United States History Commons^™

Shackling The Great Emancipator: How The Nineteenth Century Press In South Carolina Helped To Shape The American National Memory Of Abraham Lincoln’S Racial Beliefs And Policies, Elizabeth D. Oswald-Sease

Graduate Theses

Abraham Lincoln is perhaps the most popular president in American history to date. American collective memory centers on his legacy as the Great Emancipator, a man who was beyond his time in terms of social equality and paved the way for later advancements in civil rights for African Americans in the United States. This caricature of Lincoln is fundamentally inaccurate, however. Lincoln himself repeatedly stated his devotion to the restoration of the Union, which at its fundamental core was a political entity that only encapsulated white Americans. In fact, Lincoln’s eventual issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation was intended to be …