Why was Lincoln "great?"

[Rob Wick]

I’ve finally started back working on my book on Ida Tarbell (thankfully!), and I’ve spent the last few days making Staples richer by buying scores of toner cartridges and paper by the case (I’ve already gone through a case plus about 5 full reams of paper and I’m only up to 1925 in her Lincoln-related correspondence). Yesterday I spent a couple of hours printing out the various speeches Tarbell gave and found some articles in the New York Times. These articles, generally, were written either around Lincoln’s birthday or were featurish in nature (written and saved for when the editors needed them). Her speeches were all on the same theme, i.e., the greatness of Lincoln and how he became that way. Looking over the speeches, it set me to wondering just exactly why it is that most of us (Wild Bill excepted ) think that Lincoln achieved greatness. I think it also ties into one of the reasons for Tarbell’s popularity. In her books, articles and speeches, she constantly hammered home on the theme of Lincoln’s greatness, which gave the population at large what it wanted to believe about Lincoln and which fit into a picture that our society told itself not only about Lincoln but about our leaders in general as well as their own lives.

But why do we believe it? Is it a moral question? Political? Both? Neither? Most of the answers normally given are platitudinous in nature. He freed the slaves, he saved the Union, he was of the people, and of course, there is some truth to that. Just because something is a platitude or cliché doesn’t make it any less true. But as I began to think it over, something else came to my mind. Tarbell not only promoted the Lincoln her readers wanted to see, but she sincerely believed in that Lincoln as well. It wasn’t strictly financially driven with her. In other words, while her series for S.S. McClure caused his magazine to gain tens of thousands of readers (and started to assure her own fame and fortune which was only solidified when she turned her sights toward John D. Rockefeller), Tarbell was writing what she herself would have believed about Lincoln the man. And why did she and others believe it?

It’s often been said that Lincoln can be whatever one wants him to be simply because he was unknowable even to those closest to him. But I think many people see Lincoln as great because they see in him a duality. On the one hand, Lincoln obviously had a lot of book intelligence given that he could quote passages from the Bible, or Shakespeare or Robert Burns from memory. Given that many people couldn’t read or write, and given much of our society’s anti-intellectualism, that could have made him out to be a snob in the eyes of many. What negated that possibility, though, was an uncanny ability to relate to the common man by either telling a story or joke and by not forgetting his own background. I think that’s one reason that Tarbell’s “Billy Brown” stories, collected into the book “He Knew Lincoln” was her most popular book in terms of sales. Of course, it didn’t hurt that for a number of years NBC put it on the radio during the month of February, but people could relate to the man Tarbell put between the covers of her books. By being able to see that Lincoln was intelligent but accessible, people could relate to what he accomplished both before and after being elected to the presidency. They also could see something in themselves which his influence and manner brought forward. It gave them something to strive for in their own lives and Lincoln was their beau ideal. Those who couldn’t read or write could still hear the stories Tarbell told either through the guise of Charles “Chic” Sale or on NBC Radio, while those who could not only had the aural sensation of Tarbell’s (and Lincoln’s) words, but the visual as well. This is something I’m still trying to develop, but I would appreciate any and all comments on why most of us think Lincoln was great.

Best
Rob

[LincolnMan]

Great posting Rob. I think Lincoln was (and is) great because he was "good." His essential goodness informed what he did.

[Bill Richter]

Look forward to your Tarbell book, Rob.

Don't forget the cautions of Alphonso Taft, future U.S. secretary of war (1876), U.S. attorney general (1876-1877), and nineteenth century progenitor of the family that produced a slew of noted Ohio Republican politicians, who understood what had to come.
Taft wrote about the necessities of future history in a letter to his home-state U.S. solon, Senator pro tem Benjamin Wade, on September 8, 1864: “It is to be regretted that history should have to tell so many lies as it will tell, when it shall declare Lincoln’s intrigues and foolishness models of integrity and wisdom, his weakened and wavering indecision and delay far-sighted statesmanship, and his blundering usurpation of legislative power Jacksonian courage and Roman patriotism, but one cannot help it. History goes with the powers that be.”

I am not alone!

[Gene C]

I'm not sure what slant your book is taking, but you just wrote the basis for what could be a very good introduction.

What makes Lincoln great? One of Lincoln's qualities, that doesn't get enough attention, - forgiveness.

[JMadonna]

What makes Lincoln great?
1, He won the war. If he lost (and he came close), he'd be garbage.
2, He knew how to get his way by communicating directly to the people. Jeff Davis, the great Senate orator, only knew how to ask for more sacrifice.
3, He had a clear sense of human self-dignity. Davis cared only about the aristocrats that appointed him.

