Abraham Lincoln in American Memory, 1945–2001

Collective memory scholarship stands at aturning point. Will the field continue to

move in its present direction, emphasizing only“sites”of memory and their cultural meanings,or will it break through to a new level of inquiry,one that includes individuals’ beliefs about thepast? Four decades ago, George Homans’s

(1964) essay, “Bringing Men Back In,” claimedthat sociological theory explains nothing if itignores the individual as agent and subject. Fora similar though not identical reason, we askwhether the field of collective memory mustnow bring people back in, and, if so, how.

WHAT CCOLLECTIVE MMEMORY MMEANS

Maurice Halbwachs founded the field of col-lective memory, but between 1945, the year ofhis death, and the early 1980s, American soci-ologists ignored his work. Lloyd Warner, theonly American then addressing collective mem-ory issues (The Living and the Dead, 1959)does not even mention him. After 1980,Halbwachs is cited time and again, even thoughhis two major books, Les Cadres Sociaux de laMémoire ([1925] 1952) and La TopographieLégendaire des Évangiles en Sainte–Terre(1941), have not been translated into English.(Lewis Coser’s translated selections fromHalbwachs’s collected works—which includeresearch on suicide and stratification—did notappear until 1992). Halbwachs’s discoveries did

History, CCommemoration, aand BBelief:Abraham LLincoln iin AAmerican MMemory,1945–2001

Barry Schwartz Howard SchumanUniversity of Georgia University of Michigan

Ever since Maurice Halbwachs’s pioneering work, most scholars have been content to

explore collective memory through texts and commemorative symbolism. Assuming that a

study of collective memory has fuller meaning when it takes into account what ordinary

people think about the past, we compare historians’ and commemorative agents’

representations of Abraham Lincoln to what four national samples of Americans believe

about him. Five primary images—Savior of the Union, Great Emancipator, Man of the

People, First (Frontier) American, and Self-Made Man—are prominent in the cumulative

body of Lincoln representations, but recent surveys show that only one of these images,

the Great Emancipator, is dominant within the public. Lincoln’s one-dimensional

Emancipator image, which differs from the multi–dimensional one evident in a 1945

sample, reflects new perceptions of the Civil War shaped by late twentieth–century

minority rights movements. Thus, “bringing men [and women] back in” involves survey

evidence being added to historiographic and commemoration analysis to clarify one of

sociology’s most ambiguous concepts, collective memory, and to explore its social and

generational roots.

AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW, 22005, VVOL. 770 ((April:183–203)

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Direct correspondence to Barry Schwartz,Department of Sociology, University of Georgia,Athens, GA 30606 ([email protected]), andHoward Schuman, Department of Sociology,University of Michigan, 255 Popham Road,Phippsburg, Maine 04562 ([email protected]).The authors thank the University of Georgia SeniorFaculty Research Grants in the Humanities and FineArts and the Lady Davis Fellowship Trust, HebrewUniversity of Jerusalem, for supporting this project.They thank Jeffrey Olick for his many useful com-ments on an earlier draft. They are grateful to PaulRoman, Director, Center for Research on Deviance,and James J. Bason, Director, Survey ResearchCenter, University of Georgia, for generosity andassistance on their National Employee Survey

http://asr.sagepub.com/

not cause the great current of collective mem-ory research beginning in the 1980s; they wereswept into it.1

Since Halbwachs saw individuals in groupsas carriers of collective memory, he would havetrouble recognizing the current of research thathis name now adorns. Kerwin Klein (2000) crit-icizes this current with a special term, “TheNew Structural Memory,” which refers not toHalbwachs’s claim that social structures affectwhat individuals remember but that memory iscollective only if it exists outside the mind of theindividual. Pierre Nora (1996) finds collectivememory in sites (lieux de mémoire) that includeall material objects representing France’s past,independently of their meaning to individualFrenchmen. Richard Terdiman declares thatmemory resides “not in perceiving conscious-ness but in the material [symbols and rituals]which do not seem to require either our partic-ipation or explicit allegiance” (1993:34).Michael Schudson comes to a similar conclu-sion: memory consists of the concrete “rules,laws, procedures, precedents, records, files,books, holidays, statues, mementos” (1994:51)of specific institutions2—which conforms tothe more abstract proposition that institutionsremember (Douglas 1987). Jeffrey Olick dis-sociates himself from a radically structuralapproach to memory, but he defines the past rep-resented through sites and symbolic structuresas “genuinely collective memory;” the past rep-resented by surveys of individuals constitutessomething less: “collected memory”(1999:345). Taking “collective representations”and other “social facts” (Durkheim [1911]1974:135; [1895] 1964:1–46) as their ultimateunits of analysis, many sociologists share Olick’s

conception. Robert Wuthnow (1987) assertsthat we can never know what objects (includinghistory texts and memory sites) mean to indi-viduals; we can only know how these objectsrelate to one another and to institutional struc-tures. We thus enter a new age in which archives,statues, and other material objects are no longerthe instruments but the embodiments of mem-ory (Klein 2000:136). Amos Funkenstein pro-vides the New Structural Memory’s most preciseformulation:

Collective memory .|.|.|, like “language,” can becharacterized as a system of signs, symbols, andpractices: memorial dates, names of places, mon-uments and victory arches, museums and texts,customs and manners, stereotyped images (incor-porated, for instance, in manners of expression),and even language itself. (1993:6)

Funkenstein excludes the individual as an essen-tial unit of collective memory.

To consider the Structural Theory of Memoryas a methodological artifact, a remnant of ear-lier days when measures of beliefs and attitudeswere unavailable, is implausible. For more thana quarter–century, such measures have beenavailable by means of surveys, but few collec-tive memory scholars have shown an interest inpursuing survey evidence. Theoretical per-spective, not methodological limits, leads thesescholars to emphasize hermeneutic analysis oftexts and commemorative objects and to deem-phasize, even disregard, what ordinary individ-uals believe about the past. Perspective, notdata, causes cultural production to trump cul-tural reception.

When scholars recognize subjectivity’simportance but say nothing concrete about itsreferents, their comments produce more con-fusion than clarity. Alon Confino asserts thatmodels excluding the individual have been used“either perfunctorily or as a hollow metaphordefining memory as a monolith” in expressionslike “the collective memory of the state”(1997:1386). For Susan Crane, “[A]ll narra-tives, all sites, all texts remain objects until theyare ‘read’ or referred to by individuals thinkinghistorically” (1997:1381). Fentress andWickham (1992) say that collective memorytheory, when disconnected from the “actualthought processes of any particular person,”renders the individual an automaton and there-fore reifies the psychological in the social.“Hollow metaphor,” “objects,” and “automa-

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1 La Mémoire Collective, a set of essays written byHalbwachs and published by his students in 1950,first appeared in English in 1980 as The CollectiveMemory under the editorship of Mary Douglas.

2 Although Schudson’s version of the NewStructural Memory is influential, he recognizes thatthese “rules, laws, standardized procedures, andrecords . . . books, holidays, statues, souvenirs” owetheir cultural power to their subjective meaning (1989;see also his exemplary essay on the subjective dynam-ics of memory and its distortion [1996]). On theother hand, Schudson has never explored the relationamong subjective dynamics, texts, symbols, andobservances.


ton” refer to recollection without meaning. Butwhat of meaning itself? The welter of criticism,plainly, suggests no new research direction.Jeffrey Prager is more specific than most, butno more concrete: “[c]ollective memory is asociological concept, though shot through withpsychological presumptions” about cognitiveframes, identity, and trauma (2001:2223). Torecognize that collective memory is permeatedwith psychological presumptions, however, isnot necessarily to know how to bring individu-als into collective memory scholarship. NoaGedi and Yigal Elam (1996), in this regard,throw up their hands. “Since only individuals,not groups, can remember, the only proper useof collective memory is a metaphorical one. .|.|.‘Collective memory’ is but a misleading newname for the old familiar ‘myth’”(p. 47). Thesecritical writings identify a basic problem butthey define it differently, fail to explain how tosolve it, and confuse the issue by taking us indifferent directions. We intend to move forwardby defining collective memory in a way thatspecifies what we do when we study it, such thatwe can develop and control new lines of inquirythat explore what individuals believe about thepast and relate these beliefs to traditional meth-ods of representing it.

