Lincoln Unbound

by Rich Lowry

  Developing a Lincoln-­inflected agenda within its limited-­government framework is absolutely essential for the party. It has no future unless it is a party of aspiration. It needs Lincoln’s emphasis on uplift, delivered in his populist voice. It needs an economic agenda that is broader and deeper than tax cuts. It needs to engage with the struggles of the working class and do it more seriously than in ritualistic denunciations of “elites.” It needs to understand that a dynamic capitalist society depends on character, and on character-­shaping institutions. Preserving such a society is not merely a matter of limiting government and its dampening effect on enterprise, but of fostering individuals who are disciplined, ambitious, and skilled enough to rise within it. It needs a policy toward the big banks that finds a balance between necessary financial risk-­taking and government-­backed recklessness, and that communicates that Republicans aren’t the tools of Wall Street. It needs to be the party of “the sober, industrious, thriving ­people.”

  In short, it needs to become the Party of Lincoln in a sense more meaningful than a long-­standing nickname.

  The current predicament of the party bears some relation to that of the Whigs, who had to scrape for their presidential victories and faced an adversary, in Andrew Jackson, who had seized on powerful democratic symbols and had a technical advantage in the business of vote-­getting. Republicans have won a majority of the popular vote in only one of the last six elections. ­Demographically, they are swimming upstream, and in important respects they feel stuck in a bygone era—­the 1980s—­when in fact the world has turned many times since then. Their ability—­and sometimes even their desire—­to make themselves appealing seems to wane as the task of doing so becomes more urgent in an increasingly treacherous political landscape.

  Given its occasional attraction for off-­putting rhetoric and suicidal tactical extravagance, the party would be well served to heed the lessons of Lincoln’s tone and of his statesmanship. Lincoln was a champion of a kind of nonjudgmental morality. In his temperance address, he extolled the virtues of drunks and defended the point of view of liquor merchants. For all his condemnations of the slave system of the South, he always said that Southerners were just as the rest of us would be in their circumstances. He maintained an unbending moral standard without ever descending into moralism. This is a tricky balance.

  Lincoln maintained it partly out of a belief that it was the only way to convince anyone of anything. He said in the temperance address, “When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and a true maxim, that a ‘drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.’ ” Once he grew out of his “skinnings” that made ­people cry and his anonymous newspaper articles that brought on duels, he wasn’t needlessly inflammatory. He could still be tough and even excoriating, but always to make a point, never simply to wound.

  This approach was buttressed by his Madisonian realism about human nature—­rarely surprised by human foibles, Lincoln wasn’t inclined to be denunciatory about them. A Wisconsin journalist named J. S. Bliss remembered a little incident after Lincoln’s election in 1860 but before he had left for Washington that demonstrated the keen insight of a man fully attuned to the ways of the world.

  Bliss was with Lincoln in his office at the Capitol in Springfield when Lincoln’s son Willie came running in and demanded twenty-­five cents to buy candy. The president-­elect said he could give him five cents only, which he took out of his vest pocket and put on his desk. Willie stormed off, turning his back forever on the thoroughly unacceptable and insulting five cents. Lincoln predicted his boy would be back. Bliss wondered why. “Because,” Lincoln explained, “as soon as he finds I will give him no more he will come and get it.” After the matter had been forgotten and as they were conversing, Bliss recounts, “Willie came cautiously behind my chair and that of his father—picked up the Specie, and went away without saying a word.”

  On much weightier matters, his judgment was almost as unfailing. Contemporary Republicans—­especially the right of the party—­can forget that they need prudence along with their principle. Lincoln never did. The genius of his political leadership was how uncompromising he was in his ultimate goal and how compromising he was in the course of getting there. He combined strategic fixity with tactical flexibility (and exactly the same can be said of Ronald Reagan).

