Take down statues of Lincoln? No.
Abraham Lincoln and Chicago go way back, from his visits here as a traveling lawyer to his nomination for president at the 1860 Republican National Convention. His connection is one of the proudest claims of our state — official slogan, “Land of Lincoln.” Every child grows up learning his incomparable place in the history of Illinois and of the nation.
But some people think Abe’s sins cancel out his achievements. On one hand, he was elected vowing to stop the spread of slavery, waged a successful war to preserve the Union and worked to achieve constitutional equality for Black Americans. On the other, he represented a slave owner trying to recover escaped slaves, sometimes expressed bigoted sentiments and allowed the execution of 38 Dakota men during the U.S. war with their tribe.
Facts like those account for the scattered calls that he be relegated to the dungeon of America’s villains. Even Mayor Lori Lightfoot thinks he may be problematic, judging from the list of monuments to be reviewed by an advisory committee. It includes several statues of Lincoln. Also in the dock: George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, William McKinley and Leif Ericson, among others.
We have no objection to periodically reassessing public monuments as new information emerges and old information gains new pertinence. Chicagoans are not obligated to defer to the judgment of previous generations. But let’s not revel in proclaiming our superiority to yesterday’s heroes.
Apparently, some critics think every person we memorialize must be perfectly blameless by the standards of modern America. In that case, we’d have to raze just about every statue. If purity is the threshold — purity based on today’s standards against the cultural and political dynamics of our ancestors — there will be no monuments. A better approach is to weigh the good done by those who have been honored against their shortcomings, and in the context of their generation, not ours.
Lincoln is a definite keeper. Do we even need to say so? Apparently, yes. His vision and resolve were critical not only in keeping the country together but in ending slavery. Whatever malignant ideas he may have had about race, he transcended to redeem himself. He took the political risk of sparing 264 of those Dakotas who had been sentenced to death.
Lincoln might have lost the war and his 1864 reelection without Gen. Grant, whose strategic skill and relentless drive were essential to the Union victory. True, Grant married into a slaveowning family, and he briefly owned one enslaved person — whom he proceeded to free. As president, he strove to protect the rights of Black Americans. “To Grant more than any other man the Negro owes his enfranchisement,” said Frederick Douglass.
Washington? Without him, the United States might never have come into being or succeeded as the republic established in 1789. The nation his modern critics inhabit probably would not exist. It’s one thing to honor a historical figure because he upheld slavery, as Southern states regrettably did with Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis. It’s another thing to honor one despite of his extensive involvement in the peculiar institution, such as Washington.
No one who has been commemorated in bronze or marble is above continuing evaluation. New memorials should be created for men and women previously overlooked or reviled — as Chicago has done for poet Gwendolyn Brooks and civil rights crusader Ida B. Wells.
The desire to right grave historic wrongs and pay tribute to long-ignored heroes is a sound one. But it would be a mistake to get carried away in a fit of selfrighteousness. And it’s a mistake that posterity might not forgive.