ON THIS DAY: August 30

ON THIS DATE IN TEENAGE HISTORY (1866), eighteen-year-old Vinnie Ream (above) landed a $10,000 commission to create a statue of President Abraham Lincoln, who had been assassinated 16 months earlier. More than 100 politicians and national figures had signed a petition sent to the U.S. House Committee on Public Building and Grounds that said, “The undersigned, being personally acquainted with Miss Vinnie Ream, take great pleasure in endorsing her claims upon public patronage.” This triggered a raucous protest from many artists, journalists, and political foes of her Capitol Hill backers, with one newspaper reporter claiming Ream used “feminine wiles” to win her commission. She completed the statue in 1869 and unveiled it in 1871. Art critic Lorado Taft called Ream’s Lincoln an “extraordinary work for a child” and said it is “really far more dignified than many of its neighbors in the National Hall of Statuary.”