How others saw Lincoln 7

A member of the White House guard, a sentry, as he walked the second-story corridor, to and fro, past the door of the President’s bedroom, would recall, ‘Sometimes, after a day of unusual anxiety, I have heard him moan in his sleep. It gave me a curious sensation. While the expression of Mr. Lincoln’s face was always sad when he was quiet, it gave one the assurance of calm. He never seemed to doubt the wisdom of an action when he had once decided on it. And so when he was in a way defenseless in his sleep, it made me feel the pity that would almost have been impertinence when he was awake. I would stand there and listen until a sort of panic stole over me. If he felt the weight of things so heavily, how much worse the situation of the country must be than any of us realized! At last I would walk softly away, feeling as if I had been listening at a keyhole.’

How others saw Lincoln 6

'...I only wish to thank you for being so good - and to say how sorry we all are that you must have four years more of this terrible toil. But remember what a triumph it is for the right, what a blessing to the country - and then your rest shall be glorious when it does come! You can't tell anything about it in Washington where they make a noise on the slightest provocation. But if you had been in this little speck of a village this morning and heard the soft, sweet music of unseen bells rippling through the morning silence from every quarter of the far-off horizon, you would have better known what your name is in this nation. May God help you in the future as he has helped you in the past and a people's love and gratitude will be but a small portion of your exceeding great reward.'

- Mary Abigail Dodge, from her village of Hamilton, Massachusetts, written on the day of Lincoln's second inauguration, March 4, 1865.

How others saw Lincoln 5

In the late summer of 1864 a veteran on furlough was asked whether the soldiers wanted Lincoln re-elected. 'Why of course they do. We all re-enlisted to see this thing through and Old Abe must re-enlist too. He mustered us in and we'll be damned if he shan't stay where he is until he has mustered us out.'

How others saw Lincoln 4

'The world has seen and wondered at the greatest sign and marvel of our day, to-wit, a plain working man of the people, with no more culture, instruction or education than any such working man may obtain for himself, called on to conduct the passage of a great people through a crisis involving the destinies of the whole world... '

- Harriet Beecher Stowe

How others saw Lincoln 3

In January 1864 James Russell Lowell sketched Lincoln as 'so gently guiding public sentiment that he seems to follow it, by so yielding doubtful points that he can be firm without seeming obstinate in essential ones.'

How others saw Lincoln 2

'Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country — bigger than all the Presidents together.'

- Leo Tolstoy

How others saw Lincoln 1

People underestimated Lincoln at their peril. ‘He was as wise as a serpent in the trial of a case. I have got too many scars from his blows to certify that he was harmless as a dove.’

- Leonard Swet, lawyer colleague

Lincoln and Words 19

Lincoln had a voracious curiosity. Since he had virtually no formal schooling he learned early in life that satisfying his curiosity was going to be his job and his job alone. Consequently, as a child he taught himself to read and write; he also taught himself Euclidean geometry, then surveying, then the law. He was a lifelong student of literature having memorized long passages from both Shakespeare and the Bible. As if all that were not enough, in 1849 he applied for a patent on his design for ‘a new and improved manner of combining adjustable buoyant chambers with steam boats’ [these chambers were designed to lift steam boats above sand bars]. He is the only president in American history to have been granted a patent. Then as President he taught himself how to be a Commander in Chief.

Lincoln and Words 18

'...that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.'

- Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln and Words 17

'The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll get me a book I haven't read.'

- Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln and Words 16

'We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.'

- Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln and Words 15

When one of his generals grumbled and complained after being placed in charge of a mere 3,000 men, Lincoln wired him: 'Act well your part; therein all the honor lies. He who does something at the head of one regiment will eclipse him who does nothing at the head of a hundred.'

Lincoln and Words 14

‘Adhere to your purpose and you will soon feel as well as you ever did. On the contrary if you falter and give up you will lose the power of keeping any resolution and will regret it all your life.'

- Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln and Words 13

'Both [the North and the South] read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any man should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully.

 - Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address

Lincoln and Words 12

'Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. As a peacemaker the lawyer has superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough.'

- Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln and Words 11

'I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty, and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.'

- Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln and Words 10

Lincoln lost his first campaign for elected office – the Illinois state legislature - in 1832. But there was one consolation: the 23-year-old Lincoln polled 277 out of the 300 votes cast in his little village. The lesson was crystal clear: to know Lincoln was to trust Lincoln.

Lincoln and Words 9

People underestimated Lincoln at their peril. ‘He was as wise as a serpent in the trial of a case. I have got too many scars from his blows to certify that he was harmless as a dove.’

