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Of, by & for the freedmen by Allen C. Guelzo and James Hankins
October 2020 October 2020
The Freedman's Memorial, Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C., between 1915 and 1920. Photo: Bain Collection, Library of Congress.
Features October 2020
Of, by & for the freedmen
by Allen C. Guelzo and James Hankins
On the aesthetics and history of the Freedman's Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Abraham Lincoln had scarcely been elected as the sixteenth president when the death threats began to arrive. They continued all through his presidency with such regularity that he set aside a special section of his upright desk in the White House, marked simply "Assassination," to hold them. He should have taken them more seriously. After giving a speech on April 11, 1865, proposing at the end of the Civil War that freed slaves and black Union Army veterans in Louisiana be given the vote, an enraged white supremacist promised that he would "put him through." And three nights later, that is just what that white supremacist—the actor John Wilkes Booth—did.
One hundred and fifty-five years later, some of the descendants of the people Lincoln determined to free from slavery are, by a cruel twist of logic, demanding the toppling of the bronze Freedman's Memorial (sometimes known as the Emancipation Memorial) to Lincoln in Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C. "This statue right here embodies the white supremacy and the disempowerment of black people that is forced upon us by white people," announced Glenn Foster, the founder of Free Neighborhood, at a raucous meeting held at the Memorial on June 23. Marcus Goodwin, a candidate for an at-large seat on the D.C. District Council, assembled a petition for the statue's removal with more than 5,000 signatures. And D.C.'s Congressional delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, announced in a tweet that, since Lincoln Park is National Park Service property, she was introducing legislation in Congress to move the statue because "the designers of the Emancipation Statue in Lincoln Park in DC didn't take into account the views of African Americans. . . . It shows."
But what, exactly, is the message of the Emancipation Memorial? And is it true that the views of African Americans were not taken into account by the artist and the patrons responsible for setting up the statue in 1876? The historical record suggests otherwise. The work's sculptor, Thomas Ball, was not a black man—unsurprisingly, since there were no established black sculptors in the 1860s and '70s when the monument was made.1 But the original impulse for the work came from a freedwoman, Charlotte Scott; the statue was entirely funded by the contributions of former slaves; the design of the statue was thoroughly revised in response to African-American sentiment; and the celebrations for the unveiling of the statue in 1876 were almost entirely the work of Washington D.C.'s African-American community. No work of American sculpture in the nineteenth century, in fact, was more the product of collective African-American agency than the Freedman's Memorial.
No work of American sculpture in the nineteenth century, in fact, was more the product of collective African-American agency than the Freedman's Memorial.
The creation of the statue was an unlikely intersection of two unrelated movements, both originating in the news of Lincoln's assassination. Charlotte Scott was born enslaved in Virginia sometime in 1800 and labored for the family of Dr. William Rucker in Covington, Virginia. Rucker had no objections to slaveholding, but he was a Unionist and in 1862 was forced to flee across the Ohio River to Marietta, Ohio. There, Rucker freed Scott and began paying her wages. Lincoln's assassination deeply moved her: "The colored people have lost their best friend on earth," she said: "Mr. Lincoln was our best friend, and I will give five dollars of my wages toward erecting a monument in his memory." Her five dollars went into the hands of Cornelius Durant Battelle, the pastor of the First Methodist Church in Marietta, who "received her offering and gave notice through the press that [he] would receive other donations and cheerfully do what [he] could to promote so noble an act." At the same time, Rucker also contacted Brigadier General Thomas C. H. Smith (a fellow Mariettan, but in 1865 the commandant of the Department of Missouri), asking for help in publicizing Scott's monument proposal. Smith had more than enough on his hands with the winding-down of the war, so he turned to James E. Yeatman and the resources of the Western Sanitary Commission.
Despite its name, the Western Sanitary Commission had nothing to do with sanitation. "Sanitary" was, in 1865, a catch-all term for any agency that raised civilian funds to aid Union soldiers (on the model of the modern uso). Just as important, though, was the fact that the Western Sanitary Commission had nothing to do with the far larger and more influential United States Sanitary Commission, which operated out of New York City and boasted the leadership of the Unitarian minister Henry Bellows, the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, and the lawyer and diarist George Templeton Strong. The ussc hoped to expand its own branches into the West. But New York was another universe from Missouri, and in 1861, the then-commandant of the Department of Missouri, John C. Frémont, urged the formation of an independent Western version of the Sanitary Commission, headquartered in St. Louis. Under Frémont's aegis, a Western Sanitary Commission was organized around five prominent St. Louisans: James E. Yeatman (a banker and the Commission president), John B. Johnson (a medical doctor), Carlos Greely (the Commission treasurer), George Partridge (a merchant), and the Reverend William Greenleaf Eliot, a New England transplant and the pastor of the city's first Unitarian congregation.
Like its New York rival, the wsc raised funds to build military hospitals, outfit hospital steamboats, and pay for nurses and doctors. But the leadership of the wsc, beginning with Frémont, had always had a decidedly abolitionist tinge, and by 1863, the wsc had expanded its reach to assisting refugees, establishing freedmen's schools for the newly emancipated slaves, and even organizing a Freedmen's Orphans Home in St. Louis. This was not as easy a task as it might seem: although Missouri remained loyal to the Union in the Civil War, it was also a slave state, and Lincoln's 1863 Emancipation Proclamation specifically exempted Missouri. It was not until January 1865 that a sufficiently Unionist state legislature finally moved to abolish slavery. The wsc commissioners, however, shared Frémont's original anti-slavery impulse, and no one more so than William Greenleaf Eliot. He "opposed slavery . . . on moral and religious grounds, its wrong and injustice," and was "a friend and sympathizer with the oppressed and down-trodden, doing much to alleviate their condition and to inspire a fellow-feeling in their behalf," even to the point that he "once bought a slave women to save her from ruin, and . . . set her free."
It was, in that environment, only natural for William Rucker to have written to his fellow Mariettan General Smith about Charlotte Scott's gift, and for Smith to have turned at once to Yeatman and the wsc as the perfect vehicle for raising the funds necessary to bring Scott's monument proposal to fruition. With Smith's encouragement and the understanding that "the monument is to be built by black people's money exclusively," Yeatman energetically passed the hat to black Union Army units, as those blacks most likely to have spare cash to contribute. By June, "the colored soldiers of this district . . . feeling the great obligations they are under to our late President, Mr. lincoln," had raised over $16,000.
Yeatman energetically passed the hat to black Union Army units, as those blacks most likely to have spare cash to contribute.
Although $16,000 was a colossal sum to come out of black pockets in 1865 (equivalent to about $250,000 today), there remained some uncertainty about what it could buy. One of William Greenleaf Eliot's congregation, Wayman Crow, had as a protégé one of the rising stars of American sculpture, Harriet Hosmer, and it did not take much persuading to have Hosmer lay a proposal and model before Eliot and the wsc. After devising at least two preliminary models, what Hosmer provided the commission in 1867 was a grandiose, neoclassical affair, a plaza with "four statues . . . placed at the four outer angles . . . which display the progressive stages of Liberation: 1st. The slave appears exposed in chains for sale. 2nd. Laboring on a plantation. 3rd. Guiding and assisting the loyal troops. 4th. Serving as a soldier of the Union." Lincoln would appear in four bas-reliefs around "an octagonal plinth," showing the Great Emancipator in "1st. His birth and early occupations as builder of log cabins, rail splitter, flat-boatman and farmer. 2nd. His career as a Lawyer and his inauguration as President of the United States. 3rd. Four memorable events of the war, and 4th. The assassination of the President: the funeral procession and final interment at Springfield." Hosmer was convinced that the monument would be "the most interesting and important of any of modern times." There was only one problem: the whole project was estimated, in January 1867, to cost "a quarter of a million dollars"—1865 dollars. For the time being, the freedmen's money went into the bank "at interest, and held with an indefinite hope of its enlargement."
