Lincoln's Melancholy

by Joshua Wolf Shenk

  Given how much it bears on his case, it may seem surprising that the relationship between creativity and suffering has never been applied to Lincoln. That’s largely due to a blinkered view of creativity that considers it the exclusive province of cloistered artists. Politics, many people believe, is for glad-handing and persuasion, a realm where elegance of thought can be a hindrance and gains come only by pile-driving force. But a precise definition of creativity can help us see how it bears on Lincoln.

  In a study on “the psychology of discovery and invention,” drawing on analysis of high achievers in fields from science to diplomacy to the arts, the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi defines creativity as the making of something genuinely new that is valued enough to be added to the culture. “Creativity doesn’t happen in people’s heads,” writes Csikszentmihalyi, “but in the interaction between a person’s thoughts and a sociocultural context. It is a systemic rather than an individual phenomenon.” Also, being creative isn’t the same as being socially interesting or stimulating. “Some of the people who have had the greatest impact on history,” Csikszentmihalyi writes, “did not show any originality or brilliance in their behavior except for the accomplishments they left behind—neither Leonardo da Vinci nor Isaac Newton nor Thomas Edison would have been assets at a party.”

  What, then, distinguishes creative people? Csikszentmihalyi explains that one word best sums up what he has learned about them: complexity. “I mean,” he writes, “that they show tendencies of thought and action that in most people are segregated.” The prestigious creators he studied were both wild and subdued, rebellious and pragmatic, cooperative and aggressive. Crucially, Csikszentmihalyi observes, they found ways to use these extremes to their advantage—for instance, trusting their intuition to make novel connections in language or imagery, and then trusting others to edit and publish their work.

  Research on the mental health of creative people shows another angle of this complexity. The idea of the tortured genius is simplistic, insofar as it suggests that being tortured, by itself, is worth anything. As the psychiatrist Kay Redfield Jamison writes, “There is a great deal of evidence to suggest that, compared to ‘normal’ individuals, artists, writers, and creative people in general are both psychologically ‘sicker’—that is, they score higher on a wide variety of measures of psychopathology—and psychologically healthier (for example, they show quite elevated scores on measures of self-confidence and ego strength)”

  To elaborate on “sicker”: numerous studies have shown that rates of mood disorders are far higher among artists than the overall population. One in-depth study of 113 German artists found rates of “abnormality” much higher than in the general public—fifty percent of the poets in the group had clinically significant mental trouble. Another well-known study, led by Nancy Andreasen, used structured interviews and matched control groups to examine thirty writers at the prestigious University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Eighty percent of the writers met formal criteria for a major mood disorder, compared with thirty percent of controls matched for age, education, and sex.

  Lincoln, of course, is not the only nineteenth-century figure in whom intense suffering coexisted with great achievement. Modern researchers have identified one or more major mood disorders in John Quincy Adams, Charles Darwin, Emily Dickinson, Benjamin Disraeli, William James, William Tecumseh Sherman, Robert Schumann, Leo Tolstoy, Queen Victoria, and many others. We may accurately call these luminaries “mentally ill,” a label that has some use—as did our early diagnosis of Lincoln—insofar as it indicates the depth, severity, and quality of their trouble. However, if we get stuck on the label, we may miss the core fascination, which is how illness can coexist with marvelous well-being.

  In fact, the popular use of medical diagnoses—a mark of progress in many respects—has often hindered a proper understanding of prominent people who suffer so much. Perhaps the best example is the shortlived vice presidential candidacy of Thomas Eagleton in 1972. Tapped by the Democratic nominee, George McGovern, to join his ticket, Eagleton told campaign staffers that on three occasions he had received in-patient psychiatric treatment for depression. Twice he had been treated with electroconvulsive therapy—“electroshock.”

  McGovern’s staff was split over what to do. “This had never happened before,” said Gary Hart, the campaign manager. “No one knew the rules.” McGovern, after reviewing the facts, met with Eagleton and decided that he should stay on the ticket, but a barrage of negative press and nervous donors changed his mind. From that point on, “Eagleton” became synonymous with the toxic political effects of mental health treatment. When Congress was considering President Nixon’s appointment of Gerald Ford to replace Spiro Agnew as vice president in 1973, rumors surfaced that Ford had seen a psychotherapist. He denied it, as did the physician in question. “Consulting a psychiatrist or psychotherapist,” the New York Times noted, “is still an unforgivable sin for an American politician.”

  The Times got it right. The problem that dogged both Eagleton and Ford wasn’t mental trouble per se but the treatment for that trouble—and the language and imagery created by that treatment. When Eagleton first, sheepishly, told McGovern aides about his history, he said that he’d suffered from depression and fatigue. But as Hart has recounted, this raised fears that Eagleton’s medical records would contain “technical terms that unfriendly experts can twist and turn.” Indeed, the psychiatric term “psychosis,” which could refer to profound illogical thinking, a characteristic of depression, came to haunt Eagleton. The fact that he’d had electroshock therapy may have been what sank him.