[L Verge]

His natural political instinct that allowed flexibility, but also steelness.

[Eva Elisabeth]

When I reflected my instant answers to your question I began to wonder what greatness is, where it begins. It’s a word like “friendship”, I would need a closer definition. So many people do great things in their scope, aren’t they all great? If Lincoln had lost the 1860 election we probably wouldn’t have discussed his greatness because we wouldn’t have come to know about it.

Nevertheless, these are three of the points that came to my mind first:

- I think that Lincoln was always willing to grow and to reconsider former believes, although sometimes slowly, and that his intentions at all were pro humanity. (I guess someone will object now that his good intentions didn’t make 618,000 victims feel better.)
He treated people kindly and respectfully and, exept for his father he didn’t hold grudges even where most people would have done.

-Although his presidency was one of the hardest one could imagine and the pictures of him witness what he went through he didn’t give up or break down.

- Lincoln was often said to be shrewd when it came to dealing with people in difficult situations, and I would second this. Some incidents fascinated me, they developed like a drama and while reading I wondered how he would ever manage to get out of that dilemma. And then he did. He acted for himself as a deus ex machina and I just thought “Wow. How clever”. Two examples are the way he manipulated Seward in the Trent Affair (when he let him write the “pro-release” argumentation) and the way he dealt with the Republican caucus against Seward in 1862.

[Rob Wick]

Quote: When I reflected my instant answers to your question I began to wonder what greatness is, where it begins. It’s a word like “friendship”, I would need a closer definition.

That is an excellent point, Eva. In many cases what some might see as greatness can be interpreted as tyrannical to another. I can't give you a concise definition of greatness. I know it when I see it.

Quote:I'm not sure what slant your book is taking, but you just wrote the basis for what could be a very good introduction.

I'm not sure either, Gene. Only when I get all of her papers printed and filed will I go through them again and try to find common themes and only then can I decide what road it's going to take. Thanks.

I truly appreciate all the responses so far.

I just came across a short piece on "He Knew Lincoln" in the Review of Reviews Magazine which I think encapsulates why that book was as important as it was. "The vividness, pathos, and humanity of the impression one gets upon reading this exquisite little thing recalls the remark of the rural visitor at his first theatre performance in London: 'Oh, pshaw!' he exclaimed. 'that isn't play acting; why that's just life itself'."

Best
Rob

[J. Beckert]

I've always been a student of the assassination, Lincoln the man, his family and his times. I've never really looked too deeply into his politics. I just finished Bill Richter's "Sic Semper Tyrannis: Why John Wilkes Booth Shot Abraham Lincoln". I have to say, Bill did a great job of stripping off Old Abe's varnish - it showed how Booth would have viewed him in the context of the times. It really does put a different spin on things. I think it's important that we look at history that way.

Just like some of today's politicians, Lincoln was put on a pedestal. Closer inspection and attention to the mores of different time give an entirely different view of a man who is now an American God in the public's minds.

I do, however, believe Lincoln was the right man at the right time, given his lenient views on binding up the nation's wounds. How the wounds were inflicted is another story in itself.

[Liz Rosenthal]

(06-24-2013 05:10 PM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  When I reflected my instant answers to your question I began to wonder what greatness is, where it begins. It’s a word like “friendship”, I would need a closer definition. So many people do great things in their scope, aren’t they all great? If Lincoln had lost the 1860 election we probably wouldn’t have discussed his greatness because we wouldn’t have come to know about it.

Nevertheless, these are three of the points that came to my mind first:

- I think that Lincoln was always willing to grow and to reconsider former believes, although sometimes slowly, and that his intentions at all were pro humanity. (I guess someone will object now that his good intentions didn’t make 618,000 victims feel better.)
He treated people kindly and respectfully and, exept for his father he didn’t hold grudges even where most people would have done.

-Although his presidency was one of the hardest one could imagine and the pictures of him witness what he went through he didn’t give up or break down.

- Lincoln was often said to be shrewd when it came to dealing with people in difficult situations, and I would second this. Some incidents fascinated me, they developed like a drama and while reading I wondered how he would ever manage to get out of that dilemma. And then he did. He acted for himself as a deus ex machina and I just thought “Wow. How clever”. Two examples are the way he manipulated Seward in the Trent Affair (when he let him write the “pro-release” argumentation) and the way he dealt with the Republican caucus against Seward in 1862.

I like Eva's points, especially the second one about Lincoln's ability to persevere. He had a certain single-mindedness which was not always evident - or perhaps not evident much at all - to his contemporaries. Things were too turbulent then for most people to get a clear view of what was going on, let alone what Lincoln was doing.