The monument project might easily have languished there, had not William Greenleaf Eliot taken a sabbatical to Europe in 1869. Passing through Florence, he stopped at the studio of the expatriate Massachusetts sculptor Thomas Ball. Ball, a self-taught painter and sculptor as well as a fine semi-professional baritone, was part of a rising wave of young Americans who had gone to Italy in the decades before and after the Civil War to study classical and Renaissance art. Sculptors in particular needed to work in Europe, as Protestant America did not look kindly on artists who wanted to improve their knowledge of the human body by studying undraped men and women. In any case, Eliot was surprised to find that Ball had created a half-size bronze memorial to Lincoln as the Emancipator just after Lincoln's assassination. In 1865, Ball had been shaken by "the terrible news, just arrived from America," of Lincoln's murder. "I could not free my mind from the horror of it," and "began a study, half life-size," of Lincoln and an emancipated slave, "which had been bubbling in my brain ever since receiving those horrible tidings." His model in clay was not yet finished before it was "ordered in bronze by Mr. — of Boston" (Ball did not identify whom in Boston). At least four bronze copies of this early version of the Emancipation Monument survive in various American museums.2
Ball had no thought of turning his memorial into a full-sized monument until Eliot's visit. The work was too small in scale for an outdoor public monument. But, as Eliot saw, it was dedicated to "one single idea, representing the great work for the accomplishment of which Abraham Lincoln lived and died." It would also cost substantially less than Hosmer's grandiose project, and that was a consideration worth pondering if the monument were ever to see the light of day. Back in St. Louis, Eliot "spoke strongly in its praise" and distributed photographs of Ball's bronze group; it helped, too, that Ball indicated "that the price to be paid would be altogether a secondary consideration." The commissioners were persuaded, "and an order was given for its immediate execution in bronze." The new statue was not finally cast in bronze in Munich until 1874 (or 1875: the exact date of casting seems lost to time), and even then, Congress had to appropriate $3,000 further to purchase a site and a pedestal for the statue in Washington.
Seen from below, the foreshortening of the two figures makes the scale of the freedman's body appear larger than Lincoln's. His tensed leg and foot, displayed prominently to the viewer, emphasize his agency.
Despite Eliot's enthusiasm, Ball's design was accompanied by a certain touchiness from the very beginning. Ball's original bronze, dated 1865, showed a slave boy, not a man, in a passive, almost dreamlike state, which made Lincoln appear to be casting some kind of spell over him. The boy's original pose shows him resting on his haunches with his right arm drawn across his body, the open hand rubbing the left arm where it had lately been shackled. The pose was adapted from a well-known Hellenistic statue, Crouching Venus, showing Venus surprised while bathing: she screens her nakedness by turning away from the viewer and covering her breasts with her arm. Ball undoubtedly knew the Roman copy of the work acquired by the Medici and on view in the Uffizi museum. To a classically trained eye, the slave boy's posture would thus have suggested a feminine pudor, proper shame or decency. Behind the slave boy is a whipping post, a broken ball and chain, and other implements of restraint and punishment. The whipping post has been snapped off at the top, and weeds have begun to creep up around it. A cloak lies over the post as though ready to cover the nakedness of the slave boy. On his head he wears the cap of liberty, but a student of the classics would have known that such a cap was also a status marker, showing that the wearer was a libertinus, a former slave, inferior in status to a freeborn Roman citizen.
The iconography of the original bronze also has striking differences from the later Freedman's Memorial. Lincoln's right hand holds a shield with the stars and stripes embossed upon it, which rests upon four massive folio volumes. The volumes bear no titles, but are probably meant to stand for the four volumes of the Corpus iuris civilis, the compilation of Roman law that was the basis of the Western legal tradition. The Emancipation Proclamation is pinned to the stack of books by the tip of the American shield, as though to suggest that the old law of the ancient slave empire has been corrected by the virtue of the American republic.
Ball's "Emancipation Group," as he called it, was a fine piece of sculpture for college-educated American gentlemen who appreciated its classical references, but it was less suited to serve as a Freedman's Memorial. Sensitive to the possibility of offending the freedmen who had paid for the statue by representing the freed slave in a servile posture (such as the one found in a widely circulated Currier and Ives print of 1863), the commissioners decided that Ball's original figure was too boyish and passive. They insisted that Ball redesign the freedman as an older, more powerful and independent figure. To that end, William Greenleaf Eliot proposed substituting for the child-like figure a black man from St. Louis, Archer Alexander, whom Eliot had come to know in a singularly dramatic way.
Archer Alexander was born in slavery in Virginia in 1828 and moved to Missouri with his owner's son, Thomas Delaney. Delaney, in turn, sold Alexander to a farmer, James Hollman. The outbreak of the Civil War excited black hopes "that the day of freedom was at hand," and in 1863, Alexander slipped away from his work-place in a brickyard in St. Louis and blended into the turbulent racial unsettledness of the city. He was hired as a day laborer by William Greenleaf Eliot, who gradually came to suspect that Alexander was a fugitive. When Alexander admitted this, Eliot (because Missouri was not covered by the Emancipation Proclamation) offered to buy his freedom from Hollman. Angrily, Hollman refused, and even tried to have Alexander kidnapped. But Eliot obtained a "military protection" from Franklin Dick, the provost-marshal of the Department of Missouri, and Alexander remained under Eliot's eye until emancipation became a legal reality there in 1865. If there were anyone who, in Eliot's mind, could provide a realistic model of a newly freed slave, it would be Archer Alexander, and, "at the request of the Western Sanitary Commission, the active agent in collecting the funds and erecting the monument, the figure of Archer Alexander, as the representative of his race, was substituted."
The statue as eventually redesigned by Ball changed radically the way the freedman was represented. The new bronze, dated 1874, was nine feet tall, nearly three times the size of the 1865 bronze. The sculptural group sits atop a ten-foot-high granite pedestal and shows a muscular, semi-nude black male in the act of rising to his feet. Alexander the freedman is no longer passive, but rising "to break the chain that had bound him." The figure is posed at a right angle to Lincoln's standing figure, which steps back as though to make room for the rising figure. A more emphatic perpendicular posing of the two figures expresses that their actions are independent. Lincoln's left arm is held out in a welcoming gesture, as though to clasp the young man by the shoulder as he rises. Standing, the figure of Alexander would be as tall as Lincoln (who was 6'4"), forming a visual correlative to the new state of legal equality between the two men. Seen from below, the foreshortening of the two figures makes the scale of the freedman's body appear larger than Lincoln's. His tensed leg and foot, displayed prominently to the viewer, emphasize his agency. His wrists still wear the shackles that had but recently been attached to chains; his right fist is clenched, the left falls by his side in a relaxed gesture. His head is held high, and there is a determined, hopeful expression on his face.
Although Lincoln stands, he does not rule. The young man is moving upwards on his own accord, and his gaze is directed somewhere far beyond Lincoln or any cues Lincoln might be thought to be giving. In another revision to the 1865 design, Lincoln seems to stand back with one foot, as though in mingled amazement and appreciation of this new apparition, a free black man.
The iconography of the redesigned statue has also changed. In the new version, Lincoln's right hand grasps a scroll that contains the Emancipation Proclamation. The scroll Lincoln holds is partially unrolled, symbolizing the unfinished nature of the promise that it contains. It rests upon a pedestal bordered by fasces, the symbol of legitimate state power, a relief sculpture of George Washington, and thirty-six stars representing the states: twenty-five stars of the victorious Union above, eleven stars signifying the eleven states of the Confederacy below. At the base of the figural group is a single word: emancipation. (In addition to the 1865 and 1874 versions, there survives an intermediate version in marble, formerly in the possession of William Greenleaf Eliot and now in the museum of Washington University, St. Louis, the university Eliot founded. Slightly larger in scale than the 1865 bronze, the marble group represents the slave boy in a form essentially unchanged from the 1865 bronze, while the iconography of the pedestal supporting the Emancipation Proclamation is already that of the 1874 Freedman's Memorial.)
There remained for the wsc the question of where the monument should be situated, and how much it would cost to buy land and provide a pedestal, and so the wsc continued to issue circulars, solicit funds, and commission prominent black leaders like the lawyer John Mercer Langston to bring "the subject to the attention and patronage of the freed people of the South . . . especially to the consideration of any colored troops still retained in the United States service." The wsc found itself competing for funds with two other Lincoln monument projects, one in Lincoln's hometown of Springfield, Illinois, and the other sponsored by the prominent black clergyman Henry Highland Garnet, for a National Lincoln Monument in the form of an institute to educate the children of the freedpeople. "There," declared one of the National Lincoln Monument's promoters, William Howard Day, "let the riches of learning be brought, ready to be laid on the knee and in the lap of every colored child in the land."
