I've written about Abraham Lincoln often on this blog — during the Obama-Clinton race for the Democratic nomination last spring, on the 145th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg last summer and in the last couple of months, as we approached the bicentennial of his birth.
Lincoln, like Mark Twain, always seems to have something pertinent to contribute to a conversation — much of which is due to the modern-day spinmeisters who have helped to shape his image.
Today, of course, is that bicentennial of his birth, and I feel compelled to write about Lincoln once again. Perhaps when I'm done, I can let him rest in peace for awhile. God knows, he's earned it.
Last night, I watched Henry Louis Gates' two-hour program on PBS titled "Looking for Lincoln," which repeatedly made the point that Lincoln was a man — not a god, not a saint. He did not enter the presidency aiming to end slavery. His goal was to preserve the Union. The course of events had the final word, as it so often does.
Even if he is still not recognized as such by his most ardent admirers, Lincoln was a pragmatist. When he finally did free the slaves, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation (which was actually announced in September 1862 and signed 100 days later, on New Year's Day 1863) was intended more as a propaganda tool and a political weapon than it was a radical change in American life. It didn't really help Lincoln's fellow Republicans in the midterm elections of 1862, though. Democrats gained 28 seats in the House and won the governorship of New York.
The so-called "War Democrats," who had broken ranks with their fellow Democrats and allied with Lincoln in supporting a war to preserve the Union, were conflicted over emancipation, and many did not go along with Lincoln on the issue. It was, perhaps, as much to appease them as it was to give the outward impression of bipartisanship that Lincoln chose one such "War Democrat" to be his running mate in 1864.
In fact, it's hard for me to imagine any other reasons why Lincoln picked Andrew Johnson to be his running mate. Johnson and Lincoln shared few, if any, of the same political views, and Johnson did not have a special talent that made him stand out from the rest, unlike most of the members of Lincoln's famed "Team of Rivals." Surely, Lincoln did not choose Johnson to be his running mate because he felt Johnson would be a good president if something happened to him.
Johnson, of course, did become president after Lincoln was assassinated — and went on to become the first president who was impeached by the House and tried by the Senate, winning acquittal by a single vote. Today, most historians regard Johnson as one of the nation's worst presidents — which is something of an accomplishment when one considers the extensive competition for that title.
The Emancipation Proclamation did achieve a couple of Lincoln's goals. Domestically, it pleased the growing abolitionist wing of the Republican Party, which virtually guaranteed that Lincoln would be renominated for president.
Internationally, the Emancipation Proclamation swung popular support in Europe to Lincoln and the Northern Army. And that, perhaps more than the Battle of Gettysburg later in 1863, was responsible for preventing the South from winning official recognition from Britain or France, which might well have led to a Confederate victory, as was suggested in the alternate history film "C.S.A."
All this is not to suggest that Lincoln wasn't opposed to the idea of slavery. But his modern image is not entirely accurate, as Gates' program pointed out. He was a 19th century man who believed it was wrong for a human being to own another human being.
But he also believed, as Gates observes in The Root, by way of citing a pre-presidency quotation from Lincoln that was mentioned in a 1922 article written by W.E.B. Du Bois, "that there is a physical difference between the white and black races," and Lincoln went on to say that "while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."
In the wake of such a revelation, many blacks have confessed to feeling conflicted. They were raised to revere Lincoln; now they're being told things about him that make him sound racist to 21st century ears.
But, in the long run, I think it's healthy for Americans to learn certain truths about their heroes — whether that truth is that George Washington raised hemp (marijuana) and owned slaves or Lincoln may have harbored the white supremacist views of his day. Neither man lived in the 21st century. It would be unreasonable to expect them to live by its mores.
I felt that an important truth was revealed during Gates' program last night. Speaking to a high school student, Gates was told that it was probably a good thing that Lincoln wasn't a wild-eyed extremist because he probably couldn't have been elected if he had been. Some of his ideas were radical for their time, but he was just conservative enough and traditional enough to reassure mainstream voters to trust him with the presidency.
I've always thought that Edward Kennedy's eulogy for his slain brother Bobby in 1968 was a fitting description of Lincoln.
"My brother need not be idealized or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life," Kennedy said, adding that he felt his brother should be "remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it."
Kennedy, like Lincoln, is regarded as almost a patron saint to the cause of civil rights, but that wasn't his original objective. The Kennedys had maintained a certain distance from the civil rights movement — again, for primarily pragmatic reasons. They needed the support of the South to win in 1960 — that was much of the reason behind John F. Kennedy's selection of Lyndon Johnson to be his running mate. And it is certainly not an understatement to say that civil rights was not popular in the South.
Events forced the Kennedys to make more of a public commitment, much as events forced Lincoln to adapt his thinking a century earlier. When Bobby Kennedy became attorney general, his main concern at the Justice Department was organized crime, and much of the initial attention of the Kennedy administration was on Cuba, Russia and the Cold War. But the civil rights movement had a momentum all its own.
That is when greatness becomes evident — when someone is capable of acknowledging that he was wrong or not fully committed to something before and then evolves.
Seen in that light, it is even more appropriate that Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on the same day.
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