Bromwich: Obama can learn from Lincoln, party and principle go hand in hand

by on February 9, 2009 13

David Bromwich, who lectured on Lincoln's legacy last week in Colorado, responds to a post by Phil Weiss on Lincoln's failed 1849 effort to get a presidential appointment, commissioner of the Land Office:
Why do people grasp at dirty straws on the subject of Lincoln for the sake of making him "more human?" A dubious undertaking; and not well rewarded in this instance. The insinuation of official political chasteness, accompanied by a deceptive economy-of-truth in his correspondence over the appointment to the Land Office under President Taylor, can only be achieved by stringing together several inferential jumps.
First, the article to which you give a link, by Thomas F. Schwartz in the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Society, on Butterfield, Lincoln, and Illinois Whiggery, contains this apparently unobjectionable passage: "Lincoln knew Butterfield both as an accomplished attorney and fellow Whig." But that is not quite right. In his letter to Josiah M. Lucas of April 25, 1849, Lincoln writes; "As to Butterfield, he is my personal friend, and is qualified to do the duties of the office; but of the quite one hundred Illinoisians, equally well qualified, I do not know one with less claims to it." He means (if you are used to Lincoln's understatement): Butterfield is technically qualified and he, Lincoln, being his friend, must speak less ill of him than an impartial judge would do; but even so, he is compelled to say that Butterfield is no more than technically qualified; and he implies that, for both general intelligence and probity, Butterfield would not be close to the top of anyone's list. Lincoln in fact seems to have thought him the reverse of "accomplished."
In a subsequent letter, to William B. Preston on May 16, Lincoln casts some doubt on Butterfield's likely honesty by saying that he "is well qualified, and, I suppose, would be faithful in office." Lincoln was a deliberate, dry and logical writer of exact prose who took care with every word. The words, "I suppose," stand out because they were meant to. In this second letter, he goes on to remind Preston that when loyalty mattered, around the nomination of General Taylor, the same Butterfield had shown conspicuous disloyalty and heaped ridicule on the very idea of Zachary Taylor as a candidate.
Lincoln's next letter on the subject, to Duff Green on May 18, takes a stronger line. Of Butterfield's impending appointment he now says: "This ought not to be." The office is Illinois's only "crumb of patronage" and it will be wasted on such a man. He concludes by asking whether Green cannot somehow "get the ear of Gen. Taylor" and set things right. A fourth letter, to Joseph Gillespie on May 19, is written in the just the same key, but it is more urgent: "Not a moment's time is to be lost." A fifth, to Elisha Embree on May 25, goes a step further. It is now clear that Lincoln sees the appointment of Butterfield as a disaster for the Illinois Whigs; and he asks Embree to write to General Taylor and request that either Lincoln, or the man Lincoln recommends, will receive the appointment as Commissioner of the General Land-Office. To Josiah B. Herrick on June 3 he writes again saying that there is not a moment to lose and that he himself will gladly be named in preference to Butterfield.
A letter to Thomas Ewing, on June 22, looks back on the confusion created by Lincoln's urgency and his stratagem, and requests that an impression of selfish and unfriendly conduct which his friend Cyrus Edwards has taken from rumor and partial evidence, be corrected by giving Edwards to understand that, in the end, Lincoln withheld his own name for Edwards's benefit. Finally comes the last letter in this sequence, another to Thomas Ewing, on October 13, 1849. Here Lincoln writes to dispel the rumor "that there was a clique in Springfield determined to prevent Butterfield's confirmation; and, that Lincoln would give a thousand dollars to have it done." In short, he utterly disclaims knowledge of such a clique; and he adds that he does not believe it existed without his knowledge.
That ought to be enough. But, from the fact that he does not disclaim the offer of a bribe, you conclude that Lincoln may have been concealing a bribe he did, in fact, offer ad hoc, without the assistance of any clique. Look again at the grammar of the sentence and you will see how wire-drawn this theory is. The charge of instigating the corrupt actions of a clique governs everything that is said about the bribe. If there was no clique, there was no party to issue the bait for corrupt proceeding.
You have tried to outwit Lincoln as a lawyer; does not Lincoln's defense speak for itself? The true moral of this episode seems to be the surprising prevalence in the mind of Lincoln of the sentiment of party loyalty. As Mark Neely observes, in a sentence quoted by Schwartz, the Butterfield affair "strengthened Lincoln's realization that patronage must go to the party faithful to keep the party from falling apart." And we may know, by other evidence--most of all, the House Divided speech and the Lincoln-Douglas debates--that Lincoln recognized that party and principle could go hand in hand; just as "bipartisanship" and a thoroughly slack inattention to principle may go hand in hand. If there is a complex message in Lincoln's career for President Obama to take notice of, this may be a substantial part of it.
For the rest, why seek to rob yourself of a hero when the hero is genuine? This seems a fallacy on which too much of our human-interest journalism and human-interest history writing ultimately rests. Better, surely, to appreciate Lincoln by taking the pains to know exactly what it is we are appreciating. We may then come to admire his "coolness, forecast, and capacity" (to borrow words he applied to Jefferson) even more than his well-founded respect for the close relationship between party loyalty, consistency of opinion, and conscience.

