Abe Lincoln

Slobodkin’s Abe Lincoln is an imagined representation of the Great Emancipator as a young man. While Lincoln’s nickname was the “Rail Splitter,” this bronze sculpture portrays him as a rail builder focused on joining two fence rails. Each rail depends on the other for support and Lincoln guides them together—an apt metaphor for the reunification of North and South following the Civil War. Contemporary viewers likely resonated with this theme of unification and understood it as a plea for world peace and global unity on the eve of World War II.

The original version of Lincoln was made of plaster and stood 15-feet tall—well over twice the height of viewers. The sculpture was chosen from more than 420 submissions to represent “American Unity” at the U.S. Pavilion for the 1939 New York World’s Fair. However, the artwork was removed and destroyed shortly before the fair opened, because the fair’s commissioner disliked the modern Art Deco aesthetic and deemed the artwork “too big, too high, and most importantly, too ugly.” Slobodkin fought back in the press and rallied support from the United Artists Congress and National Sculpture Society. Eventually, the artist reached a settlement with the federal government, which commissioned him to create a smaller version of the artwork in bronze for the new Department of the Interior headquarters in Washington, D.C.