Lincoln Monument at the Entrance to Lincoln Park, Kennedy Boulevard and Belmont Ave.
Photo: P. Shalhoub, 2001
Courtesy, RF Smith
Lincoln Monument at the Entrance to Lincoln Park, Kennedy Boulevard and Belmont Ave.
Photo: P. Shalhoub, 2001
Every February 12th since 1867, the Lincoln Association of Jersey City commemorates the birth of Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president, assassinated on April 15, 1865. The members hold a morning ceremony and place a wreath at the foot of Lincoln the Mystic, the Lincoln monument at the entrance of Lincoln Park. The association also has a celebratory evening dinner honoring Lincoln and his legacy.
The Lincoln Association was founded in response to lingering controversy among some residents regarding Lincoln’s Civil War policies. Local newspapers reflected the differing views on Lincoln's war leadership. For example, The American Standard (1859-1875) opposed Lincoln's presidency. Published by John H. Lyons, the Standard reflected the views of the "Copperhead" faction of the Democratic Party. It faulted the abolitionist movement for the Civil War and opposed Lincoln's candidacy in 1860. The Democrats dominated Hudson County, and the newspaper was regarded as "Democratic." During the war, the Copperhead dissenters also opposed the draft and sought immediate termination of the war.
The Evening Journal (1867-1909), now Jersey Journal, was founded by Major Z.K. Pangborn and his partners William B. Dunning and Joseph A. Dear, who were pro-Lincoln. They called themselves "patriots" and Lincoln the "Great Emancipator," who struggled to save the Union and reunite the South into the nation. They held public meetings to demonstrate their loyalty to Lincoln against his detractors.
Jersey City had a special connection to President Lincoln. Although Lincoln lost New Jersey in the elections of 1860 and 1864, the city celebrated Lincoln on two occasions--one on route to his first inauguration in 1861 and the other at the president's memorial services in 1865.
On February 21, 1861, the president-elect stopped in Jersey City. Lincoln traveled by train from his home in Springfield, IL, to his inauguration (March 4, 1861) in Washington, DC. He arrived in Jersey City from New York City on the ferry John P. Jackson at the New Jersey Railroad and Transportation Company depot at Hudson Street and Exchange Place. Aboard the ferry were: the Jersey City Board President Aldermen A.A. Hardenbergh, Attorney General William L. Dayton (Governor Charles S. Olden's representative), and the former Republican 1856 vice-presidential candidate. A reported crowd of 25,000 gave Lincoln an enthusiastic reception along with Jersey City's Mayor Cornelius Van Vorst, former Mayor Dudley S. Gregory, and other dignitaries. Lincoln extended a special handshake to Mayor Gregory, with whom he previously served in the US Congress. From Jersey City, Lincoln continued on the special train that former Governor (William) Pennington had constructed in New Jersey to Washington, DC.
On April 24, 1865, Lincoln's funeral train, traveling from Washington, DC, westward to Springfield, IL, stopped at Exchange Place for citizens to pay their respects to the slain leader. The funeral railway car was placed on a barge and towed by the ferryboat from Jersey City to New York City, where it lay in state at City Hall.
Two years later, on February 12, 1867, eight Jersey City leaders began meeting in Lincoln’s memory at Zachau's Union House, then at 146 Newark Avenue. On May 3, 1867, they formalized their gatherings in the "Lincoln Association of Jersey City" with the election of officers. Later that year, the association held a banquet called "The Lincoln Ball" on Christmas Eve, December 24. It took place at Library Hall on the corner of (704) Grand Street and Ivy Place. The Bergen Library Associates built the hall for Bergen’s lending library and an auditorium.
The success of the Lincoln Association's first dinner started the tradition of the annual Lincoln day event. Over the years, it has been held at various places: Taylor's Hall, now the site for the Commercial Trust Company at Exchange Place; the Washington Hotel, now St. Mary's Residence at 240 Washington Street; Jersey City Club, now the Masonic Club at Crescent and Clinton avenues; the Carteret Club, now Saint Dominic Academy at Kennedy Boulevard and Duncan Avenue; and Casino-in-the Park in Lincoln Park. One year the decorations for the event included a scroll "Abraham Lincoln, The Nation's Choice - 1865, The Nation's Loss."
According to local historian W.H. Richardson, Capt. Dunning was responsible for the tradition of the association's annual dinners. In his obituary, the Evening Journal (June 18, 1877) writes that he "...took great interest and pride in its patriotic cherishing of the memory and virtues of the lamented good President." He was known to be a Whig and then a Republican. Dunning served with the Second NJ Militia during the Civil War and rejoined the war with Company K, the 11th NJ Volunteers. He helped found the Evening Journal (later Jersey Journal) with Pangborn and Dear, working as a printer and journalist.
The association's distinguished dinner speakers invited to offer their perspective on Lincoln's legacy have been Ambassador Ralph J. Bunche of the United Nations, NJ Governor Edward Casper Stokes, Chief Justice Clarence E. Case, and Charles Osgood of CBS television.
In the 1920s, the Lincoln Association, with the assistance of school children, raised funds for the bronze statue of Lincoln at the Hudson (now Kennedy) Boulevard entrance of West Side Park, now Lincoln Park. From their collection of pennies and nickels, the children contributed $3,500 towards the $75,000 cost of the memorial. The association chose sculptor James Earle Fraser (1876-1953) to design and build the monument. Fraser was noted for the buffalo nickel's design and End of the Trail sculpture of an American Indian on horseback for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. The statue is now in the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City.
