Word: civilizations
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...Lincolns of the A.L.P. are no mere Civil War re-enactors. They approach their work with a mixture of sacerdotal adoration, historical rigor and commercial self-interest (some impersonate Lincoln for a living, and virtually all charge several hundred dollars per gig to portray him at parades, nursing homes and museums). For the best Lincolns, bringing him to life means hours of prep; those docents in Maryland may not ask you back if you can't perform a speech Lincoln gave in the state. And then there are the costuming challenges--carefully shaving your upper lip, coloring the gray from...
...early 20th century, Lincoln's appeal broadened considerably. By then, adults who had lived and suffered through the Civil War had died. Once a symbol of division, Lincoln came to be seen as a symbol of national peacemaking, admired alike by New York bankers and the Sons of the Confederate Veterans. In 1922, the Lincoln Memorial was dedicated, its structure modeled after the temples of ancient Greece, its statue reminiscent of Zeus on his throne, its location chosen to maximize the power of impression by an object of reverence and honor. In Illinois, sites associated with the 16th President were...
...civil rights movement shone a spotlight on inequality and discrimination, Lincoln's image came in for a beating. The myth of Lincoln as the black man's best friend was hard to square with his own words, from the Lincoln-Douglas debates, that he had "no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races" and that "there is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living upon the footing of perfect equality." In a 1968 piece for Ebony, "Was Abe Lincoln a White Supremacist?", Lerone Bennett...
...knew him well, including intimate portraits that had long been neglected or obscured. In the past decade, more than a dozen volumes of essential primary evidence on Lincoln have been published, including original writings and research by his White House secretaries, John Hay and John Nicolay, and the Civil War dispatches of Lincoln intimate Noah Brooks. The granddaddy of all oral histories, the interviews and statements collected by Lincoln's law partner Herndon, are now easily available for the first time...
Still, as I look at his picture, it is the man and not the icon that speaks to me. I cannot swallow whole the view of Lincoln as the Great Emancipator. As a law professor and civil rights lawyer and as an African American, I am fully aware of his limited views on race. Anyone who actually reads the Emancipation Proclamation knows it was more a military document than a clarion call for justice. Scholars tell us too that Lincoln wasn't immune from political considerations and that his temperament could be indecisive and morose...