As a display of defiance against unrest, authorities had ordered an American flag flown from the Washington Monument, which at 156 feet was only about 30 percent complete, a stub of blue gneiss granite faced with white marble, surrounded by tumble-down work sheds and scattered pieces of stone. Seward called the flag-raising “more effective than the most eloquent speech,” although skeptics might have been inclined to see the structure below it more as a symbol of failure. Construction of the monument had begun in 1848 with enslaved labor but ceased ten years later, just as America’s sectional
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