  He outraged abolitionists and radicals throughout the war by moving against slavery only very cautiously, countermanding orders by commanders on the ground for local emancipations when he thought they would outrage border-­state sentiment and jeopardize the larger war effort. Yet his wasn’t the prudence of a mushy middle. He was adamant about maintaining the antislavery integrity of the Republicans when Stephen Douglas seemed alluring to party leaders in the East. During the secession winter of 1860–61, when the air in Washington was thick with proposals for compromise, he refused to give away the principle of nonextension of slavery (when push came to shove, he wasn’t at bottom a compromiser like Henry Clay). And the war had to be won, despite the terrible human cost, despite the political pressure for a settlement. “I expect to maintain this contest until successful, or till I die, or am conquered, or my term expires, or Congress or the country forsakes me” is not the voice of split-­the-­difference moderation.

  When a political leader has the right touch to know when to push and when to relent, when his ability is joined to a larger purpose, and when that purpose is just and true, well, then, that constitutes statesmanship of the highest order.

  Most important for Republicans now is to commit themselves to that larger purpose, a society of equality of opportunity where all can rise. Limiting government, although as important as ever in an era of spiraling debt, can’t just be an end in itself. It must be joined to a larger vision of a dynamic, fluid society. The party shouldn’t only be the party of low taxes, but of affordable health care and education. It should identify with the economic interests of the middle class more than of its richest donors and make it clear that it doesn’t believe that everyone is an entrepreneur or budding entrepreneur, that it knows most ­people are ordinary wage and salary earners and they, too, have a place in the party’s imagination. It should speak to the poor, not because it will ever win many of their votes, but so there’s no mistake that it wants them up and out of poverty and in the American mainstream.

  An agenda of uplift is in the party’s direct electoral interest. If it can forge a more pocketbook-­ and aspiration-­oriented economics, it will have a better chance of appealing to Latino voters. As a general matter, the better off ­people are, the more likely they are to vote Republican. If they are married, they are more likely to vote Republican. The party benefits if it can help create and sustain as many middle-­class families as possible.

  I believe that the Republican Party of today would, still and all, be the best vehicle for Abraham Lincoln. I’m not disinterested, though. I confess to a love for Lincoln. I can sense the rigor of thought of my late, great boss William F. Buckley Jr.—not to mention the wit and the taste for rhetorical combat—in his ­slashing polemics. Any writer or editor should relish that the first step Lincoln took to improve himself was to pick up a book, and that he counted the printing press as one of the world’s greatest inventions. No matter how often I delve into it, I don’t tire of the story of his rise. It is so American it should be draped in red, white, and blue bunting. In its essence, it is about the achievement of human potential, and all the more inspiring because it enabled him, in time, to devote himself to making it possible for others, too, to reach for their potential.

  I look to Lincoln and think, “I want my party—­his party—­to be like that,” to identify with workers and families, to propose a compelling agenda to advance their interests, to sell it with a winsome populist touch, to be pure in principle but wise as serpents in execution, to make the bedrock of it all the Declarat
ion and the Founding and the truth of the equality of all men. This is asking a lot and perhaps it’s more something to be “constantly labored for” than ever achieved. But it will never happen if Republicans don’t value Lincoln and understand him as they should.

  Whatever either or both parties do now, we shouldn’t mistake the scale of our task. It is no longer the mid-­twentieth century, and there is no way to magically transplant ourselves back to it. We have to manage in a much less forgiving environment, where we aren’t the last economy standing after a global cataclysm and where, even in the best case, some ­people are going to have a much harder time than they would have had fifty years ago. What we need, in a nutshell, is more rigor. We need it both from institutions and from individuals, and despite the formidable obstacles: Reforming the economy and government will mean overcoming the powerful pull of inertia; improving education will require besting entrenched interests deeply vested in the status quo; and restoring the national character will test the regenerative capacity of American culture.

  In the spirit of Lincoln, our project should be equal parts modernization (opening the vistas of the economic future) and recovery (of the American character and of bourgeois virtues). After all this time, Lincoln’s intellectual and moral case for the inherent worth of individual initiative, and for our free institutions and free economy as the foundations for it, is as important as ever. Lincoln’s enduring relevance is in his embodiment, expression, and realization of the American Dream. Nearly two centuries ago, a boy picked up an axe and imagined something better. Fired by ambition for himself and eventually for others, he made his way in the world, and then changed it. He saved the republic and did all he could to make it a bustling empire of commerce, the hotbed of millions of dreams, schemes, and aspirations.

