Dear Tell All: I often talk with a friend of mine at UW-Madison about the protests sweeping college campuses. He and I agree with the student activists in the South who are demanding that names associated with slavery and the Confederacy be removed from university buildings. At Georgetown, it’s two buildings named after slaveholding university presidents. At Vanderbilt, it’s an inscription that identifies a dormitory as Confederate Memorial Hall.
The other day, however, my friend surprised me by suggesting that Abraham Lincoln’s statue be torn town on Bascom Hill. He cited Lincoln’s support for resettling African Americans in another country and several of his comments that suggest a white supremacist outlook. He emailed me a statement Lincoln made during his run for U.S. Senate against Stephen Douglas: “I am not, nor have ever been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races.”
Those are damning words, and it will be hard to get them out of my head the next time I see Lincoln’s statue on Bascom Hill. Is my friend right that Lincoln’s image should be removed as the centerpiece of the UW-Madison campus?
Safe Space
Dear Safe Space: I won’t presume to say if your friend is right or wrong, because all campus activists are entitled to their opinions about our country’s racist past. This is an ongoing discussion, and it’s important that everyone be heard.
I can only give you my opinion, which is that Lincoln should stay. I’m all for tearing down monuments associated with the Confederacy, given that they glorify an armed insurrection against the United States in support of slavery. That’s a no-brainer. In the case of Lincoln, however, I’d caution against a selective reading of history — one that cherry-picks certain objectionable statements and positions.
No one doubts that Lincoln was anti-slavery. “If slavery is not wrong,” he said, “nothing is wrong.” He strongly believed in ending the hateful institution, but as a politician he took a pragmatic approach. That occasionally involved saying things to appease racists and prevent a backlash against his anti-slavery policies. It’s understandable that modern-day Americans would recoil from such statements, but they did help Lincoln steadily steer the country toward the Emancipation Proclamation.
Your friend might prefer a statue of a morally pure abolitionist on Bascom Hill, and that’s understandable. The abolitionists deserve credit for their tireless opposition to slavery, but Lincoln also deserves credit for developing the strategy to end it.
If we tear down statues of all people who don’t pass modern-day litmus tests, Safe Space, we won’t have many statues left. Almost all heroes have flaws, and many are subject to the prejudices of their times. If their achievements far outweigh their lapses, I say leave the statues up.
I’ll give morally pure abolitionist Frederick Douglass the last word on Abraham Lincoln’s brand of pragmatism: “Viewed from genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined.”
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