On June 14, 1930, Fraser's statue of the pensive, crisis-burdened Lincoln was dedicated at a morning ceremony with recitations from Lincoln's best-known and significant speeches. The low wall surrounding Lincoln's statue has excerpts from three of Lincoln's addresses: Fraser was among a crowd of over 3,000 people attending the ceremony.
WITH MALICE TOWARD NONE AND CHARITY TOWARD ALL
[Second Inaugural Address, 1865]
THAT GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE
BY THE PEOPLE FOR THE PEOPLE
SHALL NOT PERISH FROM THE EARTH [Gettysburg Address, 1863]
LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT
AND IN THAT FAITH LET US TO THE END
DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT
[Cooper Union Speech 1860]
After the Lincoln Memorial placement on Hudson (now Kennedy) Boulevard, the Lincoln Association obtained the renaming of the West Side Park for President Lincoln.
The Lincoln Highway Project
James Earle Fraser's Lincoln Monument on Hudson (now Kennedy) Boulevard played a meaningful role in the 2013 centennial of the Lincoln Highway project. The roadway was intended to be the first coast-to-coast rock highway for the "age of the automobile." It was proposed in 1912 by Carl G. Fisher, founder of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and his business associates. They formed the Lincoln Highway Association (LHA). Fisher, with many of his generation, viewed Abraham Lincoln as his hero; he wanted the privately-funded transcontinental road named for the president. The naming occurred on July 1, 1913--the fiftieth anniversary of the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg--at LHA headquarters in Detroit. Jersey City named its new secondary school Lincoln High School that same year.
The plan for the highway was to connect already existing, but mostly local dirt and isolated, roads through twelve states. The private venture predated the present-day federal transportation system, which was not operational until after World War I. It also predated the 1922 completion of the Lincoln Memorial in the District of Columbia as a national tribute to the president.
The LHA laid out the route to start at the corner of 42nd Street and Broadway in Times Square, New York City, and follow across the continent to Lincoln Park in San Francisco, CA., where James Earle Fraser's End of the Trail sculpture of Lincoln would be placed. The cross-country route was decided to be the shortest, most direct, approximately 3,400 miles. The Jersey City section of the proposed highway was named the Essex and Hudson Lincoln Highway; it turned west off Bergen Hill and crossed the Meadowlands into Newark; it continued westward across the state and beyond.
By the late 1920s, New Jersey replaced the Lincoln Highway section in Hudson County with an alternate road that became US Route 1. The highway development included the four-lane Pulaski Skyway for an overpass from the Holland Tunnel to the Meadowlands to connect Jersey City and Newark. By 1929, the association's work dwindled as federal and state governments took more of a role in highway construction.
On September 1, 1928, the association left a lasting memorial to the project. Boy Scouts placed approximately 3000 concrete markers with the letter "L" between a red and blue stripe, a bronze medallion of Lincoln, and a directional arrow along the route (Weingroff, "The Lincoln Highway"). They are considered the first road signs in many states and may be viewed today. The work of the association may have come to an end, but its promise to keep Lincoln's legacy fresh in the minds of Americans encouraged new monuments and places to be dedicated in his name. It made way for the city's Lincoln Association to commission Fraser's Lincoln the Mystic on Kennedy Boulevard in the 1920s.
In 1992, after a long absence, the LHA was reformed for the purpose ". . . to identify, preserve, and improve access to the remaining portions of the Lincoln Highway and its associated historic sites" (quoted in Weingroff, "The Lincoln Highway"). It has fourteen state chapters, including one in New Jersey.
The national Lincoln Highway never came to fruition. But 100 years later, on July 1, 2013, a reenactment of the route, known as the Official Lincoln Highway Centennial Tours, was celebrated at the Great Platte River Museum in Kearney, NE. On June 21, a caravan of vehicles set out eastward from San Francisco and another westward from Times Square, New York City, on June 22 to meet in Nebraska. The eastern caravan met travelers at the Weehawken Ferry Terminal and went through Union City and to Jersey City, as was intended originally for the highway. The gathering entered Lincoln Park, near the Lincoln Monument, before leaving via Communipaw Avenue to journey west to the anniversary event.
In 2915, the Lincoln Association dedicated a plaque at Owen Grundy Pier on the site of the arrival of President Lincoln's funeral cortege at Exchange Place.
Frassinelli, Mike. "Coast-to-Coast Lincoln Highway Turns 100." Jersey Journal 25 July 2013.
Grundy, J. Owen. "Lincoln Unit Faithful 104 Years." Jersey Journal 12 February 1971.
"Lincoln Association of Jersey City, 1865-2001." New Jersey Room, Jersey City Public Library.
Lincoln Association of Jersey City: http://thelincolnassociationofjerseycity.com/
Marx, Rebecca Flint. "Cross-Country, by a Road Less Traveled. New York Times 7 July 2013.
"The Memory of Lincoln." Evening Journal 13 February 1885.
Richardson, W.H. "The Beginnings of the Lincoln Association, the 1873 Dinner." ts, 5 pp. New Jersey Room, Jersey City Public Library.
"William B. Dunning." Evening Journal 18 June 1877.
Weingroff, Richard. "The Lincoln Highway" in Federal Highway Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation. Highway History. 2013: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/lincoln.cfm
