Sculptor McClarey creates bust of Lincoln for ISBA

By Stephen Anderson

You’ve seen them in Peoria, and in Charleston – perhaps even in Vandalia, Taylorville or New Salem State Park, north of Springfield.

No, we’re not referring to our ubiquitous candidates for ISBA third vice president in the election just concluded. What you may have seen in those communities are sculptures of Abraham Lincoln, all created by John McClarey.

The Decatur sculptor is working presently on a new challenge: A bust of Lincoln, commissioned by the Illinois State Bar Association, for presentation to the Illinois Supreme Court in 2009.

McClarey’s existing Illinois works depict Lincoln in various roles of his career. In New Salem, for instance, the life-size bronze is titled “A. Lincoln – Deputy Surveyor, Sangamon County, Illinois 1833-1837.”

Standing near the visitor center, it was commissioned by the Illinois Professional Land Surveyors Association and dedicated Oct. 4, 2003, to staff members and volunteers who have worked at the state historic site.

A legend at the base reads: “Unsuspecting as he was in this place, young Lincoln’s honesty and fairness as a surveyor, and his knowledge of the land and its people, set him on a journey that led to the Presidency of the United States.”

Special sites marked

McClarey’s full-size bronze, “Sitting with Lincoln,” in Vandalia is perched at the end of a log bench where visitors may have their pictures made with young Abe as he may have looked in the 1830s.

It is located south of the restored statehouse where Lincoln served in the General Assembly between 1834 and 1839, before the state capital was moved to Springfield. The statue was dedicated Feb. 10, 2001.

In Taylorville, at the Christian County Courthouse, a McClarey bronze, “The Last Stop,” portrays Lincoln the lawyer on the circuit in the 1850s.

The pig at his feet, with a “writ of quietus” in its mouth, recalls an incident when the din of squealing pigs under the courthouse floor caused Lincoln to request such a writ from the judge.

At the dedication on May 28, 2005, Senator Richard Durbin said, “Lincoln not only showed a sense of humor, but he showed that while he took his job seriously, he didn’t take himself seriously.”

In Charleston, McClarey has life-size bronzes of Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas facing each other during their fourth debate, held Sept. 18, 1858.

They are arranged across what the sculptor calls “a metaphorical divide” representing the chasm of the “House Divided” on the extension of slavery.

Forming a gateway to the Lincoln-Douglas Debate Museum, the statues were dedicated in September 2001 on the 143rd anniversary of the Charleston debate.

Passionate Peoria speech

The Peoria bronze might be considered the most significant. Titled “Lincoln Draws the Line,” it honors a speech that many think was the most important in a series of events that preceded the 1860 presidential election.

The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which essentially repealed the Missouri Compromise, aroused Lincoln’s passion against the spread of slavery into the two new territories. Until then, he had practiced law for five years with little interest in politics.

The Peoria speech on Oct. 16, 1854, was the third in which he refuted the indifference of Douglas to expanding slavery. The others took place Sept. 12 in Bloomington and Oct. 4 in Springfield.

“This declared indifference, but as I must think, covert real zeal for the spread of slavery, I can not but hate,” Lincoln said. “I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself.

“I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world – enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites – causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity.”

Lincoln concluded his Peoria oration, “Let north and south – let all Americans – let all lovers of liberty everywhere – join in the great and good work” (of curbing slavery).

“If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union; but we shall have so saved it, as to make, and to keep it, forever worthy of the saving.

“We shall have so saved it, that the succeeding millions of free happy people, the world over, shall rise up, and call us blessed, to the latest generations.”

In McClarey’s interpretation, on a plaza outside the Peoria County Courthouse, Lincoln’s right hand points down to a line near his feet – a figurative division between moral right and wrong.

The statue was unveiled Oct. 14, 2001, in a ceremony addressed by Congressman Ray LaHood. It is dedicated to the students, teachers and citizens of the Peoria area.

Commission in Russia

A former high school history teacher, John McClarey has pieces in distinguished places such as the Henry Horner Lincoln Collection at the Illinois State Historical Library and the Lincoln National Historic Site in Springfield.

One prized commission, a bronze sculpture of Lincoln, was dedicated in June 1998 at the Russian State Library for Foreign Literature in Moscow.

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