“Thus always to tyrants.”
Almost a century and a half later, it’d be quite the shock if the dirtbag who knocked out a bronze plaque of Lincoln with a sledgehammer in rural Illinois was actually a Latin-speaking “methus addictus.”
Sorry.
“Allegedus methus addictus.”
To him, close to a dozen concrete and bronze markers honoring Lincoln’s time as a frontier lawyer on Illinois’ Eighth Judicial Circuit are now just easy sources of scrap metal.
“Hardly any of them have been exempt from vandalism,” Mike Major explained.
In addition to creating new work — Major’s bronze handiwork is scattered throughout downtown Springfield — the Champaign County sculptor has quietly embarked on a side gig restoring public monuments across the country.
“I didn’t think anybody would be that interested,” Major confessed one recent morning at his new studio in downtown Urbana, where he’d just put the finishing touches on a bronze eagle with a 14-foot wingspan for Ashland University.
He’s spent the past several summers working to restore 11 surviving Lincoln circuit markers in central Illinois, which includes recasting two missing bronze plaques bearing Honest Abe’s likeness.
This year marks the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth.
“It’s hard to understand the lack of respect for these markers,” Major, 59, said.
At first, he was hesitant to get into the whole restoration business, which is putting it mildly.
“I was drug kicking and screaming into it,” he said, citing his role as an artist who creates new work.
But after the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution hired Major to restore its “Madonna of the Trail” statue along U.S. 40 in 2002, Major has been commissioned by DAR chapters nationwide.
“Springfield opened a door,” he said, “that’s become quite an adventure.”
He restored a 106-year-old bronze statue 22 feet in the air of George Rogers Clark overlooking the Ohio River at Fort Massac State Park in southern Illinois.
Its riverbank perch didn’t do any favors in warding off oxidation caused by exposure to moisture.
Acid rain caused by heavy industry is a problem, too, particularly east of the Mississippi.
“That acid rain,” Major said, “is a catalyst.”
State budgets don’t help much either in preventing statues from turning that familiar green color. (Green is merely the first stage of oxidation; eventually, the bronze can pit.)
“As long as you wax the statues, the oxidation won’t set in. It’s as easy as waxing a car,” Major said. “States do not take care of their monuments.”
Then there’s the “Madonna of the Trail.”
In addition to the one locally, he’s so far restored Madonna statues in Illinois, Missouri and Arizona.
He’s evaluated Colorado’s Madonna statue and will restore West Virginia’s next year.
“It’s opened up the door to meeting some great people,” he said.
Placed along the historic National Road, there are 12 concrete Madonna statues coast to coast.
All identical, Springfield’s was the first to be dedicated, on July 4, 1928. (Harry Truman, then a Missouri judge, spoke at the ceremony.)
“They’re porous enough that moisture gets in,” he said. “When it freezes, you know what happens.”
When the road was widened in 1956, the local Madonna was moved to its current spot near Snyder Park.
“Our ‘Madonna of the Trail’ had suffered terribly when it was moved,” said Mildred Thomas, a member of the local DAR chapter. “At that time, there wasn’t much known about moving statues, and she cracked.”
Weather, road salt and pollution had gnawed away at Madonna’s features, as well.
Enter Major.
The statue was rededicated on July 4, 2003 — its 75th anniversary.
“The word just immediately went out there’s this sculptor in Urbana who restored the one in Springfield and he does good work,” Thomas said. “Everybody was so impressed with his work. We recommended him without reservation to other states.”
But it’s in his current project, working to restore a series of markers lining Lincoln’s countryside judicial circuit, that Major has found a personal attachment.
Having grown up on a farm outside of Troy, Major finds himself relating to Lincoln, the railsplitter who rose from a one-room log cabin.
“You appreciate the solitude and peacefulness,” he explained, “and it becomes part of your character.”
Erected in the early 1920s, the 7½-foot-tall markers were placed at the county lines of the 14 counties that made up Illinois’ Eighth Judicial Circuit. (Running all the way from Springfield, Ill., in the west to Danville, on the Indiana border, in the east.)
As a lawyer, Lincoln traveled the circuit’s 12,000 square miles on horseback for years, bringing the legal system directly to some of the most remote locations twice a year.
Nowadays, Major has to use GPS to find the markers, or where they used to be — of the original 18, he said, only 11 still exist.
“Some of them are completely missing,” he said. “Maybe they deteriorated to the point where they fell apart. Some of them look like they’re about to fall apart.”
The remote, rural locations have been a detriment to their survival.
“After working with the Madonna monuments,” Major said, “I was expecting decay, but not the brutal vandalism.”
The markers have been hit with hammers, shot at and pushed over.
“It breaks my heart,” he said, “not only as an artist, but as an American.”
Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0352 or amcginn@coxohio.com.
About the Author