“He who would understand the meaning of America will find it in the life of Abraham Lincoln.” – President Ronald Reagan
During uncertain days, it helps to read about certain men. Reynold’s cultural biography describes Abraham Lincoln as the frontiersman, showman, jokester, rail-splitter, lawyer, thinker, statesman, and ultimate centralist. Abe describes a tough, rugged Lincoln who engaged in wrestling and feats of strength, while also stoically dealing with emotional hardship. Above all, Reynold’s delivers a man of character with the uppermost principles and the will to see them through. Abe confirms, once again, Lincoln achieved greatness because he embodied the highest American ideals.
The Middle Way
Lincoln’s core strength was his ability to find a middle way. His devotion to avoiding extremes helped garner support from many sides. Lincoln summoned unifying themes, artfully bringing the country together. First and foremost, Lincoln believed ardently in the founder’s vision, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution. He also employed Biblical language and truth to support his positions. Much of this is because of Lincoln’s limited formal schooling, which required him to use the resources around him: the Bible, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Northwest Ordinance. These foundational documents of America were also the foundational documents of Lincoln.
Accordingly, Reynold’s observes: “One of Lincoln’s main achievements as a politician would be to combine the spirit of these three founding documents in a way that convincingly positioned the antislavery agreement within the boundaries of the American system. Crystallizing the arguments of other antislavery politicians, he merged the concept behind the Northwest Ordinance – which forbade the extension of slavery in the Western territories north of the Ohio River – with the Declaration’s pronouncement of human equality and the Constitution’s protection of human rights. This anti-slavery constitutionalism, which he presented most persuasively in the Cooper Union Address in 1860, was grounded in his meditations on the Founders and their ideals as a teenager in Indiana.”
Reynold’s presents Lincoln as more than a centralist by choice, but also by birth. Lincoln was born in the frontier, away from the hardened sectionalism prevalent on the east coast. He was also part Puritan North and part Cavalier South. The Puritan and Cavalier divide, described by Reynolds, was as divisive as slavery and predated the revolution. These cultural allegiances were a primary reason North and South could not compromise. Lincoln was able to claim both sides, or neither, according to his audience.
Political Acumen
As his politics emerge, Lincoln shows himself as a strong Whig and then helps define the Republican party. Much of his politics were about pulling the nation together. Lincoln wanted a national currency in the form of paper money, for example. He also believed “The universal law of our existence, is, ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread, until thou return to the ground.’” (Genesis 3:19). Here Lincoln is honing arguments that everyone should enjoy the fruits of their own labor, linking his economic principals to slavery and rooting it in Biblical truth.
Reynolds describes how Lincoln worked through the untangling of America from the scrooge of slavery. He wanted to stop its expansion at first, but later ended slavery. This shift was not only because it was morally wrong, but because it violated the foundations of the United States. Moreover, it became increasingly clear, there was no way to slowly melt slavery away – it had to be removed. From his Peoria Speech to his debates with Stephen Douglas, the world sees Lincoln’s maturing philosophy. In it, Lincoln, weds liberty and equality, argues the founders intended for slavery to evaporate, insists on Natural Law on which the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were based. “’A house divided against itself cannot stand,” he argued, because the nation can’t endure half slave and half free. Lincoln wanted slavery on the road to extinction and insisted Washington, Jefferson, and Madison did too.
Mr. President
As President, his highest priority was preserving the United States of America. In his first inaugural address, Lincoln delivered a final overture for peace. He focused on preserving the union. Lincoln appealed to natural law in response to states’ rights – the government was not created to die, it was created to form a more perfect union. He employed God, arguing God ordained freedom and free government. In it, he spoke of the extremes of despotism v. anarchy and the great dangers they represent. Accordingly, secession was anarchy and that would lead to confusion and then a despot would take over. He ended with a plea to remain friends, “The mystic chords of memory…will yet swell the chorus of union…by the better angels of our nature.” It didn’t work, the war came.
Lincoln would expand the size of the federal government and its authority in order to save the country, but he did so reluctantly and temporarily because the South first violated the Constitution by breaking away and desecrating its commitments with other states. In some respects, the Civil War was the price the United States had to pay for the sin of slavery. As the war continued, Lincoln saw an opportunity to end slavery once and for all so he pressed onward and won.
By employing a “Team of Rivals,” Doris Goodwin’s term for using opposing political figures in his cabinet, Lincoln devotes himself again to unifying, centralist positions. Paper money, land grant colleges, the Homestead Act of 1862, and establishing Yosemite as a national preserve were all unifying measures. He placed “In God We Trust” on coins and issued proclamations of prayer and fasting nine times. He also made Thanksgiving a national holiday to give thanks to God for his blessings. Lincoln pushed for the elimination of national categories, sectional distinctions, and ethical divides, so that there might emerge a singular American category.
Lincoln’s Greatest Speeches
The Gettysburg Address and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural are the pinnacle of his life. The devotion to “Unionism” and moral certainty finds a prominent place in both.
The Gettysburg Address, which re-cast the principles of the Declaration of Independences, argues for freedom, equality, and democratic values. He employed religious, earthly, and bodily images to connect the audience to the battle field. In it, Abe pinned the Declaration as the founding of the nation – “four score and seven years ago…a new nation conceived in liberty and devoted to the proposition that all men are created equal.” The United States Constitution forms the laws backing those ideals. Both documents, Lincoln argued, were race neutral. Slavery, in other words, cut against the highest ideals of the United States. The address starts in the past, then to the present, then to the future and begs that government “of the people, for the people, by the people shall not perish from the earth.” Relevantly, Lincoln’s faith strengthened around Gettysburg. “’I then in there made a solemn vow to Almighty God that if he would stand by our boys at Gettysburg, I would stand by him. And he did, and I will.’” After Gettysburg, the Union army rolled as Grant and Sherman pushed forward.
Lincoln’s Second Inaugural address justified the war as necessary to secure human rights for all. It was a difficult time, as around one percent of the American population died in the conflict (that would be more than 30 million people today). In the Second Inaugural, familiar tones resonate: Biblical themes, healing, antislavery, unity. He owned the war, his part, the nation’s part, and God’s. And having done that he asked for God’s mercy as he encouraged a wounded nation to rebuild “with malice toward none.”
Reynold’s delivers a riveting book that sets the landscape for Lincoln’s life. It’s hard not to see providence in all Lincoln did, especially the circumstances of his life.
