Lincoln Park’s memorial to the Great Emancipator should stand

[David Lockmiller]

(07-06-2020 05:15 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  Thanks to Steve W. for sending this article. It's an editorial letter written by Frederick Douglass on the Emancipation Monument. It appeared on page 4 of the April 19, 1876 edition of the Washington DC newspaper The National Republican.

A very good article. To quote from the article:

"[I]t does not, as it seems to me, tell the whole truth, and perhaps no one monument can be made to tell the whole truth . . . . The mere act of breaking the negro's chains was the act of Abraham Lincoln, and is beautifully expressed in this monument."

I wonder why Frederick Douglass inserted the word "mere" into that second sentence. By my way of thinking, the monument is meant to express the freeing of four million Negroes from bondage by President Abraham Lincoln's signing of the Emancipation Proclamation and all of his other actions taken together for restoring the Union.