text: Schwartz argues that in the 1930s and 1940s the memory of Abraham Lincoln was practically sacred and provided the nation with "a moral symbol inspiring and guiding American life." During the Great Depression, he argues, Lincoln served "as a means for seeing the world's disappointments, for making its sufferings not so much explicable as meaningful." Franklin D.Roosevelt, preparing America for war, used the words of the Civil War president to clarify the threat posed by Germany and Japan.Americans asked, "What would Lincoln do?" However, Schwartz also finds that since World War II Lincoln's symbolic power has lost relevance, and this "fading hero is symptomatic of fading confidence in national greatness." He suggested that postmodernism and multiculturalism have diluted greatness as a concept.In the Cold War years, Lincoln's image shifted to a symbol of freedom who brought hope to those oppressed by Communist regimes.He had long been known as the Great Emancipator, but, by the late 1960s, some African American intellectuals, led by Lerone Bennett Jr., denied that Lincoln deserved that title.Bennett won wide attention when he called Lincoln a white supremacist in 1968.He noted that Lincoln used ethnic slurs and told jokes that ridiculed blacks.Bennett argued that Lincoln opposed social equality and proposed that freed slaves voluntarily move to another country.The emphasis shifted away from Lincoln the emancipator to an argument that blacks had freed themselves from slavery, or at least were responsible for pressuring the government to emancipate them.Defenders of Lincoln, such as authors Dirck and Cashin, retorted that he was not as bad as most politicians of his day and that he was a "moral visionary" who deftly advanced the abolitionist cause, as fast as politically possible.Dirck stated that few Civil War scholars take Bennett seriously, pointing to his "narrow political agenda and faulty research".