(from Heather Cox Richardson's Letters from an American)
In 1856, work began on a replacement for the original Capitol dome in Washington, D.C.. When the Civil War broke out five years later, it was unfinished.
President Abraham Lincoln and the wartime Congresses insisted on continuing construction despite the conflict, determined to show to the world their faith that the nation would endure and that it would, eventually, grow into its ideals.
The Capitol dome was completed, for the first time, in 1866. It has needed repairs periodically ever since.
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