About David Bromwich

David Bromwich teaches literature at Yale. He is a frequent contributor to the Huffington Post and has written on politics and culture for The New Republic, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, and other magazines. He is editor of Edmund Burke's selected writings On Empire, Liberty, and Reform and co-editor of the Yale University Press edition of On Liberty.
Posted in Beyondoweiss, US Politics

{ 13 comments... read them below or add one }

  1. BLG says:
    February 9, 2009 at 3:35 pm

    a post by Phil Weiss on Lincoln's failed 1949 effort

    Fix the typo, Phil.

  2. Citizen says:
    February 9, 2009 at 4:21 pm

    Perhaps Phil's post shines an understandable low glow on many of Obama's appointments so far, depending on who he views the party faithful are–but this glow is dimmed somewhat considering he, after all, promised change and he did not so promise change only to the regular Democratic voters, but to all the USA potential voters. Maybe it will take a real practical convergence of chronic economic
    and foreign policy issues to discover if Obama has Lincoln quality.
    I think we will find out before half his term in office is over.

  3. chris berel says:
    February 9, 2009 at 5:38 pm

    Don't forget, Lincoln did not free the slaves.

  4. omar says:
    February 9, 2009 at 5:55 pm

    Gee, chris, who did?

  5. Anonymous says:
    February 9, 2009 at 6:12 pm

    Michael F. Scheuer on the "Obama's Approach To Iran: How Should He Proceed?" discussion at NationalJournal.com – "On the nuclear issue, the Iranians’ will acquire a nuclear weapon; if we really wanted to stop that now-inevitable development we should have stopped our European allies from selling Tehran nuclear-related technology in the 1990s. And, parenthetically, if I was an Iranian leader watching the coming election in Israel of Netanyahu and his merry band of war-wanters, I would accelerate my acquisition and development activities."

    Defiance: a Hollywood take on Jewish banditry and murder – "….On a personal note, I would like to add here that it was a very brave Polish woman, the wife of a doctor retired from the British diplomatic service, whom I first met in 1982, who told me about this apect of the Jewish Question. At the time I was not especially aware of the nature of Jewish ethnocentrism. Her account was spoken so sincerely and matter-of-factly, it was inconceivable to me that this woman was possessed by hatred. It changed my attitude and put me on the road to eventual understanding…."

  6. chris berel says:
    February 9, 2009 at 6:33 pm

    Why would Omar wish to display his ignorance? Is it a ploy for us to mistakenly beleive all people with Arab sounding names are moronic?

    The 13th Amendment freed the slaves. It was passed by congress and ratified by the states. "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."

  7. LeaNder says:
    February 9, 2009 at 6:48 pm

    Hmmm? Now we surely have more detailed narrative concerning Abraham Lincoln, his halo is restored. But maybe slightly at Justin Butterfield's expense? After all he hasn't even got a Wikipedia entry and thus people who defend his name.

    What solves the paradox that he is both as well qualified as hundred others and at the very bottom of Lincoln's selection? So far down in fact that he offers himself for the "crumb of patronage"?

    What happened below, and were and when and how:

    In this second letter, he goes on to remind Preston that when loyalty mattered, around the nomination of General Taylor, the same Butterfield had shown conspicuous disloyalty and heaped ridicule on the very idea of Zachary Taylor as a candidate.

    Was Justin Butterfield an evil "ultra whig" an anti-slavery hardliner?

  9. Rowan says:
    February 10, 2009 at 12:43 am

    who cares about Lincoln? The USA is a global genocidalist state, worse than the Nazis and the Soviets rolled into one. So Lincoln is a total irrelevance.

  10. Eva Smagacz says:
    February 10, 2009 at 4:06 am

    The irony of Polish Jews aligning themselves with Soviet Union forces that, along with Germans, invaded and occupied Poland during WWII, is not lost on many Poles.

    For every Jedwabne, where Jewish people were slaughtered by surviving polish peasantry, there is Naliboki, where surviving polish peasantry was slaughtered by surviving Jewish people.

    The uncomfortable truth, rarely acknowledged, is that ethnocentric loyalty, at least in Poland, easily trumped the loyalty of the Jewish people to their country – Poland.

    It goes without saying that this does not in any way excuse the indifference of many Poles to Jewish suffering, any more than "disloyalty" of Israeli Arabs excuse indifference of many Jews to Palestinian suffering

    Polish people celebrate Polish Jews that consider Poland their country and are proud of their polish roots. But there is a painful history of Polish Jews who showed no such loyalty whatsoever, and the stories slowly emerge, and hopefully their emergence will bring forgiveness and closure for both sides.

  11. chris berel says:
    February 10, 2009 at 6:41 am

    Your loyal audience, Phil, those who justify Genocide.

  12. Alice says:
    February 10, 2009 at 9:16 am

    @chris berel

    Please explain your comment. Who is justifying Genocide here? And, how so?

  13. omar says:
    February 10, 2009 at 9:46 am

    @chris berel

    Lincoln freed the slaves more than any other single man in the sense that his Emancipation Proclamation was an effective propaganda stunt which garnered sympathy for the Union cause both domestically and internationally.

    At the time, since slaves were property, neither he nor congress
    could free the slaves. The Constitution requires due process of law to deprive one of property, which means it had to be done via judicial process.

    The basic question spawning the Civil War was whether or not
    a state could leave the Union. Brute Union victory decided it. Since then it has been assumed no state can leave the Union. This means the government can change the Constitution (no matter
    what it wants or does) and no state can leave the Union therefore.

    The first example was enactment of the 13Th Amendment in December of 1865.

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