Statue of Austin Blair

In front of the main entrance of the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing stands the statue of Austin Blair. Blair was an abolitionist, helped found the Republican Party in 1854 and governed Michigan from 1861 to 1865 during the American Civil War. After his death in 1894, veterans campaigned for a monument, and in 1895 the state legislature approved it almost unanimously.

The bronze figure was created by the sculptor Edward Clark Potter and cast in 1898 by the Bureau Brothers in Philadelphia; the granite pedestal was designed by the Detroit firm Donaldson and Meier. An estimated 25,000 to 30,000 people attended the dedication on 12 October 1898, among them veterans carrying their battle flags. The statue shows Blair standing as if about to give a speech, his left hand resting on a column draped with a flag.

The back of the pedestal bears three quotations from Blair, one of which names slavery as the cause of the war. According to the newspaper City Pulse, this makes the monument one of only two memorials in the United States, alongside the Lincoln Memorial, to say so explicitly. The statue was restored in 1989; it is the only monument on the capitol grounds dedicated to a single person.