- Leonard Swett

Lincoln and Words 8

'Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature -- opposition to it is in his love of justice. These principles are in eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely, as slavery’s extension brings them, shocks, and throes, and convulsions must ceaselessly follow. Repeal the Missouri Compromise -- repeal all compromises -- repeal the Declaration of Independence -- repeal all past history, you still cannot repeal human nature. It still will be the abundance of man's heart that slavery's extension is wrong; and out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth will continue to speak.'

- Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln and Words 7

'The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to have the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We - even we here - hold the power, and bear the responsibility.'

- Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln and Words 6

The following editorial appeared in The Atlanta Confederacy just before the election of 1860, just before what looked like the formation of a thing called the Confederate States of America; 'let the consequences be what they may - whether the Potomac is crimsoned in human gore, and Pennsylvania Avenue is paved ten fathoms deep with mangled bodies, or whether the last vestige of liberty is swept from the face of the American continent, the South will never submit to such humiliation and degradation as the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln'

Lincoln and Words 5

'This is essentially a People's contest. On the side of the Union it is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men -- to lift artificial weights from all shoulders -- to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all -- to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life.'

- Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln and Words 4

'Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored. It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor however illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinction.'

- Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln and Words 3

'What I did [the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation] I did after very full deliberation, and under a heavy and solemn sense of responsibility. I can only trust in God that I have made no mistake.'

- Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln and Words 2

'When southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery than we, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said that the institution exists and that it is very difficult to get rid of it in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying. I surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to do myself.'

- Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln and Words 1

'You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.'

- Abraham Lincoln

Public Opinion Baths 3

Lincoln’s rationale for what he called ‘Public Opinion  Baths:’ ‘I feel – though the tax on my time is heave – that no hours of my day are better employed than those which thus bring me again within the direct contact and atmosphere of the average  of our whole people. Men moving only in an official circle are apt to become merely official – not to say arbitrary – in their ideas, and are apter and apter with each passing day to forget that they only hold power in a representative capacity.

‘Now this is all wrong. I go into these receptions of all who claim to have business with me, and every applicant for audience has to take his turn, as if waiting to be shaved in the barber’s shop. Many of the matters brought to my notice are utterly frivolous, but others are of more or less importance, and all serve to renew in me a cleaner and more vivid image of that great popular assemblage out of which I sprang, and to which at the end of a few short years I must return. I tell you that I call these receptions my “public opinion baths;” for have but little time to read the papers, and gather public opinion that way; and though they may not be pleasant in all their particulars, the effect as a whole, is renovating and invigorating to my perceptions of responsibility and duty.’

Lincoln and Words 19

Lincoln had a voracious curiosity. Since he had virtually no formal schooling he learned early in life that satisfying his curiosity was going to be his job and his job alone. Consequently, as a child he taught himself to read and write; he also taught himself Euclidean geometry, then surveying, then the law. He was a lifelong student of literature having memorized long passages from both Shakespeare and the Bible. As if all that were not enough, in 1849 he applied for a patent on his design for ‘a new and improved manner of combining adjustable buoyant chambers with steam boats’ [these chambers were designed to lift steam boats above sand bars]. He is the only president in American history to have been granted a patent. Then as President he taught himself how to be a Commander in Chief.

- Arnold Kunst

Public Opinion Baths 2

Public Opinion baths took place from 10 - 2 on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and 10 - 12 on Tuesday and Thursday. For the public it was a fairly simple arrangement: first come, first served. Usually Lincoln would greet each individual with “what can I do for you?” Then he would listen and would promise to do what he could if the request were reasonable. If he was in a hurry to get rid of someone, he would crack a joke and with both of them laughing would ease the caller out the door. Among other things, since these meetings happened so regularly Lincoln had a consistently firm grasp on the concerns of ordinary people. In addition, the meetings served as a tonic in a city like Washington where overweening ambition and hypocrisy had – and, according to some people, still has - a way of warping facts beyond recognition.

Public Opinion Baths 1

Those around Lincoln strove from beginning to end to erect barriers to defend him against constant interruption, but the President himself was always the first to break them down. He disliked anything that kept people from him who wanted to see him. 'You will wear yourself out,' they pleaded with him. Lincoln of course agreed, but, he contended, they wanted so little - how could he refuse to see them? Thus were born what Lincoln himself was to call “Public Opinion Baths.”

The Civil War Lives On 7

I’d like to suggest that the Civil War still with us into the 21^st century. A few months ago I took a booth at what was billed as the largest Civil War reenactment west of the Mississippi: over 1,000 men and women dressed in period costume complete with homespun trousers, some with flintlock muskets, others with the then-cutting-edge Springfield rifles – all reliving something that obviously seemed of great emotional importance to them.

