KALAMAZOO, MI -- History gave Kalamazoo a gift nearly 167 years ago, and citizens are still celebrating it today.
On the anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s speech at Kalamazoo’s Bronson Park, the former president will be immortalized in a statue that will be permanently placed at the same park.
A new 7-foot-1-inch Lincoln statue is coming to the downtown park, with the unveiling set for 2 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 27, said Gary Swain, who leads the committee that’s bringing the statue to Kalamazoo.
On Aug. 27, 1856, Lincoln, 47 -- who was a relatively unknown and beardless lawyer at the time -- gave a speech against the expansion of slavery in the United States.
The speech happened four years before Lincoln was elected president.
“We were lucky there was a reporter in the crowd,” Swain said. The scribe from Detroit took down the speech in shorthand notes that were lost for decades being rediscovered and published, he said.
Lincoln was there representing the “brand new Republican party,” Swain said, which formed up the road in Jackson two years earlier.
At the speech, Lincoln spoke against slavery, suggesting it should be prohibited.
“The question of slavery, at the present day should be not only the greatest question, but very nearly the sole question,” Lincoln said, according to the Kalamazoo Public Library.
A Michigan historical marker at the southwest corner of the park tells of the speech and marks its location.
“We are a great empire. We are 80 years old,” Lincoln said. “We stand at once the wonder and admiration of the whole world, and we must enquire what it is that has given us so much prosperity, and we shall understand that to give up that one thing, would be to give up all future prosperity. This cause is that every man can make himself. It has been said that such a race of prosperity has been run nowhere else.
“We find a people on the Northeast, who have a different government from ours, being ruled by a Queen. Turning to the South, we see a people who, while they boast of being free, keep their fellow beings in bondage. Compare our Free States with either, shall we say here that we have no interest in keeping that principle alive? Shall we say, ‘Let it be’? No – we have an interest in the maintenance of the principles of the government, and without this interest, it is worth nothing.”
Lincoln spoke “rather strongly” against slavery during the noteworthy speech, Swain said. He helped abolish slavery as president about a decade later.
Lincoln went on to become the greatest, or one of the greatest, presidents in history, Swain said, and Michigan was a big supporter of his in both elections.
The sculpture is “right on schedule” to be unveiled exactly 167 years to the day after the visit, Swain said.
The figure has been sculpted and sent to foundry, where molds are being made for each piece of a larger-than-life Lincoln, Swain said.
Sculptor William Wolfe of Terre Haute, Indiana, poses with a large Lincoln head sculpture that he made for a different statue project. Wolfe recently completed a statue of Lincoln that will be installed at Bronson Park. (Mike Lunsford photo)
It is slightly larger than life size, since Lincoln was 6 feet, 4 inches tall and the statue is nine inches taller than that. It will sit on top of a three-foot granite pedestal.
“We’ve been working for about a decade to make it happen,” Swain said. The group has raised enough funds to cover the cost, he said. The city has been supportive of the effort, Swain said.
“This to commemorate Lincoln’s single and only visit to Michigan when he came to Kalamazoo,” Swain said. The speech is the only documented time he addressed a crowd in the state, the Kalamazoo Public Library said.
“We refer to it as kind of the gift of history to Kalamazoo,” Swain said.
Nine years later, Lincoln was assassinated.
In July 2022, the Kalamazoo City Commission voted to approve the final design of an Abraham Lincoln statue for Bronson Park. Western Michigan University Regional History Curator Lynn Houghton said there are descriptions, but no photographs, of Lincoln’s visit to Kalamazoo in 1856.
Photography here was in its infancy, Houghton said, and the first good image of downtown Kalamazoo is from 1861. Portrait photographers arrived in the early 1860s, Houghton said.
Jane Ghosh and Discover Kalamazoo support the plan, Gosh said in a statement the statue organizers sent to the city commission in 2022.
“As the destination marketing organization for Kalamazoo County, we know that travelers seek memorable experiences in visually interesting spaces which they record via photo and video,” Ghosh said.
“Lincoln’s speech in Bronson Park is a unique and proud moment in our history, and this powerful statue by such a talented artist has the potential to become an iconic photo opportunity as visitors commemorate their time in Kalamazoo. The planned sculpture by Mr. Wolfe in Bronson Park will become a featured part of both our historical and our arts and cultural offerings — two key reasons many visitors choose to come to our area,” Ghosh said.
The Kalamazoo Abraham Lincoln Institute posted a video about Lincoln’s return to Kalamazoo.
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