Taylor’s inauguration was the first that Lincoln ever attended. He had no idea if he would ever attend another or whether he would ever return to Washington. The knowledge that there was another Whig in the White House was of little solace to him. A presidential victory that depended on the thinnest of margins of victory in a state—New York—that Whigs should have had firmly in their column was cause for concern, not celebration. While a Whig presidency should have brightened his future, clouds had swept in. Essentially a political neophyte, Taylor was an enigma to Whigs and Democrats alike. Taylor could barely stay on script during the general election. The prospect that Seward and Weed would write the only script he might follow in the future did nothing to relieve Lincoln’s concerns or those of most Whig loyalists.
The fragile coalition that brought Taylor into office was further cause for concern. As historian Kenneth Winkle noted, “Lincoln clearly recognized the strange Whig brew [electing Taylor] that included free soil Democrats, writing ‘all the odds and ends are with us—Barnburners [an antislavery faction in New York], Native Americans, Tyler men, disappointed office seeking locofocos [a radical faction opposed to any financial policies they deemed antidemocratic], and the Lord knows what.’”107 Keeping that coalition together or forging a more solid one to ensure Taylor’s reelection was likely impossible. It could not be done without a compelling vision of the future that no one in the party had yet put together. Lincoln was not sure how to do that. Before he could chart that larger course, he had to do something else, something he had not done since he walked into New Salem—find a path that could take him from obscurity to political relevance.
Chapter Four
Learning from Failure
(1849–1856)
If a man can learn from his failures, he can go far. Lincoln did.
On returning home, Lincoln had much to be proud of. From humble origins, he had risen in eighteen years to significant heights—serving four terms in the Illinois House, becoming a Whig leader in Illinois in all but name, and serving a term in the U.S. House when the nation elected its second Whig president. In that span, Lincoln met two presidents (Polk and Taylor), traded stories with Daniel Webster, debated the Democrats’ rising star Stephen Douglas more than once, and stood on the floor of the House to make speeches that made that grand old institution shake with laughter. He had been friendly with the last giant of the founding era, John Quincy Adams, and had stood shoulder to shoulder with such Democratic luminaries as John Calhoun, Thomas Hart Benton, Chief Justice Taney, and Jefferson Davis. He had a volume of Henry Clay’s speeches inscribed by the man himself, and he had even seen Clay in person. He’d made a reputation in Washington and Illinois as a storyteller extraordinaire, and now he had more than a handful of impressive encounters to recount.
Nevertheless, Lincoln’s failures were mounting. His effort to secure a second term in the House had come to naught, and he was returning to a community in which he had managed, through his strident partisanship, to alienate many Democratic friends and old Whig allies. He had made some useful friends in Washington, but none among the party’s leadership. To add insult to injury, back to practicing law just before he left the capital, he argued his only case before the Supreme Court, a dispute in which Lincoln represented the defendant, who argued that Illinois law barred an action against him brought by a nonresident of the state. In an opinion by Chief Justice Taney, the Court ruled 6–1 against Lincoln’s client. The only vote Lincoln got came from John McLean, a Jackson appointee who had many Whiggish sympathies. A few years later, Lincoln would try in vain to get the Whig Party to nominate McLean as its presidential candidate. Lincoln had many fences to mend in Springfield, besides trying to revive a law practice that Herndon had managed to keep afloat in his absence. Herndon recalled that, upon his return to Springfield, Lincoln was despondent that he had not done more: “How hard—Oh how hard it is to die and leave one’s Country no better than if one had never lived for it!”1
From nearly half a continent away, Lincoln watched the nation’s leaders fumble in their efforts to find solutions to the mounting problems of nativism—a movement among the “native born” (those born in the United States) against new immigrants (as well as actual natives)—and slavery that were dividing the nation. Yet Lincoln never fully disappeared from the national stage in the 1850s. When he made his bid to take center stage in 1859 and 1860, he was not the same man who had returned to Springfield ten years before. He was still Abe Lincoln, the father, husband, storyteller, and loyal Whig, but this reconstructed Lincoln was more moderate, more deliberate, more contemplative, more disciplined, less biting in his wit, and more eloquent. Like Clay and Jackson, he never quit, but he went further than either of them to work on himself and find his voice and a vision for the nation’s future that picked up where Clay’s had ended.
