Not a Socialist, But a Marxist?

[Rob Wick]

Steve,

I'm sorry, but I can't see where the quote you mention makes the article unbalanced. Clearly, the author notes "Of course, Lincoln was not a socialist, nor communist nor Marxist" and later (after the quote you refer to) writes "Lincoln never took up the mantle of socialism. He believed in the system of wage labor even as he proposed reforms to it; Marx rejected it as another form of slavery."

So I would ask, did the quote the writer used represent Lincoln's point of view or not? Whether it was a more eloquent version of "working men of the world, unite," is an arguable point, but surely no one can dispute that the quote itself represented how Lincoln felt about the workingmen of this country. As a former journalist, I see the danger of taking a quote out of context as meaning that the quote does not represent a person's point of view.

I feel this distinction is important, because there is a world of difference in writing for a popular outlet like the Washington Post and writing for the Journal of American History. In neither is it permissible to do violence to a person's beliefs, but in this case the author did not do that. Using that "cherrypicked" quote still represented, as I believe it, Lincoln's position. I always remember a story Tarbell related that I used in my article on Tarbell's study of Lincoln's development of democratic ideals.

“Years ago, walking on the top of the wall around the English town of Chester, I found in the guard house at one corner of the wall, a picture of Lincoln, and the guard said to me quite simply, ‘He was a friend of us poor men.’” To me, that says it all.

Best
Rob