Springfield History: Menard statue first erected, first removed

The first statue erected on the grounds of the Illinois Statehouse was perhaps the most obscure. And it also was one of the first two to be removed.

The monument to Pierre Menard (1776-1844), Illinois’ first lieutenant governor, was one of two (the other was that of Stephen A. Douglas) that were put into storage in September — in Menard’s case because he was a slaveowner and tried to keep slavery legal in Illinois.

The two men who came up with the idea for a Menard statue were Elihu Washburne of Galena, a former Congressman and political ally of Abraham Lincoln and U.S. Grant, and businessman Charles Pierre Chouteau of St. Louis.

Like Menard, the Chouteau family was French-American. The Chouteaus were literally St. Louis’ first family — fur trader Auguste Chouteau, Charles’ Chouteau’s great-grandfather, is considered the founder of St. Louis.

Exactly what prompted Washburne’s interest in Menard is unclear. Here is how the idea came about, according to the Illinois State Journal in 1887.

“During a visit of Mr. Chouteau to Hon. Elihu B. Washburne, at Chicago, in 1884, the latter suggested the propriety of Mr. Chouteau’s erecting a monument to Pierre Menard, who was a long-time friend of Mr. Chouteau’s father. Mr. Chouteau consented promptly to devote $10,000 to the purpose if Mr. Washburne would consent to take charge of the details of the work. These conditions were agreed to. ...”

Washburne and a committee he formed selected Indiana sculptor John H. Mahoney to create the eight-foot-tall bronze statue. Unveiling the work on the Statehouse lawn, however, wasn’t all smooth sailing.

For starters, no one, including Mahoney, knew what Menard had looked like. The Journal made that point carefully.

“As Gov. Menard died in 1844, no general criticism of the likeness in the statue has been indulged in. The features were modeled from a portrait in the possession of his daughter, and probably bear some resemblance to the original, though just how much or how little, is one of the things now very difficult, if not impossible to determine.”

Also, in planning the statue, none of the organizers thought to ask the legislature for permission to install it on the Statehouse grounds. Lawmakers belatedly agreed to that in 1885.

The statue was put in position in May 1886, but officials decided not to display it until it was formally dedicated, so the statue was hidden by a wooden enclosure for more than a year. The plan was for Washburne to do the honors. However, family illnesses delayed the dedication, and then Washburne himself became sick. He died in October 1887.

At Chouteau’s request, the enclosure was removed after Washburne’s death, and the dedication finally took place in January 1888. With Washburne gone and Chouteau unable to attend, however, it became a second-rate affair, part of the annual meeting of the Illinois State Bar Association.

The featured speaker was Judge Henry Baker of Alton. Baker acknowledged that the reason he got the nod was that he had grown up in Kaskaskia, where Menard lived, and as a boy had known Menard and his family. He spent much of his speech recalling the wonders of old Kaskaskia, Illinois’s first capital, and lamenting its abandonment. “(T)he very earth upon with she stood has become a desert and a desolation,” Baker said.

Menard’s statue originally stood in the northeast quadrant of the Statehouse grounds. It was moved in 1918 to accommodate, coincidentally, the then-new statue of Douglas. (Douglas’ statue was relocated in 1935 to near the east entrance of the Capitol, where it remained until last month.)

Excerpted fromSangamonLink.org, online encyclopedia of the Sangamon County Historical Society.