Abraham Lincoln

by Stephen B. Oates

  Lincoln and mathematics: the quotation “Their ambition” from Lincoln, CW, 1:113; the story about Lincoln and Euclid’s geometry from Paul M. Angle, “Lincoln’s Power with Words,” Papers of the Abraham Lincoln Association, 3:12.

  For Lincoln’s depression and search for identity, see the sophisticated analysis in Strozier, Lincoln’s Quest for Union, 35-88. The quotation “I have no other” is from Lincoln, CW, 1:8; the quotation “Well, I feel just like the boy” from P. M. Zall, Abe Lincoln Laughing: Humorous Anecdotes from Original Sources by and about Abraham Lincoln (Berkeley, Cal., 1982), 22. For Lincoln and Ann Rutledge, see my references above under “Man of the People.” Lincoln’s letters to Mary Owens are in CW, 1:78-79, 94-95. The quotation “was deficient” is from Mary Owens Vineyard to Herndon, May 22 and June 22, 1866, Herndon-Weik Collection, Library of Congress. The Speed quotation is from Angle, Herndon’s Life of Lincoln, 170, but also see Hertz, Hidden Lincoln, 159.

  For Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln, see Ruth Painter Randall, Mary Lincoln: Biography of a Marriage (Boston, 1953), 3-85, and Turners, Mary Todd Lincoln, 3-34, 475. The quotation “the most congenial mind” from Katherine Helm, The True Story of Mary, Wife of Lincoln (New York, 1928), 76; the quotation “he would listen” from Elizabeth Edwards’s first statement [n.d.] and second statement, Sept. 27, 1898, Herndon-Weik Collection; the quotation “I am now, the most miserable man” from Lincoln, CW, 1:229; Lincoln’s letters to Speed about their romantic troubles in ibid., 259-61, 265-66, 267-68, 269-70, 280-81, 282, 288-89; the quotation “except my marrying” from ibid., 305; the quotation “lover-husband” from Turners, Mary Todd Lincoln, 534; the quotation “probably ended sexual intercourse” from Strozier, Lincoln’s Quest for Union, 88.

  3: ALL CONQUERING MIND

  Lincoln’s preoccupations with death and insanity: Lincoln’s recitation of “Mortality” and his poem on Matthew Gentry are in CW, 2:90, and 1:5-86. My version of “Mortality” is from The Home Book of Verse, Vol. II (ed. Burton Egbert Stevenson, New York, 1940), 3409. For Lincoln and liquor, see Beveridge, Lincoln, 1:82-83, 534. The quotation “all conquering mind” is from Lincoln, CW, 1:279.

  For Lincoln’s humor, Zall, Abe Lincoln Laughing, is the most scholarly and reliable collection of Lincoln stories; but also see Thomas, “Lincoln’s Humor,” Papers of the Abraham Lincoln Association, 3:-29-47. The quotations “whistle down sadness” and “I laugh because I must not weep” from Henry C. Whitney, Life on the Circuit with Lincoln (Boston, 1892), 171, 146-47; the quotation “I tell you the truth” from John F. Farnsworth’s testimony in Sandburg, Lincoln: The War Years, 3:305; the quotation “seemed to diffuse” from Lamon, Lincoln, 478-79; the quotation “He can rake a sophism” from Thomas, “Lincoln’s Humor,” Papers of the Abraham Lincoln Association, 3:46; humor on the Mexican War and state sovereignty from Zall, Abe Lincoln Laughing, 144, 55-56; the quotation “Has it not got down” from Lincoln, CW, 3:279; the quotation “every one of his stories” from Zall, Abe Lincoln Laughing, 5; the quotation “he saw ludicrous elements” from Thomas, “Lincoln’s Humor,” Papers of the Abraham Lincoln Association, 3:36; the quotations “the strongest example,” “This is an indictment,” and “burst of spontaneous storytelling” from Zall, Abe Lincoln Laughing, 69, 43, 5; the quotation “with their hands” from Basler, Lincoln Legend, 125; the story of an old Englishman, the Negro dialect joke, and the Swett joke from Zall, Abe Lincoln Laughing, 147, 42, 40; the quotation “akin to lunacy” from Charles Minor, The Real Lincoln (Richmond, 1904), 29-30; the quotation “on a certain member” from David C. Mearns, The Lincoln Papers (2 vols. in 1, reprint ed., New York, 1969), 169; Lincoln’s story, “Bass-Ackwards,” in CW, 8:420; the joke on his looks from Zall, Abe Lincoln Laughing, 21. For Lincoln wrinkling his nose and scratching his elbows, see the Letters of Horace H. Furnass (2 vols., Boston, 1922), 1:126. Henry Villard, quoted in Randall, Mr. Lincoln, 213, said that Lincoln “shook all over…and when he felt particularly good over his performance he followed his habit of drawing his knees with his arms about them, up to his very face.”

