The new focus of some of Lincoln’s lesser-known views on race (although none have been kept secret by historians who have written about them) has led officials in cities across the country to either remove or consider removing Lincoln statues.
In Boston, the famous Emancipation Memorial, which depicts an enslaved man breaking his shackles at Lincoln’s feet, was removed from a public park. The original casting of that statue still stands in a neighborhood park in Washington D.C. where police had to surround it with fencing to prevent protestors from destroying it last summer.
In Chicago, the city where Lincoln accepted the Republican Party’s nomination in 1860, five Lincoln statues have been placed on a list of monuments to be reviewed to ensure they do not offend any modern sensibilities. And in San Francisco, Old Abe’s name was taken off a high school.