Posted on 02/12/2009 4:24:36 AM PST by IbJensen
Every time a newspaper or magazine announces that it is taking a survey to determine who Americans regard as their greatest president, it is almost a foregone conclusion that Abraham Lincoln will wind up at the top, perhaps sharing space with George Washington. Oddly, Lincoln was probably one of the least-well-prepared presidents we have ever elected: he had no administrative or managerial experience whatsoever.
He had served one term as a Representative in Congress in 1848, but he had never been a cabinet officer or a governor or even mayor of Springfield. And to the dismay of those who tried to figure out how a man of such modest credentials achieved such extraordinary success as president, he was notorious for his reluctance to talk about himself. “It is a great piece of folly to attempt to make anything out of my early life,” Lincoln said in 1860, “It can all be condensed into a single sentence… ‘The short and simple annals of the poor.’ That’s my life, and that’s all you or anyone else can make of it.”
The gap between what Lincoln accomplished, and what was actually known about the man, was so great that ever since Lincoln’s death in 1865, people have been manufacturing myths about Lincoln to fill in the spaces. What is remarkable about the Lincoln myths, however, is how often they turn out to have something of a truth in them. They are not so much myths, as “true lies.”
Lincoln was a Christian, wasn’t he? He was certainly raised in a strict religious environment. But Lincoln himself pulled shy of any religious commitments of his own. He never joined a church. And when he moved to Springfield, Ill., in 1837 to begin work as a lawyer, his Springfield friends described him as a “skeptic” or an “infidel.” In mid-life, he softened that skepticism and preferred to speak of himself as a seeker. And in his last great speech, his Second Inaugural Address, he spoke as no other American president has ever spoken about God’s direction of human affairs. But he made no mention of Jesus, and he described God as a Judge, not a Father, a Forgiver, a Redeemer.
Wasn’t Lincoln just a white racist? Lincoln’s reputation as the author of the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment (which abolished slavery in the United States) suffered badly in the 1960s as African-Americans gradually came to resent the constant reminder that their freedom was owed to a white man. And Lincoln’s critics in the black community did not have to work hard to find damaging evidence, especially in remarks Lincoln made during his famous debates with Stephen A. Douglas in 1858 about the racial and social inferiority of blacks to whites.
But Lincoln was not exaggerating when he claimed in 1858 that “I have always hated slavery.” He hesitated for two years after the Civil War began to liberate black slaves, but in those first two years, he could hardly have done so without provoking a white uprising behind his back. But once public opinion was ready to accept it, he did move toward emancipation, and then armed the former slaves and encouraged movements toward full black civil rights.
Didn’t Lincoln write the Gettysburg Address on the back of an envelope? In November of 1863, two years into the Civil War and four months after the great battle at Gettysburg, Lincoln was invited to deliver the dedication remarks at the opening of the national cemetery at Gettysburg. The legend that Lincoln wrote out his “remarks” on the back of a brown envelope while on board the train taking him there arose from a short story published 43 years later in Scribners’ Magazine by Mary Shipman Andrews.
Andrews’ story was intended as fiction; and it was supposed to underscore how spontaneous and natural Lincoln’s imagination was, that the words of the Gettysburg Address could come to him almost at the last minute. Actually, Lincoln had been working on a draft of his remarks for weeks in advance; when he arrived in Gettysburg the night before the cemetery dedication, he only reworded that final sentences to get them as letter-perfect as possible. It would not have been like Lincoln, who was a very self-conscious word-smith, to leave any important public utterance to the last minute. He usually prepared his speeches with painstaking care, sometimes memorizing them word-for-word before delivering them and he frequently refused to speak at all if invited to do so without warning or preparation.