COLLECTIVE MMEMORY: HHISTORY,COMMEMORATION, AAND BBELIEF

In preliterate society, no history exists; oral tra-dition is expressed in the form of myth andinstitutionalized through ritual. In modern soci-ety, the rich development of historical researchand commemorative art makes collective mem-ory more complex. Historical narratives includehistoriography (research and analytic mono-graphs), public school and college-level text-books, encyclopedia essays, and, at a morepopular level, propositions conveyed throughmagazines, newspapers, television, film, stageproductions, and websites. Commemorativesymbolism includes hagiographies (eulogy andritual oratory), monuments, shrines, relics, stat-ues, paintings, prints, and ritual observances.Because historical and commemorative objectsare transmissible, cumulative, and received dif-ferently from one group to another, they exertinfluence in ways difficult to understand sole-ly in terms of their producers’beliefs or personalcharacteristics.

History and commemoration perform dif-ferent functions. The job of the historian is toenlighten by revealing causes and consequencesof chronologically ordered events. The job of thecommemorative agent is to designate moral sig-nificance by lifting from the historical record theevents that best exemplify contemporary values.Historians aim to describe events in all theircomplexity and ambiguity; commemorativeagents, to simplify events into objects of cele-bration and moral instruction. History and com-memoration, however, cannot be empiricallyseparated. Just as history reflects the valuescommemoration sustains, commemoration isrooted in historical knowledge. Commemorationis intellectually compelling when it symbolizesvalues whose past existence history documents;history is morally and emotionally compellingwhen it documents events that can be plausiblycommemorated.3

Collective memory realizes itself in distri-butions of beliefs about the past, but since therelation among beliefs, history, and commem-oration is problematic, two clarifications arewarranted. First, text writers, symbol makers,and their consumers are all individuals; there-fore, one can argue that the key distinction is notcultural memory vs. individual memory, butelite memory vs. popular memory. There is noharm in alternative terminology unless we for-get that elite memory’s units of analysis—his-tory texts and commemorative symbols—aredifferent from individual memory’s units ofanalysis—personal beliefs. Second, since themeaning of events to individuals reflects objec-tive qualities (described by historians) as wellas individuals’ experience and perceptualcapacities (Griswold 1987b; Fine 1996; Jauss1982), collective memory cannot be dismissed,as it so often is, as distorted history based onmyth, chauvinism, and self–deception

HISTORY, CCOMMEMORATION, AAND BBELIEF—–185


3 History, as Halbwachs ([1950] 1980) defines it,seeks an objective standpoint to assess the sequence,mutual relations, causes, and consequences of pastevents. It is “situated external to and above groups”and records the past independently of those groups’immediate problems and concerns. Since commem-oration is rooted in these problems and concerns,history and commemoration, as Halbwachs seesthem, are mutually conflicting enterprises (pp. 80–81;83–87).


(Nora 1996:1, 7, 8; Wertsch 2002:30–66;Yerushalmi 1982:81–103; Lowenthal1996:119–122; Kammen 1997:214, 219, 221;Gorn 2000:5B).

PRESENT PROBLEM

Reception, applied to collective memory,reflects the way individuals process historicaland commemorative statements. “Whether thegeneral run of people read history books ornot,” Carl Becker observes, “they inevitablypicture the past in some fashion or other”(Snyder 1958:61). Becker’s point reiteratesCharles Horton Cooley’s dictum that the “imag-inations which people have of one another arethe solid facts of society” ([1902] 1964:121).The solid facts of memory, likewise, are theimaginations people have of historical eventsand actors.

Connecting historical and commemorativeobjects (“facts of representation”) to individualunderstandings of the past (“facts of reception”;Kansteiner 2002:179) raises four major ques-tions never before posed or addressed: (1) Howfar, if at all, do individual beliefs deviate fromhistorical and commemorative statements? (2)Do historical and commemorative statementschange at the same rate and in the same direc-tion as individual beliefs? (3) How and to whatextent do individual beliefs, historical texts,and symbolic representations affect one anoth-er? (4) Which aspects of late twentieth–centu-ry American society do such beliefs, texts, andrepresentations articulate?

Whether new historical interpretations reflectdiscovery of new data, emphasis on one facetof a multifaceted personality, policy, or projec-tion of present social issues upon a distant past,is an important question. It makes a differencewhether historical accounts are empiricallysound, exaggerated, selective, or invented—butto assess this difference is not our problem. Therelationships among history, commemoration,and individual belief, not their validity, con-cern us here.

Good answers to any question benefit froma good specimen. No American’s life has beendocumented more fully, commemorated moreoften, and admired more intensely thanAbraham Lincoln’s. As “Lincoln is the suprememyth, the richest symbol in the American expe-rience” (Rossiter 1960:108), his story is an

essential part of the story of American “people-hood” (Smith 2003). Lincoln’s life embodiesAmerica’s story because it personifies egalitar-ianism, populism, libertarianism, and individ-ualism—the core values of American politicalculture (Lipset 1996:19–23; see also Lipset1990; Schwartz 2000). If Lincoln were removedfrom this story, its moral content would be lessmoving, less powerful; its moral essence lesscompelling. Lincoln is ideal for studyingAmerican memory because he remains aprophet of American civil religion (Bellah1976:177–78), American equality (Wills 1992),and is central to the American people’s chang-ing self-definition.

FIVE LINCOLNS

Merrill Peterson’s (1994) Abraham Lincoln inAmerican Memory is by far the most compre-hensive and authoritative chronicle of Lincolnrepresentations. Incorporating but transcend-ing typologies constructed independently byBasler (1935), Wector (1941), Donald (1947),and Potter (1948), Peterson draws out fiveimages from a 138–year series of Lincoln his-tories, biographies, monuments, shrines, icons,place names, and ritual observances:

1. “Savior of the Union” refers to objects that expressLincoln’s belief in the indivisibility of theAmerican state.

2. “The Great Emancipator” represents Lincoln’sefforts to abolish slavery.

3. “Man of the People” reflects writings and com-memorative devices depicting Lincoln’s identifi-cation with ordinary Americans.

4. “The First American” is Lincoln the frontieryouth, symbolized by log cabins and axes andhighlighting a personality that combines folksi-ness with dignity and vulgarity with kindness.

5. “The Self-Made Man” refers to Lincoln as theexemplification of upward mobility.

Since each image expresses a different pat-tern of historical writing and commemoration,Lincoln in American memory, as Peterson con-ceives it, means Lincoln represented by textand symbol rather than Lincoln as individualsthink about him. Peterson nowhere denies thatthe five Lincolns exist in the minds of individ-uals, but his account ignores individual beliefsalmost entirely.


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LINCOLN IN THE AMERICAN MIND

Merrill Peterson’s account of Lincoln’s mean-ing to America is structural. His vast chronicleof historians, popular writers, painters, sculptors,and monument architects furnishes good exam-ples of “reputational enterprise” (Fine 1996)—repetitive representations that “form thebackbone of collective memories” (Kansteiner2002:190). But Peterson’s is a descriptive chron-icle; while he inventories representations ofLincoln he fails to weight their relative impor-tance, over time or across society. Petersonmakes no effort to explain why different agentsportray Lincoln in different ways, let alonewhether these portrayals conform to popularbeliefs—or whether his five Lincolns fully cap-ture them.

We think it useful to examine beliefs direct-ly: not instead of, but in addition to the histori-ographic and symbolic vehicles traditionallycomprising the data of collective memory. Bydrawing on sample surveys to learn what theAmerican population believes about noted fig-ures like Lincoln, and how closely these beliefsconform to historians’ and commemorators’accounts, we move beyond the methodologicaldivide that has for so long limited collectivememory research. A broader challenge is toconfront the difficulties of melding qualitativeand quantitative perspectives and methods.Responses to survey questions are no substitutefor descriptions of how narratives and symbolsframe individual experience (Swidler 2001;Wertsch 2002), but properly designed surveyscan indicate what Americans believe. MostAmericans do not spend much time thinkingabout Lincoln, but they do carry in their mindsideas, characterizations, information (and insome cases misinformation) that surveys canreveal. And since our data allow us to see howindividuals weigh different strands of discourse,we need not assign to Lincoln’s images theequal weights assumed by Peterson and othersinvestigators.

Popular beliefs about Abraham Lincolnreflect the content of texts and commemora-tive symbols, but popular beliefs reinterprettexts and reinvigorate symbols. As we arguelater, Americans’ perception of Lincoln as aGreat Emancipator and early civil rights leaderis a social force in its own right. Evidence onindividual beliefs is no minor gloss on collec-

tive memory but essential to understanding itssubstance and function.

