Which president dedicated the washington monument

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The first major engagement of the Civil War in the far West, the battle The driving On February 21, , Hideki Tojo, prime minister of Japan, grabs even more power as he takes over as army chief of staff, a position that gives him direct control of the Japanese military. In , a new group aligned with the controversial Know-Nothing Party gained control of the Washington National Monument Society in the Society's periodic board election.

Having always struggled to gather funding, the Society's change in administration alienated donors and drove the Society to bankruptcy by Without funds, work on the monument slowed to a halt.

Architect Robert Mills died in For more than two decades, the monument stood only partly finished, doing more to embarrass the nation than to honor its most important Founding Father.

Congressional attempts to support the Washington National Monument Society failed as attentions turned toward the sectional crisis, then civil war. Only as the nation was rebuilding did attention once again turn toward honoring the man who had once united the states in a common purpose.

By a joint resolution passed on July 5, , Congress assumed the duty of funding and building the Washington Monument. The U. Army Corps of Engineers, led by Lt. Thomas Lincoln Casey, was responsible for directing and completing the work.

Casey's first task was to strengthen the foundation of the monument, which he determined was inadequate for the structure as it was designed. For four years, the builders carefully beefed up the support at the base of the foundation to support the massive weight of the superstructure to come. To continue building upward, the masons needed stone. The trouble was that the quarry near Baltimore used for the initial construction was no longer available after so many years.

Seeking a suitable match, the builders turned to a quarry in Massachusetts. However, problems quickly emerged with the quality and color of the stone, and the irregularity of deliveries.

After adding several courses of this stone from Massachusetts, still recognizable by the naked eye today as a brown-streaked beltline one-third of the way up the monument, the builders turned to a third quarry near Baltimore that proved more favorable, and used that stone for the upper two-thirds of the structure.

The stone never matched exactly, and the three slightly different colors from the three quarries are distinguishable today. Rather than ascend to feet as Mills had intended in the original plan, Casey was persuaded to make the height of the structure ten times the width of the base, meaning the optimal height for the Washington Monument was feet.

Plans for ornate adornments on the obelisk and the ring of columns were scrapped in favor of the clean, stark look of a simple obelisk shape. Aesthetic reasons aside, the design choice reduced the cost and allowed for faster construction. Casey reduced the thickness of the walls from thirteen feet to nine feet between the and foot levels, a transition visible on a visit to the Washington Monument's interior.

The colonnade was to house statues of Revolutionary War heroes and to be topped with a statue of Washington in a chariot. The Know-Nothings retained control of the society until While in control, the Know-Nothings added just a few courses of masonry to the monument using inferior marble, which were later removed.

Construction halted in when the monument was at a height of feet and the money ran out. It did not resume until after the Civil War. The monument remained unfinished for more than 20 years. Today a distinct color difference is still visible near the level at which construction temporarily stopped in the s. Grant approved legislation to complete the project, helping to gain public support. With adequate funding and a new design by Lt.

Colonel Thomas Casey, of the United States Army Corps of Engineers, the monument was completed within five years with the installation of the 3,pound marble capstone in December A dedication ceremony occurred February 21, The famous unadorned obelisk Casey designed is the monument of today.

Photographed by Carol A.