Capitol Statuary Lineup Isn't Set in Stone

WASHINGTON (Dec. 24) -- Heidi Fitzgerald stared at the larger-than-life statue of Roger Sherman in the Capitol crypt and was clueless.

"Do you know who he is?" she asked another visitor. "I would have thought we would have had Webster," the Suffield, Conn., accounting professor said, referring to the author of America's first dictionary. As for Sherman, "I'll be Googling him."

When she does, she'll learn that Sherman signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and was the author of the Connecticut Compromise that resulted in nothing less than the Senate and House of Representatives debating on the floor above them.

If history hasn't been kind to Sherman, at least his place seems secure in the pantheon of the National Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S. Capitol. The same cannot be said for George Washington Glick and Thomas Starr King, who were once so prominent that their states considered them the best they had to offer for a collection that includes two statues from every state.

When Congress agreed in 1864 to fill the old House Chamber with statues of dead luminaries chosen by the states, the idea was to create an honor in perpetuity. But as time marched on, lawmakers realized the fame of some immortalized in marble and bronze was fleeting and room must be made for more contemporary heroes.

In 2000, Congress allowed states to swap out old icons for new ones.

Kansas was the first to act. In 2003, it sent Glick, a 19th-century governor who enacted a "good roads" law and changed the state tax code, back to Topeka to make room for Dwight Eisenhower, the World War II general and president.

This year, California gave the boot to King. The San Francisco minister may have been "the orator who saved the nation" during the Civil War, but he has been succeeded by another "great communicator," Ronald Reagan.

"They might have had some fleeting significance in that state at that moment when they were chosen, but they were rapidly lost to most historical memory," said University of Pittsburgh art historian Kirk Savage. "I was struck by some really odd choices when I visited."

Darin Schroeder, 28, an Annapolis, Md., lawyer who grew up in Wyoming, recognized Shoshone Indian Chief Washakie because he learned about him in fourth grade but knows people from other states may never have heard of him.

"I'd like to know how they picked them," said his mother, Renee Schroeder, 56, of Rock Spring, Wyo. Noting the many Confederate statues that might be offensive to modern-day visitors, she said, "This is a national building, so it should be reflective of everybody's views."

Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry of Alabama, a Confederate colonel honored for championing free education in the South after the war, was replaced in October by Helen Keller, the ninth woman in the collection. The deaf, blind and mute girl who became an activist for the disabled is well-known thanks to the play and movie "The Miracle Worker."

But if Curry is out, there are plenty of other Confederates in the Capitol, where there is no "statue of limitations."

There is Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States, whose statue stands in the old House Chamber where he served and was later reviled by Northern lawmakers. Gov. Haley Barbour not only hasn't considered replacing Davis in Washington but this year signed a bill to restore another monument to him on the grounds of the Mississippi State Capitol.

Tucked away in the Capitol crypt are John C. Calhoun, South Carolina's leading defender of slavery -- a fact not mentioned in his official statue biography. Gen. Robert E. Lee of Virginia, who reluctantly resigned his commission in the Army to fight for the Confederacy, is also there as a representative of the original 13 states.

Lee's statue was installed in 1934 after Congress refused permission for a statue of him in one of the city's many traffic circles. He was too controversial, said Savage, author of "Monument Wars: Washington, D.C., the National Mall, and the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape."

He notes that of 150 outdoor figurative statues in Washington, only one, Albert Pike, is a Confederate -- and he was honored as a Freemason. Unlike the state collection, outdoor sculpture must be approved by Congress, which voted in 2005 to add a statue of civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks as the first African-American woman to be so honored in the Capitol.

Savage doesn't expect the remaining Confederates and slave holders in the collection to be recalled any time soon. They were put there as "monuments to state sovereignty," he said. "The Southern states definitely used it that way. To put Lee and Alexander Stephens" -- the Confederate vice president from Georgia -- "there, that's like sticking your thumb at the nation. It was defiant in a way, and they knew it."

A family from southwestern Virginia, who wouldn't give their name because their daughter works for one of the state's two senators, said Confederates belong in the Capitol because they are part of American history. To suggest otherwise, as Northerners sometimes do, is "insulting," said the staffer's mother.

Perhaps, but Ohio is looking to replace Gov. William Allen, a contemporary critic of Abraham Lincoln who opposed giving voting rights to blacks. So far, it hasn't decided among a field that includes three presidents and Olympic athlete Jesse Owens.

Other states planning replacements:

-- Missouri has approved swapping out Free-Soiler Union general Francis Blair with President Harry S. Truman.

-- Michigan will replace Republican Party co-founder Zachariah Chandler with GOP President Gerald Ford.

-- Arizona is preparing to demote mining magnate John Campbell Greenway for Sen. Barry Goldwater.

-- Iowa is discussing replacing one of its statues with one honoring Nobel Peace Prize-winning plant scientist Norman Borlaug.

-- Kansas, which made Glick a goner, is considering becoming the first state to replace both its original statues. There's talk of ejecting 19th-century Sen. John Ingalls, once known for his "keen sarcasm and quick wit," with aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart.

"We'll see more women than in the past, more people of color and more of an attempt to create diversity," Savage said.