Because responses to survey questions canvary depending on how questions are framed, wetake more than one approach to measuring pop-ular beliefs. Our first inquiry concerns Lincolnas a president; our second, what Lincoln did andhow he acted before and after his election to thepresidency; our third, introduced at a later point,how different generations compared him toanother great president. Each inquiry elicitscomparable perceptions, regardless of differ-ences in question wording.4

PRESTIGE AND REPUTATION

Professional historians, regardless of politicalideology, consistently assign Lincoln to the topcategory of presidential prestige, along withGeorge Washington and Franklin Roosevelt(Murray and Blessing 1988; Schlesinger 1997;Lindgren and Calabresi 2000). Only in Lincoln’scase, however, does public opinion follow pro-fessional opinion. In 1999 we replicated aGallup question, “Which three United Statespresidents do you regard as the greatest?”5 byincluding it in a 1999 National OmnibusRandom Digit Dial telephone survey (N =1,001) carried out by the University of MarylandSurvey Research Center. Lincoln was namedmost often, by 45 percent of the sample.Kennedy was second (35%), and the otherrunners-up were Reagan (29%), Washington(28%), Franklin Roosevelt (27%), and Clinton(24%). The naming of other presidents thendrops off sharply, with Truman next at 12%.6

Our next step was to assess the primary con-tent of Lincoln’s reputation. Merrill Petersondescribes five reputational genres—Savior ofthe Union, Great Emancipator, Man of thePeople, First American, and Self-made Man—that have endured since Lincoln’s death, but



4 The principle of reading open-ended discourse inthe context of prevailing symbolic forms can be cen-tral to survey analysis in ways similar to its role inethnography and depth interviews (Schuman 2003).

5 Gallup conducted these national surveys inJanuary 1956, November 1975, June 1985, andDecember 1991.

6 Percentages exclude “don’t know” responses andnonresponses.


since he never ranks them, their equal relevancemust be assumed. To test this null hypothesis,we divided the Maryland sample into those whonamed Lincoln a great president and those whodid not, then asked the former, “Why do youthink Abraham Lincoln was one of America’sthree greatest presidents?” To those who didnot name Lincoln a great president, interview-ers asked a parallel question: “Although youdid not mention Abraham Lincoln as one of thethree greatest presidents, we would like to knowwhat comes to mind when you think of AbrahamLincoln.” Both questions included nondirectivefollow-up probes (“Can you say a little moreabout that?”) to encourage fuller replies. Beforecombining the two sets of very similar respons-es,7 we coded up to two responses to the origi-nal questions and up to two to the follow–upprobes, with 40 percent of the respondents pro-viding more than one distinguishable type ofresponse.

In a second survey, carried out by KnowledgeNetworks (N = 1,005) between July 13 and July17, 2001, we used a different question to de-termine what Americans think about Lincoln:“Suppose a nephew or niece about 12 years oldhad just heard some mention of AbrahamLincoln and asked you to explain what AbrahamLincoln had done. What would you say?” Thisquestion is especially appropriate for investi-gating collective memory since it focuses onwhat adults recall as most important aboutLincoln to communicate to a younger genera-tion. We coded up to three themes for eachrespondent.

In sum, respondents answered open ques-tions, expressed their beliefs about Lincoln intheir own words, and we subsequently codedtheir responses into the categories shown inTable 1. The two surveys—referred to as the

Maryland and Knowledge surveys—were dif-ferent in the questions they asked, one focusingon the man and the other on what he had done(and the Maryland survey used two slightly dif-ferent questions depending on whether Lincolnwas initially named or not named as great); intheir modes of administration (telephone vs.Internet); in their sample response rates andlikely sources of sample bias; in their dates;and in the organizations administering them(see Appendix A on ASR online supplement,http://www.asanet.org/journals/asr/2005/toc044.html). These differences in question form andsampling could be expected to produce somedifferences in results, but we found importantconsistencies.

Our initial categories were designed to fitthe five Peterson themes listed previously, butwe included additional categories to accom-modate other reasons that appeared in a pre-liminary subsample of responses. The “FirstMentions” columns in Table 1 report the initialresponses given in each survey. Since suchanswers are mutually exclusive, they total 100percent when the miscellaneous “Other PositiveBeliefs” are included. The “Any Mentions”columns allow for coding multiple responsesgiven to a question and thus use all the answers;they are not mutually exclusive because arespondent may have mentioned several codablethemes. The two types of coding yield similarpatterns, not surprising since the bulk of the“Any Mentions” are “First Mentions.” We focuson “Any Mentions” in our following discus-sion.

EPIC THEMES

Peterson’s five Lincolns, understood throughcommon educational experience, constitute“social types” (Schutz 1970:116–22; see alsoKlapp 1962; Berger and Luckmann1967:33–34). The validity of these types is notour problem, but before conducting our sur-veys we could not help but suspect that the firsttype, “Savior of the Union,” would be men-tioned most often. Without Union victory therecould be no Emancipation and few would careabout Lincoln’s personal background.Respondents’ phrasing varied. Some said thatLincoln saved the Union by preventing its dis-integration: “His sole purpose was to preservethe Union;” “He was the only man that held the



7 We merged Maryland responses of those who hadnamed Lincoln a great president and those who hadnot. There were few differences between the two dis-tributions, though those not naming Lincoln “great”were more apt to say “don’t know” when asked tospeak further about him (11% vs. 3% of those call-ing him great), and all negative responses reportedcome from such respondents. Those not namingLincoln great were also less likely to give a Unionresponse, though equally likely to mentionEmancipation.


country together.” Others believe that Lincolnrestored a Union that had already disintegrated:“He united a broken country;” “He brought thedivided nation back together again.” These areaspects of what we call “saving the Union.” Yet,only 6.6 percent and 14.2 percent of ourMaryland and Knowledge samples mentionedLincoln as Savior of the Union.

The single most frequent explanation ofLincoln’s greatness—46.1 percent in theMaryland survey and 66.3 percent in theKnowledge survey—was “Great Emancipator.”The most common statement is the simplest:“He freed the slaves,” but there are variants,from “Slavery was wrong; he got rid of it” and“He fought for the slaves” to “He stuck out hisneck to free the slaves.”

Coding “Emancipator” responses wasstraightforward, but many respondents gaveanswers that went well beyond Emancipation,and these seemed to call for a separate code,which we labeled “Equal Rights.” These respon-dents—11.4 percent and 8.6 percent in theMaryland and Knowledge surveys respective-ly—described Lincoln as a prophet of the con-temporary ideal of racial equality, althoughevidence that Lincoln embraced such an idealis weak, and there is considerable evidence tothe contrary (Sinkler 1971; Fredrickson 1975).Typical responses in this category include “Hewas somewhat the father of equal rights”; “He

tried to ban racism.” In some cases this meantthe achievement of a universalistic value: “Hefought for civil rights, human rights;” “He real-ized it wasn’t the color of the skin that mattered.”In other cases, it meant a particularistic value:“He gave equal rights to minorities, specifical-ly the African Americans”; “He addressed blackcivil rights.” Furthermore, if we consider both“Emancipation” and “Equal Rights” responsestogether, fully 57.5 percent of the Marylandsurvey respondents and 74.9 percent of theKnowledge Network respondents gave one orboth as a reason for Lincoln’s greatness.

That “Emancipation,” including or excludingthe “Equal Rights” response, ranks so highly inboth the Maryland and Knowledge Networksurveys suggests that the wording of the ques-tion (emphasizing greatness in the former andhow Lincoln acted in the latter) played a minorrole in producing the result. Also, question-wording cannot explain the great differencesbetween “Union” and “Emancipation” respons-es within each survey.

