New Lincoln Statue Moved to Its Forever Home

By Ed Epstein

Washington, D.C.

Friday, September 5, 2025

A powerful new statue of Abraham Lincoln showing the 16th president signing the Emancipation Proclamation was lowered onto its pedestal Friday outside the soon-to-reopen African American Civil War Museum in Washington.

The bronze statue, six feet tall and weighing 600 pounds, will be formally dedicated during a program on Monday, September 22, chaired by the Lincoln Group.

The sculptor Stan Watts flew in from Utah to direct a crew in maneuvering the statue into place and bolting it down in its place of honor outside the museum, which reopens on Veterans Day, November 11, after a multi-year closure for expansion into a new home.

"People ask, 'Why are you here for this today?'" Watts said at the site at the museum's entrance. "Hell, I want to make sure everything is right." It took the crew a few hours to do the work on a warm early September morning.

Watts has done many life-size bronzes of historic figures, including Martin Luther King Jr., Nikola Tesla, Helen Keller, Rosa Parks, and the legendary racehorse Seabiscuit.

"It was an honor to do Lincoln," added Watts (pictured to the right), who was accompanied to Washington by his son and assistant, Dan Watts.

The statue will be covered until its official debut at a ceremony starting at 11 AM eastern time across Vermont Avenue from the museum, at the site of the African American Civil War Memorial, which includes the names of 209,154 Black men who signed up to fight for the Union cause after Lincoln permitted their enlistment in the Proclamation.

Those men, members of the U.S. Colored Troops, are the focus of the new 16,000-square-foot museum.

The program on September 22 will include remarks, Civil War-era music, a host of Civil War re-enactors, and a reading of the Proclamation. The outdoor event is free and open to the public.

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Photos by Ed Epstein