Abraham Lincoln
Milwaukee, Milwaukee County, Wisconsin
Marker Inscription
Gaetano Cecere, Sculptor 1934;Jno Williams, NY 1934;ABRAHAM LINCOLN/1809-1865/PRESIDENT/EMANCIPATOR/MARTYR;With malice toward none...and with all nations
The Story
This 1934 statue by sculptor Gaetano Cecere honors Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) as president, emancipator, and martyr, quoting the healing words of his second inaugural: "With malice toward none." Erected seventy years after his death, it reflects the enduring reverence for the leader who guided the Union through the Civil War and set emancipation in motion before his assassination. The monument stands in Milwaukee as a civic tribute to his memory.
Why it matters
Lincoln's leadership through the Civil War and his role in ending slavery make him central to the American story, and monuments like this shaped how later generations remembered him.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By 1934, when this statue was made, Abraham Lincoln had been dead for nearly seventy years, and his memory had grown into something close to civic scripture. The generation that fought the Civil War was passing, and the country was deep in the Great Depression — a time when Americans looked back to Lincoln, the leader who had held the Union together through its gravest crisis, as a source of reassurance and moral steadiness.
The 1920s and 1930s were a great age of Lincoln commemoration. The Lincoln Memorial in Washington had been dedicated only a decade earlier, and cities across the country were raising their own tributes. Placing such a monument in Milwaukee, far from the battlefields and from Lincoln's Illinois home, showed how thoroughly he had become a shared national figure, claimed by communities everywhere.
This was also a period when public sculpture flourished, often aided by Depression-era support for the arts, and skilled sculptors were at work giving American cities their civic monuments in bronze and stone.
People & events
The marker records the makers: Gaetano Cecere, the sculptor, whose name is signed to the work in 1934, along with the foundry that cast it. Cecere was a trained American sculptor of the era, and this Lincoln is his interpretation of the man — a work of art as much as an act of memory.
The statue's inscription distills Lincoln into three weighty words: President, Emancipator, Martyr. Each names a chapter. President: the man who led the nation through the Civil War from 1861 until his death. Emancipator: the leader who set the ending of slavery in motion, most famously through the Emancipation Proclamation. Martyr: the president struck down by an assassin in April 1865, just as the war was ending, his death transforming him almost at once into a secular saint of the American story.
The monument also carries the words "With malice toward none" — from Lincoln's second inaugural address, delivered weeks before his death. In that speech he called for binding up the nation's wounds and reconciling a broken country, and those words have echoed ever since as the essence of his hope for the peace.
Its place in the American story
Lincoln stands at the center of the American story because the questions he faced were the nation's deepest: whether the Union would survive, and whether it would finally reckon with slavery. His leadership through the Civil War preserved the country, and his role in advancing emancipation reshaped what that country claimed to be. His assassination sealed his place as a martyr to both causes.
Monuments like this one did more than honor him; they shaped how later generations remembered him. By casting Lincoln as President, Emancipator, and Martyr and by quoting his call for a peace "with malice toward none," the statue teaches a particular understanding of his legacy — one of union, freedom, and reconciliation — to everyone who passes it.
That a city far from Lincoln's own region raised such a tribute in the 1930s shows how completely he had become the common property of the whole nation, a figure through whom Americans everywhere understood their history.
If you visit
Take time with the sculpture as a work of art, not just a likeness. Notice how the sculptor chose to present Lincoln — his posture, his expression, the mood the bronze conveys — and consider what interpretation of the man those choices offer. A statue is an argument about its subject, made in metal.
Read the inscription slowly. "President, Emancipator, Martyr" is a compact biography, and "With malice toward none" carries the whole spirit of his hope for a reconciled country. Standing before the monument is a chance to sit with those words as more than slogans.
As a civic landmark in Milwaukee, it fits naturally into a walk through the city's public spaces and monuments. Approach it as a quiet encounter with one of the most consequential figures in American history — a reminder, placed in the heart of a northern city, of how the nation chose to remember the man who guided it through its hardest years.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Abraham Lincoln
- · Gaetano Cecere
Themes & tags
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