More recently, some activists have turned against Lincoln, citing his hesitant approach to the rights of black Americans and his occasional use of racist language. He said the nation was fighting for liberty-but approved the arrest of dissidents and the suspension of habeas corpus. He insisted on equality-but refused to endorse black suffrage. His Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves-but only in states over which he had no effective control. Lincoln’s actions and words could, indeed, appear inconsistent. It features one hand relaxed to represent peace, the other clenched in a fist to symbolize war. Even during his lifetime, many said that Lincoln was as disunited as the country he sought to lead some even claimed to see his asymmetrical visage as proof of internal contradictions-an observation that Daniel Chester French built upon when sculpting the statue for the Lincoln Memorial. Such disagreement seems fitting in Lincoln’s case-an apt symbol of the way the Great Emancipator was, and remains, a subject of divided opinion. The most common version of the story holds that Stanton said, “Now he belongs to the ages.” But some thought his words were more prosaic: “Now he belongs to the angels.” 1 When Abraham Lincoln died in a bricklayer’s house across from Ford’s Theater on April 15, 1865, the weeping secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, said.
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