[Excerpts from the Introduction]
Six
Encounters with Lincoln is an invitation to rethink our
presumptions about Abraham Lincoln. It is an unorthodox and provocative look at
the Lincoln presidency, although it did not start out that way. The book began
as a simple collection of intriguing stories about a man who himself prized
story-telling. The anecdotes were good ones – mostly unknown and all unexplored,
involving characters as diverse as Robert E. Lee, Chief Little Crow, Susan B. Anthony,
and an old confederate with a menacing
stick in his hand named Duff Green. The back stories were even better, astonishingly
so in fact, revealing Lincoln in a way that put the color-enhanced tinsel of his
acclaim in a new, more garish light . . .
First and foremost, the stories illustrate the difficulty of managing a republic and creating a presidency. . . the devil in democracy is that he cannot help being itself. It provides a fierce and constant debate; a cacophony of opinions; a minefield of stubborn wills and terrible egos. Within the great truth –the supremacy of the people – there are a myriad of small truths all vying for respect and often at odds with one another.
The stories also remind us that Lincoln’s republic was a government of, by and for only some of the people. It was not just the black population that was excluded, but Native Americans, women, whole categories of immigrants, and even many white males. It may have been, as Lincoln pronounced it, the “last best hope on earth” – but “hope” is the operable word here: hope of inclusion and pluralism; hope for equal rights and opportunities. It was not an ideal reached during Lincoln’s lifetime. He surely started – in important ways- the momentum towards broader democracy, but his vision proved myopic in many ways . . . for all his promotion of a society where all men might rise, for example, he raised no platform for better education or universal suffrage.
These encounters also give us a sense of the difficulty Lincoln sometimes had in communicating. The eloquence of his formal writing and his delightful, whimsical humor have, to some degree, obscured the inelegance of his everyday interactions. He disliked spontaneous discussion with people who might misinterpret him. He seemed to be most comfortable when he could project his thoughts through parables or from a written script. In Six Encounters with Lincoln we observed him standing gracelessly mute at his first review of the Army; swearing precipitously at a young soldier on the White House portico; alternately pontificating or talking pidgin English to Indian Chiefs; simply avoiding interaction with most women; and in a state of chronic miscommunication with Southerners. The episodes remind us of the human psyche's contrariness; how even the most sensitive intellect can be clumsy or obstinate or intolerant.
Lincoln is not always shown at his best in these six episodes. As the eye-witnesses make clear, in his day “Honest Abe” was not looked upon as the savior of the nation. Instead he was largely viewed as a well-meaning bumbler, a curious and earnest man, but not the leader needed in a national crisis. Even many of his closest allies believed the war was won despite, rather than because of, his efforts. Today we may be tempted to dismiss this as the poor ability of lesser mortals to appreciate the greatness before them. But the blindness is perhaps ours, not theirs. Speaking of the Irish revolutionary martyr Roger Casement, Mario Vargas Llosa noted his multi-faceted personality will never be totally acknowledged: “There will always be a reluctance to accept this complexity which is the complexity of human nature. We are not perfect, and that is not tolerable in our heroes’
Americans have had the same trouble. We are willing to tolerate little personal quirks. We can accept the lovable foibles in Lincoln: his unruly shock of hair or strange gargoyle of a face; his unrealized ambitions in local politics; his problematic marriage; and his smutty, smirking jokes. But questioning his aspiration to lead a country in turmoil , without the barest qualifications; suggesting he blundered through military labyrinths with all the agility of an angered buffalo, while thousands of people died; accepting that his fundamental racism accompanied his clear distaste for slavery; and acknowledging that as a consummate politician he often cheerfully compromised his principles for favor or party or expediency – these have been taboo subjects for more than a century. They are issues that need to be revisited and rethought if we are going to understand our past with a modicum of honesty.
Lincoln’s trajectory from farm boy to president has been likened to the parable of the mustard seed (Mark 4:26-32), in which large things grew from small beginnings. Well-meaning scholars have tried to rationalize his self-contradictory statements into a kind of unified field theory, by saying he ‘grew’ over time or was “big enough to change” as he thoughtfully honed his policies. Yet growing on the job is just another way of saying that he was always playing catch-up – he was behind, not before the curve. Learning on the job is always laudable and might have been fine if the times had been less perilous. It would have been acceptable in a Martin Van Buren or William Henry Harrison presidency and perhaps that is what Lincoln envisioned – a job of patronage, posturing, and party politics. But with a close reading of the political trends of the time, it simply looks like he was expedient, finding the most popular path and following it. This does not make him a moral compass for the nation, especially at a time of war when the consequences were greater and every stumbling step could and did lead to a corpse. In war, the price for ‘growing’ was death. . . Lincoln was not a crusader. His saving grace is that he upheld a system that allowed for change even when he was not its champion.
