Abraham Lincoln

Review: And There Was Light

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Cover image of "And There Was Light" by Jon Meacham

And There Was Light, Jon Meacham. Random House (ISBN: 9780553393965), 2022.

Summary: The convictions shaping Lincoln’s public life including his opposition to slavery, the importance of the union, and his belief in providence.

One of the things I’ve appreciated about the writing of Jon Meacham is that he focuses on the formative influences, qualities of character, and deeply held convictions of his subjects. And this what sets his biography of Lincoln apart from the many other fine biographies of the sixteenth president.

Of course he traces the life of Lincoln from his humble upbringings, his law career, early political life, his rise in Republican circles, and his war-marred presidency and its tragic end. Two formative influences stand out. One is his step-mother Sarah, who encouraged his hunger for books and brought order to a struggling household. The other was Mary Todd Lincoln, his wife, who wanted to marry the man “who had the best prospects of being president.” She was at his side in all his political endeavors, the archetypal political spouse.

What she recognized was an ambitious man with a greatness of vision. The Declaration of Independence, even more than the Constitution, shaped him. It’s ringing words, “all men are created equal” form a bedrock conviction in Lincoln. Consequently, he could not envision a good society as one where one man enslaved and lived off the work of another.

Yet he was a also a savvy politician with an acute sense of the possible. This explained his pragmatic approach of only trying to stop the spread of slavery. Preserving the Union, as far as possible, was uppermost in his priorities as President. This frustrated extreme abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass, who eventually reached a very different appraisal. An example of that sense of timing was the Emancipation Proclamation, planned for some time, but only proclaimed after victory at Antietam.

Closely tied to his intuitive sense of was his deep sense of feeling and empathy. Thus, he would struggle with the black bear of depression and would deeply grieve his lost son. Also, he was patient and gentle with a shrewish and increasingly unstable Mary. These same qualities were in evidence when he visited wounded soldiers in field hospitals.

Finally, though not a conventional Christian, Lincoln had a deep conviction of the providence of God in human affairs. He understood he could not bend or appropriate God’s will to his ends. The war would last as long as God willed, though this didn’t prevent him from looking for generals who would fight. He understood grace and forgiveness and had no intent to punish the South at war’s end. One wonders how different Reconstruction might have been were it not for Wilkes’ bullet.

One cannot, in an election year, help but think about presidential character. In the case of Lincoln, Meacham portrays a Lincoln with not only the requisite political skills, savvy, and ambition. He also had depths of character, breadth of vision and spiritual underpinnings to meet the challenges of the moment. Do we want that in those we entrust to our highest office? And if we do not, what does this say of us as a people?

Review: Lincoln’s Greatest Journey

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Lincoln’s Greatest Journey, Noah Andre Trudeau. El Dorado Hills, CA: Savas Beatie, 2016.

Summary: A day by day account of the final trip Abraham Lincoln took for sixteen days at City Point, Virginia, the headquarters of Ulysses S. Grant, and how this transformed Lincoln.

It was Lincoln’s longest stay away from the White House during his presidency.. It didn’t start out that way. Lincoln, accompanied by his wife Mary, had planned a two day visit to Grant’s headquarters, beginning on March 24, 1865. Lee’s forces defending Richmond were slowly weakening as Grant extended his lines. The hope was that the decisive breakthrough ending the war was near. Phil Sheridan was rejoining Grant from the Shenandoah valley. Sherman, further off, was marching from the south.

Lincoln arrived as a war-weary president wanting to encourage Grant to finish the job. He described himself saying, “I am very unwell” and he looked it to observers who knew him. He ended up extending his stay for sixteen days and left a different man both physically and in outlook. Noah Andre Trudeau traces Lincoln’s day by day itinerary against the backdrop of the final days of the Civil War, filling in gaps in the somewhat sketchy outlines of Lincoln’s stay at City Point.

Perhaps the event that changed Lincoln’s plans was Grants repulse of the surprise attack on Fort Stedman on the second day. Grant realized that Lee was fatally weakened and further extended his own lines to the southwest and called on Sheridan to attack on Lee’s right flank. Lincoln attended the command summit a few days later that included Sherman as they readied the attack, encouraging them that “Your success is my success.”

As Grant moved west to be at the crucial point of attack, Lincoln was left with little to do but ride and walk, receive visits and visit field hospitals. Unwittingly, he became a war correspondent, passing news from Grant along to Washington, where his reports were disseminated to the public. In so doing, Lincoln broke new ground in media communications, changing the expectations of a president as public communicator to the nation.

Meanwhile, Trudeau also introduces us to the instabilty and vanity of Mary Lincoln and her dustups with Julia Grant. In the end, she returned early while Lincoln stayed on. The portrait of the First Lady is unflattering, suggesting what Lincoln and others who were around her suffered.