  Over the past few decades, a stigma in politics against mental health treatment has extended to any display of unscripted emotion. In the primaries leading up to the 2004 campaign, a front-page story in USA Today noted that Vermont governor Howard Dean, a candidate for the Democratic nomination, “is continuing to feed the perception . . . that he is angry, edgy, and—a cardinal sin in politics—not cheerful.” It’s telling that USA Today, like the Times in 1973, used the word “sin.” Somehow, anything short of constant cheer has come to be perceived as a violation of the American religion. Even as we practically drown in information about politicians’ predilections—from snack foods to underwear—a kind of supposition of infallibility keeps us from a real discussion of character, because the real things human beings actually experience are considered taboo. We all know that our presidents, as Bob Dylan sang, “sometimes must have to stand naked.” Yet anyone who dared to be nakedly emotional would face death by a thousand cuts.

  With that in mind, it’s interesting to see how the power brokers and pundits of 1860 reacted to Lincoln’s depressions. Many people didn’t seem to care. The Chester County (Pennsylvania) Times, in the first extended profile of Lincoln published outside Illinois, noted with a shrug that he had mood swings—“passing easily from grave to gay, and from gay to grave.” Even political rivals who knew the worst of it didn’t see the melancholy as a knock on Lincoln. After his election, a Democratic newspaper told the story of Lincoln’s first breakdown, noting how his friends “placed him under guard for fear of his committing suicide.” The author of the piece, an Illinois Democrat named John Hill, raised the history of depression not to question Lincoln’s fitness for office but to celebrate his triumph over difficulty. The piece enjoined young people that they, too, could become great if they “await the occasions which shall rule their destinies.”

  If Lincoln were alive today, his depression would be considered a “character issue”—that is, a political liability. But in his time, it may have helped more than it hurt. While many found his moods odd and curious, the most common reaction was positive interest. Even as he rose to great heights, people tended to feel sympathy for him. As the biographer David Herbert Donald has observed, “Many of Lincoln’s advisors viewed him as a man who needed to be encouraged and protected.” Nathan Knapp, an Illinois Republican, said of Lincoln, “He has not known his own power—uneducated in
Youth, he has always been doubtful whether he was not pushing himself into positions to which he was unequal.” Lincoln’s close ally David Davis called him a “guileless man” who “has few of the qualities of a politician.” Of course Davis knew how skillful and savvy Lincoln could be, but his point was that on a personal level, he seemed unvarnished and unaffected. This contributed to an intense loyalty in his circle of friends and colleagues, which played a large role in his astonishing rise.

  There was a felicitous resonance between his emotional struggle and the material struggles that so impressed his Republican brethren. When Richard Oglesby came up with the “rail-splitter” label at the state party convention in Decatur, it so excited the crowd because it spoke to the dignity and strength of Lincoln’s story—how he had raised himself up, both mentally and materially, and achieved tremendous personal power. At the same convention, you will recall, Lincoln made a strong impression on the delegates with his sad, diffident look onstage. After the convention closed, he sat with his head in his hands and said, pathetically, “I’m not very well.” There was a mystery to this man, a secret pain in his heart. To some people, this made Lincoln all the more alluring. In any case, no one discussed it as a liability.

  Illinois Republicans officially made Lincoln their candidate for president on May 10, 1860, in Decatur. After the state convention, tradition held that Lincoln should go home, while his friends went on to the national party convention in Chicago to win him the nomination. The odds against his success were stiff. The convention site had been chosen, five months before, because it seemed to be neutral ground—Illinois had no serious candidate. Many thought that Seward was a shoo-in; before the proceedings commenced in Chicago, he had locked up more than 150 delegates—two thirds of what he needed to win. But if Seward had the power of a strong reputation, Lincoln had the benefit of his ferociously energetic and skillful advocates. David Davis, as Lincoln’s manager on the scene, led one of the great political operations in history, presenting the man from Illinois as the embodiment of Republican heroism, a living example of upward mobility through free labor. This, combined with round-the-clock cajoling and dealmaking, helped boost Lincoln as a serious contender. A stream of telegrams came to Lincoln at Springfield:

  “Things are working; Keep a good nerve . . . We have got Seward in the attitude of the representative Republican of the East—you of the West . . . Be not too expectant, but rely on our discretion. Again I say, brace your nerves for any result.”—N. M. Knapp, May 14, 1860

  “We are quiet but moving heaven&Earth . . . the heart of the delegates are with us.”—David Davis and Jesse Dubois, May 15, 1860

  “Dont be frightend Keep cool Things is working.”

  —Norman Judd, May 16, 1860

  It turned out that electoral realities were in Lincoln’s favor. To prevail in November, Republicans needed to capture four states they’d lost in 1856: Illinois, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. The right candidate would have solid credentials in the fight against slavery expansion, without having alienated nativists (who were strong in Illinois) or tariff advocates (who were strong in Pennsylvania). Lincoln, who had done enough to be recognized but not enough to be disliked, fit the bill. Though the first ballot brought Seward just sixty-one votes shy of victory, his support had topped out. Lincoln made big gains on the second tally and prevailed on the third. Charles Zane, a young lawyer who spent the day with Lincoln, said that he showed “no nervousness or excitement” upon hearing the news, but that he did seem “graver and at times sadder than usual . . . I attributed this to an anticipation of the great responsibility that would await him if elected.”