I
* * *
It is unknown exactly when the people closest to Lincoln began noticing he was cold and ruthlessly ambitious. There is a point in every great history of Lincoln when this side—perhaps his core—is noted, but ambition is always retrospectively obvious when the subject is a president. Lincoln’s intense craving for higher office may have become most apparent in the 1850s, but it is likely to have been there all the time, and his brief stint in Washington likely made him more eager than ever to be at the center of the political action.
Among Lincoln’s friends and mentors, there was surprising consensus on what they perceived the adult Lincoln to be. Herndon said of Lincoln in the 1850s, “Mr. Lincoln never had a confidant, and therefore never unbosomed to others. He never spoke of his trials to me or, so far as I knew, to any of his friends.”2 After Lincoln’s death, Herndon wrote, “Even after my long and intimate acquaintance with Mr. Lincoln I never fully knew and understood him. [He] was the most reticent and mostly secretive man that ever existed; he never opened his own soul to one man . . . even those who [were] with him through long years of hard study and under constantly varying circumstances can hardly say they knew him through and through.”3 In short, Herndon said, “He never touched the history or quality of his own nature in the presence of his friends.”4 Leonard Swett, a fellow lawyer in Springfield, agreed that “beneath a smooth surface of candor and an apparent declaration of all his thoughts and feelings,” Lincoln was a private man, who “handled and moved men remotely as we do pieces on a chessboard.”5 He added that Lincoln was a “remorseless trimmer with men; they were his tools and when they were used up he threw them aside as old iron and took up new tools.”6
John Todd Stuart, who had known Lincoln all his adult life, agreed as well. He said, “L[incoln] did forget his friends. There was no part of his nature which drew him to acts of gratitude to his friends.” He observed as well that there was in Lincoln “his want of passion—Emotion” that accounted for Lincoln’s “peculiar constitution—this dormancy—this vegetable constitution.”7 The word “peculiar” appears in the assessments of many associates and family members. David Davis, who traveled the law circuit with Lincoln and later led his presidential campaign, said, “Lincoln was a peculiar man. [He] never asked my advice on any question. . . . [Lincoln] had no Strong emotional feelings for any person—Mankind or thing. He never thanked me for any thing I did.”8 Lincoln’s sister-in-law Elizabeth Edwards said, “I knew Mr L well—he was a cold man—had no affection—was not Social—was abstracted—thoughtful.”9 Herndon’s experiences, too, confirmed that “Lincoln was undemonstrative” and “somewhat cold and yet exacting.”10
Many other allies, from as far back as New Salem and later in Washington, spoke of Lincoln’s circumspection. Gustave Koerner, the leader of the large German American population in southern Illinois, supported Lincoln all his adult life but thought he was not “really capable of what might be called warm-hearted friendship.”11 Pennsylvania journalist Alexander McClure wrote, “Mr. Lincoln gave his confidence to no living man without reservation. He trusted many, but he trusted only within the carefully-studied limit
ation of their usefulness, and when he trusted, he confided, as a rule, only to the extent necessary to make that trust available.”12 After years of working with Lincoln, McClure concluded, “Neither by word nor expression could anyone form the remotest idea of his purpose, and when he did act in many cases he surprised both friends and foes.”13 John Bunn, who knew Lincoln in his Springfield years, recalled that Lincoln “had his personal ambitions, but he never told any man his deeper plans and few, if any, knew his inner thoughts. What was private and personal to himself he never confided to any man on earth. When men have told of conversations with Lincoln in which they represent him as giving out either political or family affairs of a very sacred and secret character, their tales may be set down as false.”14 A fellow chess player observed that
While playing chess [he] seems to be continually thinking of something else. Those who have played with him say he plays as if it were a mechanical pastime to occupy his hands while his mind is busy with some subject. He plays what chess-players call a “safe game.” Rarely attacking, he is content to let his opponent attack while he concentrates all his energies in the defense—awaiting the opportunity of dashing in at a weak point or the expenditure of his adversary’s strength.15
There may have been no man who was closer to Lincoln than Orville Browning. Like Stuart, he had known Lincoln all his adult life. Contrary to Herndon’s assessment, Lincoln often confided with Browning, indeed, perhaps more with him than anyone else, with the likely exception of Mary Todd. On looking back over his long relationship with Lincoln, Browning said, “Our friendship was close, warm, and I believe sincere. I know mine for him was, and I never had reason to distrust his for me. Our relations to my knowledge were never interrupted for a moment.”16 Yet Browning also saw Lincoln’s ambition and cunning.
