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?"[368] 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.[369]
In the Cold War years, Lincoln's image shifted to a symbol of freedom who brought hope to those oppressed by Communist regimes.[367] He had long been known as the Great Emancipator,[370] but, by the late 1960s, some African American intellectuals, led by Lerone Bennett Jr., denied that Lincoln deserved that title.[371][372] Bennett won wide attention when he called Lincoln a white supremacist in 1968.[373] 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. 