But Garnet's project was multiracial in its backers and funding; the wsc was determined that the funding for its monument should be entirely a black affair. So it required, in the end, an act of Congress, setting aside Lincoln Park (where the Union Army's Lincoln Hospital had stood during the Civil War), eleven blocks east of the Capitol, and making a $3,000 appropriation "for a pedestal for Ball's bronze statue of Lincoln," before Ball's sculpture even had a home.3 The finished bronze Emancipation Monument was at last shipped to the United States in March 1876. In anticipation, the wsc moved to create a grand committee to oversee the dedication ceremonies, which were set for April 14, the eleventh anniversary of Lincoln's assassination. The "committee of arrangements" read like a who's who of black America. John Mercer Langston headed the committee, and it also included Frederick Douglass, P. B. S. Pinchback (the former black governor of Louisiana and future counsel for Homer Plessy in Plessy v. Ferguson), C. C. Antoine (Louisiana's lieutenant-governor), Blanche K. Bruce (a U.S. senator from Mississippi), Horace Morris (the editor of the Louisville Colored Citizen), Robert Brown Elliott (the former Congressman and speaker of the South Carolina state assembly), and fifty-six others.
Langston released the program for the dedication on March 14, calling on Congress to declare a "general holiday," announcing Frederick Douglass as the "orator" for the dedication, and inviting "the friends of impartial freedom, equal rights, and free institutions . . . to join in the interesting and appropriate exercises of the occasion. Let us all join, without distinction of party or nationality, in honoring the American martyred President and emancipator." And come they did, the Alexandria Gazette snorting on the far side of the Potomac on the eve of the dedication that "the city is swarming with negroes, decked out in holiday attire, and the ceremonies are being conducted under their auspices." By Langston's estimate, the crowds, arranged in a vast parade that marched at noon on April 14 from Seventeenth and K Streets to Lincoln Park, numbered "over a hundred thousand persons," including President Ulysses S. Grant, the Cabinet, the Supreme Court, the U.S. Marine Band, and "nearly all of the colored organizations in the city."
The program began with an invocation from Bishop John M. Brown of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, followed by a reading of the Emancipation Proclamation and a short speech by Yeatman briefly reviewing the history of the monument. Langston then stood to offer official thanks to the wsc and was ready to pull the drapery that concealed the monument when, on a sudden impulse and "moved by a deep sense of the fitness of such action," he turned to Grant and invited him to "manipulate the cord," which "would cause the fall of the drapery." Grant stepped forward and "by touching the cord . . . unveiled the monument, consisting of a bronze group of figures of colossal size, which at once produced a grand and enthusiastic outburst of appreciation and applause." Cannons went off, the Marine Band played Hail to the Chief, and "the popular demonstrations continued repeating themselves for many minutes" as "the people burst into spontaneous applause and exclamations of admiration." The monument, reported the Washington National Republican, shows
the martyred President . . . standing beside a monolith, upon which is a bust of Washington in bas relief. In his right hand he holds the proclamation, while his left is stretched over a slave, upon whom his eyes are bent, and from whose limbs the shackles have just burst. The figure of the slave is that of a man worn by toil, with muscles hardened and rigid. He is represented as just rising from the earth, while his face is lighted with joy as he anticipates the full manhood of freedom.
One person who seemed more muted in his enthusiasm was Frederick Douglass, and the oration he delivered showed it. Douglass had frequently been critical of Lincoln in the first years of the Civil War, chafing at Lincoln's apparent unwillingness to press at once for emancipation. That began to change after 1863, and especially after Lincoln invited Douglass to the White House for consultation on how to speed up the emancipation of slaves still penned-in behind Confederate lines. By 1865, Douglass was describing Lincoln as "emphatically the black man's president"; that September he sharply condemned Henry Highland Garnet's rival institute project, and spoke of a Lincoln monument as an expression of "one of the holiest sentiments of the human heart." But in the intervening years of Reconstruction, much had gone sour in the promise of emancipation. Douglass's newspaper, the New National Era, went bankrupt in 1874, along with the Freedman's Bank that he had tried to save, and he had developed a deep and protracted quarrel with Langston—and many of the members of Langston's committee—on issues that ran from the failure of the Bank to Langston's hesitation at endorsing Grant's re-election in 1872.
Now, at the dedication ceremonies, Douglass did not tremble at politely roiling Langston's carefully orchestrated celebration. "I warmly congratulate you upon the highly interesting object which has caused you to assemble in such numbers and spirit as you have today," Douglass began. But his hearers should understand that "Abraham Lincoln was not, in the fullest sense of the word, either our man or our model." Quite otherwise: "In his interests, in his associations, in his habits of thought, and in his prejudices, he was a white man" and was "pre-eminently the white man's President, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men." Black people "were not the special objects of his consideration." They were, at best, "his step-children: children by adoption, children by force of circumstances and necessity." Nor was Lincoln necessarily the paladin of abolition. "Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent."
It has been easy, over the years, to fix on these words as a rebuke from Douglass to any blacks who adored Lincoln or who thought the Ball statue an adequate depiction of the real relationship of white and black in emancipation. But those who do so forget that Douglass had grievances of his own with Langston et al., and that Douglass was, unlike Langston and his committee, a preacher. Although most of Douglass's career had been that of a secular lecturer and writer, his original molding as a public speaker was among the Methodists, and the imprint of the preacher remained with him throughout his life. He would, therefore, begin by laying out sinfulness and shortcoming, in the style of the jeremiad, but only to better contrast it by showing the path to redemption and the joy of deliverance. And this is the rhetorical strategy he followed at the Ball statue dedication. Looked at "in the light of the stern logic of great events," Douglass continued, "we came to the conclusion that the hour and the man of our redemption had somehow met in the person of Abraham Lincoln." True as it was that Lincoln "shared the prejudices of his white fellow-countrymen against the negro," Lincoln nevertheless "in his heart of hearts . . . loathed and hated slavery." And if he seemed slack by the measurement of abolitionists, "measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined." And for that alone, Douglass declared, working to his climax, "he is doubly dear to us, and his memory will be precious forever."
And yet the touchiness about the Ball statue remained. In 1903, the art critic Lorado Taft complimented the Emancipation Memorial as a "lofty" presentation of Lincoln and "one of the inspired works of American sculpture." But even Taft admitted that "its surface lacks vivacity of technic," and suffers from a "monotony of texture." Other critics were less sparing. In 1916, the black intellectual Freeman H. M. Murray wrote scathingly that the kneeling figure showed "little if any conception of the dignity and power of his own manhood":
The group as a whole is an unsatisfactory representation. . . . The sculptor has given to the figures in this group attitudes and expressions which are too strongly suggestive of the conventional representations of Jesus and the Magdalene. In fact, Ball has come perilously near to making Mr. Lincoln appear to be saying: "Go, and sin no more," or, "Thy sins be forgiven thee."
In 1892, a Boston newspaper cruelly mocked the statue as an image of a shoe-shine boy, "blackening Lincoln's boots." Even Frederick Douglass took issue, five days after the dedication ceremonies, with the absence of a figure representing Grant, and with the figure of Archer Alexander, who, "though rising, is still on his knees and nude." He should have been "not couchant on his knees like a four-footed animal, but erect on his feet like a man."
More recent critics have inverted the entire purpose of the statue, as a monument not to emancipation, but to the continued subordination of black Americans to white supremacy. In his 2018 study, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America, the art historian Kirk Savage echoed that sentiment. In Savage's view, "Ball's emancipated man is the very archetype of slavery: he is stripped, literally and figuratively, bereft of personal agency, social position, and accouterments of culture. . . . the monument is not really about emancipation but about its opposite—domination."
