Carl Sandburg and Lincoln

[Rob Wick]

Bill,

Have meant to answer this but other things keep getting in the way. Sandburg definitely enjoyed all the things that celebrity brought him. but he also remembered where he came from. In his diary, James G. Randall, who spent a couple of days staying with Sandburg in Harbert, wrote of Sandburg's handling of his celebrity:

One notes it with lack of swank and the presence of open-headed comfort in the Sandburg home. Mrs. Sandburg is a fine gracious woman full of vitality. Has a beautiful smile so does Carl. Her face is a combination of homely ruggedness and beauty. Wears old clothes—very old—around the house. He talked of old days—of his old teacher Philip Green Wright, of working on the Chicago Day Book, of army service in P.Rico in 1898.

Best
Rob

[LincolnMan]

Thanks Rob. You mentioned living in Harbert-I saw from the PBS documentary that the house seemed to be build right on the lake. That had to be super cold during the winter. I don't blame the Sandburgs for moving!

[LincolnMan]

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This is the cover of a two record set from my collection. The names Lincoln & Sandburg were linked together in so many ways!

[Thomas Thorne]

Dear Rob
I remember you saying that Sandburg believed that if Lincoln had lived he would have bolted a radical dominated Republican party.

I just finished reading Claude Bowers' Reconstruction:The Tragic Era-published in 1929-which would seem to be the most popular rendition of the Dunning thesis. Bowers-who was from Indiana-was a brilliant writer, a racist who saw no need to use code words and totally lacked the judiciousness required in a historian.

Yet Bowers was a power in the land. He was the permanent chairman of the 1928 Democratic National Convention. His popular accounts of Jefferson vs Hamilton which saw American history as a struggle between plutocrats and the people are said to have been a great influence upon Franklin Roosevelt who agreed with Bowers that Jefferson was the founder of the Democratic Party. Bowers served 20 years under Roosevelt and Truman as ambassador to Spain and later Chile.

In the Bowers political theology, Radical Reconstruction served plutocratic as well as ghastly racial ends. To me it is fascinating how successful this Dunning brush tarred the sentiments of Liberals and Radicals of the era toward the 1860's Radical Republicans. I know Charles Beard and many progressives and radicals lacked Bowers' flamboyant racism but they showed no great concern for the plight of the freedmen.

What were Sandburg's views about reconstruction in light of his opinion of what Lincoln might have done re party affiliation?

I know that J G Randall wrote the then standard 1950's scholarly account of Reconstruction. How did his views differ from Bowers? He could hardly have been less judicious.
Tom

[Rob Wick]

Tom,

To be quite honest, I don't recall saying that about Sandburg and Lincoln. Not saying I didn't, but I sure don't remember it. Give me some time to do some studying and I'll get back to you.

Best
Rob

[Bill Richter]

One of the great contradictions in the Progressive (Republican or Democrat) ideology, for historians or politicians, was the belief in superior races. This was not so evident in the South among Southern farmers at first (we too often study Populism as a Mid-western movement [see Hicks, The Populist Revolt]--it was but the main push was among black and white farmers of the South [see Saloutos, Farmer Movements in the South]), but came in strong with TR and WW and the city-orientation of of Progressives. It took Huey Long (unlike most Southern politicians the Longs were economic radicals, not racists [see the movie Blaze which looks at Earl's career, but most of the sense actually took place under Huey], and Eleanor Roosevelt and Hubert H Humphrey [an LSU master's candidate] to break this racism, but by then it was too late to be effective until the 1960s.

[Rob Wick]

Tom,

To be honest, I don't know that I've read anything in Sandburg's hand telling how he felt about Reconstruction, although he does deal with it in the War Years. I know that in 1929 Bowers wrote Sandburg a three-page letter which Sandburg replied to although when I was working in Sandburg's papers, I don't think I looked at it. Next time I work in Sandburg's papers I will definitely look for them. I'm still trying to figure out when I might have said that about Sandburg saying Lincoln would have bolted the GOP. I can't place it.

As for Randall, he definitely cut his intellectual teeth on Dunning. As an example, I read through his 1904 lecture notes when he taught at Illinois College in Jacksonville, and they could have been written by Dunning himself. An interesting note on Randall's Civil War and Reconstruction book; critics blasted Randall for shortchanging Reconstruction in the work. Randall was a strong Progressive who believed in the power of religion to benefit men, but who also, as Bill pointed out, was not as advanced on racial thinking. Randall had other factors besides religion, i.e., a cultural leaning toward the south taken from his time teaching in Virginia as well as the influence not only of his wife, Ruth, but of her father, F.V.N Painter, who taught literature at Roanoke College where Randall taught. Painter had befriended Randall after Randall's first wife, Edith, had died. His influence on Randall's views was strong.

Best
Rob

[Liz Rosenthal]

Rob:

First of all, I'm glad to see you back. I could be wrong, but you seem to have disappeared for a couple of weeks and I've missed your insight.

