Abraham Lincoln: "Big enough to be inconsistent."

[Jim Page]

(12-26-2012 04:34 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  Lincoln also had a way of walking that caught William Herndon's attention.

Roger, thanks for posting that. For some reason, Lincoln's manner of walking, since reading Herndon's biography, has intrigued me.

I wonder if Daniel Day Lewis managed that walk in the recent movie. Much has been said about his voice, which evidently manages to capture Lincoln's, but I'm more interested in the way he shows Lincoln walking.

--Jim

[RJNorton]

Jim, it continues to amaze me how Lincoln is scrutinized. I certainly cannot imagine someone writing a single sentence, let alone a paragraph, about my walk! I think I read that Daniel Day-Lewis spent a year preparing for the role, and I believe Doris Kearns Goodwin included Herndon's description in her book. So I am thinking the actor did practice walking like this. Maybe somebody has read something specific on this.

[RJNorton]

William Howard Russell, the correspondent for the London Times, described Lincoln as follows:

"Soon afterward there entered, with a shambling, loose, irregular, almost unsteady gait, a tall, lank, lean man, considerably over six feet in height, with stooping shoulders, long pendulous arms, terminating in hands of extraordinary dimensions, which, however, were far exceeded in proportion by his feet. He was dressed in an ill-fitting, wrinkled suit of black, which put one in mind of an undertaker's uniform at a funeral; round his neck a rope of black silk was knotted in a large bulb, with flying ends projecting beyond the collar of his coat; his turned-down shirt-collar disclosed a sinewy muscular yellow neck, and above that, nestling in a great black mass of hair, bristling and compact, like a ruff of mourning pins, rose the strange quaint face and head, covered with its thatch of wild Republican hair, of President Lincoln. The impression produced by the size of his extremities, and by his flapping and wide-projecting ears, may be removed by the appearance of kindliness, sagacity, and the awkward bonhommie of his face; the mouth is absolutely prodigious; the lips, straggling and extending almost from one line of black beard to the other, are only kept to order by two deep furrows from the nostril to the chin; the nose itself -- a prominent organ -- stands out from the face with an inquiring anxious air, as though it were sniffing for some good thing in the wind; the eyes dark, full, and deeply set, are penetrating, but full of an expression which almost amounts to tenderness; and above them projects the shaggy brow, running into the small hard frontal space, the development of which can scarcely be estimated accurately, owing to the irregular flocks of thick hair carelessly brushed across it."

[Jim Page]

(12-27-2012 12:43 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  William Howard Russell, the correspondent for the London Times, described Lincoln as follows . . .

Yeow!

Too bad that gentleman is no longer around. I'd pay good money to have him describe Sofia Vergara. [Roger, if this is over the top, please feel free to delete!!!]

--Jim

[RJNorton]

Jim, I think I must be leading a pretty sheltered life...I never heard of this person and had to look her up!

[Jim Page]

(12-28-2012 05:00 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  Jim, I think I must be leading a pretty sheltered life...I never heard of this person and had to look her up!

Don't feel bad, Roger; until a couple of months ago, I hadn't heard of her either. My daughter and her husband are big fans of her TV show, Modern Family.

Ms Vergara is a funny person and talented person.

--Jim

[Gene C]

Did Mr. Russell perchance describe Kate Chase?

[RJNorton]

Gene, in Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin writes, "He (William Howard Russell) was particularly taken with Kate Chase, whom he described as “very attractive, agreeable, and sprightly.” Kate was in her element, talking “easily, with a low melodious voice…her head tilted slightly upward, a faint, almost disdainful smile upon her face, as if she were a titled English lady posing in a formal garden for Gainsborough or Reynolds.”

[Mark MacKenzie]

In the movie, when Lewis walks out of the White house towards the end, he adopted a peculiar gait which when I saw it, I thought, "that's Lincoln." Of course I've never seen Lincoln walk and I can't remember a description but it struck a chord.

I was able to look at a life mask at the LMU Museum. I was not allowed to touch it but the curator brought it out to us in his gloved hands. He would hold it at all angles. The face was not attractive at all angles but face to face, head on, it seemed attractive. It reminded me of my grandfather's face. Bronzes and sculpture all have artistic license, but the life mask is a copy of the face. I like the stereo photos for that same (almost) realism.

Of course, its the eye of the beholder, isn't it?

[Liz Rosenthal]

(12-26-2012 04:34 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  Lincoln also had a way of walking that caught William Herndon's attention. Herndon described Lincoln's walk as follows: "When he walked he moved cautiously but firmly; his long arms and giant hands swung down by his side. He walked with even tread, the inner sides of his feet being parallel. He put the whole foot flat down on the ground at once, not landing on the heel. He likewise lifted his foot all at once, not rising from the toe, and hence he had no spring to his walk. His walk was undulatory-catching and pocketing tire, weariness, and pain, all up and down his person, and thus preventing them from locating. The first impression of a stranger, or a man who did not observe closely, was that his walk implied shrewdness and cunning-that he was a tricky man; but, in reality, it was the walk of caution and firmness."

