With Malice Toward None

Can’t think too much or too often about Lincoln. Here is the Great Man in the aptly named Union Square Park. It was actually one of the first statues of Abraham Lincoln, cast in 1868, and dedicated September 16, 1870, and according to a website, “combines a classically styled pose with a perceptive naturalism, uniting realistic detail with an idealistic stance.” The sculptor, Henry Kirke Brown created several Lincoln likenesses, including one in Prospect and his nephew crafted the bronze bust for Gettysburg’s Lincoln Memorial. An irony of course is that New York City hated Lincoln, always voted against him and except for his famous Cooper Union speech, he rarely visited the city. Upstate New York considered itself more New England back then and loved Lincoln and was strongly abolitionist,. New York City, especially Manhattan strongly supported the confederacy, mainly because plantation money was an investment resource for Wall Street. Many New York City politicians wanted the city to secede with the confederate states. Of course, the city changed its tune after the war and this statue was commissioned by the city’s Union League Club. Here’s a longer quote from the quote the base quotes, The Second Inaugural — “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”