Frankly, that wasn’t what went through my mind first. No, instead there was a part of me that thought, “These people should all go home and get a life!” It was a weekend in early November – why weren’t they watching a football game or three like normal people?

It wasn’t until the afternoon of the last day that I got my answer. It came in the form of a rousing rendition of “Dixie!” – by a Yankee band! That was astonishing enough [can you imagine such a thing happening during the Civil War itself?] but as I gazed around at the 50 or so people that comprised that ad-hoc audience I saw an equal sprinkling of Yankees and Rebs, some standing, some on horseback, all somehow mesmerized.

And the answer? “every person in this crowd is being healed!”

The Civil War Lives On 6

During the 40 years from 1880 to 1920 roughly 4,000 former slaves or children of former slaves were lynched in the United States, most of them in the South.

The Civil War Lives On 5

From mid-April 1861 until mid-April 1865 three million men North and South had seen war service. Killed in action or dead from wounds and disease were 360,000 from the North, 260,000 from the South, a grand total of 620,000 Americans.

The Civil War Lives On 4

During Sherman’s infamous March to the Sea, after he had taken, and then burnt, Atlanta to the ground, his well-fed, well-equipped army of 65,000 began cutting a 50-mile swath of devastation through Georgia estimated by Sherman himself at $100,000,000 in value. His rampaging troops were seldom opposed – except at one point when Federal veterans on a hill-top with swamp ground to left and right and a clear field of fire directly to their front encountered a force of 1,500 infantry with, as one Federal observed, ‘more courage than discretion.’ They attacked them across that open ground. The dug-in Yankees greeted them with a blistering volley that left scores on the field. Astonishingly they regrouped and charged again, with the same result. After yet a third attempt to dislodge the invaders, the pathetic remnant was beaten back for a final time. When the engagement was completed the Yankees, who had incurred a mere 62 casualties, walked over that field of blood only to discover that their attackers were old men and young boys – more than 600 of them in all.

The Civil War Lives On 3

During the Civil War a quantum leap occurred that changed the way in which humans conducted war against one another. The spring campaign of 1864 began with Grant and the Army of the Potomac attacking Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia at a place that came to be called The Wilderness.

When that battle ended [on balance, one could argue that the North had been defeated by the South yet again] Grant should have followed an unwritten but time-honored tradition: break off engagement with the enemy to assess and regroup. That is what had happened throughout history. Virtually all the great battles of the past - Marathon, Actium, Austerlitz, even Gettysburg – could be summarized as two blind giants stumbling into and then pummeling each other for a day or two, and then disengaging. The Battle of Hastings, for example, which decided the dynastic future of the English throne was done in an afternoon. But when the Battle of the Wilderness concluded, Grant’s order was ‘flank to the left.’ His immediate purpose was to position himself between Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, and the Army of Northern Virginia, which was charged among other things with Richmond’s defense. Lee [nickname: ‘King of Spades’] moved quickly to take up a defensive position and prevented that from happening. For the rest of 1864 the two armies grappled with each other zigzagging southward – but did not disengage. Such a relentless strategy was the beginning of what a later century would come to call total war.

The Civil War Lives On 2

The Civil War was truly a war of brother against brother as exemplified by the roll call of Mary Todd Lincoln's family of Lexington [Kentucky was a border state]. Her eldest brother Levi and her half-sister Margaret Kellogg were for the Union, while her youngest brother George and her three half-brothers had joined the Confederate Army, and her three half-sisters were the wives of Confederate officers.

The Civil War Lives On 1

On December 20, 1860 the Electoral College met formally to elect Abraham Lincoln President of the United States. On that very same day a special convention was convened in South Carolina to consider and then approve the following Ordinance of Secession: ‘That the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of the United States of America is hereby dissolved.’ This bold move – one state out, with maybe more to follow [but no guarantee!], and 33 states in – passed by a vote of 169 to 0. This take-no-prisoners attitude not only is profound but also is not the kind of mindset that later generations will lightly dismiss. And, the evidence suggests, later generations didn’t.

Why the South lost 3

‘The dream of the Confederacy started out with an expectation of nobility and ended cloaked in revisionist elitism. Both dreams contain fantastic, almost unbelievable, stories. But the story of what really happened is far more intriguing – and useful. If we are to learn from the history of men, we must be frank about their humanity. Those who led the Confederacy were not gods. They were men, sometimes bold and sometimes weak, sometimes hateful and sometimes grand, sometimes selfish, not always sober. Together they formed an imperfect union, and together they destroyed it.’

