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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/72331
Description
Title
Abraham Lincoln and Progressive Reform, 1890-1920
Author(s)
Rice, Judith A.
Issue Date
1993
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Johannsen, Robert W.
Department of Study
History
Discipline
History
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
History, United States
Abstract
"Abraham Lincoln and Progressive reform: 1890-1920" discusses the image of Abraham Lincoln among Progressive reformers from 1890 to 1920. Rather than defining reformers by their political goals or economic status, the study highlights particular values and ideas that they held in common and shows continuity between the reform efforts of the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth-centuries.
Targeting specific reformers to show how they used the symbol to promote their ideas, the study is organized into five chapters. The first chapter examines the influence of Abraham Lincoln on progressive journalists with special emphasis on such muckrakers as S. S. McClure and Ida Tarbell. Chapter two analyzes political reformers, especially Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Chapter three deals with the Chicago settlement house work of Jane Addams and Jenkin Lloyd Jones. Chapter four is devoted to black reformers, especially Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois. Chapter five explores how literary artists such as Winston Churchill, the American novelist, and Edwin Markham used Lincoln to speak to reformers of their generation.
By refracting progressive thought through the Lincoln prism this study shows how the Lincoln image received new interpretation during the Progressive Era and illuminates a common outlook among reformers, tied to the past but expressed in their current reform efforts. The reformers, who felt they faced a crisis similar to that which led to the Civil War, used Lincoln as a symbol of strong executive leadership and democracy. The study also suggests that reformers formed a distinctive generation and as children of the Civil War era were motivated in part by a desire to continue the reforms and ideals of their forefathers.
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