[3][4] Designed and sculpted by Thomas Ball and erected in 1876, the monument depicts Abraham Lincoln holding a copy of his Emancipation Proclamation freeing an enslaved African American man modeled on Archer Alexander.

The funding drive for the monument began, according to much-publicized newspaper accounts from the era, with $5 given by former slave Charlotte Scott of Virginia, then residing with the family of her former master in Marietta, Ohio, to create a memorial honoring Lincoln.

It was briefly considered merging the original funds with the National Lincoln Memorial Association, but that mission soon failed due to conflicting visions.

The funds were collected solely from freed slaves (primarily from African American Union veterans) ...The turbulent politics of the reconstruction era affected the fundraising campaign on many levels.

The face was re-sculpted to look like Archer Alexander, a formerly enslaved man whose life story was popularized by a biography written by William Greenleaf Eliot.

The document rests on a plinth bearing patriotic symbols, including George Washington's profile, the fasces of the U.S. republic, and a shield emblazoned with the stars and stripes.

"[14] After delivering the speech, Frederick Douglass immediately wrote a letter to the editor of the National Republican newspaper in Washington, which was published five days later on April 19, 1876.

In his letter, Douglass criticized the statue's design and suggested the park could be improved by more dignified monuments of free Black people.

In many ways, it exemplified and reflected the hopes, dreams, striving, and ultimate failures of reconstruction.The monument has been criticized for its paternalistic character and for not doing justice to the role that African Americans played in their liberation.

According to historian Kirk Savage, a witness to the memorial's dedication recorded Frederick Douglass as saying that the statue "showed the Negro on his knees when a more manly attitude would have been indicative of freedom".

[16][17] In a recently uncovered letter from Douglass that appeared in the National Republican five days after the dedication, he said that the monument did not tell the "whole truth of any subject which it might be designed to illustrate".

There is room in Lincoln park for another monument, and I throw out this suggestion to the end that it may be taken up and acted upon.Jonathan White and Scott Sandage, two historians who rediscovered the letter, detailed their findings in Smithsonian Magazine in June 2020.

[27] Architect Edward Francis Searles purchased an early miniature demonstration version from Ball and brought it to Methuen, Massachusetts, where it rests in the Town Hall atrium.

[citation needed] The Chazen Museum of Art, located on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was gifted a version of the statue in white marble by Dr. Warren E. Gilson in 1976.