If so, then, it is puzzling why no one in that crowd of thousands on April 14, 1876, saw such demonic messages in the Ball statue. James E. Yeatman thought that, once the figure of Archer Alexander had been substituted in the Emancipation Memorial, it was clear that Ball had made "the emancipated slave an agent in his own deliverance . . . exerting his own strength with strained muscles in breaking the chain that had bound him." John Mercer Langston, standing with Yeatman, thought that "all rejoiced together in the wildest, most unmeasured enthusiasm." William Greenleaf Eliot thought the statue showed Archer Alexander grasping "the chain as if in the act of breaking it," thereby showing that "the slaves took active part in their own deliverance." Even Archer Alexander applauded the statue: he "thank[ed] the good Lord" for delivering him "from all [his] troubles, and [that he] lived to see this." (What irked Eliot in later years was the top-lofty attitude of those who stood "at a safe distance" from the conflict over slavery and then afterwards "severely censured . . . those who worked with faithful and self-denying energy . . . for their 'temporizing, time-serving policy.' ")
In Nikole Hannah-Jones's "1619 Project," Lincoln's name appears only in an accusation that he regarded blacks as a "troublesome presence" and promoted forced colonization of freed slaves.
But we live in times of Afro-pessimism, in which the testimony of Eliot, Alexander, Langston, Ball, Yeatman and the others that day in Lincoln Park has little or no weight, and in which Lincoln can only appear as an avatar of oppression, and Archer Alexander only as a dispirited victim. In Nikole Hannah-Jones's "1619 Project," Lincoln's name appears only in an accusation that he regarded blacks as a "troublesome presence" and promoted forced colonization of freed slaves. In Hannah-Jones's recent New York Times Magazine essay demanding reparations for slavery, "slavery's demise" occurs in the passive voice, as though Lincoln, the Union Army, and the Civil War had never happened.
But the war did happen. It cost, by the most recent estimates, 365,000 Union lives and $13 billion (that's $13 billion in 1865 dollars), until, as Lincoln said in his second inaugural address, every drop of blood drawn by the lash had been paid for by those drawn by the sword. To fling that away is to pretend that the deaths of the modern equivalent of over three million Americans meant nothing, that racism is a permanent feature of American life, that the evil eye can never wither. Worse still, to attack the Emancipation Memorial is more than a criticism, rightly or wrongly, of Lincoln as the Great Emancipator. It suggests that there can never be mutuality of purpose, that all human relationships must be calibrated in terms of power and suspicion. The Ball statue is, ironically, a monument to black agency; even more, it is a monument to the mutual agency of black and white together in the search for human flourishing and an end to the great evil of "property in men."
Even Frederick Douglass had second thoughts about his description of Lincoln that day in 1876. Ten years later he wrote that "In all my interviews with Mr. Lincoln I was impressed with his entire freedom from popular prejudice against the colored race," that Lincoln "was the first great man that I talked with in the United States freely, who in no single instance reminded me of the difference between himself and myself, of the difference of color." Tear the statue down and we have testified, in art and in society, that we now believe that we live only as creatures of blood and impulse, slaves to the past, not free men and women.
1 Edmonia Lewis (1844–1907), of mixed African-American and Native American descent, was the first professional black sculptor. Her career was just beginning when the Emancipation Memorial was being planned.
2 The Harvard Art Museums; the University of Michigan Museum of Art; the Colby College Museum of Art; and the Art Museum of Montclair, New Jersey, the town where Ball died in 1911 at the age of ninety-two.
3 This would not even be the first Lincoln statue in Washington; that prize was claimed by Lot Flannery (1836–1922), who was at Ford's Theatre the night of Lincoln's assassination and whose 1868 memorial statue was installed on a forty-foot pedestal outside the D.C. city hall.
Allen C. Guelzo is Senior Research Scholar, Council of the Humanities, Princeton University.
James Hankins is a Professor of History at Harvard University. His book, Virtue Politics: Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy, was published by the Belknap Press of Harvard University in November 2019.
https://newcriterion.com/issues/2020/10/of-by-for-the-freedmen
Topics:Art, Lincoln, Politics, Statues, Slavery
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E-mail Of, by & for the freedmen by Allen C. Guelzo , James Hankins


Yup-- I think that you are hearing what Milton has his God saying.  And yes, you are certainly right that -- quite unfortunately, I would say -- M was not a universalist and "shall find grace" does indeed refer to the availability of grace to all human beings and the acceptance of grace by some human beings (who consciously do so, or perhaps do the moral equivalent thereof in the case of "virtuous pagans").  For Milton, as an Arminian, grace can be rejected.  It is not irresistible.  God, on M's view, respects human freedom both before and after.  He gives man a chance to exercise it -- because he didn't get to do so fully in the fall (or so the argument goes).  Again, a purely moral/rational framework.
I think you're right about the trickiness of Milton's rationale for distinguishing between lending help to human beings and lending help to angels: he does sound like he's saying that we "deserve" grace more because our sin is less, being the product of a deception rather than outright willfulness. Obviously, if it's a matter of grace, then there's no need to reference the severity of sin, which is supposed to be infinitely (qualitatively) exclusive of Divine favor rather than quantitatively. If the quantity of sin mattered, then we can still be saved so long as our sin meter doesn't go too high -- which is almost what God sounds like he's saying in bk 3 with these lines.
I'm wondering if a focus on Satan's unwillingness or inability to really repent -- that we hear from Satan himself in his private thoughts -- would have solved this dilemma? Milton seems to be throwing everything into the conceptual hat here, including predestination and foreknowledge. Was he trying to represent everyone's position to keep from alienating anyone on this point, or because all of these ideas seemed viable?
I would like to suggest that since Milton doesn't appear to be a universalist, when he says that man "shall find grace" he may be referring only to the availability of grace to all human beings and the reception of grace by some human beings. If he were to hold to a strict view of predestination, those seeking and asking for grace are those who have been enabled by God to do so, and the sacrifice of Christ might be a means of that enabling. In the NT, you might see some mechanism like this in Romans: "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." The act hearing of the message carries with it the capacity to believe in it.
Thanks for the nice discussion, Jim.
But I think "Die he or justice must" makes no sense given what God says about the rationale -- justice -- of forgiving man but not Satan and company (though the fallen angels were also, it seems to me, not "self-tempted").  And I think what you say about giving man the capacity to receive grace is lovely but tricky, and not clearly laid out by Milton.  "Shall find grace" is pretty absolute.  And, within the poem, the creatures that A and E are shown to be after the Fall look as if they are capable of asking for and receiving grace.  And they are certainly punished directly -- having to leave Eden, cause the misery of history, etc, etc.
He says instead that man shall find "grace." We might be tempted to think of God's forgiveness the way that we think of human forgiveness: you or I could forgive someone unilaterally, regardless of their response to us or of their feelings for us.
Can never seek, once dead in sins and lost;"
Because of man's fallen state, man is unable to seek out the help of grace, so God offering man grace won't be enough to save mankind: somehow, mankind has to be made able to receive it.
Behold mee then, mee for him, life for life"
In these lines the state of being "dead in sins and lost" can only be remedied by atonement, but because of man's fallen state, man is unable to offer atonement. Christ, however, being unfallen, can make himself such an offering by becoming human.
That seems to me to be the Milton's explanation for the existence of the cross: God offers grace, but mankind is unable to receive it, so Christ's sacrifice of himself, as a man, makes all of mankind able to receive God's grace.
The rigid satisfaction, death for death."
The two and a half lines seem like a fairly straightforward presentation of substitutionary atonement: either justice falls on humanity or on someone else. If that doesn't happen, then justice itself will die.
Well, here goes!  I'll say it, and let the storm follow:  Milton could hardly care less about the crucifixion and still be any sort of Christian.
The Son's "heroism" in Book 3 is entirely adventitious, since, after the proem, the action of the Book OPENS with God's decision to pardon man on purely moral/rational grounds (he was misled -- but then, so were Satan's followers-- but that's another problem).  In any case, "Man therefore shall find grace" is determined, absolutely and definitively, before the whole drama of sacrifice takes place.  The critics who think Satan's heroism false and the Son's true have it backwards.  Someone had to do what Satan did, if his plan was to succeed (and it is not clear that anyone else was going to volunteer); the Son's Great Act is strictly unnecessary -- it's Milton trying to look orthodox, as if he believed in Anselmic atonement theory, when in fact he has already worked things out in his purely rationalistic way.
And of course, the crucifixion is notoriously difficult to find in the account of history in Bks XI-XII.  It takes up 3 lines (XII: 411-13), and even there, Milton finds the abjection intolerable, and immediately makes the event a military triumph and reversal of torture -- "But to the Cross he nails thy Enemies."
why is the Tree of Life there at all? Milton seems to strip it of any function in the literal narrative and reduce it to a symbol prefiguring Christian salvation. Does this get us any closer to establishing a symmetrical relation between the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life?
