MYTHS ABOUT LINCOLN

 Abraham Lincoln was undoubtedly one of our greatest presidents. His face is sculptured on Mount Rushmore and is printed on our five dollar bills. Lincoln’s birthday was celebrated annually on February 9 until merged with Washington’s birthday in the same month to formed Presidents’ Day.  I have published an essay on his blog that also appeared in my first book that Lincoln was the last in the line of our Revolutionary Founders in that the Civil War essentially completed the work that began in 1776 (and still needs finetuning even to this day).

The lives of great persons inevitably produce myths surrounding these lives and Lincoln was no exception. Even though myths are grounded in some truths about these persons and can be used to help motivate their descendants like us to accomplish great things, nevertheless myths are usually harmful to the extent that they cloud the complexity of the historical record and violate the NCM theory of history- that history is in fact nuanced, contradictory, and messy, In this essay I will list and briefly describe several myths surrounding Lincoln so that we can gain a deeper understanding of his life and influence on us today.

 

MYTH # 1- Lincoln was defeated for re-election to Congress after one term.  

One major blinding fault of the Founders was that although they perceived human passions and ambitions which resulted in a check-and-balances  government, they did not foresee the rise of organized political factions or parties. Jefferson and Madison founded the Democratic-Republican Party (later morphed into the Democratic Party) and Washington and Hamilton founded the Federalist Party. He Federalists disappeared after the War of 1812 and after a few decades the Whig Party emerged. Lincoln was originally a Whig.

In Illinois, candidates for the US House of Representatives were nominated by district conventions. In the 1840s Lincoln and several other Whigs made an informal agreement in which each of them would serve one term- 1847-1849 was going to be Lincoln’s time of serving in Congress. But as the election of 1846 approached, the then-serving congressman gave signals that he wanted to be elected to a second term.  Lincoln had to appeal to their agreement to secure the nomination for himself. He was elected despite his opponent publicly questioned his religious faith convictions.

In his two years in Washington Lincoln met fellow congressman John Quincy Adams, the only former president elected to the House, As the son of John Adams and the defending attorney of the Amadeus case before the Supreme Court, Adams was the connection to the Founders and Lincoln serving as one of the pall bearers at Adams’s funeral sealed that connection for Lincoln symbolically. In addition, Lincoln attacked President Polk for the conduct of the Mexican American War. Folks back in Illinois were very proud of their militia units fighting in Mexico so some considered Lincoln’s criticisms to be near treasonous.

Despite his feelings that the war was unjust, Lincoln knew that another Whig was due his turn to serve, He lobbied for appointment as Commissioner of the Public Land Office when he left Congress but the position was offered to another. Lincoln left Washington disappointed not for being defeated for re-election but for being denied appointment to an executive position.

This myth is widely used by success gurus and life coaches to help motivate us to look past our own defeats to find success in the future as Lincoln did. While their attempts are admirable, the means do not fit the facts. A more honest and historical approach would be this- Lincoln knew that he had only one term in office and he had to decide how to be effective, either by the popular way by supporting President Polk and the the war effort or by the conscientious way by criticizing the President and the war because he thought the war was an imperialistic overreach by the US and therefore, unjust. By deciding on the latter approach we gain entry into Lincoln’s character.

 

MYTH #2- Lincoln was a “blue collar” lawyer before entering the White House.

Lincoln was perhaps the most unschooledpPresident as compared to the other 44 men who had held the office. The demands of the family farm together with the family poverty and the isolation of the frontier kept Lincoln away from the schoolhouse most of his youth. I have personally visited his birth site and can attest to the isolation and ruggedness of the Kentucky frontier and I can imagine Indiana, where the family moved, was the same. Only did Illinois, where Lincoln moved as a young man, offer him the wide open prairie.

Despite being unschooled, Lincoln was not unlearned. In fact, Lincoln is perhaps one of the most educated of our presidents. He was a supreme learner. He regularly read the Bible, Shakespeare, and Euclid’s Geometry as well as other books he borrowed to read on breaks during his farm labors. He also read newspapers, including Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune which featured for a time as a European correspondent Karl Marx, later co-author of The Communist Manifesto. During the Civil War, Lincoln taught himself military tactics, so as to become an active commander-in-chief and on par (or even more effective than) Jefferson Davis, his Confederate counterpart, who had graduated from West Point and served as US Secretary of War.

