Douglas statue comes down, but Lincoln had racist views, too
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — With the nation racing to come to grips with centuries of racial sins, officials plan to remove the Capitol lawn statue of Stephen A. Douglas, whose forceful 19th century politics helped forge modern-day Illinois but who also profited from slavery.
Just inside the Statehouse hangs another revered depiction of an Illinois legend — and longtime Douglas rival — who expressed white supremacist views: Abraham Lincoln. The immense painting in the governor’s second-floor office depicts a Sept. 18, 1858, debate between the two men that opened with these words from Lincoln, who was vying for Douglas’ Senate seat and was still two years away from running for president:
“I am not, nor ever have
been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and Black races. ... There is a physical difference between the white and Black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.”
When the Douglas statue is put in storage this fall, it will become the latest in a line of monuments, from Confederate generals to Christopher Columbus, to come down during the global reckoning on race sparked by the May 25 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody. There has been no discussion, though, about removing likenesses of Lincoln, the president whose Civil War victory freed the slaves, despite his earlier views on race.
“At a certain point, where do you cut it off?
Jefferson, he wrote the Declaration of Independence. You separate that from him being a slave owner,” St. Louis tourist Eric Zuelke said during a recent visit to the Douglas statue, referring to Thomas Jefferson.
Lincoln believed that slavery was morally wrong and, like Douglas, he opposed it, although the two differed on how to end it. While his thinking evolved in the White House, Lincoln’s advocacy for Black people in 1858 stopped at recognizing their natural rights under the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal,” though his was still a radical position for the time.
Douglas’ contributions to the modern-day Illinois economy and transportation network cannot be understated. But he retained a 20% share of a family-owned 200-slave
Mississippi plantation, a little-known fact that led Illinois’ House speaker in July to recommend removing Douglas’ likenesses from the Statehouse.
On the day in the eastern Illinois city of Charleston depicted in Robert Root’s 1918 painting — the fourth of seven celebrated debates around the state that helped make Lincoln a national figure — Lincoln felt pressured to respond to Douglas’ repeated taunts of Lincoln as a “Black Republican” who stood for “Negro equality.”
Teresa Haley, who heads the Springfield branch of the nation’s oldest civil rights group, the NAACP, said she thinks the Douglas statue should be removed to show intolerance for racism and white supremacy. Although Lincoln also had racist views, he was a president and the one who freed the slaves, she said.