The Tree of Life is the type of the cross. Jesus dying on the cross in obedience to the law of God makes good Adam's disobedience in eating of that other tree. So Christ (the anti-type of Satan, who offered the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, or death) redeems from death all those who "offered life / Neglect not" (XII, 425-6). The Tree of Life is identified with the true church in Book IV and Satan who perches on it as he scopes out Eden to corrupt clergy (193).


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text:
And He said unto them, "Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the Kingdom of God; but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables,
And he said unto them, Unto you is given the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all things are done in parables:
He said to them, "The mystery of the kingdom of God has been given to you [who have teachable hearts], but those who are outside [the unbelievers, the spiritually blind] get everything in parables,
And He said to them, To you has been entrusted the mystery of the kingdom of God [that is, the secret counsels of God which are hidden from the ungodly]; but for those outside [of our circle] everything becomes a parable,
And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables:
He answered them, "The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to those outside, everything comes in parables
He said to them, "The secret of God's kingdom has been given to you, but to those who are outside everything comes in parables.
He answered them, "To you the secret of the Kingdom of God has been given; but to those outside, everything is in parables,
He answered: I have explained the secret about God's kingdom to you, but for others I can use only stories.
And he said to them, To you is given [to know] the mystery of the kingdom of God; but to them who are without, all things are done in parables,
DLNT
And He was saying to them, "The mystery of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But all things come in parables to those outside
And he said to them: To you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but to them that are without, all things are done in parables:
Jesus said, "Only you can know the secret truth about God's kingdom. But to those other people I tell everything by using stories.
He said to them, "The mystery of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but everything comes in parables to those who are outside,
And he said to them, "To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables,
Jesus said, "·You can know [To you has been given] the secret about the kingdom of God. But to ·other people [outsiders] I tell everything by using ·stories [parables]
And he said unto them, To you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all things be done in parables,
Jesus replied to them, "The mystery about God's kingdom has been given ⌞directly⌟ to you. To those on the outside, it is given in stories:
"You have been given the secret of the Kingdom of God," Jesus answered. "But the others, who are on the outside, hear all things by means of parables,
Jesus said, "Only you can know the secret truth about the kingdom of God. But to other people I tell everything by using stories.
He told them, "The secret about the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside, everything comes in parables
Then when they were by themselves, his close followers and the twelve asked him about the parables, and he told them. "The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those who do not know the secret, everything remains in parables, so that, 'seeing they may see and not perceive, and hearing they may hear and not understand; lest they should turn, and their sins be forgiven them'".
And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God; but unto those that are without, all these things are done in parables,
And He was saying to them, "To you has been given the mystery of the kingdom of God, but to those who are outside, everything comes in parables,
And he said to them, "To you has been granted the secret of the kingdom of God, but to those who are outside everything is in parables,
He replied, "You are permitted to know some truths about the Kingdom of God that are hidden to those outside the Kingdom: 'Though they see and hear, they will not understand or turn to God, or be forgiven for their sins.'
When they were off by themselves, those who were close to him, along with the Twelve, asked about the stories. He told them, "You've been given insight into God's kingdom—you know how it works. But to those who can't see it yet, everything comes in stories, creating readiness, nudging them toward a welcome awakening. These are people— Whose eyes are open but don't see a thing, Whose ears are open but don't understand a word, Who avoid making an about-face and getting forgiven."
He said to them, "To you is given the secret of the kingdom of God, but to those who are outside, everything is said in parables,
MOUNCE
And he said to them, "To you has been given the mystery of the kingdom of God, but to those · outside, everything is in parables, ·
Yeshua replied to them, "The mystery about the kingdom of God has been given directly to you. To those on the outside, it is given in stories:
He answered them, "The mystery of the kingdom of God has been granted to you. But to those outside everything comes in parables,
And He was saying to them, "To you has been given the mystery of the kingdom of God, but for those who are outside, everything comes in parables,
And He was saying to them, "To you has been given the mystery of the kingdom of God, but those who are outside get everything in parables,
He told them, "To you has been granted knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to those outside, everything comes in parables,
Jesus said, "You can know the secret about the kingdom of God. But to other people I tell everything by using stories
He said to them, "The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those outside, everything is in parables,
He told them, "The secret of God's kingdom has been given to you. But to outsiders everything is told using stories.
He told them, "The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables
He told them, 'The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables
And He said to them, "To you it has been given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God; but to those who are outside, all things come in parables,
He said to them, "You were given the secrets about the holy nation of God. Everything is told in picture-stories to those who are outside the holy nation of God.
He replied, "You are permitted to understand the secret of the Kingdom of God. But I use parables for everything I say to outsiders,
And he said to them, To you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God. But to those who are outside, all things shall be done in similitudes,
And he said to them, 'To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in parables;
And he said to them, "To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in parables;
And he said to them, "To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything comes in parables,
'The mystery of God's kingdom is given to you,' he replied, 'but for the people outside it's all in parables,
And he was saying to them, To you the raz (secret) of the Malchut Hashem has been given. But to the outsiders, everything remains in meshalim,
And He said to them, "To you it is given to know the mystery of the Kingdom of God. But to those who are outside, all things are done in parables,
And he said to them, "To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables;
And He told them, "To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God. But for those who are outside, everything is in parables, so that
Jesus: God has let you in on the inside story regarding the workings of the Kingdom—the hidden meanings. But the crowds—I teach them in parables
He said to them, "To you is given the mystery of God's Kingdom, but to those who are outside, all things are done in parables,
He said to them, `You can learn the secret things about the kingdom of God. But we must use stories to tell the other people.
And he said to them, To you it is given to know the private of the kingdom of God [To you it is given to know the mystery, or private, of the kingdom of God]. But to them that be withoutforth, all things be made in parables,
and he said to them, `To you it hath been given to know the secret of the reign of God, but to those who are without, in similes are all the things done;
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Baci di dama are buttery, chocolate-filled cookies traditionally from Piedmont, a northern region of Italy. This recipe turns them into a savory treat and they are just as delightful and addicting as the sweet ones.
Savory baci di dama consist of two small parmesan cookies sandwiched together with a salmon cream cheese filling.
For the filling I simply placed in a food processor the cream cheese and smoked salmon and blended until smooth. You can replace the smoked salmon with olives, chives, thyme, cayenne pepper, sundried tomatoes, pesto or whatever you prefer.
Store the baci di dama in a sealed container in the refrigerator for 2-3 days. They can also be prepared in advance and assembled at the last minute.
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C (356 degrees F). Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Combine all the ingredients in a large bowl and knead until you have a smooth dough.
Divide the dough into small pieces (more or less weighting 8 grams / 0.3 ounces each) and roll them into tiny balls between the palms of your hands.
Place the balls on the prepared baking sheet, slightly spaced apart.
Bake the savory baci di dama for 20 minutes, until they are set to the touch.
Prepare the filling. Place the cream cheese and smoked salmon in a food processor and blend until smooth.
Put the filling in a pastry bag, pipe the mixture on one cookie and place another one on top.
Store the savory baci di dama in an airtight container in the refrigerator for 2 - 3 days.


text:
No Coincidence, No Story!
We asked listeners to send us their best coincidence stories, and we got more than 1,300 submissions! There were so many good ones we decided to make a whole show about them. From a chance encounter at a bus station to a romantic dollar bill to a baffling apparition in a college shower stall.
Dollar photo courtesy of Paul and Esther Grachan.
Episode Extra
Photos: Listeners Coincidence Stories
Extra coincidence stories from you that all involve your photographs.
