16) Abraham Lincoln - Father Abraham

In 1809, the president who saved the Union was born in Kentucky. The first true Westerner to ascend to the nation’s highest office had a hardscrabble, frontier upbringing. They moved from Kentucky to Indiana where Abe’s mother died. Unable to raise a family on his own, Abraham’s father went back to Kentucky to marry Sarah Bush Johnston. They returned with Sarah’s three children and luxuries that the Lincoln’s never had such as beds, a table and chairs, and utensils. Sarah treated her step-son with kindness and love that young Abraham affectionately returned. Throughout adolescence Lincoln’s relationship with his father deteriorated and shortly after the family moved again, this time to Illinois, Lincoln moved out at 21 years old and without any prospects.

Lincoln's "rail-splitter" image was an
important part of his appeal to voters.

It was during these years that the “Rail-Splitter” came to be. Lincoln worked on the river, tried carpentry, operated a general store, surveyed land, joined a militia to battle local Indians, was a postmaster, gravitated toward law, and eventually got involved in politics. Lincoln spent his twenties living a frontier life centered around the town of New Salem, Illinois but his political aspirations soon saw him elected to the Illinois legislature and, partly thanks to his political maneuvering, to the new capital of Springfield.

Lincoln served eight years in the Illinois legislature as a staunch Whig while building his law career. During this time, he was also engaging in a rocky courtship with Mary Todd which caused mood swings and severe bouts of depression. In his last year of the legislature he and Mary finally wed and Lincoln had to find a way to support his family. When the law practice he was involved in dissolved he decided to begin his own law firm and partnered with William Herndon. The partnership was successful and Herndon, and ardent Whig and abolitionist, helped encourage Lincoln’s political aspirations.

In 1847, at the age of 47, Lincoln ran for and won a seat in United States House of Representatives. Lincoln served only one term, however his actions while in the House are interesting. In Congress the debate over the Wilmot Proviso was raging. Lincoln believed that slavery should be left alone to die in the South and did not participate in these debates. However, on five occasions when the Proviso came up in a roll call, Lincoln voted in favor. During his second session Lincoln was more active and involved himself in the fight against the slave trade in Washington DC, viewed by many as a national embarrassment.

Lincoln did not run for reelection as his stance against the Mexican American War was unpopular in his district. He did not hold public office again until he was elected president 12 years later. Lincoln and Herndon continued to build their law practice during this time, however Lincoln was involved in building the Republican Party in Illinois by stitching together anti-slavery factions in the state. During this time Lincoln ran against Stephen Douglas for a Senate seat. While Lincoln did not win the seat, he did engage Douglas in their famous series of debates which helped to crystallize the Republicans as the anti-slavery party. Additionally, these debates catapulted Lincoln in to the national spotlight. Seizing on this newfound fame, Lincoln accepted an invitation to speak in New York City. It was 1860, a presidential election year, and Lincoln traveled to New York City and delivered his lauded Cooper Union speech. The location of the speech was as important as the content because New York City was the home turf of the presumptive Republican nominee, William Seward.

Lincoln rode the momentum from the Douglas debates and Cooper Union speech to the 1860 Republican Convention which was conveniently located in Chicago. Lincoln was not a front-runner, but also not a dark horse. He ticked important boxes with his opposition to the expansion of slavery and support of internal improvements. However, there was a chance that the upstart Republican Party may actually take the White House so they needed a candidate who could build a big enough coalition to win the general election. Lincoln was likely to attract former Whigs, given his strong Whig credentials. Secondly, while he opposed the controversial Know-Nothing Party, he wasn’t openly confrontational to the sizable nativist movement in the country. Lastly, Lincoln could deliver Illinois, a state the Republicans needed. Lincoln grabbed the nomination and then won a wild general election in which the vote was split between four candidates. As president-elect, Lincoln was acutely aware that he had garnered less than 40% of the popular vote and was by no means a consensus president. He went on a whistle-stop tour of the Northern states to build unity.

Lincoln was immediately the subject of derision as he snuck in to Washington at night due to rumors of an assassination plot in Baltimore. He regretted the show of weakness. Following the oath of office Buchanan was able to drop the Charleston Harbor crisis in Lincoln’s lap which went on to consume his first month in office. When it became clear that the nation was at war, the North rallied around the administration quickly filling Lincoln’s request for 75,000 volunteers. Unfortunately, Northerners expected a quick routing of the Southern troops. As the war dragged and the Confederate army notched key victories many turned on Lincoln. During much of his presidency Lincoln existed in a space where he was despised by the South, too radical for Northern Democrats, not radical enough for the abolitionist wing of the Republican party, and too hesitant in his handling of his troops. During mid-term elections Lincoln was rebuked with heavy losses in the House of Representatives, however Republicans importantly held on to their majorities in both houses thanks to the departure of Southern legislators.