  Across all the decades and despite all the momentous changes, we still live in that republic. In 1861, Lincoln told Congress, “The struggle of today is not altogether for today—­it is for a vast future also.” That future was our windfall. We diminish and squander it at the risk of losing what it means to be American, and losing touch with the wellsprings of human accomplishment. It is up to us. In how we react to the new challenges to the American Dream, we shall nobly save, or meanly lose, what Lincoln and generations of patriots bequeathed to us.

  Notes

  The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use the search feature of your e-book reader.

  A note on the notes: These endnotes are not exhaustive. This is not an academic book. But I wanted to be sure to give readers enough information so they know where to go to find out more, and also to be sure to fully acknowledge my debt to all those professional historians on whose work I depended.

  INTRODUCTION

  3“the hardest set of men he ever saw”: Benjamin P. Thomas, Lincoln’s New Salem (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988), 79.

  3“Go to the devil, sir!”: Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 67.

  6a trend that holds across the Western world: Peter Wehner and Robert P. Beschel Jr., “How to Think about Inequality,” National Affairs 11 (Spring 2012), 94-­114.

  6Men with only a high-­school diploma: Scott Winship, “Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz is All Sorts of Wrong on Inequality,” The Empiricist Strikes Back, April 9, 2011, http://www.scottwinship.com/1/post/2011/4/nobel-­laureate-­joseph-­stiglitz-­is-­all-­sorts-­of-­wrong-­on-­inequality.html.

  6not quite the highly mobile society: Scott Winship, “Mobility Impaired,” National Review, November 14, 2011, 30-­33.

  7Social capital: W. Bradford Wilcox and Elizabeth Marquardt, eds., “When Marriage Disappears: The New Middle America,” The State of Our Unions: 2010 (Charlottesville, VA: National Marriage Project and Institute for American Values, 2010).

  8“Well, Governor”: Merrill D. Peterson, Lincoln in American Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 10.

  9One of the more egregious examples: Mario Cuomo, Why Lincoln Matters: Today More Than Ever (Orlando: Harcourt, 2004).

  10“Lincoln’s legitimate offspring”: Willmoore Kendall, “Source of American Caesarism,” National Review, November 7, 1959, 461-­62.

  10Lincoln inflicted: Frank S. Meyer, “Lincoln without Rhetoric,” National Review, August 24, 1965, 725-­27.

  10why Lincoln didn’t forestall: John Hawkins, “An Interview with Ron Paul,” Right Wing News, March 31, 2010, http://www.right­wingnews.com/interviews/an-­interview-­with-­ron-­paul/.

  11to protect human bondage: Thomas L. Krannawitter, Vindicating Lincoln: Defending the Politics of Our Greatest President (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), 292, 230-31. He has a good discussion of all the issues, and pushes back against the conservative critics in his chapters “Was the Civil War Caused by Slavery or Economics?” and “Was Lincoln the Father of Big Government?”

  12gigantic privatization: I draw on the arguments Guelzo makes in an informative Heritage Foundation paper called “Abraham Lincoln or the Progressives: Who was the real father of big government?” The Heritage Foundation, February 10, 2012, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/02/abraham-lincoln-was-not-the-father-of-big-government.

  15unstoppable dynamo of economic development: Kevin Phillips in The Cousins’ Wars: Religion, Politics, Civil Warfare, and the Triumph of Anglo-­America (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 470, and Paul Kennedy in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Random House, 1987), 200-­01, 423, both have useful discussions of the growth of post-­Civil War America.

  CHAPTER 1

  18“more hopeful and confident”: F.B. Carpenter, Six Months at the White House with Abraham Lincoln (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1866), 97-­98.

  20“My how he could chop”: Louis A. Warren, Lincoln’s Youth: Indiana Years, Seven to Twenty-­One, 1816-­1830 (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1959), 142-­43. Facts drawn from this book are sprinkled throughout the chapter.