- David Eicher

Why the South lost 2

The reason the Lost Cause actually lost was not because the Confederate leadership wasn't prepared to pay the price; it wasn't because they failed to see themselves, or behave, as men of honor; it wasn't because they were lacking in the kind of talent, the sheer brain power, to pull it off; it wasn't because they used up all the men, money and resources needed to get the job done; it wasn't even because God was punishing a society based on the monstrous evil of slavery. The real reason had to do with the logic behind the idea of secession itself. Only a few short weeks before secession actually took root, they thought they saw a new president [Abraham Lincoln] of a thing larger than their precious individual states show signs that he was going to be a state-eating ogre; that mind-set had quickly become set in concrete. Soon Jefferson Davis was warning that the Confederacy’s only hope of final victory over what eventually proved to be a determined foe was in unity and the (temporary) surrender of states' rights to a different president [namely, himself] of a thing larger than a state. Davis’s warning largely fell on deaf ears. He was told, in effect, ‘we already endured that kind of presidential tyranny; we'll not put up with it again.’ In their heart of hearts they knew Davis was right; in his heart of hearts Davis knew they were right. Bottom line: although each side ended up making significant accommodations to the other side, there was simply no accommodation here. The problem was that Southern leaders continually ended up tripping over a mind-set that leads to secession – a mind-set, they discovered to their cost, that has no internal check.

Why the South lost 1

The South should have won the Civil War. They had a cause, for starters, that was so stirring that it excited the admiration, and unfortunately the allegiance, of the vast majority of America’s military talent, to include arguably the most able field commander in American history, Robert E. Lee. The Confederate fighting man left his Yankee counterpart in the dust in terms of ferocity, ingenuity, stamina. Then there were the text-book considerations: interior lines of transportation and communication, and the fact that a defensive war can be won even if you’re outnumbered three to one if you’re prepared to pay the price. And the Confederacy more than paid the price. And finally, we compare the two presidents and it’s all over. Jefferson Davis cut his teeth in the big leagues of Washington politics for nearly 15 years; he slipped into the presidency of the Confederacy smooth like a hand into a glove. A West Point graduate and decorated hero of the Mexican War, he was a former Secretary of War who, unlike Lincoln, required no steep learning curve – as Commander in Chief Davis was up to speed from day one. True, the North outnumbered the South by 5 to 2, had a vastly more robust industrial base, but none of those factors would be decisive as long as the war was a short one.

Hatred ever enthroned 12

“Oh, I’m a good ole- Rebel, Now that’s just what I am

For this fair land of freedom I do not give a damn.

I’m glad I fit against it, I only wish we’d won,

And I don’t want any pardon for anything I done.

I rode with Robert E. Lee for four years thereabout,

Got wounded in three places and starved at Point Lookout,

I catched the rheumatism a sleeping in the snow,

But I killed a chance of Yankees and I’d like to kill some more.

Three hundred thousand Yankees are stiff in Southern dust,

We got 300,000 before they conquered us,

They died of Southern fever, of Southern still and shot,

But I wish it was three million instead of what we got.”

Post-Civil War ballad.

Hatred ever enthroned 11

“Oh, I’m a good ole- Rebel, Now that’s just what I am

For this fair land of freedom I do not give a damn.

I’m glad I fit against it, I only wish we’d won,

And I don’t want any pardon for anything I done.

I rode with Robert E. Lee for four years thereabout,

Got wounded in three places and starved at Point Lookout,

I catched the rheumatism a sleeping in the snow,

But I killed a chance of Yankees and I’d like to kill some more.

Three hundred thousand Yankees are stiff in Southern dust,

We got 300,000 before they conquered us,

They died of Southern fever, of Southern still and shot,

But I wish it was three million instead of what we got.”

Post-Civil War ballad.

Hatred ever enthroned 10

The agony of The Civil War was summarized in the experience of a Kentucky family that lost two sons, one dying for the North the other for the South. Over the two graves of these soldier boys the family set up a joint monument with the following poignant inscription: 'God knows which was right.'

Hatred ever enthroned 9

Following Lincoln’s assassination, a War Department circular in 1865 virtually guaranteed the capture of Davis. ‘One hundred thousand dollars Reward in Gold will be paid to any person or persons who will apprehend and deliver Jefferson Davis to any of the military authorities of the United States. Several millions of specie reported to be with him will become the property of the captors.’

Hatred ever enthroned 8

Reconciliation had a long way to go in the days following Lee’s surrender. Edmund Ruffin, credited with firing the first shot at Sumter four years earlier, reacted to the news of Lee’s surrender at Appomattox by leaving a farewell note decrying ‘the perfidious, malignant and vile Yankee race’ - then putting a bullet through his head. Not to be outdone, as it were, the famous Northern preacher Henry Ward Beecher, vitriolic as ever, foresaw eternal agony for the secessionist aristocrats – ‘guiltiest and most remorseless traitors, polished, cultured, exceedingly capable and wholly unprincipled…Caught up in black clouds full of voices of vengeance and lurid with punishment, [they] shall be whirled aloft and plunged downward forever and forever in endless retribution.’

