemed that an engineer in Rome named Ferdinando Girardi was under
the impression that the stone had never reached Washington or had been lost.
The Star's headline included the helpful words, “Never Reached Here!” Mr. Girardi
suggested that if the first block could not be found, a second should be sent.
Nothing came of that, however.
Then, during a 1930 reconstruction project, the stone was removed from
the museum and stored in the state Capitol - in the basement. There
it was left.
Even when the reconstruction was finished in 1931, the stone was not
returned. It had been forgotten yet again. In 1935 or 1936 (again the sources
are uncertain), Gov; Henry Horner was entertaining several VIPs, including the
Italian ambassador. The latter casually asked the whereabouts of the Rome
Stone. An aide to Horner hurried over to the Capitol, got the stone cleaned up
and had it sent to the governor's residence just before the VIP party showed
up. The stone was placed hurriedly in a bay window, as if it had been on honored display all the time.
Finally, it was decided to install the stone permanently at the Lincoln
Tomb. In a major ceremony on Sunday, Oct. 11 - one day before Columbus Day - the Rome Stone was embedded at the bottom of the 117-foot obelisk that
rises above the rest of the memorial. It is still there today.
The Rome Stone's wanderings had ended at last.
John Lockwood is a writer in Washington.