Trudeau covers Lincoln’s visits to Peterburg and Richmond, including the scant provisions for security on the first of these trips. A sniper could easily have ended his presidency right there. Instead, we see a president deeply moved both by war’s devastation and the joyful reception he received from emancipated former slaves.

Lincoln finally departs on April 8. One of the most moving descriptions in the book is Lincoln’s visit to the hospitals for each division, literally speaking to every wounded soldier, some who would die within days while others would carry memories of Lincolns attention and encouragement. Throughout the narrative, we hear of Lincoln’s concern to end the bloodshed. His visit reflected his awareness of the precious sacrifice these and many others had made. This included Confederate soldiers who Lincoln would welcome back to the Union without retribution.

And here we glimpse the transformation that Trudeau so skillfully traces. Lincoln came a weary commander-in-chief. He left anticipating the end of hostilities which came the next day. He returned to Washington committed to the task of reunifying a nation and embarking on a new era in the treatment of former slaves. He was physically restored, filled with a sense of fulfilled purpose, and ready for the new challenge of restoring the Union as a peace president. But first an evening’s entertainment at Ford’s Theater…

Trudeau offers us a well-rounded account of the sixteen days at City Point and how they changed Lincoln. Trudeau also reveals to us the depth of character of Lincoln, battered but resilient, firm in resolve, enthusiastic in support for Grant, and tender with the wounded. We see a man capable of growth as he meets former slaves. And we see a man with a far-reaching, magnanimous vision, one that would die with him.

Review: The Crooked Path to Abolition

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The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution, James Oakes. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2021.

Summary: A historical account of how Abraham Lincoln, although not a traditional abolitionist, strongly supported and implemented the antislavery portions of the Constitution to pursue the end of slavery.

Abraham Lincoln was not an abolitionist in the traditional sense. He did not advocate immediate emancipation in the slave states. He did not advocate active resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act, but only for due process rights. He did not rail in his rhetoric against the vile evils of slavery. But Abraham Lincoln hated slavery and believed there were resources within the Constitution properly leveraged that would lead to its eventual end. How could this be so when the Constitution protected slavery in the states? Only states could abolish slavery, not the Federal government. Both Constitution and legislation allowed slave owners or their proxes to capture and return runaway slaves even where slavery was not legal. And there was that language of slaves being three-fifths of a person.

Actually those who believe in an antislavery Constitution might start there. Slaves are written of as “persons,” undermining the contention of slaves as being property. Beyond this, those who developed the idea of an antislavery Constitution drew on both the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble affirming the equality of persons. They focused on the due process rights protected under the Fifth Amendment to make it as hard as possible for slave owners to retrieve runaways, while not breaking the fugitive slave laws. They used the Federal power to regulate the territories to make these free rather than slave. The Constitution said Congress had no authority “to give legal existence to slavery in any territory of the United States.” They antislavery people were committed to no more compromises that would admit new slave states into the country.

Lincoln believed that slavery would eventually wither away of its own. Some proposed that slaves brought into free territory could sue for their freedom. The dynamic economy of the north would outstrip the south, particularly because it could not expand its economy, fenced about by free territories becoming states. Eventually Southern states would abolish slavery on their own, which only they could do, Lincoln believed, since the Constitution did not give this power to the Federal government.

James Oakes traces the development of this antislavery doctrine, particularly within the Republican party. With enough votes in the growing North, Lincoln was elected. While he assured the South that slavery would be upheld, the implementation of other aspects of the antislavery doctrine triggered secession. Oakes shows how this offered new avenues to antislavery effort: ending slavery in the District of Columbia, ending the slave trade and blocking slave shipping to southern ports, and most significantly, voiding Fugitive Slave laws for slave owners in rebel states, since they no longer were under the laws of the Union. Slaves who fled into Union lines would be considered “contraband” and emancipated. While this was not so for border states who remained in the Union, the Army was directed not to assist in the retrieval of any fugitive slaves, since they did not have the legal powers to properly adjudicate such matters. The owners were on their own, further contributing to abolition.

Oakes doesn’t portray Lincoln as an antiracist. He favored colonization of Blacks, believing Blacks and Whites could not live together. But he hated slavery with a singular focus. One senses a Lincoln both shrewd and resolute in availing himself of all the resources available in the Constitution to move the needle toward abolition and emancipation, even maneuvering conquered states to constitute themselves as free and to join in ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment.

What I continue to wonder about is whether Lincoln realized his approach would send the South over the edge, precipitating the Civil War? Or did the South adequately take on board Lincoln’s resolve to preserve the Union once attacked? I wonder, given the case Oakes make, whether there is an argument to suggest that the South played into Lincoln’s hand, accelerating the demise of slavery that may otherwise have taken another fifty to one hundred years. Did Lincoln fully understand the cards he was holding and play them to full advantage?