  20“back side of this world”: Burlingame, A Life, 17.

  21“from the days of the Phoenicians”: George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, 1815-­1860 (White Plains, NY: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 1951), 5. The beginning of Taylor, 3-­6, has a rundown of conditions in the early 19th century. So does Bruce Levine, Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of Civil War (New York: Hill and Wang, 2005), 51-­56.

  23“a marvel of learning”: Warren, Youth, 25.

  24“when a mere child”: Burlingame, A Life, 37.

  25a restless and seeking mind: Burlingame, A Life, 45, and Daniel Walker Howe, Making the American Self: Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 138. They both recount memories of Lincoln’s early ambition.

  25“Honest Thomas”: David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Touchstone, 1996), 21-­26, 33, and William Lee Miller, Lincoln’s Virtues: An Ethical Biography (New York: Knopf, 2002), 68-­71. They both have details about Thomas. So do Warren’s Youth, 10-­19, 193, and Burlingame’s A Life, 2-­26.

  28Lincoln’s great-grandfather: Facts about Lincoln’s ancestors are drawn from Mark E. Neely Jr.’s The Last Best Hope of Earth: Abraham Lincoln and The Promise of America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 2-­3, and Donald’s Lincoln, 21.

  28Despite much adversity: Donald’s Lincoln, 22, and Warren’s Youth, 86, 115, 121.

  29rural isolation: Warren’s Youth, 23, 41, and Burlingame’s A Life, 23, describe just how isolated.

  30“no market for nothing”: Michael Burlingame, The Inner World of Abraham Lincoln (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 41.

  30The “rusticity”: Jean H. Baker, “ ‘Not Much of Me’ ”: Abraham Lincoln as a Typical American (Fort Wayne, IN: Louis A. Warren Lincoln Library and Museum, 1988), 7.

  30“The s
on’s ambitions juxtaposed”: Howe, Making, 138-­39.

  31a tiny schoolhouse: Burlingame’s A Life, 18-­19, 30-­34, has a detailed description of the schools and Lincoln’s early diligence. So does Warren, Youth, 83.

  34He read the Bible: Warren’s Youth, 21-­31, 76-­80, 105, 212, provides an exhaustive account of his reading. Burlingame’s A Life, 36-­45, does as well. Douglas L. Wilson, Honor’s Voice: The Transformation of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), 57, and Donald’s Lincoln, 33, describe opposition to Lincoln’s reading from those around him.

  36hire Lincoln out: Donald’s Lincoln, 32, 43, and Burlingame’s A Life, 42-­44, recount his youthful working life.

  37“we were all slaves”: Burlingame, Inner, 36.

  37maximum height for a stump: Taylor’s Transportation, 15, 56-­64, 143, 158, authoritatively describes the changes wrought by the coming of the steamboat.

  38the riverine commercial current: Warren’s Youth, 144-­49, is especially good on Lincoln and the rivers. He tells the story of Lincoln’s flatboat trip with Gentry, 182-­86.

  39Two yoke of oxen: Ibid, 207.

  40“He never once”: Burlingame, A Life, 10.

  40the merchant Denton Offutt: Ibid, 52-­57. I draw on Burlingame’s account of Lincoln and Offutt.

  41­People moved into Illinois: Thomas, New Salem, 12-­41. His book on Lincoln’s new home is a little gem.

  42running strongman contest on the frontier: Wilson’s Voice, 142-­43, 67, describes his physicality and his humor. Burlingame’s A Life, 78, has the story about Johnson Elmore. Thomas’s New Salem, 67, has the story of Babb McNabb’s rooster.

  43“only plenty of friends”: Donald, Lincoln, 42.

  43“how rapidly his life opens”: Miller, Virtues, 24.

  43convinced him to run: Donald, Lincoln, 41. Burlingame’s A Life, 71, has the uncouth quote.

  43become a viable throughway: Allen C. Guelzo, Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 43-­48. Donald’s Lincoln, 41-­42, Burlingame’s A Life, 66, Thomas’s New Salem, 72-­76, and Wilson’s Voice, 87-­88, also take up the saga of the Sangamon.