It was Lincoln’s custom to visit the War Office late at night to get the most recent dispatches, and the memorial in Newark shows him after such a call. He is sitting on a bench, his tall hat beside him, dispirited and alone. Borglum’s idea for the statue was inspired by a letter from Lincoln to a friend shortly after his election. “I could appreciate the feelings of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane.... I am now in my Garden of Gethsemane.” Borglum received the commission to make this statue as a result of the exhibition of his marble head of Lincoln in the Capitol. Amos Van Horn, Civil War veteran and citizen of Newark, had bequeathed $150,000 for three public monuments, one to Washington, one to Lincoln and a third to the soldiers and sailors who had fought in the War between the States. He appointed three executors, chief of whom was Ralph E. Lum, a Newark lawyer who knew nothing of Borglum or his work except the Lincoln head. That seemed enough evidence. He gave the sculptor the commission for the Lincoln Memorial and thereafter was always his steadfast friend. The work was carried out under pleasant, amicable, understanding relations. There was no competition. The executors had virtually no suggestions. They knew that Gutzon Borglum was a competent sculptor, and they left the details of the production to him. He submitted a small model which they considered and accepted. After that he made a full-sized model in clay. The location chosen for the memorial was in front of the Newark courthouse where much grading and change was needed. The city lacked a thousand dollars of enough to pay for what was needed; so Gutzon advanced the money to Park Superintendent Carl Bannwort. The architect who drew the plans for the setting was an old friend, William Price. The architect, Bannwort and Gutzon contrived to give the statue a perfect environment, and Bannwort seemed surprised to see it finished. “It’s the first time,” he said, “that I ever heard of a sculptor ever giving back a part of his own pay.” Work was begun in 1909, and a year later the Gorham Company announced the arrival of the full-sized plaster model at their foundry in Providence, Rhode Island. The sculptor had asked that they cast the bronze in one piece, which cost forty per cent more and took more time. He thought it worth the extra expense because there would be no seams in the bronze and no danger of breakage due to extremes of heat and cold. Gutzon was pleased with the work when it appeared in bronze. “Lincoln never left the Garden of Gethsemane,” he said. “He went right from Springfield to the labor of war. And Lee had hardly surrendered when Lincoln was shot. It is a curious and charming picture when you realize that he wandered away constantly into this garden alone.”