Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Land of Lincoln
Where we are on Feb. 12, 2018
ALMOST 200 years ago, in the spring of 1828, a young man took a boat down the Mississippi job came watched girl” amazement—as that was across River promised brought with a slave to amazement—disgusted to New a a auction be good “comely sold. Orleans payday. there The mulatto on story and He a down her goes flesh in that front and she commented of was buyers, marched who on pinched the up way and she an animal, walked. to She see was how trotted she moved. about, The like young man from the Midwest seethed.
“If I ever get a chance to hit [slavery],” he told a friend, “I’ll hit it hard.”
He got his chance to hit American slavery in the 1860s. And he hit it hard.
Hof the be perhaps the almost for young on 16th his his OW such only formal man, any every serious president. DOES a would-be man? because intense, time photograph. face. a The country we Early self-aware, Yet we politician question see on even a He produce likeness there could then, arises posing trying is have of something him, foreknowledge, something been granted haunting driven, there the about as gift is if he but never only a really preparation. had a youth Then, taken in in a photograph February 1865, toward the end of The War and his life, there is the familiar visage of Father Abraham in the brokenglass portrait that so faithfully mirrors the state of the Union at the time. It’s an image that still crowds the throat with fear and wonder. And gratitude. Where did he come from?
He was a man of contradictions, like his country. He hated slavery. But his Emancipation Proclamation sounds like it was written by an out-of-sorts bureaucrat. He had little formal education. But he could quote the King James Bible and Shakespeare at will. Historians believe he suffered tremendous bouts of depression. But he told jokes so often he annoyed some in his Cabinet. As in:
Two Quaker women were deciding at the beginning of the Civil War who would win. The Confederacy will win, said the first. “Because Jefferson Davis is a praying man.” Said the second in response: “But Abraham Lincoln is a praying man, too.”
“Yes, but the Lord might think Abraham is joking.”
—Abraham Lincoln
He was skinny. But skilled with an axe. He was homely. But went into politics. He was a brilliant debater. And lost election after election after election. That is, until he became president of the United States of America. And vowed to keep the nation together. And did.
WE KNOW his early life must have afforded a long, lanky farm boy a lot of time alone—time to read and time to think things through. He would have gone to school maybe 12 months at most between his 8th and 15th birthdays. Yet somehow this son of an illiterate father and an unlettered stepmother acquired an education.
He had something else, too, something instinctive, visceral and marrow deep: an abiding hatred and detestation of human slavery.
Other Americans disliked slavery too. Some even knew it was evil. But so many were willing to accept it as a necessary evil. And still others would have destroyed anything to get at it, including the American Union. But Abe Lincoln was no abolitionist in that sense. With him, ending slavery was a moral necessity, but so was saving the United States of America. Somehow, against all odds and the conventional wisdom of his day, Mr. Lincoln accomplished both goals.
Today the kids and commentariat (but we repeat ourselves) like to say how divided this country is, and how we need a uniter and peace and harmony—and that government officials “need to work together for the American people.”
Children, gather around, and let us tell you about divided. It happened in this country circa 1861-1865. For all of today’s protests outside congressional offices and the sucker-punching coming from our tweeter-in-chief, this ain’t divided. Not like during Abraham Lincoln’s term. Once upon a time the continuation of this nation was doubtful. And those who’d tear the Union apart were winning. Or at least drawing things out enough to discourage the other side.
No matter what we’ve heard from certain unreconstructed types over the years, yes, the American Civil War, or just The War as it’s known in these latitudes, was about slavery. All one need do is read the correspondence of those who were fighting in it. Or read the declarations of each state in the Confederacy as they voted, one by one, to leave the Union. Those secession papers are so much more interesting, reliable and honest than some of the books going around today, which create more echo chambers as the writers quote each other. And give each other some sort of paper trail showing how economics and only economics caused The War. Yes, different regions of the country had different economies. Because one was based on slavery, a peculiar institution as American as apple pie, motherhood and violence.
Then the most unlikely of American politicians showed up. And finally won election.
THE MAN whose birthday we celebrate today wasn’t always as popular as he is now. Even before he took office, half the country wouldn’t have him. The congressmen who mentioned him in debates—that is, those congressmen who stayed in the Union—treated him with contempt. The papers would make modern editorialists blush. (“Filthy story-teller, despot, liar, thief, braggart, buffoon, usurper, monster, ignoramus Abe, old scoundrel, perjurer, swindler, tyrant, field-butcher, land-pirate.”—Harper’s
Weekly magazine.)
Worse, his generals wouldn’t fight. He courted them, waited on them, praised them, pushed them, reassigned them, badgered them and fired them. (“If McClellan is not using the army, I should like to borrow it for a while.”)
Eventually Lincoln would find Grant. But it would take several bloody years. In which the president’s standing with the American people kept falling. Months before the November 1864 election, he told friends he had no hope of winning.
But he held firm. And held the Union firm. With the firmness in the right that God gave him to see the right, and finished off the peculiar institution. And was shot dead for it.
In the end, Abraham Lincoln would manage to win the most decisive battle of all, the one for public opinion. And has managed to leap to the top of most lists of Great American Presidents.
In great part because of Abraham Lincoln, this country is still one, under God, indivisible. And this editorial of Feb. 12, 2018, is being written in a free country, specifically in Little Rock, Ark., U.S.A. — not C.S.A.