  4: MR. LINCOLN

  The best studies of Lincoln’s law career are John J. Duff, A. Lincoln, Prairie Lawyer (New York, 1960), and John P. Frank, Lincoln as a Lawyer (Urbana, Ill., 1961). The quotation “I have news” is from Lincoln, CW, 2: 106; Lincoln’s finances in Harry E. Pratt, The Personal Finances of Abraham Lincoln (Springfield, Ill., 1943); the quotation “resolve to be honest” from Lincoln, CW, 2:82.

  For Lincoln on alcoholics, see ibid., 1:271-79; on women’s rights, ibid., 48. The quotation “In this statement” is from Roy P. Basler’s essay in Cullom Davis and others (eds.), The Public and the Private Lincoln: Contemporary Perspectives (Carbondale, Ill., 1979), 42; Herndon’s quotation on the Irish in his article in the New York Tribune, Feb. 15, 1867; Lincoln’s remarks on the Know-Nothings in CW, 2:323.

  Part Three: Advocate of the Dream

  1: THE BEACON LIGHT OF LIBERTY

  For Lincoln and the Declaration of Independence, see Lincoln, CW, 2:266 and 4:168-69, 235-36, 240, 266. The quotations “profitable lesson” and “got through the world” are from ibid, 2:124. The best study of Lincoln’s economics is G. S. Boritt, Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream (Memphis, Tenn., 1978). The quotations “The legitimate object,” “better their conditions,” and “the liberty party” are from Lincoln, CW, 2:220-21, 3:312, and 2:276.

  Lincoln’s views on slavery before 1854: the quotation “founded both” from ibid., 1:75; the quotations “continual torment” and “had the power” from ibid., 2:320; the quotation “sort of Negro livery stable” from ibid., 2:253, 237-38; the quotation “noblest political system” from ibid., 276; the quotation “there should be nothing” from ibid., 3:3-7, also 2:492, 513-14; the quotations “just what we would be” and “human sympathies” from ibid., 2:255, 264; the quotation “a captive people” from ibid., 132. See also Don E. Fehrenbacher, Prelude to Greatness: Lincoln in the 1850s (Stanford, Cal., 1962), 24-25, 85.

  2: THIS VAST MORAL EVIL

  For Lincoln’s reactions to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, see the speeches in Lincoln, CW, 2:247-83, 398-410, which include his Peoria address. My description of the great southern reaction draws from the Illinois Daily State Register, July 30, Aug. 19, Oct. 15, 1856; Muscogee (Alabama) Herald as quoted in ibid., Oct. 15, 1856; George Fitzhugh, Cannibals All! or Slaves without Masters (ed. C. Vann Woodward, Cambridge, Mass., 1960), 252; Lincoln, CW, 2:341 and 3:53-54, 205; Beveridge, Lincoln, 2:436-39. Lincoln’s remarks about slave traders are in CW, 2:322.

  Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech, ibid., 461-69, outlines the stages of the slave-power conspiracy as Lincoln saw it. But see also ibid., 2:341 and 3:53-54, 204-5; Beveridge, Lincoln, 2:563-64; Fehrenbacher, Prelude, 79-95; and Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War (New York, 1970), 73-102. Whether or not there was a southern conspiracy isn’t so significant as the fact that Lincoln and the Republicans thought there was, for that is what shaped their actions. I am trying to stress the point that people respond to events according to their perception of reality. Therefore, what people believe is true is quite as important as what is true when it comes to reconstructing the past or understanding the present.

  Lincoln’s quotations “vast moral evil,” “central idea,” “the bread that his own hands have earned,” and “stripes, and unrewarded toils” are from his CW, 2:494, 385, 520, 320. My own work With Malice Toward None narrates the Lincoln-Douglas debates from Lincoln’s point of view, whereas Robert W. Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas (New York, 1973), 641-79, relates them from Douglas’s perspective. The speeches of both men are gathered in Lincoln, CW, vols. 2 and 3, and in Paul M. Angle (ed.), Created Equal: The Complete Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 (Chicago, 1958). Douglas’s remarks about Lincoln and Negroes are from his speeches at Chicago and Ottawa.

  Lincoln had touched on racial equality and intermarriage in earlier stump battles with Douglas (see, for example,
CW, 2:266, 405, 407-8). My discussion of Lincoln’s views on the subject derives from the following sources: Lincoln’s position on legally enforced discrimination in Illinois from Mark E. Neely, Jr., The Abraham Lincoln Encyclopedia (New York, 1982), 217; the quotation “Lincoln of history” from Don E. Fehrenbacher, “Only His Stepchildren: Lincoln and the Negro,” Civil War History, 20 (Dec., 1974), 303; Lincoln’s quotations on Negroes in CW, 2: 501, 3:16, 145-46, 301, and 5:372-73; Current’s observations in Davis and others, Public and Private Lincoln, 144. For Lincoln and Springfield and Sangamon County in 1858, see Christopher N. Breiseth’s excellent analysis in ibid., 101-20.

