How The Leviathan State Built The Washington Monument

In the middle of the nineteenth century anti-catholic sentiment was raging, mainly because of the Irish famine bringing Catholics to the country. Nativist sentiment turned against Catholics to such a degree that the first republican presidential candidate John C. Fremont was falsely called a catholic by his opponents in the 1856 election. Pope Pius IX donated a block of marble for constructing the monument, in the name of the catholic temple of concord. This enraged anti Catholics, the know nothing party which was on its way to replacing the wig party in the 1850's. in 1854 9 know nothing supporters broke into the monument tied up the watchmen and stole the popes stone, they rolled it to a boat smashed it into smaller pieces and took off. The stone was a donation, the monument "was" privately funded by the Washington national monument society established in 1833, headed by John Marshall he did try to get federal funding but it was deemed unconstitutional, no way really unconstitutional to force tax payers to fund the construction? On the other hand the land was donated by the government, a contest was held to see what design would be picked Robert Mills won that contest with the Pantheon design. In the original design it would have had a horse mounted George Washington, in 1848 the construction began. The funds came from voluntary donations, by 1854 it stood 150 ft high, the funding slowed and eventually construction ceased. In 1853 the Know Nothing party took control of the national monument society. The know Nothings contributed to halting donations, this is when the marble was stolen, 30 years the monument went untouched. Abraham Lincoln always supported federal funding for federal infrastructure, but Lincoln was busy with war and reconstruction. In 1876 president Grant authorized federal funding to complete the monument, which went from privately funded to funded through force or taxes. This is why the monument has two different colors, this color change shows the change the entire country went through during the civil war. What we need to look at very carefully is that federal funding for the monument before the civil war was Unconstitutional and yet after the civil war it was. I dont know what the monument is supposed to stand for, but to me it stands for a split country freedom on one hand and tyranny on the other. I'm gonna try and get a great post for presidents day tomorrow, i'm also still working on getting my thoughts together so thank you guys for staying with me and reading my post. Thanks for reading guys! Please upvote, follow, and check out the next post!