Hannah Jacoby tells the story of when she and her best friend Lindsey bonded over those toy soldiers with the parachutes, called (really) Poopatroopers — and how the little jumpers perfectly bookended their high-school years. And guest host Sarah Koenig explains the very interesting trends we discovered in our listeners' coincidences. (9 1/2 minutes)
A surprising number of coincidences involve grandmothers — that's one of the things we learned doing this show. One grandma has so many coincidences happen to her, it drives her granddaughter, 16-year-old Juliana Bontrager, to try to beat her at her own coincidence game. And we also hear from Blake Oliver about a very strange appearance his grandma once made. You can hear more from Blake Oliver in an interview on The Story. (9 minutes)
When it comes to love, coincidences tend to loom extra-large. Stephen Lee tells about the time his parents first met his fiance's parents, and his future mother-in-law dropped a coincidence bomb. And we hear how a dollar bill ended up clinching a marriage, after floating around Chicago for years. (10 minutes)
"Someplace I'm Supposed to Be" by Bry Webb with Rich Burnett
Brother, Can You Spare a Dime
Ryan Rozar told us about a confounding coincidence that was visited on him in college. We didn't think it was a coincidence at all, so we set out to prove him wrong. (8 minutes)
Don't Lift the Manhole Cover
More stories of dazzling coincidences: An old boyfriend is conjured in Morocco; a jazz singer seems to rise from the dead, and three boys believe they've seen a corpse. Plus stories of errant fathers, lost and found. (13 minutes)
What Are The Chances?
Sometimes the best way to appreciate a coincidence is to look past all the rational reasons it might have happened. Other times, it's better to face facts — even very, very large facts. Kerry Weeks tells about the time he lost a pocketknife, and turned to the galaxy for help. His story was recorded live at a Moth StorySLAM in New York City. (7 minutes)
"Children of Coincidence" by Dory Previn
89: Sibling Rivalry
Act One: He Is Heavy, He's My Brother
True tales of sibling cruelty.
138: The Real Thing
Act Three: Drawl
What does it mean to talk like a real Southerner—and why a multimillion industry can't seem to figure it out.
19: Rich Guys
Act Two: Citizen Kane
Jack Hitt reviews the strange case of William Kane, his mistress, his family, and fifteen vials of frozen sperm.
I'm From the Private Sector and I'm Here to Help
Nancy Updike goes to Iraq to try to figure out what it's like to be a private citizen working in the middle of a war zone.


Nowadays, customers believe they are entitled to excellent customer service, anywhere, anytime. Brands can thank social media in part for that. Social media provides customers with a public forum to lodge their complaints very conveniently in front of a very large audience. In fact, according to the Global Web Index, about 50% of customers now follow brands in order to access some form of customer service via social channels. It's no surprise then that more and more brands are improving their image by providing customer support via social. But what sort of plan should you have in place to contend with negative comments when they arise?
Let's simplify. You don't need 12. You don't need 8. You don't need 5. You need 3.
The first six principles above should be self-evident to any customer-service, marketing or PR professional. They have to do with the most basic customer-service tenet. You can distill these six principles down into a singular recitation of the Golden Rule: treat your customers as you would treat yourself.
Turn your negative-comment lemon into lemon-aid. This includes knowing your top social influencers and addressing them appropriately (#7 above). It also means that you can turn a negative comment into a positive experience by following up with your disgruntled customer to ensure they got the answer they needed and that their problem was resolved (#8). Lastly, deepen the relationship to add value. Offer more information than they asked for, ask them for additional feedback, or tell them about new products/services (#9).
Be a judicious moderator. If someone steps out of line, take appropriate actions. It is, after all, your community (#10). Your page's comments are your brand's content. See how far you can go with this by listening to how the Atlantic Monthly's Ta-Nehisi Coates moderates comments. Bottom line: if it's not appropriate, you are empowered to remove it. But before you remove a nasty comment, ask yourself this: Will customers perceive us as being surreptitious if I remove this comment? (#11, #12). Always think of your customers first. If removing a comment would be more helpful to your brand than to your customers, you should probably leave it be.
But what about blatantly false accusations? Should you defend yourself? If those accusations begin to negatively impact relationships with other customers, it's probably a good idea to stick up for yourself. Southwest Airlines pulled some punches with their own video response to some unruly and outspoken customers. It was authentic and addressed their customers concerns. It was also aggressive, but it worked in putting out the fire of worry among their broader customer base.
What do you think? Are there other principles you use when dealing with negative comments online?
Every good marketing campaign needs a social object. In essence it's the thing that brings people together. It may give people a common purpose or simply give them something to talk about. It encourages and increases sociality. And for a marketing campaign, that's key, as it gives way to virality and social amplification. (Marketers covet word-of-mouth referrals!) The most obvious non-marketing example of a social object would be a baseball: A boy and his father get some good quality bonding time playing catch in the front yard. The ball becomes the social object that allows them to do this.
In the world of marketing, a great example of a social object would be Kraft's Oreo Cookie Moments Gallery. The premise is straight forward: To help celebrate its 100th anniversary, Oreo asked it's fans to share their favorite Oreo photos, videos and stories with them and they would then "share them with the world". Oreo fans would upload their own "Oreo Moment" via Facebook or their campaign micro-site. These moments were then displayed on both Facebook and the microsite, and became fully share-able across each fan's social graph via Facebook. Each Oreo Moment thus became a social object.
Could the Oreo Cookie itself also be a social object? Certainly. Many products themselves are the primary social object for brands. In fact, the guy who advocated the "social object" term says that unless your product is a social object, you might as well not be selling it. Any Apple product (iPhone, iPad, etc.) is a great example of a social object.
On a larger scale, well-functioning social networks must define what their concept of social object is. For example, Flickr uses user-generated photography as the social object. Delicious or Digg use URL's. Facebook uses images, URL's, and status updates. But what about LinkedIn? A convincing polemic on why some social networks work and others don't argues that a successful, sustainable social network must be focused on an "object-centered sociality".
Something like collaboration itself could be a type of social object. Consider the so-called social business model. In this paradigm, a company, from product, customer service, engineering, marketing and so on, are all interconnected not only with one another, but with their external customers. Michael Brito of Edelman Digital has an informative infographic on what a social business model looks like. Social business managers must discover their social objects if they want to see their customers and employees interact, discuss and evolve their ideas into tangible outcomes. Dell's IdeaStorm is inspirational in this regard.
As a social media marketer or online community manager, you must frequently uncover your community-wide social objects. How do you do this? There's no tried and true model here. My advice is to begin by acting as a group facilitator. Listen, listen, listen. Chart out the most commonly discussed topics or products, the sentiment, the problems, the positive feedback, etc. You'll then have a short list of themes to work with. Get community members involved with not only what the social object is, but what the process and rewards (if any) might be. This can be crucial to engagement. Remember that ultimately you will not control the object itself. You can, however, facilitate the process and the outcome.
So what's your community's social object?
Launching a collaborative online community: Really Tough. Nearly Impossible. At the very least, ceaselessly challenging. Collaborative communities rely on great content that everyone can discuss and develop. The content represents ideas. These ideas are put forth to the community, and if it's an active community, an evolution of that idea takes place. It becomes better than it was before. That's the ideal anyway. Think about this evolution of ideas in terms of a Hegelian Dialectic: Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis.
But, before you can get there, you've got to have some content that provokes thought, compels opinions and spurs dialogue. For most communities that is a tough nut to crack. It gets even more challenging when your community content is 100% user-generated. How do you get your users to furnish amazing content that moves ideas forward and pushes the community closer to its collective vision?
It starts with nurturing your members. Every member needs a certain amount of hand-holding when they first arrive: learning the tools, navigating the site, understanding the guidelines. But the type of nurturing I'm talking about is deeper than that. You've got to identify members who have promise as star contributors. Who are the thought-leaders? Who has something worth saying? Who has strong or even divisive opinions? Who has notoriety? Who has something at stake?
Think through these questions as you go through your member rolodex. Once you've identified these folks, put them to the task. Ask them to contribute! But frame it in a way that gives them something to win. Gamify your proposition with recognition, visibility, points, rewards, or whatever it takes to motivate them to contribute.
Case in Point: One thing we've been experimenting with in our community is a "Blogger" program. With a capital B in fact. This is an official program for our star contributors. They commit to one 500+ word blog post per month. In exchange we feature them on the home page of the community website and in the weekly community newsletters. We also elevate their status in the community by giving them a special badge that displays on their profile page and on any of their official Blogger posts.
The hard part with this is motivating them to generate that first post. To assist with that, we created an editorial calendar that they all have online access to. It details each blogger, their monthly topic and the date that it will be published. This shows them that they're part of a team. They see the stature of their colleagues as well – everyone here knows that the other is a well-known figure for their company or cause. Giving them a specific date will do wonders for 90% of the bloggers too. Nearly all of us love (hate?) a deadline. Once we're given one, if the stakes are appropriately set, we'll stick to it.