Regardless of whatever anyone may think of William Herndon, we owe him a huge debt of gratitude. Certainly, his description of things that were directly observable, such as Lincoln's gait, we can find nowhere else. As for all of the people he interviewed or corresponded with... well, I hate to think of how much poorer we would be without the huge pile of "oral histories" he sought and accumulated. Others did some interviewing, too - Jesse Weik, John Nicolay, Ida Tarbell - but none to the extent that Herndon did. And Herndon began within a month of his former partner's death! He was a man on a mission and, he, more than any other, could truly say by the end of his life, "Mission Accomplished."

That being said, I agree with David Herbert Donald's criticism of Herndon's intuitive observations. Herndon came up with all sorts of weird descriptions and theories of physical and mental aspects of Lincoln's below-surface characteristics. For example, Lincoln "moved slowly and thought slowly." Though Lincoln's thinking was severely logical, somehow, it was also "gnarly," as was his body. The reason, Herndon said, for Lincoln's slownness was his very sluggish circulation!! (If it were as sluggish as Herndon seemed to suggest, Lincoln would have been dead long before he was ever elected president!)

Herndon also said that Lincoln didn't hate any particular individuals or groups of individuals (which seems mostly accurate), but he didn't love them, either. Now I'm sure we here can all agree that Lincoln was a man who loved many, whether they were family members or close friends. Herndon also couldn't imagine that anyone was ever as close to Lincoln as he was, not even Joshua Speed!

Also irksome for me are some of Herndon's above-surface Lincoln descriptions. For example, he said that Lincoln was "not muscular, but wirey." Almost every description I've read from every other person who ever had a chance to find out stated that Lincoln was very muscular (see, e.g., statements of friends, artists, tailors, doctors, politicians). Herndon also claimed Lincoln's shoulders were narrow and that his chest was thin. This statement is also belied by two things - the comment of a tailor who was sizing Lincoln up for a suit in advance of his inauguration (see, in particular, Holzer's book, Lincoln President-Elect) and the evidence that Lincoln was physically very powerful to the day of his death.

I have to assume that Herndon was focusing on his former partner's slouching posture and tendency to droop his shoulders, which gave the impression of narrow shoulders and a thin chest.

And one other thing. Herndon went on and on about how Lincoln was a great appellate lawyer but a poor nisi prius (trial) lawyer, and he gave as his reason Lincoln's supposed ignorance of the rules of evidence. As someone with a legal background, I think that what Herndon was really observing of Lincoln's lawyerly aptitude was the latter's famous manner of attacking a case by going to the root of the problem, and discarding or ignoring as extraneous anything that did not go to the root.

Well, those are my thoughts about Herndon today.

[Mark MacKenzie]

Thank you for the great post.

[Liz Rosenthal]

Thanks, Mark!

I think I'm going to re-post it on the Herndon "mediocre" thread which I just noticed.

[LincolnMan]

A friend of mine asked me about Lincoln being so loved today. I basically told him that he is and is not. In fact, I expressed to him that he was very much hated in his day. Still, as the title of this thread states, Lincoln was "big enough to be inconsistent."
Here is part of what I wrote to him about Mr. Lincoln:
Abraham Lincoln was absolutely hated in his day. He had incredible internal fortitude to withstand the vitriol leveled at him from all sides. There were even calls within some circles for his assassination right from the start. There was a serious threat of assassination against him that resulted in changes in his arrival plans for the inauguration. He keep a file of some of the death threats he received from John Q. Public. He was shot at one night while riding a horse. The round went through his top hat. Years afterward, other assassination plans came to light. Some of them were known some not. One plan was to blow up the WH! Another was to infect him with small pox. Another one was to poison him. Every faction had their "reasons" for hating him. Through it all he remained steadfast. He knew slavery was evil--but he also knew that first and foremost the Union had to be saved--in order preserve the country and finally for it to be in a position to end slavery. Even today he is hated among some. Some of it is due to ignorance. We live in a "sound-bite" world. A headline on the internet says: "Lincoln cared nothing about ending slavery-" and people accept it as gospel. Others hate Lincoln but have studied the matter and can at least offer intellectual arguments. At any rate he still greatly resonates with so many people. The ill-educated country bumpkin who rose to the highest heights, helped free millions of people, and preserved the United States of America with that "new birth of freedom." Then he was killed at the very height of his accomplishment--sending him into secular sainthood and forever fixing him in our imaginations inspiring countless others to greatness, duty, and positive virtue. Pretty good for the country hick who could barely spell but wrote some of the world's greatest political documents. Shine on Mr. Lincoln...

[RJNorton]

Bill, IMO what Joe Beckert wrote here makes sense to me.

[Eva Elisabeth]

I still think our former chancellor Brandt spoke very well at Lincoln's 150th anniversary banquet in Springfield:

"In Abraham Lincoln intellectual force was matched with moral strength. He understood the spirit as well as the needs of his time; and he was possessed of that pragmatic way of thinking which is conducive to successful action and which always stands the test if it is anchored in firm convictions."

The entire speech is here:
http://rogerjnorton.com/LincolnDiscussio...t#pid56517