Lincoln was also largely self-taught in law. In the days before law schools became the normal entry into the profession, a prospective barrister would find a practicing attorney to serve as his mentor and serve under him for a few years, observing the mentor in action and reading law books before generally departing on their own. This Lincoln did in Springfield, Illinois and once “graduated” he formed a law partnership with William Herndon who also became a close friend and confidant.

In Illinois at the time, lower state courts were circuit courts; this meant that judges and attorneys would travel from town to town during the circuit season. Lincoln would travel with the courts to build a reputation and a clientele. He defended farmers, merchants, and other working class yeomen before the courts. He developed his legal reasoning and oratorical skills as well as his story-telling ability which appealed to his clientele.

When his congressional term expired and when his desire for appointment as the land commissioner was vanquished. Lincoln decided on a change in his legal practice which would sustain him on the national stage- he became a railroad and corporate attorney. Lincoln represented the Illinois Central Railroad in several cases and when Cyrus McCormick sued John Manny for patent infringement, Lincoln was enlisted for the Manny defense team. However, the other lawyers on the team did not think highly of Lincoln and his role was reduced to the point that Lincoln felt he was a mere spectator. He returned to Springfield humiliated; nevertheless, he continued to work rebuilding his reputation to the point that in 1858 he was the Republican nominee for the US Senate. [In a turn of irony Edwin Stanton was one of his fellow attorneys in the McCormick v. Manny case who had “roughly handled” him, went to become US attorney general on the disasterous Buchanan administration. In 1862, Lincoln chose him to be secretary of war. Stanton served Lincoln until the president’s death. ]

 

MYTH #3- Lincoln was a racist.

Back in the day, when I was a high school social studies teacher, I got engaged in a spirited discussion with a student who said Lincoln owned slaves and was therefore a racist. I told the student that Lincoln did not own slaves. When the student persisted, I asked him for his evidence. “I saw it on television,” he confidently told me.

Obviously, my student was wrong about Lincoln owning slaves. As a matter of fact, Lincoln detested slavery. As a young man, Lincoln boated down the Mississippi as part of a work party and visited New Orleans. The sight of slave markets revolted him to his core.He eventually articulated his belief that people had the right to enjoy the fruit of their labors earned by their sweat from work.

But a more nuanced approach to my discussion with the student could lead me to agree with him that Lincoln may have been a racist but only in today’s context but not in Lincoln’s day. Although Lincoln did not personally support slavery, he may not have thought the races were equal. For example, he once supported the colonization efforts of sending freed slaves back to Africa. That endeavor had some success with freemen creating the nation of Liberia with the capital city named Monrovia after President Monroe, himself a slaveowner,

Why Lincoln did not formally identify with the abolitionist movement is a complex question. Although his adopted home state of Illinois was a free state, it wa still influenced by the slave states of Kentucky to the south and Missouri to the west. And no one desiring career advancement through Illinois politics before the war wanted to be seen as a “radical” on the issue of racial equality, a charge brought by Stephen Douglas against Lincoln in their famous debates for the US Senate election in 1858.

Yet, I believe Lincoln did have the growth in his moral compass to see equality of peoples regardless of race. After all, Frederick Douglass, an abolitionist and former slave, believed that he did.

 

MYTH #4- Lincoln violated the Constitution.

Of course, Confederates and Copperheads, their Northern sympathizers, considered Lincoln to be a tyrant responsible for the war. Lincoln considered the Federal Union to be firm and worth fighting for while Jefferson Davis and his ilk likened the Union to be a free association in which states could enter and leave as they so desired. In the movie Gettysburg, Confederate General Pickett in a campfire colloquy to his fellow officers could therefore liken the Union to membership in a gentlemen’s club.

Yet, many Americans believe Lincoln did violate the Constitution went it came to habeas corpus (Latin for “you shall have the body (in court)). It means that if a person is arrested, law enforcement must produce the prisoner before a judge and justified the detention of the prisoner. This legal principle came to us from English law and was considered so vital to liberty that that our Founders placed it in the Constitution (Article 1, Section 9, Clause 2) without waiting for the Bill of Rights to be adopted.