Hatred ever enthroned 7

During Sherman’s infamous March to the Sea, after he had taken, and then burnt, Atlanta to the ground, his well-fed, well-equipped army of 65,000 began cutting a 50-mile swath of devastation through Georgia estimated by Sherman himself at $100,000,000 in value. His rampaging troops were seldom opposed – except at one point when Federal veterans on a hill-top with swamp ground to left and right and a clear field of fire directly to their front encountered a force of 1,500 infantry with, as one Federal observed, ‘more courage than discretion.’ They attacked them across that open ground. The dug-in Yankees greeted them with a blistering volley that left scores on the field. Astonishingly they regrouped and charged again, with the same result. After yet a third attempt to dislodge the invaders, the pathetic remnant was beaten back for a final time. When the engagement was completed the Yankees, who had incurred a mere 62 casualties, walked over that field of blood only to discover that their attackers were old men and young boys – more than 600 of them in all.

Hatred ever enthroned 6

At one point during the Civil War there was talk of a Southern woman spy in the White House. The Senate Committee on the Conduct of the War heard about it and held a secret session to look into allegations that Mrs. Lincoln, who was from the border state of Kentucky, was a disloyalist. One member of the committee told of what happened. 'We had just been called to order by the Chairman, when the officer stationed at the committee room door came in with a half-frightened expression on his face. Before he had opportunity to make explanation, we understood the reason for his excitement, and were ourselves almost overwhelmed with astonishment. For at the foot of the Committee table, standing solitary, his hat in his hand, his form towering, Abraham Lincoln stood. Had he come by some incantation, thus of a sudden appearing before us unannounced, we could not have been more astounded. There was an almost inhuman sadness in his eyes; an indescribable sense of his complete isolation which the committee members felt had to do with fundamental senses of the apparition. No one spoke, for no one knew what to say. The President had not been asked to come before the Committee, nor was it suspected that he had information that we were to investigate reports, which, if true, fastened treason upon his family in the White House. At last the caller spoke slowly, with control, though with a depth of sorrow in the tone of voice: “I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, appear of my own volition before this Committee of the Senate to say that I, of my own knowledge, know that it is untrue that any of my family hold treasonable communication with the enemy.” Having attested this, he went away as silent and solitary as he had come. We sat for some moments speechless. Then by tacit agreement, no word being spoken, the Committee dropped all consideration of the rumors that the wife of the President was betraying the Union. We were so greatly affected that the Committee adjourned for the day.'

Hatred ever enthroned 5

At one point during the Civil War the body of a dead Yankee, pierced with a pitchfork, was propped up at a Mississippi crossroads for weeks for all to view. Not to be outdone, as it were, a Yankee burial party following the battle of Antietam shortened their work by dumping the bodies of 57 dead Rebels down the well of a Southern sympathizer.

Hatred ever enthroned 4

On December 20, 1860 the Electoral College met formally to elect Abraham Lincoln President of the United States. On that very same day a special convention was convened in South Carolina to consider and then approve the following Ordinance of Secession: ‘That the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of the United States of America is hereby dissolved.’ This bold move – one state out, with maybe more to follow [but no guarantee!], and 33 states in – passed by a vote of 169 to 0.

Hatred ever enthroned 3

The following editorial appeared in The Atlanta Confederacy just before the election of 1860, just before what looked like the formation of a thing called the Confederate States of America; 'let the consequences be what they may - whether the Potomac is crimsoned in human gore, and Pennsylvania Avenue is paved ten fathoms deep with mangled bodies, or whether the last vestige of liberty is swept from the face of the American continent, the South will never submit to such humiliation and degradation as the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln.'

Hatred ever enthroned 2

They say that Senator Benjamin Wade kept a sawed-off shotgun in his desk drawer in the Senate chamber. Just in case.

Hatred ever enthroned 1

‘The country during the run-up to the Civil War seemed to have completely lost all capacity to listen. Perhaps the most striking example occurred in 1856 when Senator Charles Sumner delivered a rousing anti-slavery speech in the US Senate that played well among his abolitionist supporters in his home state of Massachusetts. Unfortunately that speech infuriated the South – and induced a relative of the Southerner whose honor Sumner had besmirched to enter an almost empty senate chamber and attack Sumner as he sat at his desk, beating him with his walking stick with sufficient vehemence that Sumner took years of recuperating before he could return to his senatorial duties. And while Sumner was recuperating, his assailant received any number of replacement walking sticks from well-wishing fellow Southerners – to be used again in case any other Yankee hypocrite stepped out of line!’