During the war Lincoln never legitimized the Confederate government. He would refer to the “insurrection” or “rebellion” and when left with no other way to describe his adversary he would refer to “the so-called Confederate States.” He refused to refer to Jefferson Davis as a president. On the other hand, Lincoln utilized many war time measures. Captured Confederate soldiers were treated as POWs, not as criminals. Additionally, the occasional suspensions of habeas corpus and most importantly the Emancipation Proclamation were war time measures designed to weaken the South.

Speaking of the Emancipation Proclamation, it is important to understand what it was and what it was not. The Emancipation Proclamation did not end or outlaw slavery. It did establish the freedom of slaves in certain rebellious states and called for the acceptance of those newly freed slaves in to the armed forces. Additionally, the Proclamation tacitly established that abolishment of slavery was a precondition for reunion, at least on Lincoln’s watch. Congress did not vote on the Proclamation, Lincoln just declared it as a war-time measure. He worried about the ambiguous legal status of freedmen once the war came to a close and worked to use the Proclamation as a stepping-stone for the eventual 13^th Amendment to the Constitution that would pass Congress two years later and permanently abolish slavery. Chicago mayor and former White House Chief of Staff to Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, is famous for saying “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” I think this is a great phrase to synthesize and simplify Lincoln’s presidency.

The physical toll that the stresses of war took on Lincoln
are evident in these two pictures. To the left is a picture
taken in 1861, shortly after taking office. The picture on the
right was taken in 1865, about two months before his death.

Between the Emancipation Proclamation and the passing of the 13^th Amendment much happened. One significant event came during a lull in the war during 1863. Lincoln had been looking for a chance to give a public address on the significance of the war and got a chance when he was invited to the dedication of the graveyard at Gettysburg. Lincoln may have been tweaking his words up until the day of the address, however he had already arranged much of his carefully worded address. He was scheduled to speak after the eloquent retired politician Edward Everett. Everett spoke for over two hours, leaving many in the crowd unprepared for Lincoln’s brief remarks. So brief her his remarks that a photograph was not taken. Witnesses offered conflicting reports on what Lincoln said and how he said it; Was he reading from notes? Was he interrupted by applause? Did he say “under God”? That his words were extraordinary quickly became apparent as its text was printed in papers across the country. What I find most beautiful about these words was his use of “Four score and seven years ago”. By establishing 1776 and the Declaration of Independence as the birth of our nation and not the signing of the Constitution in 1789, Lincoln was driving home his philosophy that until Jefferson’s words “all men are created equal” were fulfilled, the nation had not met its purpose.

Lincoln dealt with rumblings of a contested nomination for the Republican nomination. Some Republicans even held a dissident convention in which John Fremont was nominated, but the party ultimately rallied around Lincoln and he easily defeated his former general, George McClellan. One interesting note from Lincoln’s second election was his passivity at the nomination of Andrew Johnson as his Vice President thereby replacing Hannibal Hamlin. Some suppose that Lincoln wanted to distance himself from Hamlin’s extreme (i.e. abolitionist) views on slavery. Lincoln was known to joke that he didn’t fear Confederate assassination attempts because they feared Hamlin more than him.

There is so much more to touch on with Lincoln. I’ve hardly discussed Mary and haven’t mentioned his children. There’s Lincoln’s struggle to find generals he could work with and trust, his premonition-like dreams, the reconciliation of views that would be considered racist today with the image we have of the Great Emancipator. In the last couple days that I read Lincoln’s biography I trying to decide how to compare Washington and Lincoln. Washington created the country while Lincoln saved it. It finally occurred to me, not that this is an earth-shattering revelation, that the country needed both of them. They are great because of each other. Without Washington, there would likely have been no United States for Lincoln to lead and without Lincoln, Washington’s creation may have been destroyed. Both were undoubtedly the perfect person at the perfect time for the country.

Given that I wasn’t looking much beyond Lincoln and the Civil War when I began this project, I’ve decided to linger for a while. My next two books will diverge a bit from the regular pattern. I’m going to read James Swanson’s Manhunt to better understand Lincoln’s assassination and the subsequent search for his killer. Then I’m going to read William Cooper’s biography of Jefferson Davis to better understand Davis and “the so-called Confederate States.”