Abraham Lincoln's Legacy Still Dividing the U.S. as Statue Vandalized

A statue of a young Abraham Lincoln was vandalized in Chicago, in another sign that the legacy of the man viewed by many as the greatest U.S. president is continuing to divide Americans.

The statue in Chicago's Edgewater neighborhood was splashed with red paint on Thanksgiving Day, the Chicago Tribune reported.

The vandals also wrote the words "COLONIZER," "LAND BACK!" and "Dakota 38"—the latter an apparent reference to the 38 Native Americans who were executed in Mankato, Minnesota, on Lincoln's orders after the 1862 Dakota War, also known as the Sioux Uprising.

"With increasing frequency, we have tragically seen vandalism directed against Lincoln statues, particularly in the Midwest," Harold Holzer, a historian and author of several books on Lincoln, told Newsweek.

Holzer said that, while Lincoln approved the executions of the 38 Sioux, he "also reviewed the cases and pardoned more than 200 Native people he believed were unjustly sentenced to death for their part in an uprising in Minnesota."

In the summer of 2020, the Black Lives Matter protests that erupted in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd fueled a renewed push to tear down Confederate monuments.

However, amid a broader reckoning about America's legacy of racism, figures including Thomas Jefferson—who owned slaves—and Lincoln—who ended slavery—also came under scrutiny.

While Lincoln has long been remembered as "The Great Emancipator" for ending slavery, his racial views have received renewed attention in recent years and sparked protests.

In December 2020, a statue of Lincoln standing over a newly emancipated Black man was removed from Park Square in Boston after thousands signed a petition calling for it to be replaced.

And early in 2021, San Francisco's Board of Education voted to change the name of dozens of schools honoring figures they said were linked to racism and oppression, including Lincoln. The plan was later abandoned after a fierce backlash.

"The history of Lincoln and Native Americans is complicated, not nearly as well known as that of the Civil War and slavery," Jeremiah Jeffries, chairman of the renaming committee, told the San Francisco Chronicle in late 2020.

"Lincoln, like the presidents before him and most after, did not show through policy or rhetoric that Black lives ever mattered to them outside of human capital and as casualties of wealth building."

But Lincoln historians have argued that his racial views evolved over the course of his presidency and should not tarnish his legacy.

"Like other white Americans of his time, he had an implicit belief in white supremacy but he was open to changing his mind," James McPherson, best known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, told Newsweek.

"In fact, he did partly modify that belief in the direction of equality by the end of his life."

McPherson also said: "In no rational sense of that word could he be considered a colonizer."

Holzer added: "Lincoln's attitudes on race evolved markedly in his years as president.

"He progressed from insisting only that slavery not spread to the West to advocating for the 13th Amendment five years later, ending slavery everywhere in America."

Holzer said that Lincoln "progressed less dramatically in his attitudes toward Asians and Native people," but did welcome a delegation of Native chiefs to the White House and "conducted a memorable meeting on peaceful coexistence."

Holzer added that "without question, Lincoln saved American democracy as we know it, and ended slavery in this divided country," which was "founded on many sins, including the enslavement of Africans and the containment and expulsion of Native peoples."

But "desecration is no way to conduct dialogue about the history of Native people in America—or Lincoln's attitudes."

He "inherited a flawed democracy and purged it of its worst inequities. We should continue celebrating those achievements—as well as the brilliant words he used to summon 'the better angels of our nature,'" Holzer said.

"The larger history of Native and Black people—dating to centuries before Lincoln—always deserves a full hearing—and full reckoning in American memory, but not at the expense of one of the greatest of all Americans, the greatest of our Presidents, who saved and left us a country worth living in harmoniously."