Becoming the conscience of the country
Lincoln battled the nation’s worst impulses long before the Civil War
It’s been said that every generation invents a new Abraham Lincoln. At various times, our 16th president has been cast as a plucky Everyman, a sorrowing war leader, a homegrown mystic and a Christlike martyr — sometimes he’s played these parts simultaneously. In his new biography “Wrestling With His Angel: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1849-1856,” Sidney Blumenthal gives us Lincoln as master politician, re-emerging from defeat with renewed purpose as America headed toward its greatest crisis.It is a followup to his previous Lincoln biography “A Self-Made Man: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln 1809-1849.”
Mr. Blumenthal brings a sharp, battle-honed political mind to the task of re-telling this seemingly familiar story. Last year, his role as a roving adviser to Hillary Clinton became an issue in the presidential campaign. His feel for the heat of partisan combat gives his book a sense of immediacy and excitement. More than that, he draws insightful parallels between the bitter political fights of the 19th and 21st centuries, suggesting that the great moral divides ofthe past are still with us today.
If big themes undergird the book, the author also relishes the fine details of family rivalries and small acts of revenge. Subplots such as the legal wrangling of the Wickliffe family over money and land touch upon the bedrock evil of Southern slavery. Through his wife’s family, Lincoln became embroiled in these squabbles, working out fine moral points through everyday legal wrangling. Mr. Blumenthal skillfully connects these petty disputes with larger issues of race and class.
“Wrestling With His Angel” manages to put flesh on the dry bones of forgotten political characters. We meet a motley assortment of presidents, including the roughhewn yet resolute Zachary Taylor, the vain mediocre Millard Fillmore and the weak, tragic Franklin Pierce. The blustery, violence-prone Sen. Thomas Hart Benton and the somewhat sinister Jefferson Davis (an adulterer afflicted with venereal disease), areparticularly well-drawn.
If there’s an outstanding villain in this book, it’s Illinois Sen. Stephen A. Douglas, a “classic rabblerousing demagogue” termed by Lincoln “the most dangerous enemy of liberty.” In his quest to get rich and become president, he upsets the precarious balance between North and South by engineering repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Charismatic, greedy and ruthless, Douglas embodies the dark side of American nationalism, the sort of populist hustler all too familiar these days.
Mr. Blumenthal contrasts Lincoln’s bedrock commitment to human dignity with Douglas’ amoral opportunism. It takes time and much soul-searching for Lincoln to become a champion for freedom, though. Along the way, the book details the violently shifting politics of the mid-1850s, giving special attention to the Know-Nothings, a secretive anti-immigrant party that enjoyed enormous (if brief) success. Lincoln hates the KnowNothings yet must appeal to their followers, executing a delicate dance that shows his political skill.
The book, the second of four volumes, catches the mood of division that filled the country on the eve of the Civil War. The Whigs collapse and the Democrats bicker as the Republicans assemble themselves out of pieces of the old parties. Amidst the shady deals and shifting alliances, Mr. Blumenthal never lets us forget the higher stakes involved. He reminds us that the Bible was used by Southern leaders to sanctify AfricanAmerican bondage as the natural order of things. He notes that slavery needed to expand its territory to survive economically, making compromise ultimately impossible. The reader is never allowed to forget how aggressive and selfjustifying slavery’s advocates were — and what risks Lincoln took in confronting them.
Through all of this, Lincoln takes shape as a man of contradictions: superstitious yet rigorously logical, tenderhearted yet remote. What made him function — what made him great — was his sense of purpose and will. “Wrestling With His Angel” retells this crucial chapter in Lincoln’s story with fresh eyes, ones that don’t miss its relevance to today.