What was Lincoln thinking? What were his listeners hearing when he spoke? Reaching outside of the biography will supplement our understanding.
As we read biographies, we are painting hundreds of pictures in our minds. The biographer is doing his or her best to help us along the way. Our backgrounds are contributing to the picture as well. For instance, I’ve watched Daniel Day Lewis’ portrayal of Abraham Lincoln three times. His voice is now the voice I hear of Lincoln. In some ways, I’m sure, I even picture Lincoln’s mannerisms in what I remember from the film.
Having spent a bit of time in Illinois, Kentucky, and Washington D.C., I’m also trying to picture the places and scenes I know as they might have looked in the 1800s. What was it like to ride from Springfield to Vandalia? What was it like to cross the Ohio River? What was it like to travel East by rail?
I’m nearly through Benjamin P. Thomas’ Abraham Lincoln and his pictures are painted well. They don’t seem to be overpainted and I appreciate the way he describes the muddy slick Springfield boardwalks and the backwoods towns along the Sangamon River.
As I started to come across descriptions of Lincoln’s speeches, however, I found that just reading the descriptions was not terribly satisfying. With Thomas’ book in one hand, and a good collection of Lincoln’s speeches and writings in another, I set out to read the book in a little different manner. At junctures where a speech is mentioned, in Peoria and Springfield, for example — when Lincoln is following Douglas around the state in the race for an Illinois Senate seat — I stop reading Thomas and I read the actual speech. It is sort of like being able to expand the text into the bibliography.
The experience is eye-opening, and begs for a closer look at source materials.
The first stereotype that I shed was that Lincoln’s character is what made him a great man. You may want to re-read my last sentence.
It’s easy for our minds to wrap themselves around his character or invent his character from what we know. Lincoln did have a superior character. It did its part to make him a great man. But as I read Abraham Lincoln’s actual words, I am beginning to form the opinion that Lincoln’s logic was the core of what drove him. His logic was a product of a great deal of research and a monumental amount of thinking. His logic fails less than his character does. (For example, Lincoln’s patience and his way of forgiving other’s faults would be considered admirable, except that as President it could often get in the way of real progress.) One could argue that his thoughtfulness was a facet of his character. Okay. But, if so, his way of thinking was so essential to his character that it eclipses it in importance.
In his speeches, Lincoln thinks out loud. He recreates the paths upon which his mind has already tread. He knows where he is heading and he draws the listener along with him and his thought process in coming to his conclusions. Undoubtedly this was a facet of his legal mind, but it was also one of the great capacities of his marketing mind. To bring the jury along with him, he would admit his thoughtful dead-ends, probe future possibilities and then state the case for his conclusions. He tells the jury about where he struggles with definitions, where the Constitution is vague and how people of differing views can so easily come to justifiable conclusions. His mental transparency and his “open book” patterns of speech are magnetic.
I can see those with Northern abolitionist sentiments thinking to themselves, “Yes. Yes. That’s just what we’ve been wanting to say all along. You’ve helped us understand ourselves. Put slavery on trial. Put the Supreme Court on trial. Put bad legislation on trial. We need a leader who will articulate the whole case.”
What Lincoln did, that may be considered pure “character,” was to trust his logical conclusions and act on his conclusions, not backing down until he had some reason to believe that his logic was wrong or ineffective or time had made it irrelevant.
I thought that I may have been alone in my assessment, but with no experience regarding academia’s many words on the subject, discovered that I was not alone. My thoughts are a faint echo of what has been said before.
Roy Basler, an early 20th century historian and expert on Lincoln’s writings said that,
“If there is one incontrovertible theme that runs throughout the biographical sequence of facts, opinions, and legends concerning Lincoln, it is that as a personality he never ceased to grow in a unique pattern, which was both organically logical and objectively adaptable.”
He goes on to say,
“The failure of numerous biographers to bridge the gap between his early life and his presidency might have been avoided had they given as much attention to his writings as to the minutiae of his daily living.”
I came across a fascinating article on Benjamin Thomas written by James Hoffman for the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association in 1998. He cites one of Thomas’ articles for the publication in 1931, where Thomas asserts that after 1853, Lincoln’s speeches came to be “keenly analytical and logical.”
Most of us are far too sound-byte addicted to appreciate the long, drawn out explanations. But Lincoln’s explications are thorough. (He spends the first eight pages of a Peoria/Springfield speech, just delineating slavery’s legal history.) They are well-formed foundations upon which he could build an effective case for his future actions. These took years to develop. In a way, his speeches ARE sound bytes based on thousands of hours spent in case development.
The result of reading Lincoln’s words is a fresh layer of paint on my mental image. In this instance, it is the image of Lincoln’s transparent and logical mind. People could easily think along with him. Mental ascent was a simple matter of following his logical trail.
As we listen to his moments on the platform, we are also given a better mental picture of what it would have been like to live in his day and hear his words. We can see, for example, why his post-election speech in Philadelphia reinforced the decision of the people in choosing him to lead. We can also get a much better picture of how he attempted to use conciliatory language in his first inaugural address. Benjamin Thomas points out that southern reaction to the inaugural address was widely mixed and that there were many in the south who were pleased with the patient course that Lincoln was attempting to chart.
Many of Lincoln’s concepts are deep. In fact, many were too deep or too context-driven for me, as a non-historian, to understand them completely. I still see them as valuable. Others must, too, because anthologies of Lincoln’s writings and speeches continue to sell well.
So, in a nutshell, my suggestion with reading a Lincoln biography is that you treat it a bit differently than cruising through the biography of James Buchanan or Zachary Taylor. If you do, I think you’ll find that as you remove Lincoln’s mystic haze from your eyes, you’ll see less of the surface icon and more of his logical (and human) mind.
Two last thoughts:
- Lincoln is a President whose lessons are ripe for our picking and application. For example, quiet moments spent alone and in thought, charting out likely futures from well-considered decisions may save you a lifetime of headaches and heartaches…or at least keep you headed in the right direction. Not worrying. Not overplanning. Just considering likely conclusions to current activities and adapting where needed.
- Watch the Lincoln film. You may want to read Team of Rivals first to have a deeper understanding of the characters and their motivations. Daniel Day Lewis, from what I’ve read about Lincoln’s voice, does an excellent job of fitting historical descriptions. Sally Field is quite remarkable as Mary Todd Lincoln. I don’t think I can oversell the entire cast. I don’t watch many movies myself, but this one I felt was terribly worthwhile.
americanbibliography.com 