In 1876 Fredrick Douglas, speaking at a ceremony to dedicated the Freedmen’s monument in Washington, D.C. declared that there was nothing new to say about Abraham Lincoln. “His personal traits and public acts are better known to the American people than those of any other man of his age.” Yet thousands of books later, we still have important insights to relate. And America’s yearning to know its sixteenth president seems not to have abated.
First and foremost, the stories illustrate the difficulty of managing a republic and creating a presidency. . . the devil in democracy is that he cannot help being itself. It provides a fierce and constant debate; a cacophony of opinions; a minefield of stubborn wills and terrible egos. Within the great truth –the supremacy of the people – there are a myriad of small truths all vying for respect and often at odds with one another.
The stories also remind us that Lincoln’s republic was a government of, by and for only some of the people. It was not just the black population that was excluded, but Native Americans, women, whole categories of immigrants, and even many white males. It may have been, as Lincoln pronounced it, the “last best hope on earth” – but “hope” is the operable word here: hope of inclusion and pluralism; hope for equal rights and opportunities. It was not an ideal reached during Lincoln’s lifetime. He surely started – in important ways- the momentum towards broader democracy, but his vision proved myopic in many ways . . . for all his promotion of a society where all men might rise, for example, he raised no platform for better education or universal suffrage.
These encounters also give us a sense of the difficulty Lincoln sometimes had in communicating. The eloquence of his formal writing and his delightful, whimsical humor have, to some degree, obscured the inelegance of his everyday interactions. He disliked spontaneous discussion with people who might misinterpret him. He seemed to be most comfortable when he could project his thoughts through parables or from a written script. In Six Encounters with Lincoln we observed him standing gracelessly mute at his first review of the Army; swearing precipitously at a young soldier on the White House portico; alternately pontificating or talking pidgin English to Indian Chiefs; simply avoiding interaction with most women; and in a state of chronic miscommunication with Southerners. The episodes remind us of the human psyche's contrariness; how even the most sensitive intellect can be clumsy or obstinate or intolerant.
Lincoln is not always shown at his best in these six episodes. As the eye-witnesses make clear, in his day “Honest Abe” was not looked upon as the savior of the nation. Instead he was largely viewed as a well-meaning bumbler, a curious and earnest man, but not the leader needed in a national crisis. Even many of his closest allies believed the war was won despite, rather than because of, his efforts. Today we may be tempted to dismiss this as the poor ability of lesser mortals to appreciate the greatness before them. But the blindness is perhaps ours, not theirs. Speaking of the Irish revolutionary martyr Roger Casement, Mario Vargas Llosa noted his multi-faceted personality will never be totally acknowledged: “There will always be a reluctance to accept this complexity which is the complexity of human nature. We are not perfect, and that is not tolerable in our heroes’
Americans have had the same trouble. We are willing to tolerate little personal quirks. We can accept the lovable foibles in Lincoln: his unruly shock of hair or strange gargoyle of a face; his unrealized ambitions in local politics; his problematic marriage; and his smutty, smirking jokes. But questioning his aspiration to lead a country in turmoil , without the barest qualifications; suggesting he blundered through military labyrinths with all the agility of an angered buffalo, while thousands of people died; accepting that his fundamental racism accompanied his clear distaste for slavery; and acknowledging that as a consummate politician he often cheerfully compromised his principles for favor or party or expediency – these have been taboo subjects for more than a century. They are issues that need to be revisited and rethought if we are going to understand our past with a modicum of honesty.
Lincoln’s trajectory from farm boy to president has been likened to the parable of the mustard seed (Mark 4:26-32), in which large things grew from small beginnings. Well-meaning scholars have tried to rationalize his self-contradictory statements into a kind of unified field theory, by saying he ‘grew’ over time or was “big enough to change” as he thoughtfully honed his policies. Yet growing on the job is just another way of saying that he was always playing catch-up – he was behind, not before the curve. Learning on the job is always laudable and might have been fine if the times had been less perilous. It would have been acceptable in a Martin Van Buren or William Henry Harrison presidency and perhaps that is what Lincoln envisioned – a job of patronage, posturing, and party politics. But with a close reading of the political trends of the time, it simply looks like he was expedient, finding the most popular path and following it. This does not make him a moral compass for the nation, especially at a time of war when the consequences were greater and every stumbling step could and did lead to a corpse. In war, the price for ‘growing’ was death. . . Lincoln was not a crusader. His saving grace is that he upheld a system that allowed for change even when he was not its champion.
In 1876 Fredrick Douglas, speaking at a ceremony to dedicated the Freedmen’s monument in Washington, D.C. declared that there was nothing new to say about Abraham Lincoln. “His personal traits and public acts are better known to the American people than those of any other man of his age.” Yet thousands of books later, we still have important insights to relate. And America’s yearning to know its sixteenth president seems not to have abated.
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