- Arnold Kunst

Lincoln and the prolonged personal snub. 6

The story takes a most curious turn with Lincoln’s accession to the Presidency. His first Secretary of War, Simon Cameron from the pivotal state of Pennsylvania, had to be replaced for certain contract improprieties, and in January, 1862 Lincoln appointed Edwin Stanton Secretary of War. Everyone, including Stanton, was astonished at his appointment. After all, in the years since that 1855 trial Stanton had repeatedly vilified this “imbecilic” President, this “original gorilla” [Darwin’s 'Origin of Species' had just been published in 1859].

Lincoln knew all this, of course, but had put that aside. He never carried a grudge, he said later, because it didn't pay. Although irascible Stanton was thoroughly honest – unlike Cameron he couldn’t be bought. Also, Stanton was a Union man through and through. Finally, he was a prodigious worker and a wizard as an administrator - and those skills impelled Lincoln to promote him. With time it was clear the appointment was a stroke of genius.

Lincoln and the prolonged personal snub. 5

Legend - or perhaps ugly political rumor - has it that after the trial Stanton referred to Lincoln as a giraffe, monkey, or some other equally unflattering pejorative. Whether or not that was true, there is no doubt that Stanton (and the other counsel) not only treated Lincoln with disdain, they clearly did not regard him as a great trial lawyer as of September 1855.

But a funny thing happened to Lincoln the lawyer on the way home from the Cincinnati courthouse. Ralph Emerson—at the time a young partner of Manny—had also been in attendance. Emerson had known Lincoln before the trial, and he asserted that it was he who insisted that Lincoln be hired for the case. Emerson contended that the trial had an “immediate effect” upon Lincoln. He then quoted Lincoln as follows: ‘I am going home to study law! I am going home to study law!’ he exclaimed repeatedly, as he and Emerson walked from the court room down to the river when the hearing had ended. Emerson said that that was what he had been doing. ‘No,’ Lincoln replied, ‘not as these college bred men study it. I have learned my lesson. These college bred fellows have reached Ohio, they will soon be in Illinois, and when they come, Emerson, I will be ready for them.’

From that time on, insists Emerson, who often heard Lincoln thereafter, his style and manner of speech and argument improved greatly and steadily — the result, as the old manufacturer stoutly contended throughout his long life,

of Lincoln’s connection with the celebrated patent case of McCormick vs Manny et al.

Lincoln and the prolonged personal snub. 4

From the moment Lincoln arrived he was not only ignored, he was actively shunned by the other members of the Manny trial team. Without question Stanton was rude, snobbish, and supercilious toward the unknown Lincoln. But so was everyone else connected with the case. Harding, for example, never even opened the lengthy manuscript which Lincoln had prepared as his contribution. When one of the presiding jurists entertained the counsel on both sides, Lincoln was not even invited. Although all the lawyers were staying at the same hotel, none asked Lincoln to share their table, to visit them in their rooms, or to join them on the daily walks to and from the court. Lincoln, nevertheless, stayed for the duration of the trial. He was entranced, mesmerized, and seated at the back of the courtroom. He was not asked to say a word, and he did not do so. He offered to return his retainer, but that was declined.

Lincoln and the prolonged personal snub. 3

It transpired, however, that the venue for the trial was changed from Chicago to Cincinnati and as Harding put it, that “removed the one object we had in employing Lincoln.”

Lincoln didn’t know about the change of venue, and when he arrived at the Cincinnati train depot he was met by his soon-to-be colleagues, the other members of the Manny legal team. Harding’s description of how Lincoln appeared upon his arrival in Cincinnati in September 1855 has to be quoted: He looked like ‘a tall, rawly boned, ungainly backwoodsman, with coarse, ill-fitting clothing, his trousers hardly reaching his ankles, holding in his hands a blue cotton umbrella with a ball on the end of the handle. ‘When introduced, we barely exchanged salutations with him, and I proposed to Stanton that he and I go up to the court. ‘“Let’s go up in a gang,” remarked Lincoln.

Stanton was having none of this country bumpkin. ‘“Let that fellow go up with his gang. We’ll walk up together,”‘ said Stanton, aside, to Harding. And ‘we did,’ Harding relates.