We found and coded one other Lincoln attrib-ute commonly linked to epic achievement: pres-idential “leadership.” In a few cases, thisattribute referred to the restoring of the Union,but its stress was on Lincoln’s leadership skills.“He led the country through difficult times,”remarked one of our respondents. “He under-stood the big picture,” said another. “He had to



Table 1. Major Attributions to Lincoln in Two Surveys

Maryland Survey Knowledge Survey

1st Mention Any Mentiona 1st Mention Any Mentionb

N % N % N % N %

Peterson Categories—1a. Great Emancipator 259 31.8 375 46.1 384 43.9 578 66.3—1b. Equal Rights 051 06.3 93 11.4 33 03.7 75 08.6—2. Savior of the Union 026 03.2 54 06.6 72 08.3 124 14.2—3. Folk Themes 016 01.9 39 04.8 22 02.5 36 04.1Additional Categories—4. Moral Traits 091 11.1 156 19.2 39 04.5 89 10.2—5. Leadership 048 05.9 79 09.7 47 05.4 89 10.2—6. Negative Beliefs 017 02.1 29 03.5 25 02.9 37 04.2—7. Other Positive Beliefs 307 37.7 .— .— 251 28.8 .— .—N 814 100 873 100

Note: The “Don’t Know” category contained 132 responses in the Knowledge Survey and 65 cases in theMaryland survey.a The base N for each percentage in the Maryland survey is 814; in addition, 122 respondents who could notname any president as great were not asked an open question about Lincoln.b The base N for each percentage in the Knowledge survey is 873.


deal with the worst war the world has ever had.”His “vision and knowledge” won the war.Almost 10 percent of the respondents in both theMaryland and Knowledge surveys attributedthese qualities to Lincoln. “Leadership” is pos-itively associated with “Savior of the Union” inboth the Maryland and Knowledge surveys (r= .12 and .10 respectively, each with p < .001),but negatively with the “Great Emancipator” inthe Maryland survey (–.13) and essentially zeroin the Knowledge survey. If the “Leadership”and “Savior of the Union” categories are com-bined, then the totals for the Maryland andKnowledge samples would be 16.3 percent and24.4 percent, but the percentage in both samplesmentioning the “Great Emancipator” would stillbe more than twice as great.

FOLK THEMES

Lincoln’s earthiness has led some Americansto see his presidential greatness in terms oftraits he shared with the common people. Theirresponses reflect the biography and com-memorative symbolism of (1) “Man of thePeople”: “He was a common person”; “Heunderstood the people and he was not a richman. He was poor”; “He was solid down toearth”; (2) “First American”: “He grew up ina log cabin”; “He would write with charcoal onthe floor”; (3) “Self–made Man”: “He wasself-taught”; “He came from the log cabin tothe presidency.”

Few people answered our survey questionsabout Lincoln in these terms. If we combine thethree sets of answers into a single categorycalled “Folk Themes,”only 4.8 percent of theMaryland respondents and 4.1 percent of theKnowledge respondents, as Table 1 shows, fallinto it. Perhaps many respondents do think ofLincoln in these terms but do not see them asreasons for “greatness,” even when encouragedto give multiple responses. If this were so, how-ever, we would obtain a higher percentage offolk respondents in the Knowledge Survey,which asks the respondent to indicate whatLincoln had done, than in the Maryland survey,which asks why Lincoln was great. This was notthe case. Edwin Markham’s early-twentieth-century observation that “[t]he color of theground was in him, the red earth; The smack andtang of elemental things” ([1911] 1970:14) may

well have been more meaningful to earlier gen-erations than to ours.8

MORAL CHARACTER

Another aspect of Lincoln’s reputation is basedon integrity, kindness, gentleness, forgiveness,and courage (which may be no less relevant tourban than to frontier life). Five types of moralattribution appeared among our responses: (1)honesty, (2) compassion, (3) bravery, (4) reli-giosity, and (5) other moral qualities, includingfairness, virtuousness, and strong convictions.These five attributions are infrequent whentaken individually, but at least one of the five ismentioned by 19.2 percent of the Marylandrespondents and 10.2 percent of the Knowledgerespondents, making them as a group secondonly to “Emancipation” as a source of Lincoln’shistorical identity. They are not, however, con-sidered a major theme by Peterson.

The last category in Table 1, “Other PositiveBeliefs,” includes a wide range of responses, themost common of which are ambiguous phras-es including “Civil War,” “one of our great pres-idents,” “decent man,” “great man,” “didimportant things.” Other responses concernedphysical appearance, assassination/martyrdom,visual images (statues, painting, penny), mon-uments, school lessons, Gettysburg Address,and a few that were wrong but positive, forexample, “Father of our country.”9

In contrast to the volume of positive beliefsabout Lincoln, 3.5 percent of the Marylandrespondents (entirely from those who had notnamed Lincoln “great”) and 4.2 percent of theKnowledge Network respondents expressednegative beliefs about his dishonesty, supposedextra–marital sex, indifference to slavery, and



8 On this and all following pages, the meaning of“generation” follows Mannheim’s conception: “Thefact of belonging to the same generation or age grouphave this in common, that both endow the individu-als sharing in them with a common location in thesocial and historical process, and thereby limit themto a specific range of potential experience, predis-posing them for a certain characteristic mode ofthought and experience” ([1928] 1952:291).

9 Since we did not intend to discuss the “OtherPositive Responses,” we collapsed them into a singlecategory. Analysis of this category would be mean-ingless because it contains disparate items.


the meaninglessness of his EmancipationProclamation.

Within every subgroup of age, education,region, gender, and race, “Great Emancipator”is named most often; “Moral Traits” are nextmost often named; “Folk Themes,” the least so.(For analysis of subgroup differences in per-ception of Lincoln, see Appendix B on ASRonline supplement). This finding, however, isunique to our time. Understanding the processthat now makes the Emancipator image themost popular requires an across-time compar-ison.

HISTORICAL PERIOD

The Maryland and Knowledge Network datareflect the experience of Americans at onepoint in time, but historical beliefs change astime passes. Without data from an earlier peri-od we cannot be certain whether the “GreatEmancipator” is more prominent now thanbefore. Since the Maryland and KnowledgeNetwork surveys were administered at a timewhen minority rights were foremost in thepublic’s mind, we want to know whether sim-ilar results obtain from surveys administeredat a time when racial justice and minority rightswere not major public issues.

Respondents from Gallup’s wartime surveyof January, 1945, a period of intense fightingin Europe and Asia, and from the NationalEmployee Survey carried out shortly afterSeptember 11, 2001, provide us with a meansof comparison.10 By eliminating non–employ-ees from the Gallup survey, we produced twoclosely matching samples with no retirees,full-time housewives, or unemployed. Whenwe compared findings in the matched sampleto the full Gallup sample, however, the differ-ences were insignificant and, in fact, almostidentical. (See Appendix E on ASR online sup-plement for comparison of matched and fullGallup samples.) To the 2001 NationalEmployee Survey we attached the two ques-tions posed by Gallup’s 1945 interviewers:“Who do you think was the greater man,

George Washington or Abraham Lincoln?”and “Why?” We also coded the EmployeeSurvey reasons for ranking Lincoln aboveWashington into categories comparable tothose reported by Gallup. (For verbatimdescription of the Gallup and Employee Surveyresponse codes, see Appendix C on ASR onlinesupplement.)

When the Gallup Poll asked the 1945 sam-ple “Who was the greater president: GeorgeWashington or Abraham Lincoln?” 42 percentof the respondents named Lincoln. In 2001, 51percent of the Employee Survey respondentsnamed Lincoln—an increase of 9 percent. In1945, 22.7 percent named Washington; in2001, 21.3 percent. The percentage namingboth equal in 1945 and 2001 were 27.2 and20.8% (Chi–square, df = 2, p < .01). SinceLincoln and Washington have long symbol-ized the ideals of equality and liberty respec-tively (Karsten 1978; Cunliffe 1988; Zelinsky1988), the increase in Lincoln’s prestige rela-tive to Washington’s suggests an expansion ofegalitarianism relative to libertarianism inAmerican society.11

Between 1945 and 2001, Americans gavedifferent reasons for their rankings, and theseenable us to compare by period the relevanceof Merrill Peterson’s five Lincolns. The 1945survey allowed for one response per individ-ual, which we compared to 2001 “FirstMentions” only. (For a comparable table show-ing Employee Survey “Any mentions,” seeAppendix D on ASR online supplement). Liketheir 1999 Maryland and 2001 KnowledgeNetwork counterparts, the 2001 NationalEmployee Survey’s respondents named Lincolnthe “Great Emancipator” (31.0%) more oftenthan “Savior of the Union” (4.8%), and anoth-



10 The National Employee Survey, conducted byPaul Roman, University of Georgia, is the third in aseries of surveys dealing with workplace experiencesand problems.