  Some white historians agree with Bennett and Harding that Lincoln was a white supremacist. See George M. Fredrickson, “A Man but Not a Brother: Abraham Lincoln and Racial Equality,” Journal of Southern History, 41 (Feb., 1975), 39-58; Strozier, Lincoln’s Quest for Union, 173-75, 178-79; and Kenneth M. Stampp, The Imperiled Union: Essays on the Background of the Civil War (New York, 1980), 128. Other Lincoln scholars, including the present author, disagree with this argument and have been at great pains to place Lincoln’s public utterances of the 1850s in historical context and to show how much he grew and changed in the war years. See Fehrenbacher, “Only His Stepchildren,” Civil War History, 20, 293-310; the essays of Breiseth and Current in Davis and others, Public and Private Lincoln, 101-20, 137-46; Current, Lincoln Nobody Knows, 214-36; Quarles, Lincoln and the Negro; and Franklin, Emancipation Proclamation.

  3: MY DISSATISFIED FELLOW COUNTRYMEN

  Lincoln on the stump derives from Lincoln, CW, 3:368-69, 375-76, 380, 387-88, 390-91. For Lincoln and the Republican vision of America, see ibid., 3:462-63, 477-81, and Lincoln, Collected Works—Supplement, 1832-1865 (ed. Roy P. Basler, Westport, Conn., 1974), 43-45, hereafter CWS; the quotation “This is a world” from Lincoln’s Cincinnati speech, the quotation “if constitutionally we elect,” and Lincoln’s Cooper Union speech, all from Lincoln, CW, 3:376, 440-41, 453-56, 501-52, and 535-55.

  For Lincoln and the 1860 nomination: the quotation “taste is in my mouth” from ibid., 4:45, also see 34, 36, 38, 43, 46, 47, and 3:375; how Lincoln got nominated from Lincoln, CWS, 54-55, Willard L. King, Lincoln’s Manager: David Davis (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), 137 ff., Fehrenbacher, Prelude to Greatness, 155-59, from which I took the quotation “could not win,” and Stampp, Imperiled Union, 136-62; the quotations “class,” “caste,” and “despotism” from Lincoln, CW, 3:375.

  My account of Lincoln, the South, and secession draws from Davis, Image of Lincoln in the South, 7-40; the quotation “the South, the loyal South” from the Atlanta Southern Confederacy as reprinted in the New York Times, Aug. 7, 1860; the quotation “the people of the South” from Lincoln, CW, 4:95; David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861 (New York, 1976), 405-47, 485-513, and Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis (New Haven and London, 1942), 9-19, 139-42; Stampp, Imperiled Union, 163-88, 191-242; Steven A. Channing, Crisis of Fear: Secession in South Carolina (New York, 1970), 17-57, 229 ff.; Allan Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln (2 vols., New York, 1950), 2:287 ff.; the quotation “Slavery with us” from Channing, Crisis of Fear, 291; quotation “To remain in the Union” from Montgomery Mail as reprinted in the Nashville Banner, Nov. 11, 1860; the quotation “loud threats” from Thurlow Weed, Autobiography (Boston, 1883), 605-14; the quotations “Why all this excitement?” and “complaints?” and Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address from Lincoln, CW, 4:215-16, 262-71. See also James G. Randall, Lincoln the President: From Springfield to Bull Run (paperback ed., New York, 1945), 178-206.

  Lincoln and Fort Sumter: the quotation “all the troubles” from Orville H. Browning, Diary (ed. Theodore Calvin Pease and James G. Randall, 2 vols., Springfield, Ill., 1927-33), 1:476; the quotations “no attachment to the Union” and “irrevocably gone” from Stephen A. Hurlbut to Lincoln, March 27, 1861, the Robert Todd Lincoln Collection of the Papers of Abraham Lincoln, Library of Congress, hereafter RTL; Lincoln, CW, 4:423-26; Richard N. Current, Lincoln and the First Shot (New York, 1963), 43 and passim.; Stampp, Imperiled Union, 177-88; Potter, Lincoln and His Party, 337-66; quotations “an ingenious sophism” and “With rebellion” from Lincoln, CW, 4:433-37; the quotation “professed Union men” and Lincoln’s references to Lee, Johnston, Magruder, and southern insurrectionists from ibid., 4:427, 43 and 6:264, 265, 8:121; the quotation “all conquering mind” from ibid., 1:279.

