"Confederate heritage groups would like to do something Gen. Robert E. Lee's army couldn't accomplish 138 years ago: keep Abraham Lincoln out of Richmond.

A statue of the 16th president will be dedicated in April at the Tredegar Iron Works. The site is next to a National Park Service visitors center that tells the history of Tredegar, a foundry above the James River that forged Confederate cannons.

But as with some other works of art -- including a statue of Richmond native and tennis great Arthur Ashe and a banner of Lee -- news of the Lincoln statue has touched a nerve in the former capital of the Confederacy.

To Cynthia MacLeod, superintendent of Richmond National Battlefield Park, the statue is simply a way of publicizing a little-known historical fact: Lincoln visited Richmond in the waning days of the Civil War.

'I just want people to understand and be interested in history, without having to have a win-lose or good guy-bad guy situation,' MacLeod said. 'We want people to understand the resources and events that are nationally significant. . . . The National Park Service isn't necessarily going to make a judgment whether people should like Lincoln or not.'

To Viola O. Baskerville, the Democratic state delegate in whose district it will sit, the statue is part of a long-overdue process to tell 'the complete story of the Civil War.'

Others think the story of the Civil War has been told just fine up till now at Tredegar. Del. Richard H. Black (R-Loudoun) said, 'Putting a statue to [Lincoln] there is sort of like putting the Confederate flag at the Lincoln Memorial.'

Black was so perturbed by news of the statue that he agreed to a request from the Virginia chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans to ask state Attorney General Jerry W. Kilgore (R) whether any Virginia laws prohibit placing the statue at Tredegar.

None do. Although a Virginia statute forbids Union markings from being added to Confederate memorials, and vice versa, the ironworks building is on privately owned land that's leased to the federal government.

That means the statue is on track for its April 5 dedication, 138 years and a day after Lincoln and his 12-year-old son, Tad, alighted from a boat to tour a city still smoking from the fires a retreating Confederate Army had set the day before.

'A lot of people think that Lincoln came to Richmond to do an end-zone dance, but it was just the opposite that he was doing,' said Edward C. Smith, director of the American studies program at American University and co-director of the Civil War Institute, a week-long seminar devoted to studying the war.

Smith is among the statue's supporters: 'I really felt that until Lincoln was received as the restorer, not just the invader and the conqueror, quite frankly, the war in many people's minds would never be over.'

Others see Lincoln's whirlwind trip as a victory lap, a humiliation of the city. 'He sat at Jefferson Davis's desk and propped his feet up on the desk,' said Bragdon Bowling, commander of the Sons of Confederate Veterans' Virginia division. Bowling said his group will continue to protest the statue's placement and is planning a conference to highlight Lincoln's less-admirable qualities.

The life-size bronze statue is being donated by the United States Historical Society, a nonprofit organization headquartered in Richmond. Designed by Kingston, N.Y., sculptor David Frech, it depicts Lincoln and Tad sitting on a bench against a granite wall. The words 'To Bind Up the Nation's Wounds' will be cut into a granite capstone.

The society's chairman, Robert Kline, said he had been thinking for more than 20 years that a Lincoln statue belonged in Richmond. Kline grew up in Illinois, where Lincoln launched his political career and where towering likenesses of him are fixtures in town squares.

Kline allows that it might have been more historically accurate to put the statue at Rockett's Landing on the James River, where Lincoln disembarked for his tour, but that would have required city approval.

'If there were any tax funds used or if it was on city property, it wouldn't have happened,' he said. The society decided to foot the bill.

Black said he is not sure a Lincoln statue belongs anywhere in Virginia.

'We've got a Lincoln Memorial not that distant,' he said. 'It's a huge memorial right across the Potomac. I suppose you could put a Lincoln memorial in every city of the United States. I'm not sure what that accomplishes.'

Kline wouldn't say how much the statue will cost. Black and other critics grumble that the society is making the highly publicized donation as a way of hyping the $875 bronze and $125 resin miniatures it will sell.

They will join another item offered by the society: a limited-edition, leather-bound edition of 'Personal Reminiscences of General Robert E. Lee.'" (John F. Kelly, Washington Post, January 9, 2003)