11 The greater percentage of Lincoln mentions in2001 compared to 1945 appears in all demograph-ic categories, but mostly in the South and West andamong whites generally. In the South, the percent-age choosing Lincoln over Washington increasedfrom 30 % in 1945 to 47% in 2001. In the West, thecomparable figures are 47% and 62%. Thus, theSouth is just below the national average of 51%; theWest, far above that average. In both 1945 and 2001,51% of African Americans chose Lincoln overWashington. In 1945, 41% of whites chose Lincoln;in 2001, 50%.


er 5.9% mentioned “Equal Rights” (See Table2, note a). Thus, based on a third sample of con-temporary Americans and still different ques-tions about Lincoln, the Employee Surveyfindings provide further evidence of the culturalpower of the “Great Emancipator.”

The 1945 Gallup survey coded “Union” and“Emancipation” responses into a single category(possibly because the practical connection ofUnion and emancipation was clearer in thecoders’ minds than in ours). To make theEmployee Survey comparable to Gallup’s wehad to combine “Great Emancipator” and“Savior of the Union” responses into a singlecategory also. Into this combined category fell26.1 percent of the earlier Gallup respondentsand 41.7 percent of the Employee Surveyrespondents (Table 2). Even if the 26.1 percentfalling into Gallup’s category contained only“Emancipator” mentions, there would still befewer such mentions in 1945 than in 2001 (p <.01), when 31 percent named Lincoln the GreatEmancipator. When we include the “RacialEquality” responses in the 2001 “Emancipation”category (the only category in which they couldpossibly fit in 1945), the “Great Emancipator”figure becomes 36.9 percent (Table 2, note a).If the ratio of “Emancipation” to “Union”responses was the same in 1945 as in 2001,“Emancipation” would have contributed 22 per-cent to the 1945 total of 26.1. If the ratio of

“Emancipation” to “Union” responses waslower in 1945, which, as the next section willshow, is most probable, the direction of the1945/2001 difference would be even more pro-nounced.

From 1945 to the present, the substance ofLincoln’s reputation changed in other, equallyimportant, ways. In the 1999 Maryland and2001 Knowledge Network samples, few sawLincoln as a folk hero. The 2001 EmployeeSurvey results displayed in Table 2 also showfew “Folk Theme” mentions: only 3.1 percentidentified Lincoln as a “Self-Made Man” and4.4 percent, as a “Common Man and People’sPresident,” comparable to Peterson’s “Man ofthe People.” In 1945, however, 23.3 percent sawLincoln as a “Self–Made Man” and 26.3 percentidentified him as a “Common Man and People’sPresident.”12 These differences, which appear inall categories of age, education, region, gender,



Table 2. Reasons for Designating Abraham Lincoln Greater than George Washington: 1945 Gallup Poll Surveyand 2001 NES

1945 Gallup Poll (%) 2001 NES (%)(N = 906) (N = 1,378)

1. Emancipator, Savior of the Union a 26.1 41.72. Common Man, People’s President 26.3 4.43. Self-made Man 23.3 3.14. Honesty 1.7 2.05. Greater Statesman 2.1 11.86. Greater Problems 7.4 8.47. Greater Communicator 2.1 1.28. Washington’s Shortcomings 1.0 1.49. Miscellaneous 10.0 26.0Total 100.0 100.0

Notes: The 1945 percentages are based on an N of 906, which excludes 23 nonresponses. The 2001 percentagesare based on an N of 1,378, with 104 nonresponses and 45 uninterpretable responses excluded. The numbers ineach column add to 100% because the Gallup survey allows for one response; the NES results are calculated onfirst response only. See Appendix C for the codes included under the NES “Miscellaneous” category. The Gallup“Miscellaneous” codes are unknown. NES = National Employee Survey.a In the 2001 NES, this category consisted of three separately coded components: Saving the Union = 4.8%;Emancipation = 31.0%; Equal Rights = 5.9%.

12 Appendix C (on ASR online supplement) showsclose correspondence between the coding instructionsfor the 1945 and 2001 categories; but there is oneexception. We cannot be certain that the content ofour NES 2001 “Leadership” category corresponds toGallup’s undefined 1945 “Greater Statesman” cate-gory. The first, second, third, and fifth row differencesreported in Table 2, assessed by difference of pro-portions tests, are significant beyond the .01 level.


and race, correspond to differences in experi-ence. Almost all Gallup’s 1945 respondentswere born before 1925, when more than half ofAmerica’s population resided in non-urbanplaces and more than 25 percent of the laborforce was agricultural (U.S. Bureau of theCensus 1975:11; 1990:17). One-third of thispopulation was born and reared in the early JimCrow era (the end of the nineteenth century);most of the rest were their children. Gallup’swhite 45 year-olds, born in 1900, can be thoughtof as having participated in the segregated 1909Lincoln Centennial celebrations, learned aboutLincoln from Ida Tarbell’s populist biographies,admired Lincoln’s freeing the slaves withoutever associating Emancipation with racial equal-ity and, as 22 year-olds, cheered when PresidentHarding dedicated the Lincoln Memorialexpressly to North–South—not white–black—reconciliation.

Reared in a society still suffused with thevalues of the farm and small town, livingthrough a severe, decade-long depression and aWorld War, people in 1945 saw in Lincoln amultidimensional man—a Savior of the Unionand, yes, paternalistic Emancipator, but evenmore a compassionate Man of the People andSelf-Made Man. The 1945 Gallup Poll thus cap-tured the Lincoln of 1930s film, poetry, statu-ary, and biography (Schwartz 2005)—all ofwhich portrayed a man of gentleness and tough-ness, a common man performing epic deeds.

Present perceptions of Lincoln asEmancipator and Champion of Racial Justicediffer from those of 1945, but when did thetransformation begin? Do data on individualbeliefs answer this question differently fromdata drawn from historical and commemora-tive archives? How did new understandingsabout America’s minorities affect new ways ofseeing Lincoln?

CIVIL WAR, CCIVIL RIGHTS, AND THE FIVE

LINCOLNS

Three surveys—Maryland, KnowledgeNetwork, and National Employee—present aman whose greatest achievement was not somuch to make the nation stronger as to redeemits sins and protect the weakest of its citizens.In America, white racial attitudes began turningpositive after World War II (Frederickson 2002;Schuman, Steeh, Bobo, and Krysan 1997), and

this shift aided public acceptance of changes ini-tiated by the courts, the government, and evensuch private organizations as baseball teams.Late twentieth-century minority rights revolu-tions (Skrentny 2002) and race pride move-ments (Rhea 1997) accelerated these trends.Don Fehrenbacher (1968) was among the firstto observe the civil rights movement drawingscholarly attention to slavery, but he had noidea how intense this new focus would become.From the New York Times Index we recorded thenumber of slavery entries (relating to America)for the first year of each decade from 1910to1980. Never more than two articles aboutslavery appear. The production of slavery arti-cles rose abruptly, however, from four in 1990and 1992, to 28 in 1998, 61 in 2000, and 80 in2001. Similar trends appear in both Reader’sGuide to Periodical Literature and AmericanBook Publishing Record.13

Rising interest in slavery corresponds to his-torians’ reinterpretation of the Civil War. Duringthe 1920s and 1930s, leading historians believedthe Civil War resulted from extremist agitationin the North and South, that Emancipation failedto affect the lives of the black masses, that thewar’s horrendous costs could never be justi-f ied.14 Contemporary historians are moreinclined to consider the war inevitable andmorally just, to sympathize with abolitionistsand Radical Republicans, to judge Emancipationand Reconstruction more important than North-South reconciliation, and to include extrem-



13 In the Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature,the average annual number of articles on Americanslavery, sampled at ten–year intervals, was 7.0between 1900 and 1990. After 1990, the averageincreased to 24.8. The trend’s spike of 65 articlesoccurs in 1998. The American Book PublishingRecord’s trend, sampled at two–year intervals, is lessdistinctive but in the same direction: in the 1980s anannual mean of 32.2 books was published; from1990 to 1997, the mean was 35.2. From 1998 to2001 the annual average rose to 51.3 books. Slaverypublications increase during the late 1990s and early2000s.

