Winchester Mayor Rex McIntire says that a statue commemorating an important speech given by Abraham Lincoln in the city is drawing closer.
The proposed statue would stand in Douglas Park near the existing monument to Senator Stephen A. Douglas. The pairing isn’t accidental. In August of 1854, at the location of the old Scott County courthouse on the Winchester Square, Lincoln delivered his first known public speech attacking Douglas’s Kansas-Nebraska legislation. Historians now view that Winchester address as Lincoln’s political reawakening after years largely out of office.
McIntire says it will firmly put Winchester on the Lincoln and Freedom Trails for tourists to the state: “I want people to come to look and I want to bring people to town and that’s really an excellent way to do it. Many of us grew up here and we’ve heard about Lincoln all of our lives. I didn’t know that he had made that particular speech here until I became mayor. People from other parts of this country have heard about Lincoln and they actually come here just to see Lincoln sites and the library and the museum in Springfield and places where he actually spoke and maybe had some of his debates with Douglas and others back in the day. This speech here actually propelled him back into the national spotlight and six years later he was president. [The statue] could bring people from around the country and bring money and help our businesses and kind of put us on the map. And that’s maybe my main goal in all this. I want to bring attention to our town. We got signs out on the highway. It says ‘Historic Winchester.'”
In December, Reggie Benton of Benton Engineering presented the City of Winchester a $1,000 check towards the statue. Benton told the Winchester City Council that he believed it was an excellent idea for the city and that Benton Engineering wanted to honor their oldest customer with a donation to the project.
McIntire says he’s now putting together a committee of citizens to best locate a proper statue: “I’m going to search out people in the community that would want to be on a committee to locate a statue that would be good for Winchester. Something good that we could afford. I want a quality statue, an appropriate statue. I want to get a take on it from people from the public. I want to ask two or three of the aldermen if they’d be interested in helping out, too. I want to try to get this thing ordered and have it ready to go by July the 4th as part of our nation’s celebration for our 250th anniversary year.”
If you have interest in helping with the statue or helping with the city’s celebration of the nation’s 250th anniversary, contact Mayor McIntire at City Hall in downtown Winchester.