True, many of these critical appraisals of Lincoln seem like sour grapes, the negative reactions of people who may not have gotten all they had wanted from Lincoln, or perhaps attempting, after Lincoln’s death, to bring him down a peg or two. Yet these comments remain credible because they came from people who thought of themselves as Lincoln’s allies and friends. They might have felt betrayed because they were not as important to Lincoln as they had hoped or because Lincoln had not confided in them as much as they would have liked as he paved his path to the presidency. They wished to be remembered for their own impact on history.
Many of Lincoln’s closest associates, perhaps all, missed the fact that Lincoln was fundamentally a pragmatist. Principles, history, ideas, people—he thought of them all as tools. Lincoln’s hero, Clay, had been the same, earning his most common nickname, the Great Compromiser. Yet it would be wrong to say that the only thing Lincoln refused to compromise was his own career prospects. His moral imperative, particularly when it came to opposing the extension of slavery, remained his compass. The surprise for many was how fiercely he pushed others out of the way on his relentless quest for power.
II
* * *
Lincoln was ever mindful of his failures and limitations. In 1850, he began a lecture to young law students with the candid acknowledgment (reminiscent of Clay’s trademark self-deprecation) that “I am not an accomplished lawyer. I find quite as much material for a lecture in those points wherein I failed, as in those wherein I have been moderately successful.”17 He thought, too, of how Stephen Douglas, younger than he, had surpassed him in Illinois and national politics. In 1852, he acknowledged, “Douglas has got to be a great man, and [be]strode the earth. Time was when I was in his way some; but he has outgrown me and [be]strides the world; and such small men as I am, can hardly be considered worthy of his notice; and I may have to dodge and get between his legs.” Four years later, he was still thinking of Douglas, remembering that
twenty-two years ago Judge Douglas and I first became acquainted. We were both young then; he a trifle younger than I. Even then, we were both ambitious; I, perhaps, quite as much so as he. With me, the race of ambition has been a failure—a flat failure; with him it has been one of splendid success. His name fills the nation; and is not unknown, even, in foreign lands. I affect no contempt for the high eminence he has reached.18
Lincoln wanted such eminence for himself. He put in the hard work on behalf of a cause bigger than himself for the good of the country and acclaim seen through the prism of Lincoln’s faith in the self-made man. He was not going to quit because he had yet to achieve such eminence. Jackson did not despair in 1824 that he had lost his chance to be president. To the contrary, he redoubled his efforts and became the standard of success for other presidents to measure themselves. Though Clay had lost the presidency three times, he never quit, either. As Lincoln was leaving Washington, Clay was returning to Washington to try, in spite of his frail health, for at least one more chance to lead the Senate and make another run for the presidency.