I’ve often commented about the writing of slavery into our Constitution. I don’t think we can dodge that terrible compromise. But Oakes offers another perspective, showing the side of the Constitution that assumes freedom and equality the norm and slavery an exception. He also shows the lawyerly genius of Lincoln to recognize and exploit that side to its full extreme. The great sadness of all this was the lives it cost, including in the end, Lincoln’s own.

Is Collective Insanity Possible?

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Ecstatic NationI’m in the midst of reading Brenda Wineapple’s Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis, and Compromise, 1848-1877. What the book raises for me is whether it is possible for a nation to descend into a fit of collective insanity, or at least ecstasy, in which it takes leave of its senses, with dire consequences to follow. In the first part of the book, she chronicles the increasingly incendiary rhetoric of political leaders and advocates both for slavery and abolition that seemed to stir a growing spirit of fear and anger in the nation that overwhelmed calmer voices like Lincoln, Stephen Douglas, and even Alexander Stephens from the South who recognized the terrible conflict toward which the United States was headed.

Certainly, a survey of recent history suggests other examples of national collective insanity. The massacres in Rwanda stand out, where neighbors turned on neighbors in a horrific bloodbath of tribal warfare. People I’ve talked with from China speak with muted tones of the painful experience of Mao’s Cultural Revolution.

This makes me wonder whether it is possible that this could occur once again in our country and what form this might take? There is anger and fear and even deep resentments or hatreds in many quarters against ethnic minorities, immigrants, the majority culture, and over those who differ with each other in matters of sexual expression. Efforts to work toward some form of a more perfect union are often trumped (!) by the soundbite smackdown.

I have to admit to being personally concerned that much of our national discourse, and the social media discourse that parallels this is indeed an exercise in playing with fire. We don’t seem to think that words can be dangerous or that speech freedoms might be abused. I will always defend our speech freedoms as a special gift and privilege. Yet the use of that freedom to sow fear and anger and intransigence contributed to the American Civil War and drowned out other voices like those of Lincoln who made this plea in his inaugural:

“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely as they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

I don’t think another Civil War is likely, but I think that civil anarchy is possible, a situation akin to the Wild West where power comes from the end of a gun and the rule of law is increasingly impotent to check disorder and violence. Do we realize that the American experiment of the past 239 years can quickly descend into either anarchy or into a reactive tyranny of repression?

I believe the way forward is to listen neither to the voices that foment fear and anger, nor to the voices of easy solutionism that promise that America’s greatest days are before us (which is why I’ll never be elected to office). I wonder if we need more voices warning of the abyss toward which we could be heading and calling on us to stop, and lament what has been or is in danger of being lost. I wonder if we need voices calling us back to both our highest national and spiritual values–the recognition that all are created equal and have dignity, and all are gifted contributors to our national greatness.

Our words matter as do deeds of justice, mercy and compassion. Those who play with fire often don’t realize they could burn down the house until they do. And that includes our national house.

Review: Drawn with the Sword: Reflections on the American Civil War

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McPhersonDrawn with the Sword: Reflections on the American Civil War by James M. McPherson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

James M McPherson is the author of the best-selling Battle Cry of Freedom, chronicling the history of the Civil War. This is a wonderful collection of essays on the same subject. These are organized under four headings with a final essay that I thought was worth the price of admission all by itself: “What’s the Matter with History”. The problem actually isn’t history, according to him, but the growing chasm between academic publications in history centered around very specialized questions and written in the arcane language of the discipline, and works for the educated public, increasingly written by journalists rather than academic historians. McPherson, who is an academic historian, describes how his success with Battle Cry undermined, to a certain degree, his academic credibility.

He begins the book with several essays on the origins of the Civil War including his take on southern exceptionalism, the role of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and his counter to the claim that the war was one of northern aggression.

Part Two focuses on the war and its wider impact on American society. He explores our perpetual fascination with the Civil War–why so many re-enactors, why so many books, and why so much continual re-hashing of the history from northern and southern perspectives. He explores the Civil War as a case study in the transition from limited to total war, and the issues of race and class, including the story behind the movie, Glory, which he considers one of the best depictions of the reality of battle among Civil War movies.

Part Three explores “Why the North won” looking at the arguments about why the Confederacy lost, how they almost won and the generalships of Lee and Grant. McPherson would come down on the side of the preponderance of northern military might combined with finally coming up with a group of Generals in Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan, who would exploit that might.

Part Four looks at Lincoln, and in many ways defends Lincoln against scholarship that minimizes the role of Lincoln in Emancipation and the defense of the republic.

I’m reminded why I like McPherson–he writes clearly and takes clear positions on historical questions. I’m sure he must have his detractors, but one thing he does not do is hide his conclusions behind arcane language and highly nuanced argument. May his tribe increase among academic historians!

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