It is now widely said that Obama is modeling himself on Lincoln. Wonderful; he should. Last night on "Charlie Rose," Eric Foner, the Columbia historian, in a discussion of Obama's transition in historical terms, said that Lincoln had opposed the abolitionists for some time before he took office.
This is from Lord Charnwood's biography Abraham Lincoln (1917). Charnwood quotes a letter from Lincoln to Joshua Speed, a good friend and Kentucky slaveholder, in 1855:
But you say that sooner than yield your legal right to the slave, especially at the bidding of those who are not themselves interested, you would see the Union dissolved. I am not aware that any one is bidding you yield that right; very certainly I am not. I leave that matter entirely to yourself. I also acknowledge your rights and my obligations under the Constitution in regard to your lsaves. I confess I hate to see the poor creatures hunted down and caught and carried back to their stripes and unrequited toil; but I bite my lips and keep quiet. In 1841 you and I had together a tedious low-water trip on a steamboat from Louisville to St. Louis. You may remember, as I well do, that from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio there were on board ten or a dozen slaves shackled together with irons. That sight was a continual torment to me, and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio or any other slave border. It is not fair for you to assume that I have no interest in a thing which has, and continually exercises, the power to make me miserable. You ought rather to appreciate how much the great body of the Northern people do crucify their feelings, in order to maintian their loyalty to the Constitution and the Union…
Emphasis mine. Great mind, Lincoln. And great politician. The trip St. Louis was 22 years before the Emancipation Proclamation, this letter eight years before it. Joshua Speed was a close friend of Lincoln's. Obama's good friends Alan Solow and Lee Rosenberg brought him out on a steamboat to Israel. And when he was there, he saw Palestine.
About Philip Weiss
Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
I'm not exactly sure how Foner presented Lincoln, but it's not hard to make the case that Lincoln had more in common with racists and segregationinsts of the twentieth century than he did with egalitarians of the Enlightenment.
I hope that Obama is more straightforward, and less of a politician, than Lincoln was.
Sure.
If you know nothing about 19th century American history.
Understand the man in the context of his time. Not in a 21st century one.
Judge him on the basis of where he started, where most of his countrymen were at the time, and where he finished, not on the basis of current canons of political correctness and you'll reach a different conclusion.
How many politicians before Lincoln would have met with Frederick Douglass?
How many politicians of Lincoln's day would have merited Douglass's tribute: "the one man of all the millions of our countrymen to whom we are indebted… than to any other."
I'm not sure those "egalitarians of the Enlightenment" were so color blind either, but it would just be silly to argue that Lincoln had more in common with Vardaman or Bilbo or even Woodrow Wilson than with William Wilberforce or Thomas Clarkson.
Lincoln-worship gets overdone and tiresome. But the same is true of Lincoln-slamming and the whole neoconfederate thing.
As for Obama, better he show shrewdness, discernment, and practicality than just airy idealism.
"Sure.
If you know nothing about 19th century American history.
Understand the man in the context of his time. Not in a 21st century one."
The point is that Lincoln had more in common with 20th century segregationists and racists than he did with enlightenment egalitarians of previous centuries. Whatever a progressive is, Lincoln wasn't one.
This notion that Obama should emulate Lincoln and appoint his right wing opponents to important cabinet positions is being propagated by his right wing opponents. They lost the election and are now trying to manipulate his vanity by comparing him to Lincoln for their own politcal ends.
Lincoln's goal was to build a united front in the North to preserve the Union. His actions were sensible in that light. Obama won, not to preserve the union, but to change the status quo. Appointing republicans and Clinton retreads to his cabinet will defeat that goal.
Slavery practices made Lincoln uncomfortable in the same way he might pity an abused domestic animal which he saw the negro as only little above. Don't waste time trying to match the real Lincoln up with his myth. You may end up as I did after my own inquiry–John Wilkes Booth was 4 years too late.
Todd,
You still haven't said just who these "enlightenment egalitarians" of previous centuries were. Voltaire? Rousseau? Montesquieu? Kant? Jefferson? The truth is that they weren't appreciably more advanced on slavery or racial equality than Lincoln was.
Lincoln's opponents accused him of being in favor of racial equality and of wanting to put the Blacks and Whites on an equal footing. He denied that. He wouldn't have had a political career if he didn't. But if you look at what he did, rather than at what he said, he was in advance of his countrymen on slavery and equality.
I'm not saying that Lincoln was "really" colorblind or anti-racist at heart. He was who he was, a man of his times. But Lincoln's actions indicate that he wasn't cut from the same cloth as virulent racists like Vardaman and Bilbo were.
The problem with saying that Lincoln had much in common with, say Strom Thurmond or Richard Russell, is that it ignores the role that he played in ending slavery. And people who make that comparison are often concerned with condemning as much as they can in Lincoln and excusing as much as they can in Thurmond or Russell, an indication that the comparison isn't entirely fair.
Hammersmith,
"Slavery practices made Lincoln uncomfortable in the same way he might pity an abused domestic animal which he saw the negro as only little above."