  Indeed, his chances were good, for as the new, untested Republican party settled on Lincoln, the old, great Democratic party fell to ruins. Its convention in Charleston, South Carolina, collapsed when southern delegates, who insisted on a federal slave code for the territories, clashed with northerners, who fought that plank. Six weeks later, a second convention, in Baltimore, nominated the slave-code opponent Stephen Douglas, but southerners stormed out, convened again in Richmond, and sent up their own candidate, John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky. To make matters worse for the Democrats, the old Know-Nothing organization joined with southern Whigs to form yet another party, which promised to drain votes from the Democratic upper South. In a four-way race—Lincoln for the Republicans, Douglas for the northern Democrats, Breckinridge for the southern Democrats, and John Bell for the Constitutional Unionists—the “rail-splitter” had the upper hand. “I think the chances were more than equal that we could have beaten the Democracy united,” Lincoln wrote on July 4, 1860. “Divided, as it is, it’s chance appears indeed very slim.” On November 6, Lincoln and his running mate, Maine senator Hannibal Hamlin, won every free state—except for New Jersey, which the ticket split with Douglas—assembling an electoral majority with just forty percent of the popular vote. Abraham Lincoln, the son of a mostly illiterate farmer, would be the sixteenth president of the United States.

  Overnight, the same divisions that had thrust Lincoln to victory became his burden. Repulsed by the ascension of an antislavery party, the cotton states of the lower South quickly seceded—first South Carolina, followed by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. Officials from these states withdrew from Washington and resigned their military commissions. On February 18, 1861, the Confederate States of America inaugurated Jefferson Davis as their provisional president.

  Northern eyes turned expectantly to the man in Springfield. Newspapermen who came to see Lincoln noticed the same contrasts that had intrigued his friends for decades. Describing the president-elect’s “careworn” appearance, the New York Herald’s Henry Villard reported, “The vigor of his mind and the steadiness of his humorous disposition are obviously unimpaired.” Samuel R. Weed, a reporter from St. Louis, found Lincoln “in good spirits,” greeting his supporters “with sincere pleasure.” “There was a sort of sadness in his face,” Weed wrote, “which was remarked by more than one of those present. But he kept it under.” These glimpses of Lincoln—haggard, vigorous, and funny; seeming sad but “keeping it under”—hinted at the man’s complexity. Lincoln himself offered a telling introduction with a line he used on allies who had campaigned for him. “He repeated this remark a half-dozen times in two hours,” reported Weed, “and I have no doubt it came direct from his heart”: “Well, boys,” Lincoln said, “your troubles are over, but mine have just begun.”

  Politics aside, the real question about Lincoln’s melancholy in his public life is how it affected his judgment and outlook. After a lifetime of inner turmoil, Lincoln had the experience and judgment to look trouble straight in the eye. Many old political hands were rattled by secession. Some northerners brashly said good riddance to the South, claiming that the country would be better off split. Others rushed to find something, anything, that would pacify the aggrieved states and bring them back into the Union. Watching these negotiations, Lincoln said plainly that he wouldn’t budge on the bottom line. “Let there be no compromise on the question of extending slavery,” he wrote. “Stand firm. The tug has to come, & better now, than any time hereafter.”

  That phrase reflected a judgment informed by old instincts. Having felt the tug come many times, Lincoln knew that putting it off would do no good. As Frederick Douglass said, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” A dramatic concession might have prevented a conflict, only to intensify it on another day. And as Lincoln repeatedly explained, compromise on the essential issue of the election would set a fatal example. If the losers at the ballot forced the victors to yield on the central point, the result could hardly be called democracy. “We must settle this question now,” Lincoln said, “whether in a free government the minority have the right to break up the government whenever they choose.”

  Good leaders can navigate skillfully between a steady set of principles and the exigencies of the moment. From the start, Lincoln made clear his commitment to a Union dedi
cated to the spread of liberty under the rule of law. At the same time, he took clear stock of the threat. As the scholar Matthew Pinsker has observed, “Mediocre presidents run from bad news. Great presidents face it.” A history of mental struggle is surely no prerequisite for facing bad news, but for Lincoln, a tendency to depressive realism—a temperamental inclination to see and prepare for the worst—gave him an advantage. Having seen that his troubles began after his election, Lincoln also watched, with unclouded vision, as his troubles deepened.

  While the Confederacy mobilized its militias and seized federal forts, mints, and customhouses, President Buchanan dithered in his response. Calling secession illegal, he said he could do nothing to stop it and found fault chiefly with northern agitators who had given slaves “notions of freedom,” leaving their masters no choice but to act in self-preservation. Lincoln was aghast. “The present administration does nothing to check the tendency toward dissolution,” he told his friend Joseph Gillespie. “I, who have been called to meet this awful responsibility, am compelled to remain here, doing nothing to avert it or lessen its force when it comes to me.” Referring to the place where Jesus awaited execution and begged that the cup of bitterness be taken from his mouth, Lincoln said, “I am in the Garden of Gethsemane now, and my cup of bitterness is full and overflowing.”