Excerpt from Washington National Monument: Shall the Unfinished Obelisk Stand a Monument of National Disgrace and National Dishonor? Speeches in the House of Representatives, June 4, 1874
The House having under consideration the report of the Special Committee on the Washington National Monument, and also the report in relation to a monument to Mary, the mother of Washington -
Mr. Chipman said:
Mr. Speaker: Seventy-four years ago, on the 23d of last December, the Congress of the United States, in response to a universal feeling throughout the nation, resolved to erect a marble monument at the capital, so designed as to commemorate the groat events of the military and political life of George Washington.
The whole people were in mourning for the loss of the man who by-common consent was regarded as the Father of his Country; the man of whom it was said, without exciting the envy of a living soul, that he was "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen."
When Congress resolved to commemorate the great events of this man"s life, they imposed a solemn as well as pleasing duty upon all who were to come after them until that duty should he performed. At this distance of time, looking hack along the path of our history, and remembering the vicissitudes through which efforts to carry out that pledge have passed, and turning my face toward that unfinished column, standing with bowed head upon the hanks of the Potomac, I wonder what great and stirring events must have interposed to prevent the consummation of this sacred duty.
George Washington died 011 the 14th day of December, 1799. No man who has ever lived occupied a larger space in history or had a greater and more salutary influence upon the lives of men. Upon his death not only the whole American people, but the civilized world, mourned his loss as one of the greatest and best of earth. The President, Mr. Adams, announced the distressing event to Congress in a message, in which he speaks of the purity of Washington"s character and the long series of services to his country as having rendered him illustrious throughout the world. The letter which brought the sad intelligence to the President, and which was transmitted by him to Congress, was written from Mount Vernon, December 15, by Tobias Lear, who was with Washington in his last hours. The letter states:
His last scene corresponded with the whole tenor of his life; not a groan nor a complaint escaped him in extreme distress. With perfect resignation, and with full possession of his reason, he closed his well-spent life.
There is to me, Mr. Speaker, a melancholy pleasure in reviewing this striking event of our early history, and I dare say the House will not feel the half-hour misspent which is given to revive the recollection of this now almost obscene passage.
I shall not myself speak particularly of the life and character of Washington; but what I shall say upon that theme I prefer shall be from the lips of those who were his associates in arms, his companions in the struggles of our curly revolutionary period.
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