Lincoln Park’s memorial to the Great Emancipator should stand

[David Lockmiller]

Lincoln Park’s memorial to the Great Emancipator should stand
Washington Post, June 25, 2020

The article reads in part:

A few blocks from my house [Washington DC, Lincoln Park area] stands a bronze monument to Abraham Lincoln, flanked by trees in a bustling park. But a vocal few — armed with bullhorns and invective — now threaten to forcibly topple it after 144 years.

It was a poor, recently freed enslaved woman, Charlotte Scott, who, distraught over Lincoln’s assassination in 1865, declared, “Colored people had lost their best friend on earth … I will give five dollars of my wages towards erecting a monument to his memory.”

Scott’s request and contribution to the Western Sanitary Society, a charity run by white abolitionists for freedmen and Union veterans, grew as black Union veterans and freedmen exclusively gave thousands more to the project.

Donations poured in with “$4,200 from colored troops at Vicksburg; $3,200 from another colored regiment; $500 from a battery unit; and more, until over $16,000 was amassed.

On the day the statue was unveiled, a crowd of 25,000 gathered, black and white. Supreme Court justices, Cabinet officials and the president shared the park and the day with freedmen.

[LincolnMan]

Yes, it should stand. My impression of most of those who want it illegally torn down have little or no clue as to the history of the statue. Instead, they are seem to be misguided or have an agenda for their own purpose.

[RJNorton]

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.

[David Lockmiller]

(07-06-2020 04:15 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.

[LincolnMan]

Too bad this suggestion by Douglass couldn't be made into a stand alone plaque placed near the monument to provide additional insight.

[Steve Whitlock]

(07-06-2020 07:08 PM)LincolnMan Wrote:  Too bad this suggestion by Douglass couldn't be made into a stand alone plague placed near the monument to provide additional insight.

You may want to remedy that "plague" with a plaque.

[LincolnMan]

Thanks Steve!