LINCOLN (Part 1)

No man was less likely to be President of the United States than Abraham Lincoln. He grew up in poverty, had no formal education, served a few terms in the Illinois Legislature and one term as a congressman, and then lost every election he stood for until he was elected President. He was vilified by political opponents to a degree that makes the negative campaigning of today seem tame. He couldn't have been elected today. He was unattractive and ungainly in his manner. Yet I think there has not been a greater President of the United States.

I grew up in Illinois, the Land of Lincoln. His birthday was a state holiday. Lincoln Park dominates the north side lakefront of Chicago. Lincoln Avenue is a major thoroughfare

Even the neighborhood I was raised in had a loose connection with Lincoln. It was built on land that had been part of the Turner Farm. John Turner was a friend and supporter of Lincoln. Indeed, Lincoln stayed with Turner before leaving Chicago for Washington, although not at the farm as I once read. Turner owned the farm since some time in the 1850s and the farmhouse was built in 1859, but Turner didn't move out to the farm until after the Chicago Fire in 1871.

I have been on a Lincoln kick since reading Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Actually, Richard Thomas read the book and I listened to it on CDs in my car. Along with it I was reading Carl Sandburg's Abraham Lincoln: The War Years. (By-the-by, Sandburg once lived in a house about a mile and a half from where I grew up. I wonder if my great-grandfather ever passed Sandburg on the street? I understand there's a marker on the house now. How come no one has put a marker on my mother's parent's house which is on the exact same street as Sandburg's? Of course my grandparents never won a Pulitzer Prize.) Anyhow, Sandburg's biography of Lincoln reads like a collection of everything Sandburg could lay his hands on. There are copies of letters, photos, cartoons, and what-not else. No wonder it takes up four hardbound volumes.

I had read stuff about Lincoln and seen movies and dramas and documentaries, but this reading has given me a much better sense of the man. He was honest, principled, and an amazing analyst of human nature. He grew up in poverty, but successfully educated himself. I was particularly impressed by his incorporation of political opponents into his administration. Cabinet members Seward, Chase, and Blair all thought they should have been president. Chase never gave up trying to undermine Lincoln politically thinking he could replace him as president in 1865. I can't imagine a contemporary politician who would want his rivals on the Cabinet, but for Lincoln is was the only way to govern a fractious nation. Time and time again Lincoln tried to steer a middle ground between extremists on both sides of his own party.

But for all his efforts, the country fell into war. Every so often there is a nasty debate about the Civil War in our North-central Florida town. This is the South, no matter how many Yankees have moved here. One of the high schools here is named Forest High School, which I thought was named in honor of the Ocala National Forest. That's what the school board wanted people to assume. The truth is that people here had wanted the school named Nathan Bedford Forrest High School after the Confederate General and founder of the Ku-Klux-Klan. The Confederacy is a matter of pride in this community. After all, the Civil War was about defending the rights of the states against the encroachment of the Federal Government. Some people get very upset when I try to explain that the right the states were trying to maintain was the right to own human beings as property. No, they tell me, the Civil War was not about slavery. How car anyone who has read the history believe that? So it is that the War goes on after 150 years.

The odd thing I have found among some of the Confederate Battle Flag wavers is their complete misunderstanding of Lincoln. Lincoln was a southerner, born in Kentucky and raised in Indiana and southern Illinois. Believe me, that is NOT Yankee territory. Lincoln was not an abolitionist. He might hate slavery and want to see it end, but he acknowledged that it was protected by the Constitution. What he opposed was the extension of slavery into the territories. What he feared was the admission of more slave-holding states which might tip the balance and cause a change in laws so that no state could prohibit slavery. The secession started not because of anything Lincoln did, but simply because he was elected president. Seven states seceded and formed the Confederate States of America before Lincoln was inaugurated. But Lincoln didn't have to do anything. As the historian Morris Commager remarked, the South saw Lincoln as a malignant baboon with abolitionist serpents as attendants.

And when the secession was brought to an end by the bloodiest war in our history, John Wilkes Booth murdered the President he so hated. He couldn't that this would make life so much worse in the South, for the radicals took control of reconstruction abandoning Lincoln's moderate policy to restore the union and substituting one of draconian vindictiveness.

What would have happened if Lincoln had not been President? Would the Civil War have been prevented or would we still have two nations occupying the territory that is now the United States? Or maybe we still have two nations. I wonder when I see the election maps with red and blue states.

I remember that it was just fifty years ago President Eisenhower had to send troops into Little Rock to enforce the laws of the nation against a segregationist governor. I had hoped we were beyond that but I hear terrible lies spewed against one presidential candidate because he is partly of African descent. People make not-so-veiled comments that "the country isn't ready for a Black President." And more disturbing, "If he gets elected, he'll be assassinated." It's all the scarier because some people said that about Lincoln, and they were right. Is it too much to hope that we might again have someone with the skills and moderation of Lincoln? I

want to put out a few excepts for Lincoln's speeches next time, and then I think I will head off in another direction.

In the meantime, whatever direction you take, may the Lord bless you on your way, and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne






1 Our house
2 Site of Turner Farm House
3 Grandma & Grandpa's House
4 Sandburg's home