14 Reflecting their generation’s disillusionmentwith World War I and reacting against the “nation-al” tradition of Civil War history, James G. Randall,Wesley Craven, Reinhard Luthin, Benjamin Thomas,and T. Harry Edwards, among other historians,formed the Revisionist school of Civil War history.


ists—John Brown, William Lloyd Garrison, andThaddeus Stevens—among the war’s heroes.The “Savior of the Union” and “Man of thePeople” images resonate with David Blight’s(2001) “reconciliationist memory” of the CivilWar, which assumes that decent men from theNorth and South fought gallantly for theirrespective beliefs and should respect one anoth-er’s heritage. On the other hand, the newLincoln, the “Great Emancipator,” resonateswith “emancipationist memory,” which definesthe war’s essence as a struggle for racial justice.We are now in the midst of the first great surgeof emancipationist memory.

Emancipationist memory, although reflectedin the content of history textbooks producedduring the past 25 years, is not uniquely deter-mined by historians. Textbooks, in fact, arebenchmarks indicating how far popular mem-ory, marked by survey data, can outrun changesin elite memory, marked by academic produc-tion. Both authors and readers are members ofthe same social world, but they react to it in dif-ferent ways. Our concern will be to explore thisrelationship.

Before the mid-1960s, most textbook writersdefine the saving of the Union as Lincoln’smajor goal; since then, an unprecedented num-ber of scholars believe that NorthernRepublicans supported the war to restore theUnion but gradually saw Emancipation as itsmajor purpose and justification. One of thepresent authors and a second reader reviewedcarefully 40 high school textbooks (AppendixF on ASR online supplement): three to seventexts for each decade between 1920 and 1999;two, for the year 2000.15 All books publishedduring or prior to the 1970s were sampled fromFrances Fitzgerald’s bibliography of widely usedhistory texts (1979:227–34). Those publishedafter 1980 were selected from a school of edu-cation library. The textbooks were available todifferent generations of students and indicate the

changing relevance of “Union,” “Emancipation,”and the “Folk Theme.” As such, they provide oneapproximation of the turning point in Lincoln’sreputation—the last third of the twentieth cen-tury during which the relevance of the “GreatEmancipator” began to supercede that of the“Savior of the Union,” “Man of the People,”“First American,” and “Self-Made Man.”

PREWAR TEXTBOOKS: 11920–1944

Between 1915 and 1944, when most membersof Gallup’s sample were educated, writersdescribed slavery as a moral wrong but definedEmancipation as an instrument of Union victory,never an end in itself. The rationale forEmancipation was to weaken the South’s laborforce, augment the Union’s manpower, and pre-vent European countries from recognizing theConfederacy. The narrative, centering on thestate and its salvation, is textured with picturesof military and political scenes, monuments,memorials, statues, and portraits of leading gen-erals and statesmen. Representations of slaveryare sparse. Slavery is represented as a philo-sophical rather than humanitarian evil, not somuch a source of concrete suffering as a viola-tion of the principles of free labor, sanctity ofprivate property, and individual liberty.

Almost all pre-1945 textbooks coverAbraham Lincoln’s life extensively, noting hisbeing born in poverty and reared on the frontier,and his achieving the presidency by hard work.They describe the log cabin where he was bornand his simple manner, and they show picturesof him chopping wood and reading books. CivilWar-era women, in the little space devoted tothem, appear as housewives and supportivemothers. These themes endure through the1970s, but less conspicuously after World WarII than before.

POSTWAR TEXTBOOKS: 11945 TO PRESENT

Textbook contents between 1945 and 2001 movein the same direction as changes evidenced inthe Gallup and National Employee surveys.Against the background of World War II, theCold War, Soviet condemnation of Americanracial segregation, and, above all, the growingfury of Southern black protest (1945–64), text-book writers devote more space to Emancipationbut continue to see the Union’s preservation asLincoln’s goal. In texts published after 1965,



15 For each generation of textbooks considered, i.e.,texts published between 1920 and 1944; 1945 and1964; and 1964 to present, the author and secondreader agreed on the relative emphasis of “Union” and“Emancipation.” “Emancipation” bore a utilitarian,subordinated, relation to “Union” until 1965; after1965, “Emancipation” assumed a significance equalto or greater than “Union.”


however, a widespread commitment to socialreform finds expression in reformist portrayalsof Lincoln and the Civil War. To sustain this newunderstanding, the salience of the categories of“Great Emancipator” and “Savior of the Union”had to shift. That Emancipation widened thewar’s purpose, an assertion characteristic of theearliest textbooks, is reiterated, but some promi-nent writers in the late 1960s and 1970s (includ-ing Platt and Drummond 1966; Wilder, Ludlum,and McCune 1966; Todd and Curti 1972) beganto assert that moderate Americans—not justabolitionists—perceived Emancipation as theprimary war goal rather than an instrument forwinning the war. In the 1980s, too, historianslike Melvin Schwartz and John O’Connorexplain, “People in the North had felt they werefighting to keep the Union together,” but empha-size that “[n]ow they also felt they were fight-ing to free the slaves” (1986:320). WinthropJordan, Miriam Greenblatt, and John Boweswent further: “The Emancipation Proclamationgave the Northerners the weight of a moral cru-sade and began to replace Union as the wargoal” (1985:348, see also p. 345; Sellers et al1975). In William McFeely’s (1983) words, the“uneasy relationship between black and whitepeople, rich and poor people, is what the CivilWar was about.”

During the 1990s, as slavery representationsmultiplied in the mass media and book publi-cations, the emancipation theme became evenmore prominent. The Northern population,according to Henry Bragdon, SamuelMcCuthen, and Donald Ritchie (1992), couldnever justify the war’s carnage by mere restora-tion of the Union; the EmancipationProclamation “aroused a renewed spirit in theNorth” and strengthened the will to win thewar ( Downey and Metcalf 1997:375, 461–62).Lincoln at Gettysburg “announced to the worldthat the abolition of slavery had become a majorpurpose of the Civil War.” The death of so manymen would have meaning only if the countryremained “dedicated .|.|. to the unfinished workwhich they who fought here have thus far sonobly advanced.” This unfinished work was notthe saving of the Union but “the movement tofree the slaves and an enduring commitment toracial justice” (Boyer, Todd, and Curtis1995:379–80). Since slavery was the war’s onlymoral issue, Emancipation was the cement that

held the North together (Buggey et al.1987:391).

Post-1965 texts not only reinterpret the rela-tionship between Emancipation and Union; theydiscuss it in a new context that redefines thewar’s meaning. Centering on liberation, the nar-rative is f illed with representations of theAfrican American experience. “Until the mid-sixties,” Frances Fitzgerald observes, “blackAmericans had hardly entered the textbooks atall” (1979:83). After the mid–sixties, textbookauthors make up in intensity what their forebearsignored. They name slavery an evil, define itspsychological effects, display pictures of humanneck yokes, slaves being auctioned and labor-ing in the field, runaways being captured, blackcitizens brutalized during Reconstruction. Theydiscuss black contributions to the war effortand show pictures of black soldiers individual-ly and in action against the enemy. In addition,they discuss the wartime fight in the Northagainst discrimination toward free blacks inwork, schools, and local places. They relateinformation about the Underground Railroad,depict John Brown’s martyrdom, draw liberal-ly on slave narratives, and consider the fate ofblacks after Emancipation. Lincoln’s racial atti-tudes, his concern for the well–being of eman-cipated slaves, and the accomplishments ofAfrican American leaders are common topics.Teacher guides recommend connecting thewartime situation of blacks to present civil rightsissues. During the last third of the twentiethcentury, then, textbooks reconfigure the CivilWar’s purpose by devoting more space to theexperience of slavery.

Multiculturalism and interest in minoritiesenhances emancipationist memory. Textbooks,for example, devote unprecedented attention tothe role of women. They identify white womenperforming espionage and combat roles, work-ing in factories, managing homes, farms, andplantations in their husbands’absence, and theyprovide information on black and white womenadministering medical care, nursing, teaching,mobilizing drives for reading materials, food,and other support. Irish, German, and NativeAmerican contributions are also discussed in theCivil War chapters, although more briefly thanthose of African Americans. Emphasizing “his-tory from below” is logically unrelated to thewar’s purpose, but by recognizing minorityexperience, writers make Emancipation more




plausible as a primary war goal and transformthe Civil War from a tragic to a necessary strug-gle. (For fuller discussion of late twentieth-cen-tury changes in textbook content, see Lerner etal. 1995; Sewall 2001.)

