Video: 'Roosevelt Unveils Jefferson Memorial (1943)'
(Tuesday, April 13, 1943, 11:45 a.m.-12:35 p.m. EWT) — On the 200th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson’s birth and at the height of World War II, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the majestic Jefferson Memorial today in Washington, D.C., as a “shrine to freedom.”
Roosevelt told the nation that the agonies of war serve to heighten man’s appreciation of freedom, and expressed his confidence that the “seeming eclipse” of freedom in wartime “can well become the dawn of more liberty.”
Video: 'Jefferson Memorial - Decades TV Network'
Standing bareheaded before the $3 million marble shrine on the shore of the wind-whipped Tidal Basin, Roosevelt drew historic parallels between the difficult problems of Jefferson’s age and of the present generation and vigorously voiced agreement with the third American president that “men are capable of their own government.”
“No king, no tyrant, no dictator can govern for them as wisely as they can govern for themselves,” he proceeded noting that he echoed a belief of Jefferson.
Video: 'Jefferson Memorial, Washington [HD]'
At this point, Rudulph Evans’ statue had not yet been finished due to material shortages that emerged during World War II.
Instead, the memorial opened with a temporary plaster cast statue similar to the bronze statue that Evans ultimately completed four years later, in 1947.