If true that still was further than most early-19th century Americans were willing to go. Certainly much further than John Wilkes Booth was willing to go.
In truth, most reforms do begin with pity for those one doesn't regard as quite one's own equals. But Lincoln made it clear that whatever his thinking about racial equality in the abstract, he did regard Blacks as his equals in the right to liberty and compensation for their labor, and that was more than most of his contemporaries would concede.
In fact, Lincoln received Frederick Douglass at the White House and treated him as a fellow human being. That may not be surprising to us today, but it was a major step at the time.
Politicians' comparisons of themselves to Lincoln do tend to sour us on both Lincoln and those contemporary politicians. It looks too obsequious and insinuating. But we'd all do well to look closely and critically at your sort of neo-confederate mythmaking before we swallow that nonsense whole.
"You still haven't said just who these "enlightenment egalitarians" of previous centuries were. Voltaire? Rousseau? Montesquieu? Kant? Jefferson? The truth is that they weren't appreciably more advanced on slavery or racial equality than Lincoln was."
Al, I understand that. Maybe I am guilty of being too general, but the debate is usually very general.
I also don't claim that Lincoln was on par with Atilla the Hun, but it is clear that he wasn't a saint or egalitarian, either. Just like most people, he can be built up or torn down with his own words.
What were his real actions? He freed slaves in the South after secession, but not in the areas under northern control. He also supported repatriating blacks to Africa for reasons that would be called racist today. He also pressed a terribly brutal war on dubious grounds. I guess you could say he wasn't a philosopher president.
"The problem with saying that Lincoln had much in common with, say Strom Thurmond or Richard Russell, is that it ignores the role that he played in ending slavery."
Actually, I was thinking more of Lester Maddox, who employed blacks, and was capable of geniune kindness towards them, while supporting segregation. My impression of Maddox is from first-hand stories rather than any official view. And who knows what Strom Thurmond or Richard B. Russell would have supported before the Civil War and Reconstruction? They were men of time and place, also.
When you speak of neo-Confederate myths, what do you mean? There is quite a but of myth-making in the South, but the Grand Tapestry is at least as bogus as what passes for southern history to many.
By neoconfederate myths I mean the idea that everything would have worked out well if it hadn't been for Lincoln, or that Lincoln took away "our" liberties in a permanent way.
The bizarre notion that somehow John Wilkes Booth was right because Lincoln wasn't a 21st century racial egalitarian probably qualifies as well, though it's so off the wall that it's unlikely to take root.
I don't know about your Maddox analogy. Usually in the mythology it's Southerners who don't accept equality in the abstract but have hearts of gold in private life while Northerners believe in the abstraction but are cold-hearted in person. That's the mythology anyway and Southerners put Lincoln in the latter category.
I don't know what Russell and Thurmond would have done if they'd been around in the 1860s, but it seems pretty clear to me that they wouldn't have seen their way clear to putting an end to slavery at that time, as Lincoln and his party did.
Is there a Lincoln myth? Sure. But what's enfuriating are people who think they've seen through it and discovered the "truth" when they've only rediscovered the Lost Cause myths that were current a century ago.
Supporters of the Lincoln myth often paint Lincoln as a 21st century egalitarian, also. I see no reason that people in the South should regard Lincoln as a hero. And the South was clearly harmed by the war for a very long time afterwards.
I think a good case can be made that the view of the Jeffersonian ideal of a permanent pastoral South at the time of the Civil War is a myth, since trade and industry were developing in ways that made economic issues more of a threat than slavery was a moral issue for the North. Northerners have their fair share of myths as well.
If people are shaped by history and time, then there is no way to know what Richard B. Russell or Strom Thurmond would have done had the War and its aftermath not occurred, any more than one can guess at what Lincoln would do today. In all honesty, much of the Northern "truth" is based on recycled myths that predate the Civil War.
"In all honesty, much of the Northern "truth" is based on recycled myths that predate the Civil War."
Is "in all honesty" like "frankly" or "with all due respect" — a formula that means the opposite of what it says?
Maybe you feel you have to say that "Northern views" are based on recycled myths because I said much the same thing about neoconfederate opinion. But there's a lot of hostility to Lincoln and the Republicans among today's academics. They aren't a cheering section and they aren't just repeating the views of a century ago.
Apologists for the Confederacy, by and large, are just rehashing old tales. It's not just that what they're talking about is so similar — what they don't talk about is much the same as what the "Lost Cause" school didn't talk about a century ago. What's new is that they pick up on attacks on Northern racism without really confronting Southern prejudices.
Al, the North was up to its eyeballs in the slave trade, and white supremacy was common above the Mason-Dixon line in many ways right up to the civil rights movement in the form of eugenics. That along with Indian removal pretty much washes out any compaints about southern attitudes. Why not rehash the truth?
If you want to believe that the South was destined to develop into a version of a Jeffersonian bucolic dream, fine. But industry and shipping were developing which made the region a threat to northern interests. If you want to believe that Lincoln pressed for war mainly because he was an egalitarian, go ahead. Maybe he was to a degree, but the looting of the region after the war is telling, also.