Abraham Lincoln

Happy Birthday, Abe! He'd have been 212 years old today. Coincidentally, I finished Abe a recent biography by David Reynolds of our sixteenth and best President. It's quite the tome, 900+ pages not including end notes! And it's on the expensive side, $40. All that said, I still recommend it, although waiting for the paperback might be a good thing to do. I've read more than 50 books about Lincoln and would rate this one in the top five or six. Its insights into what made Lincoln, well, "Lincoln," are incisive and plentiful. It examines the cultural, social, economic, and religious as well as political aspects of the Ante-Bellum and Civil War years that influenced Lincoln. Despite my studies, I gained an even deeper understanding of the man. I was grabbed by Reynolds early on, in the Introduction, with a quote from none other than Karl Marx. Lincoln was one "of the rare men who succeeded in becoming great without ceasing to be good." Yep. Reynolds shoots down many of the criticisms, contemporary and otherwise, by pointing at the record. By the mid- to late-1850s Lincoln had developed some radical ideas, quite radical for his times. "All men were created equal," including blacks. Freedom and respect for individual liberty had to be meshed with that equality. Justice was there for all. Slavery and all oppression are wrong! Indifference toward that is de facto support for them. Lincoln was wise enough to heed Walt Whitman's words, "Be radical! Be radical! Be radical! But not too damned radical." Part of Lincoln's political genius was that he learned to be radical, to work to bring the radical changes that were needed, but without sounding so. He constantly worked to mold popular opinions, to redirect them toward what he thought were just and fair. This would take time. The calls for immediate abolition, for instance, of William Lloyd Garrison and others either fell mostly on deaf ears or, often, resulted in violent reaction against them, even in the North. Lincoln knew peoplw would not listen to ideas they weren't ready to hear. Jesus was killed for pushing the greatest message the world has ever heard, "Love thy neighbor as thyself." People, Romans, Gentiles, and other Jws weren't prepared to hear that. So Lincoln bided his time, molding often in little steps attitudes that would support abolition, black citizenship, and voting rights for blacks. One instance where Lincoln demonstrated this was with the legacy of John Brown. Brown was excoriated in the South and in much of the North as well for his violent abolitionist actions--Bleeding Kansas, Harper's Ferry. Many of those Southerners and even Northern Democrats likened all abolitionists and the Republican Party to Brown. Lincoln recognized this and, to win support for his radical ideas, distanced himself from Brown's actions while, philosophically and politcally, embracing them--until the time was right. (Reading this section of the book I couldn't help but make a comparison to today, how the Democrats and their lapdog media have been so quick to accuse all Trump supporters and Republicans in general of guilt for the January 6 debacle. I don't know what else to call it, but I won't use "insurrection," not with Mr. Viking Helmet leading the charge.) While I'm at it, here was an important fact I didn't know. Lincoln and his supporters strongly felt the 1858 Senate seat in Illinois was "stolen" from him. It was widely alleged that the Democrats/supporters of Stephen A. Douglas recruited Irish workers, brought them to Illinois and granted them instant citizenship. These new citizens then voted. It wouldn't be hard to imagine which party they favored. I guess Lincoln would be "canceled" for that today, for making such a suggestion. In this way, Lincoln "never went beyond the people" as one his lawyer friends explained. And that was because, in his own view, Lincoln was one of "the people." His long-time friend William Herndon echoed that. "As a politician and statesman, he took no steps in advance of the great mass of people... He made observations, felt the popular pulse, and when he thought the people were ready, he acted, not before." Of course, he worked tirelessly to make the people ready. There is far, far more that feeds my admiration of Lincoln. I've written about some of that before. But Reynolds notes Lincoln's speeches as pivotal. He was generally not a long-winded speaker. He had the gift "to explain much with little." Far from the only two, but The Gettysburg Address and his Second Inaugural Address were highlighted. At Gettysburg, in about 200 words, not many more, Lincoln succeeded in redefining the ideals of this American experiment. With the Second Inaugural, using fewer than 700 words, he outlined a post-war path to re-unite such a divided nation. Frederick Douglass, in attendance that afternoon, told Lincoln, "That was a sacred effort." What the President did was give a speech that might have fallen "from the lips of [William Lloyd] Garrison." Talk about radical! And many people were now willing to listen. It's too bad most of today's so-called "leaders" know so little of Abraham Lincoln. Happy Birthday, Lincoln! (That's what he preferred to be called.)