Though Lincoln was back in Springfield, he had not lost his ambition. As Browning noted, Lincoln was “always a most ambitious man.”19 In Browning’s judgment, Lincoln hoped “to fit himself properly for what he considered some important predestined labor or work . . . , that he was destined for something nobler than he was for the time engaged in.”20
In the last paragraph of the first speech Lincoln gave announcing his arrival on the political stage, he had declared, “Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say for one that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition, is yet to be developed.” For the rest of his life, he reminded audiences of his “humble” origins (“I was born,” he said, “and have ever remained in the most humble walks of life.”21) while acknowledging his “ambition” to serve. In his 1838 speech to the Young Men’s Lyceum in Springfield, Lincoln denounced the hazards of political ambition, which enticed men to become tyrants. Years later, as president, he understood the importance of braving those hazards for the greater good. As he counseled General McClellan, “If we never try, we shall never succeed.”22
The most common theme of Lincoln’s counsel to others in the 1850s was that success required relentless determination on behalf of a noble cause. These are what drove men like Jackson, Clay, and Lincoln to make an enduring mark on the world. Failure was not going to stop Lincoln’s “little engine” of ambition. Not trying was, for Lincoln, the greatest failure of all.
A yearning for something better, some grander objective, was deeply engrained within him. In 1850, Lincoln further suggested to young law students, “The leading rule for the lawyer, as for every man of every other calling, is diligence. Leave nothing for tomorrow which can be done today.”23 In 1855, Lincoln counseled Isham Reavis, who had written for advice on becoming a lawyer: “If you are resolutely determined to make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is more than half-done already.”24 Nearly three years later, he wrote another aspiring lawyer, William Grigsby, “If you wish to be a lawyer, attach no consequence to the place you are in, or the person you are with; get books, sit down anywhere, and go to reading for yourself. That will make a lawyer of you quicker than any other way.”25 In 1858, James Thornton wrote to Lincoln seeking his assistance in training John Widmer, who was aspiring to practice law even though he was older than the usual young man starting the study of the law. Lincoln declined the chance “to be a suitable instructor for a law student.” His advice for Widmer was that “he reads the books for himself without an instructor. That is precisely the way that I came into the law. Let Mr. Widmer read Blackstone’s Commentaries, Chitty’s Pleadings—Greenleaf’s Evidence, Story’s Equity, and Story’s Equity Pleadings, get a license, and go to the practice and keep reading.”26 Lincoln told Reavis, “I did not read with anyone.”27 (So much for John Todd Stuart, Bowling Green, and Stephen Logan.)
Lincoln’s reading always extended beyond the law. In the 1850s, he reread the poetry and other books he loved best. John Hay, one of Lincoln’s secretaries when he was pre
sident, recalled that Lincoln “read Shakespeare more than all the other writers together.”28 As president, Lincoln told the actor James Hackett, “Some of the plays I have never read; while others I have gone over perhaps as frequently as any unprofessional reader. Among the latter are Lear, Richard Third, Henry Eighth, Hamlet, and especially Macbeth.”29 Lincoln read Macbeth aloud when the mood suited him, and also the somber, sad poetry of Robert Burns, Pilgrim’s Progress, and William Knox’s Mortality (sometimes called by its most famous line, “Oh Why Should the Spirit of Mortal be Proud?”).
Pilgrim’s Progress was a perrennial Lincoln favorite. Its hero, Christian, finds salvation only after surmounting the challenges of corruption run wild in the world and the countless temptations that routinely bring men down—most of all, the sin of pride. Lincoln also loved Hamlet and the Henry plays, but one reason he might have preferred Macbeth was that its actual hero does not die in the end. Macbeth is an antihero whose ambition leads to his downfall. In the end, it is “the good Macduff,” the quiet man who is respected when he speaks and is devoted to his country above all else, who prevails. Lincoln also loved Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, another tragedy in which an overambitious main character dies. Brutus says, “As he was ambitious, I slew him.”30 There were lessons in these literary masterpieces, and Lincoln relished not only their language, but also their precepts.
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