Abraham Lincoln is to abolishing slavery as lemons are to lemonade. President Lincoln’s memorial is great in size and stature; a grand marble building lined with pillars and a large open airway with a perfect view of the righteous president relaxing in a Romanesque platform just shy of twenty feet tall. The memorial echoes the touch of a Greek architect, and the air about Lincoln has a striking similarity to the memorial of the Greek god Zeus. While Lincoln looks to be in touch with the world’s ancient past, his work is associated with something not so long ago: freeing America’s slaves.
Many myths surround the Civil War. One of them which Abraham Lincoln himself saved all of the slaves in one fell swoop and became the everyday American Hero who stands for what he believes in. However, the truth is that while on paper the slaves of the confederacy were free, they were physically chained. It took a force of more than 2 million soldiers, a civil war and an already standing Anti-Slavery Movement pressuring the president to end slavery. The 16th president was not quite ready to deprive the southern states of their property rights.
Of course, it is hard to imagine Honest Abe “The Great Emancipator” pro-slavery, but according to “the textbook critic Norma Gabler, [she] testified that textbooks should “present our nation’s patriots in a way that would honor and respect them”” (Loewen, Handicapped by History). Ironically, our president had to be pushed to publish his anti-slavery mindset. The Civil War began in 1861, but the Emancipation proclamation was not published until 1863. Coincidentally, the Civil War began on the southern end, meaning the North didn’t even initiate the combat to end slavery.
The Civil war began at Fort Sumter when southern troops attacked northern “U.S.” soldiers in order to solidify their right to slaves and show the North that the Abolitionist movement didn’t scare them; but it did. The South felt threatened by Frederick Douglas and his anti-slavery ways and the president was a bystander in the beginning of the war. Frederick Douglas believed that all men were created equal, yet the South only saw black and white. Textbook history classes don’t want students to see the Civil War as a bloody fight to keep slavery but a cold war to end it. “The notion that opportunity might be unequal in America, that not everyone has “the power to rise in the world,” is anathema to textbook authors, and many teachers as well” (Loewen, Handicapped by History). Abraham Lincoln, sadly, may have felt this way when he stated that he had “no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists” (Green, Socialist Worker: Who Freed The Slaves?)
Northern blacks believed that after the South secession from the Union, there would be a war and quickly started prepping, yet the government rejected the idea as Lincoln believed the problem would be solved quickly and quietly. After 1861 and streak of confederate victories did Lincoln, with his arm twisted, write the Emancipation Proclamation. This was still limiting as it freed only the slaves from stated that had seceded. Many Americans don’t know of the difficulty the North faced when dealing with Southern slavery and an unresponsive president. “Michael Kammen suggests that authors selectively omit blemishes in order to make certain historical figures sympathetic to as many people as possible” (Loewen, Handicapped by History). In this case, while the president didn’t do much, historians scream “at least he wrote the Emancipation Proclamation!” This is not uncommon for heroification to occur in textbooks.
Abraham Lincoln was subject to the presidential archetype that all of this nation’s leaders are great in character and views. History has white-washed him to the fearless leader who abolished slavery and reunited the North and South while simultaneously disregarding his initial hesitation and all of the other great things he accomplished in his presidency. This is a commonly used action when creating the history hero.