Mary Lincoln's Choice: Oak Ridge Cemetery
Mary Lincoln however recalled that Lincoln once had said that he wanted a quiet place for his burial at Oak Ridge (said to her on May 24, 1860, when Lincoln, then running for president, and Mary attended the dedication of Oak Ridge, a rural quiet cemetery, two miles (3 km) from the heart of Springfield). On April 28 Mary sent a message to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, in which she stated that her decision was final and that Lincoln's remains must be placed in the Oak Ridge Cemetery. On April 29 another message followed: "arrangements for using the Mather vault must be changed". And on May 1 the message was: "the remains of the president should be placed in the vault of Oak Ridge and nowhere else". The Oak Ridge vault was readied, but work on the Mather vault continued as a "contingency".
Even after the burial, the debate was not over. The National Lincoln Monument Society began again to stoke the fires of creating the grand tomb for Lincoln at the Mather Block. Mary Lincoln threatened to have her husband's remains taken to Chicago or Washington for permanent burial (deadline June 15). "My determination is unalterable," she wrote on June 10 and demanded a formal promise that "the immortal Savior and Martyr for Freedom" would be at Oak Ridge. Faced with Mary's June 15 deadline, the association voted, on the evening before the deadline, by the narrowest of margins, 8-7, to accept her demands. Oak Ridge Cemetery became the site of the Lincoln Tomb.
Read more about this topic: Funeral And Burial Of Abraham Lincoln, Burial Site Selection
Famous quotes containing the words mary, lincoln, oak, ridge and/or cemetery:
“O how terrible it must be for a young man—
seated before a family and the family thinking
We never saw him before! He wants our Mary Lou!
After tea and homemade cookies they ask What do you do for a living”
—Gregory Corso (b. 1930)
“Our eldest boy, Bob, has been away from us nearly a year at school, and will enter Harvard University this month. He promises very well, considering we never controlled him much.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The self-consciousness of Pine Ridge manifests itself at the village’s edge in such signs as “Drive Keerful,” “Don’t Hit Our Young ‘uns,” and “You-all Hurry Back”Mlocutions which nearly all Arkansas hill people use daily but would never dream of putting in print.”
—Administration in the State of Arka, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“The cemetery of the victims of human cruelty in our century is extended to include yet another vast cemetery, that of the unborn.”
—John Paul II (Karol Wojtyla)