Table 3 summarizes the main axes of dif-ference between early and later Americanhistory textbooks. All textbooks describeEmancipation’s purpose, institutionalization,and function. Reading across the table’s sevenrows, these topics involve the Union’s relevancebecoming subordinated to that of slavery. Thepriority of Emancipation over Union is con-veyed by multicultural symbols replacing sym-bols of the strong state, of freed slaves replacingimages of young Lincoln as exemplifications ofequality, of a social equality champion replac-ing a folk hero. Thus, the way we think aboutLincoln, Table 3 shows, is an aspect of the waywe perceive the Civil War.

HISTORY, CCOMMEMORATION, AANDBELIEF

Differences between history texts written beforeand after World War II are considerable, buttheir variation is a matter of emphasis. If under-standing individual beliefs about Lincolndepended solely on textbook content, we would,in fact, vastly underestimate the increased sig-

nificance of Emancipation between 1945 and2001. No contemporary historian, not even themost radical, asserts that Lincoln would haveinitiated a war to free the slaves if elevenSouthern states had not seceded. In ourMaryland and Knowledge Network data, how-ever, 46 and 66 percent respectively mention theemancipation, compared to 7 and 14 percentmentioning the preservation of Union asLincoln’s greatest feat. Likewise, Lincoln the“Folk Hero” is mentioned by approximatelyone-quarter of late-twentieth-century textbooksbut by only 5 and 4 percent of the Maryland andKnowledge Network survey respondents respec-tively. In the Gallup–National Employee Surveycomparison, moreover, the “Common Man andPeople’s President” drops from 26.3 to 4.4 per-cent; the “Self-made Man,” from 23.3 to 3.1 per-cent respectively (Table 2).

When commemorative and survey trends arecompared, the problem of ignoring individualbelief becomes even more apparent. Althoughtextbooks are written annually, the productionof monumental symbolism peaks in definitedecades, then ceases. Most prominent Lincolnicons, monuments, shrines, and place nameswere dedicated before 1950; since then, theirnumber has remained steady while beliefs aboutLincoln have changed dramatically. Sincechanging beliefs are occurring against a rela-



Table 3. Characteristic Features of Civil War Chapters in American History Texts Published before and after1965

Topic

1. Purpose of War afterEmancipation Proclamation

2. Function of EmancipationProclamation

3. Key Problem4. Priority5. Illustrations and Examples

Accompanying Text

6. Representations of Equality

7. Primary Image of Lincoln

Before 1965

Save union; free slaves

Instrumental (weakensConfederacy)

Unity of statesUnion > EmancipationSymbols of strong state and domi-

nant political culture: historypaintings, statues of military andpolitical men, monuments, shrines

Pictures of young Lincoln, logcabin; accounts of Lincoln’ssocial background and ambition;vertical mobility as symbol ofequality

Epic hero (Savior of Union) andfolk hero

After 1965

Save union; free slaves

Moral (justifies war)

Institution of slaveryEmancipation > UnionMulticultural symbols:

Representations of the slaveexperience, pictures and stories ofAfrican American soldiers, politi-cal figures, women, NativeAmericans, immigrants

Freed slaves and assimilated butculturally distinct minorities assymbols of equality

Epic hero (Great Emancipator) andchampion of social equality


tively fixed commemorative backdrop, Lincolnmonuments are more likely than texts to bescreens on which new beliefs are projected.

HISTORY OF MEMORY AS A SUPPLEMENT TO

THE NEW STRUCTURAL MEMORY

Historical figures resonate with contemporaryexperience when their personalities or achieve-ments engage the presuppositions of the peopleencountering them. Since these presuppositionsare patterned by group and generational expe-rience (Griswold 1987b; Schuman and Scott1989), there is some analogy between the pres-ent analysis of collective memory, based onwhat beliefs individuals take from history booksand commemorative symbolism, and readerreaction studies, which ask individuals whatthey get from romance novels and other popu-lar books (Radway 1984, 1997) or how review-ers in different countries react to identical novels(Griswold 1987b).16 Like these readers, indi-viduals holding beliefs about Lincoln are notpassive end-links on some chain of causation;they reinforce or modify the texts and symbolsthey consume. The succession of historical per-ceptions is therefore mediated not only by pro-ducers, like authors and artists, but through theinteraction of producers and recipients. Whenanalysis of collective memory is grounded inreception, the producer’s dependence on con-sumer reaction comes more fully into view, asdoes the latter’s role in generating collectivememory’s vicissitudes. “Culture creation” and“culture-reception” are inseparable (Griswold1987a; Wertsch 2002), but we can explore thisconnection only if we know what individuals,as cultural recipients, actually believe.

Surveys assess individual beliefs as out-comes, but they cannot capture the process lead-ing to them. We can imagine teachers in 1945telling their students that Lincoln at Gettysburg

praised the soldiers who died to save democra-cy; parents at Lincoln’s Springfield home tellingtheir children, “Here lived the poor, commonman who made himself president by hard work”;tourists visiting the Lincoln Memorial gazing atits powerful references to Union. We can testhypotheses about contemporaries’ reaction tothese objects, however, by combining qualita-tive and survey methods. As Lincoln appearsagainst a changing “horizon of expectations”(Jauss 1982:3–45) based more on equality thanunity, focus groups, depth interviews, directobservations, and on–site interviews can reveala mnemonic resocialization process (Zerubavel2003) beyond the survey’s reach: teachers tellingtheir students that Lincoln at Gettysburg praisedthe soldiers who died to bring about racial jus-tice; parents waiting to enter the Lincoln hometelling their children, “Here lived the man whofreed the slaves”; tourists visiting the LincolnMemorial admiring the statue of the GreatEmancipator, ignoring its declaration of grati-tude to the Union’s Savior.

Aggregation of individual beliefs affects theenvironment from which they emerged. As thisenvironment’s horizon of expectation becomesemancipationist, it inspires and welcomes mod-ification of old structures, like the LincolnMemorial plaque that commemorates MartinLuther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech;promotes the canonization of old structures,including the placement of the long–forgottenSoldiers’ Home, where Lincoln drafted theEmancipation Proclamation, into the NationalHistorical Registry; and influences the policy ofnew organizations, including the AbrahamLincoln Bicentennial Commission, which hasadopted the premise that the EmancipationProclamation redefined the Civil War, “chang-ing it from a war for Union to a war for humanfreedom,” and has explicitly made Lincoln’sassociation with racial equality its major focus(U.S. Abraham Lincoln BicentennialCommission 2004:7, 48).

The seriousness with which any writer orartist assumes his audience’s standpoint, reflect-ed in beliefs about Lincoln arrayed in tables 1and 2, is a measure of the power of individualbeliefs to affect the media that represent them,but we would never know about the climate ofbelief to which historians and artists adapt if wefailed to assess it. The history of memory (trendsin individual belief) supplements the structure



16 Although we place aggregated survey respons-es in the context of aggregated texts and symbols, wecannot know which particular texts and symbols par-ticular individuals are apprehending. This short-coming distinguishes our method from that of readerreaction studies. We know only that texts and sym-bols (cultural objects) contextualize individual beliefs(reception), and it is from this relation that we drawinferences about causation.


of memory (textual and symbolic patterns)because the former help explain the latter’s per-sistence and change. Therefore, belief is both asource and product of Lincoln representation.

Modernizing images of Lincoln may bringthem closer to or further from reality; but sinceevery generation believes the image it entertainsof him to be the truest, the last thing its mem-bers consider is how future generations willregard him. If the Union’s permanence can betaken for granted today, future generations tak-ing racial harmony for granted might findLincoln’s racial views irrelevant to their con-cerns. When the social movements that haveformed these concerns reach completeness, asthey eventually must, the ground supportingthem will lose its resonance with life.

CONCLUSION

The New Structural Memory contributes richinsights into the workings of history and com-memoration, but it ignores the question of howindividuals think about the past. America’s fiveAbraham Lincolns—Savior of the Union, GreatEmancipator, Man of the People, FirstAmerican, and Self–Made Man—exemplifythis point. There is no way to determine from acumulative body of texts and symbols which ofthe five Lincolns is most relevant today. Onlywhen we ask individuals about Lincoln’s great-ness or what comes to mind when they think ofhim or why he was a greater president thananother do we realize the importance they placeon Emancipation and, beyond that, on his imag-ined commitment to civil rights as presentlyunderstood. If we had not compared our surveysto Gallup’s earlier evidence, we would not knowthat the one–sided imagination of Lincoln asemancipator was alien to the American mind ofthe mid–1940s, and that emancipator imagerytypifies contemporary beliefs even more than docontemporary texts and symbols.