Lincoln and the prolonged personal snub. 2

Manny chose Lincoln because he had built up a solid reputation over the past 20 years or so of dazzling both juries and judges with his distinctive blend of wry humor, shrewd insight, and dogged, methodical dedication to all things legal. In short, Lincoln was the best trial lawyer Illinois had to offer. Frankly, in the mid 1850’s that wasn’t saying much - maybe Lincoln was merely a big frog in a little pond and not up to the task when pitted against the best legal minds in the country. But since the trial was to take place in front of an Illinois jury Lincoln just might prove invaluable, possibly in providing the summation at the end. In any event when Harding visited Lincoln in his home in Springfield he paid him a $2,000 retainer on the spot, a sizeable sum of money indeed. But then money was no object.

Lincoln of course was elated. It was his first crack at the big time. He enthusiastically researched the two brands of reapers writing up a brief based on a meticulous analysis of their respective characteristics. However, it was a brief that, as we shall soon see, never saw the light of day.

Lincoln and the prolonged personal snub. 1

It all began with a court case between two manufacturers of reapers. In 1855, the same year the Manny reaper beat the McCormick reaper at the Paris Exposition, Cyrus McCormick filed suit against John Manny for patent infringement [McCormick argued that the Manny reaper was a copy; Manny denied this.] The stakes were enormous: if Manny lost, not only had he to cease production but he would be forced to pay McCormick $400,000 in damages. In 1855, $400,000 was a lot of money.

Both sides lawyered up with the biggest legal names in the 19^th century.

Manny’s team was headed up by George Harding of Philadelphia arguably the pre-eminent patent lawyer in the country. Also on Manning’s team was the formidable Edwin Stanton of Pittsburg. Since the trial was to be held out West in Illinois, Harding sought to shore up his team by hiring the best trial lawyer Illinois had to offer, and that proved to be Abraham Lincoln.

He’d never get elected today! 14

Finally, this man was not doctrinaire – all the more remarkable because he lived at a time – rather like our own? - when being doctrinaire was automatically taken to mean being a man of conviction. Others had the answers, all the answers, and had them easily. And this was an age profligate with examples of just this seductive tendency. Thus, at the very outset of Lincoln’s term, Northern editorial writers in the winter-spring of 1860-61 who wrote [pontificated?] that if South Carolina wanted to leave the Union, good riddance to bad rubbish; they’ve been nothing but trouble from the beginning anyway. Those editorial writers also had all the answers. Similarly, those South Carolinians manning artillery aimed at Fort Sumter knew exactly what to do; we gonna kill us some Yankees! What could be cleaner? The examples go on and on. And against all that is this new man in the White House who said, more than once, “My policy is to have no policy.”

He’d never get elected today! 13

If we are to understand this man we have to put him in the context we know, that of a contemporary president. To put it mildly, he was different from them, and different from what is currently successful translates as, well, the opposite of success.

Even so, can any of the Presidents who came after him match Lincoln’s unassailable sense of self assurance? Consider this: Lincoln had made what from an outsider’s point of view was a huge leap from a sleepy little two-man law firm in Podunk, USA to President of the United States, and he did it without missing a beat. The only explanation for such an apparently unexplainable leap is that he was supremely confident in himself. Lincoln never seems to have thought the following thought: “I wonder if I’ve gone too far, attempted too much, moved too swiftly? I wonder if this or that decision is warranted?”

That isn’t to say, of course, that he never made any mistakes. One thinks of his over-estimation of pro-Unionist sentiment in the South in late 1860/early 1861, or his often-repeated proposal – no blacks would take him up on it since it was fraught with vast impracticalities - that freed blacks choose to be sent out of the country. The key for a man who said, “my policy is to have no policy” is that he merely changed directions, like some martial arts practitioner who absorbs the energy of his opponent’s blows, and in the process turns that energy against that same opponent. Lincoln gives boundless luster to that term we in the 21^st century consider the ultimate sin for any politician: flip-flopping.

He’d never get elected today! 12

If truth be told, we Americans have been known to elect to public office tawdry, media-construct leaders who, because they are not all that comfortable living inside their own skin, end up choosing people in their immediate circle who are inclined to agree with him/her more than, perhaps, is good for the country.

Not so Lincoln.

An old friend of Lincoln advised him not to take Salmon Chase into his cabinet “because Chase thinks he’s a great deal bigger than you are.” “Well,” asked Lincoln, “do you know of any other men who think they are bigger than I am?” “I don’t know that I do,” the man replied, “but why do you ask?” “Because,” answered Lincoln, “I want to put them all in my Cabinet.”

Glib of tongue though our current politicians may be, they are left speechless in the presence of the master.

He’d never get elected today! 11

Lincoln proves equally distinctive. For example, “Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”

He’d never get elected today! 10

Four years later after winning reelection to the Presidency for a second term Lincoln was equally soft-spoken: “Having served four years in the depths of a great, and unended national peril, I can view this call to a second term in nowise more flattering to myself, than as an expression of the public judgment that I may better finish a difficult work in which I have labored from the first, than could anyone less severely schooled to the task.”