When one reviews the pressures Lincoln faced and what he actually did in the face of that pressure, what is remarkable is how steadily he stuck to his chosen course. A lot of lesser individuals would probably have taken an easier road - another compromise with the South, a negotiated peace. A lesser individual might have followed the course favored by Seward in encouraging belligerence with Europe so as to either unify North and South or just distract everyone from the issues that actually needed to be addressed. A lesser individual might not have cared as much about the fate of black slaves and not made much effort to get the 13th Amendment passed.

It helped that Lincoln was extremely confident in his abilities. If he hadn't been, he probably would not have had the wherewithal to realize his goals. Seward would truly have been the "premier" or Congress would have had power over the make-up of Lincoln's cabinet or it would have stepped all over him when it came to the timing and manner of ending slavery and how Reconstruction was to develop or Greeley would have wittingly or unwittingly made a fool of him.

Lincoln had the right combination of street smarts, book smarts and smart-smarts, not to mention a sense of who he was, what he could do and what he had to do.

Then you look at Lincoln's writings, and so much of it is great literature. It's no accident that his art - his words - has been equated with that of Shakespeare and Mozart.

[J. Beckert]

Here's a not so sanitized view of Lincoln by a black author. Before we run Lincoln up the flagpole and mention "slavery" and the "Thirteenth Amendment" every time we talk about his political motives, we have to take a look at the man and his times.

http://lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo241.html

Here's a synopsis of "benevolent racism" - as blacks call it.

Benevolent prejudice is a superficially positive type of prejudice that is expressed in terms of apparently positive beliefs and emotional responses. Though this type of prejudice associates supposedly good things with certain groups, it still has the result of keeping the group members in inferior positions in society (Whitley, 2010).[1] Benevolent prejudices can help justify any hostile prejudices a person has toward a particular group

[My Name Is Kate]

Something sure isn't making sense. Why is it that Lincoln is always, or almost always portrayed as either super-humanly good, or bordering on demonic? Can't he be somewhere in between, like (almost) every other human being who ever lived?

I still don't know enough about Lincoln to know why he was, or wasn't great. But after I finish this post, I think I'll finally break down and buy "Sic Semper Tyrannis" to try to understand better why Booth and most of the South hated him so much. I say "break down" because I had no intention when I joined this forum, of delving into Lincoln lore or history, and I thought I would be long gone after the few questions I wanted to ask were answered when I first joined.

As for benevolent racism, sometimes it almost seems that some people wish slavery was re-instituted so they personally could abolish it all over again. Or maybe they are so hung up on...something (rooting out original sin?) that they don't even realize it has been abolished.

Here is an article I came across that I thought was quite interesting:

http://americancivilwar.com/authors/blac...owners.htm

The following is intended as a humorous aside, to show another side to Mozart (and Beethoven). Their music may have been sublime, but their character wasn't always. In his later years, Beethoven didn't always bother to empty his chamberpots before visitors came over.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart_and_scatology

[Eva Elisabeth]

(06-24-2013 10:43 PM)My Name Is Kate Wrote:  Can't he be somewhere in between, like (almost) every other human being who ever lived?

(06-24-2013 07:58 PM)J. Beckert Wrote:  Lincoln was the right man at the right time, given his lenient views on binding up the nation's wounds. How the wounds were inflicted is another story in itself.

This is exactly what I meant in my beginning.
We don't know if he would have become that famous if there hadn't been the CW, and we don't know what would be now if there had been another president then. Anyway, I was never so much affected by the hero worship since such is rather uncommon here. Still I think he had certain qualities which, as said above, served especially well at the right time.

Kate's example of Mozart and Beethoven is what I had in mind when I asked for a definition of greatness. It is easier to refer to certain abilities or character traits rather than to a person in general.

Most of you may know "Lincoln reconsidered" by David H. Donald, therein he takes a close look at the issue. (If I had to choose a favourite book about Lincoln, this one and Donald's "Lincoln" biography would share the #1 position.)

[brtmchl]

Which Lincoln do you believe? The awkward, story telling frontier folk hero, the moral political genius, The Great Emancipator, the shaper of a nation, or the savior of the union?