The second hardest part is getting them to do it again. To help with this we used the concept of a dashboard. Every couple weeks we email the blogger group and list all the recent posts. We also list out the number of views and the number of comments that post received to-date. This gamification tactic gives them social validation (if they're numbers are highest) but also gives them motivation to either keep their game up, or to try and beat out the top posters for that period.
Good community managers and social strategists know that content is crucial to a successful community. But when you can't fully control the content creation, you've got to get creative. I believe collaborative communities need a solid blogger program to keep the ideas evolving.
What do you think? Have you had experiences with your own "blogger" program? What other ways are there to facilitate *good* content development?
Nearly every e-commerce site these days has a "like" button on its product pages. But what does that really do for increasing the bottom line? Is it the best way to engage your customers? Are there better ways for e-commerce companies to integrate social into their buying experiences? And how can brands fully leverage their fans on social to build loyalty, advocacy, and increase purchase frequency?
To answer these questions (and many more!), I went to the bleeding edge of social commerce. Based in Portland, Oregon and founded in 2009, ShopIgniter is a rapidly growing, social commerce software company that helps retailers and brands leverage the social web to extend their reach, promote products and generate revenue. I got the opportunity to speak with Marko Muellner, SI's Senior Director of Marketing.
Ben Fowler: Let's start at the beginning: How do you define social commerce? What are its components?
Marko Muellner: There are many different definitions of social commerce and the category seems to span from deal vendors like Groupon to social shopping sites like Fab.com to companies like 8th Bridge, who help brands put Like buttons on their existing eCommerce sites, all the way to companies like ShopIgniter, who's focused on helping brands go from product discovery in social to purchase.
BF: How do those components manifest on Facebook?
MM: Facebook itself doesn't enable any transactions outside of their Facebook Credit offering. There has been much speculation about Facebook expanding their Credits program to include broader eCommerce offerings but they haven't done this yet.
With the move away from FBML within the Facebook Pages and Apps worlds, brands and retailers are able to create rich experiences within Facebook and they can now easily include commerce functionality. There are vendors that offer easy to set-up and use Facebook storefronts for small businesses as well as companies like ShopIgniter that offer richer and more end-to-end solutions for bigger brands.
That being said, the first wave of f-commerce proved that most customers aren't on Facebook to shop. It has also largely been proven that most people aren't on your online store to be social. In the next wave we expect to see more vendors trying to bridge the gap between product discovery, which is happening more and more in social networks with the help of Pinterest, Fancy and Polyvore, for example, and the path to purchase.
In other words, you can do just about anything you want in Facebook and we think the next wave will include more brands getting serious about promoting products in new and interesting ways.
BF: In your Social Commerce Playbook you point out three elements to product strategies for brands and marketers: rich posts, social product experience and seamless purchase integration. Can you quickly define those and talk a bit about their importance?
The strategy we outline in The Playbook takes each piece, dives into strategies for each and provides guidance for digital and social marketers looking to promote and sell their products.
In social, the most important part of the experience is the stream. On Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc., everything that's important happens in the stream, whether we're browsing or posting. This is where awareness and discovery happen. The networks know this and are hard at work making stream posts more and more compelling. Facebook has introduced Timeline and a few big and beautiful post types like the Gallery post, for example. Twitter has introduced their new Cards API and Pinterest is a beautiful photo world to begin with. The richer the streams get the better they are for promoting products. In Facebook for example, we can already enable buying directly in a wall post and that experience is going to get better and better. Executing rich posting plans are essential.
As you shared, what we call "social product experiences" are at the heart of how marketers need to think differently when promoting products. Instead of posting and linking to your existing .com or online store, social customers need a "transitional" experience to allow them to stay in-network, explore the products more, learn, share, comment, earn rewards and potentially buy. These experiences can come in many different shapes and sizes but must be focused on key objectives and must make it easy for fans to buy if they choose. Lastly, since 50+% of social customers are on mobile devices, these experiences must be optimized for both smartphones and tablets and must account for these different contexts, especially when it comes to checkout.
The last piece to the puzzle is making it easy to buy. This doesn't mean that all social product experiences need to be full-function stores; in fact, integrating existing eCommerce carts is a great solution for many big brands and retailers. Regardless of the underlying technology, social customers expect that if they do finally decide to buy that it's as easy as possible.
Generally, our recommendation is that where the experience lives is determined by where the customer accesses it. If someone is coming from Twitter or Pinterest, the experience can be a standalone web-based app. If they're in Facebook keep them in Facebook, and if they're on a mobile device make sure the design is responsive and that the experience is right for the device.
BF: Of the three elements, you say the key lies in creating good social product experiences. What does a good product experience look like and where should such an experience live?
Study after study shows that social fans and followers tend to be a brand's most rabid customers. Perfect.
But presenting the same old products you're pushing on your online store just doesn't work. The products need to be special — this is key. This doesn't necessarily mean that you need to convince your company to create a whole new awesome product to sell on Faceobok, although that would be great, it just means you need to get a little creative. Can you get a famous designer, celebrity or influencer to make a small set of exclusive versions of a popular product? Can they sign it or wear it or have a special color made … The ideal situation is to have a series of exclusive products you can roll out over time, this builds anticipation and excitement — perfect for social.
Now you need to make the experience special. Do you have video of how the products were made; can you tell the story in photographs or do interviews? Do you have an existing loyalty program that you can integrate into your experience so people who share or comment or buy can get rewards? If not, you can build that into your experience, no problem.
BF: I can see social media or community managers sweating over how much of their FB activity should be promoting social product experiences versus the brand engagement stuff. In your view, what's the right mix?
MM: There's no set ratio. Product promotion should be driven by seasonal and brand calendars and when there's something special to share. Many marketers have gone too far the other way, not mentioning products at all because they think fans will revolt. We encourage them to ease back in and be more thoughtful and interesting in how they promote products. At this time of year it makes the most sense to start thinking about holiday. If you'll have special promotions, sales and products start planning now. Those plans will help you find your messaging balance.
BF: In the Playbook you also indicated that engagement drives amplification, loyalty and purchase. A lot of retailers have had challenges establishing the link between engagement and sales. Can you show how community engagement (via comments, shares, etc.) connects to a purchase? And what types of engagement are most effective?
MM: When fans engage in a poll or contest they are not in a product discovery or consideration mind set and getting them on that path is impossible. As we've learned in eCommerce, when customers are shopping things like rich product imagery, reviews and merchandising impact conversion rates. In social product experiences, the goals are usually to both amplify (shares, comments, likes, retweets and repins) and to drive consideration and purchase. More product-specific actions like "want" buttons, add to cart/wish list and watching product videos, for example, are much more likely to drive sales.
BF: Retailers and brands sell tons of products. How can they most quickly determine what's worth promoting on social? And what product promotion method seems to work best?
Think special. Any product or collection that has a story you can tell is great. Either how it's made, who it's made by, the designer, where the ingredients come from, etc.
Take a small set of your most popular products and make them special. They're already popular and you're going to build on that.
Do some research. Take beautiful pictures of some of your best products and post them to Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook and see which get the most engagement. Run polls to your Facebook fans around product ideas. Or get deeper and work with your consumer insights team or an outside agency to better understand who your fans are and what they like.
Once you have some products in mind then planning the experience should flow from key objectives. If you want to reward fans with exclusives across your seasonal calendar, build a social store where you'll update products, let fans vote and earn rewards, etc. If you want a big burst of buzz and sales then consider a flash sale, etc.
BF: From your experiences have flash sales worked well on FB? If so, what sort of tools or services are out there to help a retailer or brand implement a flash sale on FB?
MM: Flash sales with special products can be amazing in social. Not only do they drive sales but the buzz and lift in new fans and customers can be great too. ShopIgniter is the only vendor I know of that can create, manage and measure flash sales of significant size. There are smaller storefront vendors like Ecwid but they're not built for large brands and retailers.
BF: What's the best advice you can give to social media managers trying to integrate product experiences into their current FB content stream?
Work with someone in your eCommerce or retail team. They can help with product selection and merchandising, commerce systems and the basics of selling.