George Homans (1964) brought individualsback into sociology (dominated in his time byfunctional theory) because he believed psy-chological dynamics drive social structures andcultural patterns. We bring individuals into col-lective memory (dominated now by structuraltheory) because they alone, as creators andrecipients, ascribe meaning to historical andcommemorative objects. In our introduction,

we posed four interrelated questions aboutmeaning’s ascription. The first question asked“How far, if at all, do individual beliefs deviatefrom historical and commemorative state-ments?” In Lincoln’s case, individuals plainlyexaggerate such statements. Textbooks affirmUnion’s importance but place far more empha-sis on Emancipation during the last third of thetwentieth century. Among the individuals wesurveyed, however, this emphasis is magnified:the “Great Emancipator” has for the most partswallowed up the “Savior of the Union” and ren-dered the “Folk Hero” marginal.

The second question was “Do historical andcommemorative statements change at the samerate and in the same direction as individualbeliefs?” Comparison of the 1945, 1999, andtwo 2001 surveys show that the importance of“Saving the Union” and “Folk Themes,” relativeto “Emancipation,” fell faster within the publicthan among history book writers. The “CommonMan and People’s President” was mentioned insurveys more than six times as often in 1945 asin 2001; the “Self-made Man,” more than fourtimes as often; the “Emancipator,” as well as wecan estimate, about half as often.

Any answer to the third question, “How andto what extent do beliefs, historical, and sym-bolic representations affect one another?” mustbe tentative. Comparing 1945 and 2001 showsthat a population believing in Lincoln as “GreatEmancipator” not only produces writers andartists who define him as such but also pro-vides these writers and artists with an appre-ciative audience. Lincoln’s memory, then, isembodied not in a succession of books andsymbols consumed passively but in a successionof books and symbols actively embraced, reject-ed, and shaped, by their consumers.

“Which aspects of late-twentieth-centuryAmerican society do [Lincoln] representationssymbolize?” was our fourth question. The pri-mary social fact of the late twentieth-century, therevolution in race relations, frames our findings.Despite continuing debate about “states’ rights,”virtually all Americans take the permanence ofUnion for granted, and Lincoln’s rescuing it isone of the last things about him that comes tomind. The Civil War makes sense today as astruggle for racial equality, and the “GreatEmancipator” explicates the meaning of thisnew interpretation, puts definite constructions


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on the events associated with it, and drives theconnotation of those events into the open wherepeople can see it and grasp it in a collective aswell as personal way. Specifically, the disad-vantage of contemporary African Americansseems more understandable as a product of slav-ery, while slavery itself seems less relevant apartfrom its legacy of affliction.

Recognition of history’s victims is one of themechanisms that has transformed Americanmemory. Revisionist historians, to take oneexample, freely describe Columbus’s crimesagainst native peoples, and Columbus Day nowgenerates protest as well as celebration. Severalnational surveys, however, show beliefs aboutColumbus to be almost uniformly positive(Schuman, Schwartz, and d’Arcy 2005, forth-coming). Revisionists have been less than suc-cessful partly because the Indians whomColumbus is perceived as having oppressed area smaller and less vivid presence than AfricanAmericans, whom Lincoln is perceived as hav-ing freed.

Through the Columbus and Lincoln casesruns a generalizable pattern. GeorgeWashington’s presidential policy toward Indianswas highly conciliatory, but today (notwith-standing Wiencek 2003) he is more distin-guished by his status as slave holder. PresidentAndrew Jackson’s atrocity against the Cherokeesis less known today than Thomas Jefferson’salleged sexual liaison with his slave; but if thetarget of Jackson’s offenses had been AfricanAmericans his reputation would also be badlytarnished. The public’s affection for FranklinRoosevelt would likewise lessen if he hadapproved the internment of African Americansrather than Asian Americans. Given Lincoln’sreputation as a friend of oppressed minorities,his remarks about the social inferiority ofAfrican Americans and Native Americans rarelyappear in textbooks and media, and they seemincongruent when they do. That his prestigewould be lower had he espoused the interests ofIndians rather than African Americans followsfrom a horizon of expectations defined by theAfrican American civil rights movement. Thisnew horizon shapes the reception of Columbus,Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, and Rooseveltas well as Lincoln.

The fading of the “Union’s Savior” and “FolkHero,” like the rise of the “Great Emancipator,”

is symptomatic of a victim-and trauma-cen-tered framework of collective memory(Eyerman 2001; Giesen 2004). In a societywhose past is more of a moral burden thansource of inspiration, where the “duty to remem-ber” applies more to atrocity than to heroicachievement (Booth 1999), the “Savior of theUnion,” standing less firmly for “accountabil-ity,” is less relevant than the “GreatEmancipator.” A prominent place no longerexists for the down-to-earth people’s presidentsitting beside a cracker barrel peeling an appleand telling jokes, nor even for the compassion-ate president brooding over casualty figuresand visiting wounded soldiers. The beneficiar-ies of this kind of humanitarianism have alwaysbeen white men. Less relevant, even, than thekindly “Man of the People” is the “Self-madeMan,” the dynamo who relies on his own willand wit to rise from log cabin to White House.When linked, these last two images, rooted inthe nineteenth-century world of the frontier andfree market, a world in which minorities weredespised, fail to inspire the best in modern lead-ers determined to bring all people together. Theindividualist ideal of hard work remains impor-tant today, but social equality is more relevant.Bill Clinton, John Edwards, and DennisKucinich have worked as hard to achieve theirstature as Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, andJoseph Lieberman, but the latter’s minority sta-tus gives their success greater moral resonancebecause it affirms the egalitarian ideal (Fordetail on the relative salience of individualismand egalitarianism, see Ellis and Wildavsky1989; Thompson, Ellis, and Wildavsky 1990).

Since preoccupation with past discrimina-tion and sympathy for the wronged are part ofthe present horizon of expectations, they affectwhat people learn when they read biographies,look upon statues, and visit shrines (Griswold1987a: 10–16). No horizon of expectation, how-ever, can be totally new, totally devoid of tradi-tion’s traces. Even now, many people think ofLincoln as did his contemporaries, for today’sLincoln, “our Lincoln,” is largely constituted bythe Lincoln of yesterday. Indeed, to assume thatchanging historical reputations are necessarilycongruent with the changing tastes and expec-tations of society eventually leads to a dilemma,for the significance of historical figures inheresprecisely in their transcending the mores of




their own time. This is why new Lincoln themeshave not entirely replaced traditional ones. Mostof our respondents associate Lincoln withEmancipation and racial justice; but the num-ber associating him with the preservation ofthe Union, identification with the common man,the frontier, and self-reliance, although small,is significant, and these themes remain availablefor exploitation (or rejection) by future gener-ations.

Given the place of reception in collectivememory, what is to be said about the NewStructural Memory? Merrill Peterson’s AbrahamLincoln in American Memory exemplifies thestructural perspective because it portrays thepast largely as material artifact. The Savior ofthe Union, Man of the People, First American,and Self-Made Man live still, and their promi-nence, as Peterson conceives it, is equivalent inprint, canvas, and stone. At the turn of thetwenty-first century, however, the image of theGreat Emancipator appears most relevant tomost Americans. Measuring belief apart fromtexts and symbols would be unnecessary if itcould be inferred from them. Since this is notalways the case, we have no choice but to bringindividual men and women into our under-standing of collective memory. Collective mem-ory does not consist of individual beliefs alone.Bringing men and women into collective mem-ory scholarship is an effort to widen, not nar-row, its scope. Collective memory, then, refersneither to history, commemoration, nor indi-vidual belief, but to the relations among them.

Barry Schwartz, Professor Emeritus of Sociology,University of Georgia, has addressed collective mem-ory issues through numerous topics, includingAmerican presidents. His book, Abraham Lincolnand the Forge of National Memory traces popularimages of Lincoln from 1865 to 1922. His second vol-ume, Abraham Lincoln at the Millennium, nearingcompletion, traces Lincoln’s images from theDepression decade through the turn of the twenty-firstcentury.

Howard Schuman is Professor and ResearchScientist Emeritus, University of Michigan. In addi-tion to long-term research on questions and answersin surveys as in life, he has drawn on survey researchand content analysis to explore collective memories,including a recent article on “Elite Revisionism andPopular Beliefs: Christopher Columbus, Hero or

Villain?” in the journal Public Opinion Quarterly(2005).

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