Lincoln did indeed suspend Habeas Corpus but many do not realize that the Constitution permits this action to be taken in cases of rebellion or invasion, Federal courts have ruled that this can also mean if public safety is in danger. Three other presidents have also suspended habeas corpus- Grant, FDR, and Bush 43. In Lincoln’s case, it was the question of whether Congress should determine if suspension is in order (since habeas corpus appears in Article 1) or the president as commander-in-chief can act solo in suspending this vital protection.

Throughout the war, Lincoln had to proceed cautiously and slowly in constitutional matters because of the Supreme Court. Several years before Lincoln became president in 1861 the court led by Chief Justice Roger Taney has ruled in the infamous Dred Scott decision against the freedom of a slave taken to the North by the master. Taney was a slaveholder and some of the associate justices held Southern sympathies, so Lincoln had to insure all his actions passed constitutional scrutiny from the Supreme Court if the war was to be fought effectively and successfully.

 

MYTH #5- Lincoln freed the slaves.

When the Mexican holiday Cinco de Mayo became popular in the United States many Americans mistakenly thought the Fifth of May was the celebration of Mexico’s Independence Day, which is really September 16. On May 5, 1862, Mexican forces defeated the French Foreign Legion in the Battle of Puebla. France had taken advantage of the United States in its Civil War to violate the Monroe Doctrine by invading Mexico in an attempt to enlarge the French Empire. The Mexican victory at Puebla did not mark the end of French rule, it was just a setback. The French end became clear in 1865 when the United States, fresh from its victorious war against the Southern Confederacy, began to reinsert itself against France and its violation of the Monroe Doctrine.

About the same time, another mistaken reason for a holiday occurred, this time in the United States. On June 19, 1865, US General Gordon Granger announced to the slaves of Galveston,, Texas they were now freed under the terms of the Emancipation Proclamation. “Juneteenth” is now celebrated as the end of slavery in the US,  finally becoming a Federal holiday in 2021. But the facts behind this event are more nuanced than the popular perception.

On January 1, 1863, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, an executive order issued under the president’s war powers as commander-in-chief. As such, only those slaves in areas of Confederate control were freed and slaves under Federal control like New Orleans and slaves in Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware remained in captivity. This can lead one to speculate that General Granger exceeded his authority to free the slaves in Galveston since the city was under Federal control when he arrived, but I digress. The Proclamation was limited for two reasons- the Supreme Court (see MYTH #4) and the fact Lincoln had correctly perceived that the war must have a moral dimension to keep European powers such as Britain from entering the war or actively supporting the Confederacy.

Thus, the Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in the United States albeit it set the general tone for the Federal conduct of the war in the final 30 months of combat. The Thirteenth Amendment ratified in December, 1865  and implemented in January, 1866 finally put to rest the notion that the United States could remain a “house divided” on the issue of slavery.

 

MYTH #6- Lincoln rose above politics.

Lincoln’s assassination was an emotional gut check for many Americans. His death, for many mourners,  practically deified him as “Father Abraham” among the angels. Perhaps that haliography is appropriate for our Last Founder, but perhaps not. Lincoln was as much as a political animal as our other presidents.

For example, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were the primary creators of the Democratic-Republican opposition to the Federalists under the leadership of George Washington, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton. Madison had been an early speechwriter for President Washington while a congressman and secretly turned against him. Jefferson, recalled from France to serve as our first secretary of state, hired a clerk for the Department of State not to  deal with diplomatic matters, but to be the editor of a political newspaper which attacked Washington and other Federalists. Jefferson also tried to sway the evidence against Aaron Burr, his own vice president, in Burr’s trial for treason.

Without going into too much detail for this essay, I urge the reader to watch Steven Spielberg’s movie Lincoln. The film depicts the President fighting for passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in the House of Representatives bribing congressmen with patronage jobs and lying to Congress whether his administration was having talks with  Confederate peace commissioners. If the events depicted in the movie are even close to what really happened without too much literary license, then Lincoln was a master politician.

 

Abraham Lincoln duly remains as one of our greatest presidents. He was indeed our last Founder as he had both the personal purpose and the political power to begin to end slavery in the United States and pave the way for civil rights for all Americans. We have much to complete in that regard but what we do accomplish now and in the future rests upon his shoulders.