Don't be afraid and get excited. If you're excited about a great set of products then you're going to create a great and successful program. If you think the products are dull, they probably are.
Social and commerce are complicated, unfortunately. Make sure you have a partner, either an agency or a solutions vendor, who has done this before. Rely on them for guidance, best practices and to solve creative and technical challenges.
Think long term. One-off product promotions can be successful but you have products to sell all year long so think of programs that can be somewhat repeatable.
Focus on inspiring your fans not selling your products. They love you because of your products and if you give them something they want and make it easy to share and buy, they will.
BF: Are there tertiary effects from successful social product experiences? For example, have you seen a brand's overall SEO improve or see them get a boost in customer satisfaction ratings from such efforts?
When cross-referenced, we've seen brands find that more than 50% of their fans and followers aren't in their CRM database. For some it's even higher. When social product experiences include opt-in tactics then these efforts can jump start or accelerate existing retention programs.
We've seen an increase in buying by loyalists in some cases. When fans feel special or have access to exclusives they tend to buy more. This also drives higher Net Promoter Scores (NPS) and similar satisfaction ratings.
BF: Anything else you would like to add?
Better Engagement – Up to 75% of users participating & sharing content vs. avg Facebook post engagement of 0.11% for Retailers.
Higher Amplification – Up to 2.5 stories and shares generated for every user vs. share buttoned Product Pages, only 0.36% have even 1 Like.
Increased Conversion – Up to a 28% conversion rate for products sold via a social showcase vs. avg convert rates of 0.6% for Facebook & 0.4% for Pinterest linking straight to a .com.
BF: On better engagement, when you say social product experiences can bring 75% of users "participation and sharing" vs. 0.11% avg FB-post "engagement" for retailers, are we really talking apples to apples here?
MM: Not apples to apples but more an indication of the increases in participation, amplification and conversion that can be achieved with a more full-featured strategy. Relying on stream posts and links to .com just isn't enough.
As I touched on a little bit, social product experiences can have all sorts of engagement actions from the standard Likes, shares and comments to voting, "wanting," playing, adding to wish list or cart, capturing opt-in or lead info, etc.
Social influence may very well be the current zeitgeist of digital marketing. With the blossoming of services like Klout and PeerIndex that help brands find and meet social influencers, any marketer may come to believe they need to use such services to discover new influencers and automate relationship building.
Instigators are the drivers of actions and conversations, and it's down to one simple fact – they have the innate ability to create conversations and actions based on those conversations, as opposed to being a shill for a brand.
What he's getting at is that as a brand, you should shy away from services such as Klout, and focus on building real relationships with real people who have real influence. What's not explicated is that he's basically talking about bloggers: People who have a following not on Twitter or Facebook, but on their own blog.
Is this sort of call meaningful? Are there brand or marketing managers out there who are only focusing on services such as Klout to spell out their influencer graph? I doubt it. I think all you marketing gurus know that when it comes to building out your network of influencers, you have a well-rounded reach. Pull out your Rolodex of influencers and you likely have a healthy mix of media journalists, niche bloggers, celebrities, and the like. As of 2012, you may have added a few influencers that Klout sent your way. But you treat each of these differently. And most of your attention is aimed at where you will get the most visibility for your brand: established influencers with a large following.
Good, so don't use Klout, right? Not quite. Typically an influential blogger also has a Facebook or twitter profile. And that profile will usually have lots of followers. Most smart bloggers do this. When it comes to staying abreast of your favorite blogger, many if not most of you will use Facebook or Twitter to do so. And this is where the beauty of a tool such as Klout comes to play. Since Klout relies heavily on Facebook and Twitter to determine influencer score, it can help you identify and target bloggers you may not currently have in your Rolodex.
But use such tools with a bit of caution. Definitely don't put too much stock in the scores – they're automated via a black-box algorithm and aren't always going to be spot on. But they can give you clues as to where your strongest potential influencers are.
So who are your top social influencers? Klout may indeed help identify current trends with your influencers, but only to the extent it searches for influencer data (primarily Facebook and Twitter), and only through the lens of it's mysterious algorithm.
Ultimately, your true top social influencers should be determined by more than just an automated-and-algorithmic tool. My suggestion is to continue building real relationships the old-fashioned way. But be vigilant with tools like Klout to maintain broader awareness of the influencers within your niche.
How do you connect with top social influencers?


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Home Jammu Army Chief on 2-day visit to Kashmir, to review security situation
Army Chief on 2-day visit to Kashmir, to review security situation
Posted By: Editor State Timeson: June 03, 2021 In: Jammu, Kashmir, Slider, Top J&K News, Top Stories, Twitter
Meets LG Manoj Sinha, discusses internal security
Srinagar/New Delhi: Army Chief General M M Naravane arrived on a two-day visit to Kashmir on Wednesday to review the prevailing security situation in the union territory as the ceasefire understanding between India and Pakistan along the Line of Control (LoC) completed 100 days.
On his arrival at Srinagar, the Army Chief, accompanied by Northern Army Commander, Lt Gen Y K Joshi and Chinar Corps Commander, Lt Gen D P Pandey, visited units and formations in the hinterland where he was briefed by the local commanders on the existing security situation, an Army official said.
He said Gen Naravane was also briefed about the measures being taken to identify and target the overground workers (OGWs) network involved in radicalisation and recruitment of youth into terrorist ranks.
Earth-mover machine fired at by Pak along IB in Jammu
Jammu: Pakistani Rangers fired at an earth-mover machine engaged in cleaning bushes along the International Border (IB) here on Wednesday in what could be the second ceasefire violation in nearly four months, official sources said.
The Border Security Force (BSF), which is guarding the IB, neither confirmed nor denied the incident.
Sources said Pakistani Rangers fired a few rounds upon noticing the bullet-proof JCB machine clearing the bushes in Arnia sector's Vikram post area in the outskirts of Jammu around 8.15 am.
There was no report of any casualty. The BSF also fired a few rounds in retaliation, they said, adding the situation has returned to normal and there is calm along the IB.
On May 2, Pakistani Rangers violated the ceasefire by opening fire along the IB in Ramgarh sector of Samba district which was the first ceasefire violation by Pakistan after the two countries signed a fresh agreement to maintain calm along the border on February 25 this year.
Last month, BSF shot dead two Pakistani intruders who tried to sneak into this side in Samba sector after ignoring repeated warnings.
Efforts to prevent local recruitment and facilitate the surrender of local terrorists were also discussed, the official said.
The arrival of the Army Chief in Kashmir assumes significance as it comes on a day when the fresh ceasefire between India and Pakistan along the LoC completed 100 days.
India and Pakistan had on February 25 this year released a joint statement announcing a ceasefire along the Line of Control, following talks between their Directors General of Military Operations.
Gen Naravane, while interacting with troops, expressed his appreciation to the jawans and commanders who are relentlessly battling the dual challenges of Pakistan-abetted terror and the Covid pandemic.
He reinforced the need to be prepared to meet emerging security challenges effectively. Later, the COAS was briefed by the Chinar Corps Commander on the overall situation pertaining to the LoC and the hinterland, the official said
The Army Chief complimented the excellent synergy exhibited by all sections of the civil administration, Jammu and Kashmir Police, Central Armed Police Forces and other security agencies in projecting a 'whole of government' approach that has resulted in improvement in the security situation conducive for fostering a new era of development in the UT, he said.
In the evening, Gen Naravane called on Lt Governor Manoj Sinha at Raj Bhavan here. He was accompanied by Lt Gen YK Joshi, Northern Army Commander and Lt Gen DP Pandey, General Officer Commanding (GoC) 15 Corps.
The Lt Governor and the Army Chief discussed about recent internal security developments and the prevailing security scenario in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir. Discussions were also held on several internal and external security-related issues and their effective management.
The Lt Governor stressed on the high importance of maintaining close synergy between the Army and other Security Forces to meet the security challenges.
The Lt Governor lauded the Army's role in ensuring a safe and secure environment for the people of J&K, besides extending necessary support and complementing Government's efforts in controlling the spread of Corona virus, according to an official spokesperson.
Northern Army Commander Lt Gen Joshi had on Tuesday said ceasefire understanding between India and Pakistan is being followed in letter and spirit by both sides, but asserted that the Indian Army is not letting its guard down even for one bit along the border in Jammu and Kashmir.
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