He’d never get elected today! 9

Can you imagine any victory speech in the political world we live in of knee-jerk animosity that mirrors Lincoln’s in winning the Presidency in 1860? “In all our rejoicing let us neither express, nor cherish, any harsh feeling towards any citizen who, by his vote, has differed with us. Let us at all times remember that all American citizens are brothers of a common country, and should dwell together in the bonds of fraternal feeling.”

895

8/27

He’d never get elected today! 8

His victory speeches are without equal. Every other politician in the world, whether he’s just been elected president or dogcatcher, reacts to his victory in exactly the same way: he gives a victory speech full of references to the historic sweep of what just took place; he will now begin the process of fulfilling all those promises and so Everything Will Be Different Now that we’ve swept the crooks out of office.

On the contrary, Lincoln sounds a far different tone. Listen to him after winning the Presidency in 1860: “I have been selected to fill an important office for a brief period, and am now, in your eyes, invested with an influence which will soon pass away; but should my administration prove to be a very wicked one, or what is more probable, a very foolish one, if you, the people are but true to yourselves and to the Constitution, there is but little harm I can do, thank God!”

He’d never get elected today! 7

In 1858 when he lost the Senatorial election to Stephen Douglas I think Lincoln was as bitterly disappointed as any candidate losing election. Yet when asked how he felt about that result, this is what he said: “I felt like the boy who stubbed his toe rather badly; I’m too big to cry and too badly hurt to laugh.”

He’d never get elected today! 6

'Let us at all times remember that all American citizens are brothers of a common country, and should dwell together in the bonds of fraternal feeling.'

- Abraham Lincoln

He’d never get elected today! 5

Flip floppers don’t get [re]elected:

“Honest old Abe when this war first began

Denied abolition was part of his plan.

Honest old Abe has since made a decree

That the war must go on till the slaves are all free.

As both can’t be honest, will someone tell how,

If honest Abe then he is honest Abe now.”

Civil War doggerel

He’d never get elected today! 4

'I cannot understand why men should be so eager after money. Wealth is simply a superfluity of what we don't need. '

- Abraham Lincoln

He’d never get elected today! 3

‘When our own beloved country once, by the blessing of God, united, prosperous and happy is now afflicted with faction and civil war, it is peculiarly fit for us to recognize the hand of God in this terrible visitation, and in sorrowful remembrance of our own faults and crimes as a nation and as individuals, to humble ourselves before Him, and to pray for His mercy.’

- Abraham Lincoln

He’d never get elected today! 2

‘Mr. Chairman, this work is exclusively the work of politicians, a set of men who have interests aside from the interests of the people, and who, to say the most of them, are, taken as a mass, at least one long step removed from honest men. I say this with the greater freedom, because, being a politician myself, none can regard it as personal.’

- Abraham Lincoln

He’d never get elected today! 1

‘These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people.’

- Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln Jems 25

'No man resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention. Still less can he afford to take all the consequences, including the vitiating of his temper and the loss of self-control. Yield larger things to which you can show no more than equal right; and yield lesser ones, though clearly your own. Better give your path to a dog than be bitten by him in contesting for the right. Even killing the dog would not cure the bite.'

- Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln Jems 24

When one of his generals grumbled and complained after being placed in charge of a mere 3,000 men, Lincoln wired him: 'Act well your part; therein all the honor lies. He who does something at the head of one regiment will eclipse him who does nothing at the head of a hundred.' 

Lincoln Jems 23

 ‘I am slow to learn, and slow to forget. My mind is like a piece of steel - very hard to scratch anything on it, and almost impossible after you get it there to rub it out.' 

- Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln Jems 22

'If any personal description of me is thought desirable I am in height, six feet four inches nearly; lean in flesh weighing on an average one hundred and eighty pounds; dark complexion with coarse black hair and gray eyes - no other marks or brands recollected.' 

- Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln Jems 21

‘It is easy to see that, under the sharp discipline of civil war, the nation is beginning a new life.' 

- Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln Jems 20

'It is much for the young to know that treading the hard path of duty will be noticed and lead to high places.' 

- Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln Jems 19

'Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others.' 

- Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln Jems 18

'My father taught me how to work, but not to love it. I never did like to work, and I don't deny it. I'd rather read, tell stories, crack jokes, talk, laugh - anything but work.' 

- Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln Jems 17

'Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world?' 

- Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln Jems 16

'The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just; it shall not deter me.' 

- Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln Jems 15

'My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.' 

- Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln Jems 14

‘I shall go just as fast and only as fast as I think I’m right and the people are ready for the step.’

- Abraham Lincoln