The Statehouse Lincoln Used as a Stage
Near Columbus, Ohio
The Ohio Statehouse took twenty-two years to build. Ground was broken in eighteen thirty-nine. The building was not completed until eighteen sixty-one, and the legislature had already begun to use it while work dragged on.
Abraham Lincoln stopped in Columbus in February of eighteen sixty-one, on his journey from Springfield, Illinois to Washington for his inauguration. He was president-elect. The country was fracturing. Seven states had already seceded. He spoke from the steps of the unfinished statehouse to a crowd below, and then went inside and addressed the Ohio General Assembly in joint session.
He came back four years later. On April twenty-ninth, eighteen sixty-five, Lincoln's funeral train passed through Columbus. His body lay in state in the statehouse rotunda for public viewing. Large crowds came to pay their respects. People came from surrounding counties and from other states. The line stretched for hours.
The statehouse stands on the same site today, completed in a neoclassical style that took its time arriving and has outlasted every controversy since. The rotunda where Lincoln lay is still the rotunda. The building that was still being finished when he spoke on the steps in eighteen sixty-one is finished now.