On the issue of Sandberg and Reconstruction, my knowledge is limited, except for one thing I took note of when reading the one-volume, abridged version of Sandberg's six Lincoln volumes. I recall Sandberg writing about Lincoln's April 11, 1865 speech concerning Reconstruction in Louisiana in such a way as to totally lose sight of the importance of the speech. Sandberg seemed to suggest that it was silly of Lincoln to bring this up when he did because people were expecting something very different. He described people in the crowd as kind of looking at each other in puzzlement as if to say, "What's he talking about? What does this have to do with the price of bread in Lower Slobovia?" (Of course, I'm paraphrasing here.) I was kind of disappointed in Sandberg's apparent cluelessness. Maybe his one-volume work was just badly edited; maybe he expressed things more thoughtfully in the original. But I got the feeling that history was not really his thing. That is, Abraham Lincoln was, but not history.

It occurs to me with hindsight that Sandberg was likely just expressing (unwittingly or not) the majority white viewpoint of the time that the condition of the African-American in the Jim Crow South was not of particular concern. I got that feeling later when I read the Benjamin P. Thomas bio of Lincoln when Thomas pretty much skirted over the importance of the plight of the freedmen to Lincoln's thinking. And I again had a similar feeling when I read Lincoln's Herndon, by David Herbert Donald, and Donald belittled Herndon's passion for opposing the Kansas-Nebraska Act as if the North (and Herndon, and by extension, Lincoln) was in a tizzy over nothing. Donald even remarked that Herndon somehow didn't realize the misguided folly of Northerners questioning the "way of life of the South." Since this was 1948, and the modern civil rights movement hadn't quite sprung forth yet, Donald's unoriginal and disappointing view on the issue was, in a way, understandable. He was just going with the flow.

[Rob Wick]

Thanks Liz. I'm a bit underground now as I'm working on my book proposal for Ida Tarbell's study of Lincoln. I'm going to be gone much more than I'll be here.

There is definitely a difference today in scholarship regarding Lincoln then there was in the middle part of the 20th century. Donald was Randall's most prominent student, and he took much from his mentor. I remember reading a letter from Allan Nevins to Randall in which Nevins chided Randall for his Civil War and Reconstruction's pro-southern bias, but then Nevins admitted he held the same bias.

Best
Rob

[RJNorton]

Bill,

I have a signed copy of Golden's book, too. I will never forget the circumstances of its getting signed. It made such an impression on me that I wrote down the experience a few hours later and still have that impression in a manila folder. It was during a college break when I had gone back to Chicago and went downtown to the nnow defunct Kroch & Brentano's bookstore on Wabash. The book was there with a sign indicating that Carl Sandburg would be there in the afternoon to sign the book. It had already been signed by Harry Golden. A clerk asked if she could help me and I expressed my interest in purchasing the book, but also my dismay at not being able to be there in the afternoon when Sandburg would do his signings. She excused herself, I thought, to help another customer. She came back and asked me to follow her up onto the mezzanine of the store--where she ushered me into a room where, seated at a table, was Carl Sandburg. He rose and I eagerly shook his hand. He took out a Parker fountain pen (I remember this because I also wrote with one) and signed his name for me in the flyleaf of the book. I was thrilled!

Many thanks to Joe D. for sending this image today. Joe writes, "When I was in my teens, I wrote to Sandburg at Connemara to ask for an autograph." Joe recently visited Connemara on a very rainy day.

[Joe Di Cola]

                My visit to Connemara Farm last Wednesday. I was surprised how many books Carl Sandburg and I had in common--not just Lincoln ones.

[LincolnMan]

Bill,

I have a signed copy of Golden's book, too. I will never forget the circumstances of its getting signed. It made such an impression on me that I wrote down the experience a few hours later and still have that impression in a manila folder. It was during a college break when I had gone back to Chicago and went downtown to the nnow defunct Kroch & Brentano's bookstore on Wabash. The book was there with a sign indicating that Carl Sandburg would be there in the afternoon to sign the book. It had already been signed by Harry Golden. A clerk asked if she could help me and I expressed my interest in purchasing the book, but also my dismay at not being able to be there in the afternoon when Sandburg would do his signings. She excused herself, I thought, to help another customer. She came back and asked me to follow her up onto the mezzanine of the store--where she ushered me into a room where, seated at a table, was Carl Sandburg. He rose and I eagerly shook his hand. He took out a Parker fountain pen (I remember this because I also wrote with one) and signed his name for me in the flyleaf of the book. I was thrilled!

Many thanks to Joe D. for sending this image today. Joe writes, "When I was in my teens, I wrote to Sandburg at Connemara to ask for an autograph." Joe recently visited Connemara on a very rainy day.

I had missed this post before. What a neat thing for Sandburg to do. And notice a Lincoln postage stamp was used!

[LincolnToddFan]

Hi Joe, I am in love with that first photo on the left, it's so beautiful!

It reminds me of the lovely old houses from my Ohio childhood.

[L Verge]

Great memories for you, Joe. If Sandburg could only know what a Lincoln scholar you turned out to be!

As Toia said, I love the old home's photo also, but I'm sure glad that my knees don't have to do those stairs every day...