A Complicated Legacy

It was not until 1865, when the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, that slavery was formally abolished throughout the United States. Yet many Americans, black and white, celebrated the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation and praised Lincoln. When he made the now-famous Gettysburg Address in November 1863, Lincoln stated unequivocally that the United States was “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” and that the nation shall have a “new birth of freedom.”

After the Civil War, the legend of Lincoln as the most significant hero of freedom—the “Great Emancipator”—began to take hold. In 1876, the Freedmen’s Memorial Monument, originally funded by African Americans, was given as a gift to Congress to honor Lincoln. However, its design, by white sculptor Thomas Ball, has been controversial, even at the time, because of how it represented Lincoln and the formerly enslaved man at his feet.