I think along with all of the above posts, what made Lincoln great was his ability to argue. He was a brilliant man, not only in the ways he thought, and wrote; but also by the words he spoke. He was an amazing orator. Arguements drove him, often recrafting certain political ideas, at times making them more aggressive. At others rethinking stances altogether, or even outgrowing his own prejudices. His ability to see the other side of an arguement without taking a hard vain stance is unheard of in this day of partisan politics. But his own ability to make an arguement was un-natural.
My favorite example is from Lincoln's letter to James Conkling. "You dislike the emancipation proclamation; and, perhaps, would have it retracted. You say it is unconstitutional--I think differently. I think the constitution invests its Commander-in-chief, with the law of war, in time of war. The most that can be said, if so much, is, that slaves are property. Is there--has there ever been--any question that by the law of war, property, both of enemies and friends, may be taken when needed? And is it not needed whenever taking it, helps us, or hurts the enemy? .......You say you will not fight to free negroes. Some of them seem willing to fight for you; but, no matter. Fight you, then exclusively to save the Union. I issued the proclamation on purpose to aid you in saving the Union. Whenever you shall have conquered all resistence to the Union, if I shall urge you to continue fighting, it will be an apt time, then, for you to declare you will not fight to free negroes.
I thought that in your struggle for the Union, to whatever extent the negroes should cease helping the enemy, to that extent it weakened the enemy in his resistence to you. Do you think differently? I thought that whatever negroes can be got to do as soldiers, leaves just so much less for white soldiers to do, in saving the Union.
Does it appear otherwise to you? But negroes, like other people, act upon motives. Why should they do any thing for us, if we will do nothing for them? If they stake their lives for us, they must be prompted by the strongest motive--even the promise of freedom. And the promise being made, must be kept.


The ability to play devil's advocate makes Lincoln great. Especially in a classroom setting. No other person can be so much fun to debate, his ambiguity leads often to arguements at both extreme ends of a topic. Such as slavery.

"I love him not because he was perfect but because he was not and yet triumphed. There was something left so at the crisis he was big enough to be inconsistent, cruel, merciful, peace loving, a fighter. Despising negroes, and letting them fight and vote. Protecting slavery and freeing slaves. he was a man, a BIG inconsistent MAN." - W.E.B. Du Bois

Some people will argue that he never wanted to free the slaves as the Greeley letter is often quoted, or that he was a racist. In 1861 Frederick Douglas called Lincoln "the most powerful slave catcher in the world." . But Look at the last part of the Greely letter. "I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free." Or as in his letter to A.G. Hodges, "I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I took that I would, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power."
By the election of 1864, Lincoln believes he will lose and invites Frederick Douglas to the White House urging him to organize bands to get as many slaves out of the south as possible. This mission never happens. The fall of Atlanta shifts the election in Lincoln's favor. Lincoln, I believe, was limited by his powers in the beginning, playing politics to achieve small gains as our country did from the beginning. There could have been compromises made, as there had been for decades to possibly prevent the war, only to see the problems arise again in the future. But with Lincoln's war powers he acted upon his morality and seized the opportunity to reconstruct the nation. "Never let a crisis go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel. Did Lincoln maneuver the South into firing on Fort Sumpter? A topic for a later debate.

In the end what truly made Lincoln great was his capacity to grow.

[Rob Wick]

(06-24-2013 03:06 PM)william l. richter Wrote:  Look forward to your Tarbell book, Rob.

Don't forget the cautions of Alphonso Taft, future U.S. secretary of war (1876), U.S. attorney general (1876-1877), and nineteenth century progenitor of the family that produced a slew of noted Ohio Republican politicians, who understood what had to come.
Taft wrote about the necessities of future history in a letter to his home-state U.S. solon, Senator pro tem Benjamin Wade, on September 8, 1864: “It is to be regretted that history should have to tell so many lies as it will tell, when it shall declare Lincoln’s intrigues and foolishness models of integrity and wisdom, his weakened and wavering indecision and delay far-sighted statesmanship, and his blundering usurpation of legislative power Jacksonian courage and Roman patriotism, but one cannot help it. History goes with the powers that be.”

I am not alone!

Bill,

First, thanks for the kind words on my Tarbell book.

I am curious as to the context of Taft's comments. That is a much different Taft than the one who, according to his biographer, Lewis Alexander Leonard, was a strong supporter of Lincoln during the 1860 convention. In the 1920 biography Leonard wrote "Besides this he greatly admired Mr. Lincoln, the nominee. He had carefully read the Lincoln-Douglas debates and admired Mr. Lincoln's very able arguments and the beautiful but simple English in which they were clothed. He felt that this man was destined to make a great impress on the world, and that he would be elected this time." (pg. 135)

His supposed dislike of Lincoln evidently had no effect on his son, who not only made the dedication speech at Lincoln's birthplace but also spearheaded the committee that created the Lincoln Memorial. Alphonso Taft was a very strong influence on his son, whom he knew was destined to be on the Supreme Court.

Nor did it effect his grandson, who was a strong admirer of Lincoln and who would be aghast to see how so many conservatives are turning against Lincoln's memory.

Best
Rob