Posted on 11/12/2011 4:06:39 PM PST by markomalley
Not even Lincoln’s Tomb is immune to the spree of copper thefts that have hit the Springfield area.
A copper sword brandished by a statue of a Civil War artillery officer atop the tomb was stolen sometime between September and early November.
The theft is believed to have been a first to state property at the Lincoln Tomb State Historic Site since 1890, said Dave Blanchette, a spokesman for the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency.
A tomb employee noticed the sword was missing last week.
The sword was part of a statue grouping mounted on the terrace of the tomb. There are four such groupings on the balcony, one each representing the artillery, cavalry, infantry and navy during the Civil War.
“We just cannot imagine why someone would even think about doing it, let alone climb up the steps and actually do it,” Blanchette said.
Site officials plan to repair the statue, he said.
The theft probably occurred after Oak Ridge Cemetery was closed to visitors, Blanchette said, noting that a chain blocks daytime visitors from climbing the stone stairs to the balcony level.
“Anyone who would have gone up would have been noticed by a worker,” he said.
The thief broke off the roughly 3-foot-long sword at the handle. No significant damage was done to the rest of the statue.
Thefts of state property at the site are extremely rare, Blanchette said.
The last incident is thought to have occurred 101 years ago, he said, when the same sword was stolen from the artillery group. That sword would have been bronze, the metal the statues originally were all cast from (much of the raw material for the statues came from melted-down Civil War cannons).
The bronze sword is believed to have been replaced by the copper version recently taken, he said.
Outside of those thefts, the tomb suffers an incident of vandalism about once every decade, Blanchette said. The most glaring example was in 1987, when racist graffiti was spray-painted on the tomb. Five teenagers were arrested for the crime.
A security guard was stationed at the tomb overnight in response to that incident, Blanchette said. However, within a couple of years, budget problems forced lawmakers to eliminate the position, he said.
Damn, still standing up for pedophilia on a Lincoln thread. Pathetic.
Victor Davis-Hanson recently wrote that all the bronze commemorative plaques in his town of Selma, CA have been ripped from their buildings and monuments.
What a sad state of affairs. Our public square is a mess with bums, graffiti, “occupiers,” public urination and defecation, thefts and other crimes.
The same will happen elsewhere too.
Historical markers will be another target.
I’d say, make them out of wood, but that will be stolen for fuel.
Stone or concrete seem to be the only solutions, as the Egyptians and Romans knew.
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