Its title often shortened to Lincoln Walks at Midnight, this statue was dedicated on June 20, 1974, in a prominent position in front of the south-facing entrance of the West Virginia State Capitol. Inspired by poet Vachel Lindsay’s 1914 poem “Lincoln Walks at Midnight (In Springfield, Illinois),” it was designed by Fred Martin Torrey (1884-1967), a Fairmont native known for his statues of Lincoln at the 16^th president’s tomb in Springfield, Illinois, and at the Iowa State Capitol in Des Moines.

Torrey crafted the 42-inch plaster model in 1933 after reading Lindsay’s poem, which refers to Lincoln emerging from his tomb to mourn the death and destruction caused by the start of World War I. Torrey, however, re-interpreted it in the context of Lincoln pacing the White House halls on New Year’s Eve 1862, debating whether to sign the West Virginia statehood bill. Torrey’s model was displayed at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York and at Garfield Park in Chicago, but it was never cast into a statue during his lifetime due to the cost and a seeming lack of interest.

During the West Virginia Centennial in 1963, Louise Bing, a Charleston community leader who wrote local-interest newspaper columns, publicly noted the absence of any statuary in the state commemorating Lincoln, despite his pivotal role in creating the state. Hearing about Torrey’s Lincoln model from a mutual contact in Fairmont, she reached out to Torrey, then nearly 80 years old and living in Des Moines. Torrey told Bing he would sell the model to West Virginia if she could raise an estimated $40,000 to cover the entire project.

 West Virginia Hillbilly editor Jim Comstock began endorsing the idea and, in a joint 1966 appearance on a Charleston talk show, challenged his friend Summersville Mayor William Bryant to fly to Iowa, negotiate with Torrey, and bring the model back. Bryant flew his own plane and discussed the matter with Torrey but, without funding to craft the full-sized statue, left without the model. Torrey died the next year, but in 1969 Bryant at last purchased the model from Torrey’s widow, Mabel, for $5,000.

Bing, Bryant, Walter Spring of Rivesville, J. Robert Nuzum of Charleston, and Helen Frankman of Fairmont led a successful fundraising campaign to build the statue on the capitol grounds. All 55 school boards urged students to contribute a penny to the project. Most of the funds, though, came from private donations, the legislature, the state Department of Commerce, and the West Virginia Arts and Humanities Council (the predecessor of the West Virginia Humanities Council).

Charleston artist Bernie Wiepper completed a nine-foot pattern in November 1973 and personally drove it to Kingwood, where the Sheidow Bronze Corporation cast it into a 14-foot, 11-ton bronze statue. The completed work was mounted on a pedestal in front of the south entrance to the capitol.

The statue’s unveiling on West Virginia Day 1974 was attended by major benefactors and project supporters, including Bing, along with Torrey’s only child and his 88-year-old sister. In his dedication speech, Governor Arch Moore said that Lincoln had “a commitment to the people of the mountains of western Virginia. . . . We hope that we have lived up to the measure of faith and confidence that he gave to us . . . and sustain the legacy from which the state of West Virginia was born.”

Moore ordered that the statue be continually lit at night to “burn as long as West Virginians believe there is a future for our children in the state.” Ever since, the statue has been spotlighted after dark.

For many years, Torrey’s original 1933 plaster model was displayed in the Governor’s Reception Room in the West Virginia State Capitol. It is now on permanent display in the West Virginia State Museum in Charleston.