Was Lincoln really “Honest Abe”? In Lincoln’s time, as much as in our own, the words honest and lawyer are not often found much in company. Lincoln, however, was not only a lawyer, but one who developed an outstanding reputation for honesty and fair play in his own legal practice. This did not mean, though, that Lincoln was a kind of legal Robin Hood. By the 1850s, his experience in the circuit courts and his network of political connections had won him agreements to represent most of the major railroad corporations in Illinois and the legal work he did for them often involved evicting farmers from lands claimed by the railroads, protecting the railroads from lawsuits by businessmen whose freight was damaged or spoiled by the railroads, and winning tax exemption for the railroads from local property taxes.
Was Lincoln our greatest president? Lincoln’s success in piloting the nation through the Civil War has crowded out a number of notable policy achievements in other areas:
• Lincoln sponsored the revival of a national banking system
• Tariffs on foreign goods to protect American businesses from foreign competition
• Opening the Great Plains to settlement through the Homestead Act
• Pioneering government support for higher education through the Morrill Act
• Promoting legislation to subsidize a railroad system to cross the entire north American continent
Even if we completely erased the Civil War from the equation, Lincoln’s presidency would still have been seen as a “hinge” presidency, like that of Jefferson or Franklin Roosevelt. Much of what we are as a nation — including the fact that we still are one nation — is owed to Abraham Lincoln. To point to him as our greatest president requires no myth-making, and not even the help of a few true lies.
who do you think writes the history books?
I think Lincoln would have been even more highly regarded had he lived to serve out his second term.
It always amazes me that people continue to bash Lincoln like he was one of the worst Presidents ever. Why? There are plenty here on FR that will join in shortly to bash a decent man.
Lincoln couldn’t be all bad. It appears that Obomba has taken Lincoln as his personal hero.
Today’s history texts are written by shop-worn Marxists.
He was not a constitutionalist. Constitutionalists tend not to like Presidents that view the Constitution as an interesting concept, but something that need not be followed if expedient.
“He was not a constitutionalist.”
Fine, but I would say during times of civil war, the Constitution would be harder to follow. And before the other Lincoln bashers join in, FDR and Obama sure aren’t Constitutionalists either.
The south didn’t have a whole lot of room to bitch about whether Lincoln obeyed every letter of the consititution.
The irony is that it was Jefferson Davis who brazenly and openly disregarded the Confederate constitution in the service of expediency. Lincoln appears as even more of a hero when viewed in the context of the conduct of his Confederate foes.
Well, query as to whether there would have been a war if he'd followed the constitution, but anyhow, that's the answer to the question. Lots of people on this website don't like him because he wasn't a Constitutionalist.
The debate can certainly follow to whether he was justified in disregarding the Constitution, and that's the real argument. People who don't like Lincoln think no. People who do think yes.
What about the citizens of Maryland?
Oh yea, I’ve read many of the debates here on FR. There is no right answer, but plenty of opinion.
Washington established the republican pattern, leading our way in carrying out a uniquely seamless transition from revolution to an established stable republic.
Lincoln saved the Union from those who would destroy it for the furtherance of mere political gain.
Reagan led our nation in the defeating of the greatest external threat to our national freedom in history.
I think one mistake made by Lincoln was ending the POW exchange over the summary execution and enslavement of black union soldiers. It didn’t end the executions and led to a massive number of POWs that neither side was prepared to deal with. It was a reason for Andersonville prison in the south and Camp Douglas (?) in the north.
It’s easy to judge Lincoln by the standards of today but the fact is that he lived in a very different world.
Simple, he was a Republican.
Now that failed President FDR, ahh
If Abraham Lincoln was the least prepared president in US history, then it may be time to change the way we select and elect the man in the Oval Office. I have seen the “efforts” and “accomplishments” of many men who were “well prepared” by education, “ethics”, experience, and career and think that maybe the William J. Buckley “joke” could be accurate.
“Fill the offices of state with men/women drawn from the phone books.” Couldn’t do a much worse job, could they?
Give us a DECENT man rather than he who has lived off the public trough. Please.
Too many pass over Calvin Coolidge who was the epitome of what a president should be.
Fast forward to Ronald Wilson Reagan who was the best president in my lifetime.
Lincoln was the president who presided over the central government during a long, bloody, costly civil war.
What would you have done instead?
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