  Part Four: Warrior for the Dream

  1: THE CENTRAL IDEA

  The quotation “You are nothing” is from A. G. Frick [?] to Lincoln, Feb. 14, 1861, Chicago Historical Society; the quotation “miserable traitorous head” from clipping in Edmund J. McGarn and William Fairchild to Lincoln, Apr. 20, 1861, RTL; the quotation “clear, flagrant, and gigantic case” from Lincoln, CW, 6:264; the quotation “not at all hopeful” from Orville Browning to Lincoln, Aug. 19, 1861, RTL, and Browning, Diary, 1:488-89; Lincoln’s message to Congress and quotations “nothing in malice,” “I happen temporarily,” and “material growth” from Lincoln, CW, 4:426-39, 5:346, 7:512, 3:477-79, 5:52-53; Boritt, Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream, 195-231; the quotation “remorseless revolutionary struggle” from Lincoln, CW, 5:49.

  There is a popular argument in the academies that Lincoln was a “Whig in the White House,” adhering to some theoretical Whig formula about a restricted presidency beyond what was necessary to save the Union. This argument rests on the assumption that Lincoln had left the Whigs reluctantly in 1856 and that ideologically he remained attached to the old party. This does not accord with the evidence. Lincoln was no reluctant Republican. By 1856, he had become convinced that old party labels—even his own Whig label—severely impeded the mobilization of anti-Nebraska forces and that a new free-soil party was imperative. The Republicans now loomed as the new major party of the future, and Lincoln readily enlisted in their antiextensionist cause. In fact, he gave the keynote address for the organization of the Republican party in Illinois. He never said, in a single surviving record, that he regretted the demise of the Whigs. Indeed, they had become obsolete in the battles over slavery that dominated the 1850s. In Republican ranks, Lincoln no longer had to consort with proslavery southerners, as he had with the Whigs. In Republican ranks, he belonged to a party that forthrightly denounced slavery as a moral wrong and that shared his views on the American experiment and the inalienable rights of man. In Republican ranks, Lincoln found an ideological home for all of his principles—political as well as economic. And no man, as I pointed out in the text, defended Republican dogma more eloquently and unswervingly than he. Thus, when he gained the presidency, Lincoln was a Republican in the White House, not a Whig. Among other things, it was not a Whig who employed all the pressures and prestige of the White House to get the present Thirteenth Amendment through a recalcitrant House of Representatives (as I describe in the text). Nor was it a Whig who raised Republican ideology to the lofty heights of the Gettysburg Address.

  As for some Whig theory of the presidency, it is improbable that any such thing existed for a minority party which, in its twenty-four-or twenty-five-year history, managed to elect only two chief executives, both of them professional soldiers and political amateurs who died during their first year in office. The Vice-Presidents who replaced them—if anybody can remember their names—hardly left their marks on the job. The “Whig in the White House” argument appears in Donald, Lincoln Reconsidered, 187-208, and is carried to almost absurd lengths in Boritt’s otherwise superior study, Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream.

  2: DEATH WARRANT FOR SLAVERY

  The quotation “Lincoln would like to have God” is from Quarles, Lincoln and the Negro, 84. My discussion of the pressures on Lincoln to free the slaves is based on the following sources. The advanced Republicans: my own “The Slaves Freed,” American Heritage (Dec., 1980), 74-78; David Donald, Charles Sumner and the Rights of Man (New York, 1970), 17 ff.; Hans L. Trefousse, The Radical Republicans, Lincoln’s Vanguard for Racial Justi
ce (New York, 1969), 171-73, 203-22; Franklin, Emancipation Proclamation, 1-28, 124; Detroit Post and Tribune, Zachariah Chandler (Detroit, 1880), 253; George Washington Julian, Political Recollections, 1840-1872 (Chicago, 1880), 153, 165-66, 223; Edward Magdol, Owen Lovejoy, Abolitionist in Congress (New Brunswick, N.J., 1967), 299-302; the quotation “never allowed himself” from Noah Brooks, Washington, D.C., in Lincoln’s Time (ed. Herbert Mitgang, Chicago, 1971), 33; quotations “perhaps the most energetic,” “queer, rough,” and “first blast” from Hans L. Trefousse, Benjamin Franklin Wade, Radical Republican from Ohio (New York, 1963), 180, 131, 181; the quotation “cooked by Niggers” from Trefousse, Radical Republicans, 31; the quotation “more advanced Republicans” from Detroit Post and Tribune, Chandler, 222.

  Frederick Douglass: Douglass, Life and Times (reprint of revised 1892 ed., New York, 1962), 336; McPherson, Negro’s Civil War, 38-40; also Philip S. Foner (ed.), The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass (4 vols., New York, 1975), 3: 13-21.