Is it him, or not? 

Give it up already

I was tooling around on ebay when I ran across an auction that was attempting (yet again) to sell what someone thinks is an original, newly discovered picture of Abraham Lincoln. If anyone out there has 5 million dollars burning a hole in their pocket, the link to the auction is here.

The picture has been out there for quite a while, and has aroused a fair amount of controversy. The owner solicited medical experts to compare this image to known photos of Lincoln, and the experts concluded that it may in fact be Lincoln. As I understand the methodology (and I am certainly no expert), they made a series of microscopic measures of various features of Lincoln's face--the distance between his eyes, for example--then made similar measurements to this image, and found a match. The link explaining this is here.

Keep in mind, however, that the evidence assembled in that link is put into the service of the person who wants to sell this portrait, and so is of course very one-sided. Not one Lincoln scholar I know believes this is Lincoln, or even takes the whole matter very seriously. I once mentioned it to Tom Schwartz, for example, and Tom just rolled his eyes and laughed. For a good article in American Heritage that debunks pretty thoroughly the methodology used to authentic the picture, look here.

I've used this portrait to good effect in my classroom, teaching about methodology. I show my students the portrait without identifying it, ask the students who they think it is (some guess Lincoln; most do not), then discuss the various ways in which a historian might verify its authenticity. My favorite was the guy who once suggested a seance.

Anyway...I guess what surprises me most is running across this portrait again, on ebay and with such a hefty sale price. The whole controversy is over a decade old by now. Does anyone really believe that there's a bidder out there who will now suddenly pony up 5 million dollars for a portrait of what may turn out to be Bob the Hatmaker, or whoever?

Lincoln Freedmen's Memorial 

Lincoln Image #4: Lincoln Freedmen Memorial

I knew this statue had become rather un-pc, but I didn't really understand just how much so until I googled it looking for the picture. Apparently this is used by a fair number of teachers to guide high school students into a "correct" way of thinking about the Emancipation Proclamation--that is, rejection of Lincoln as the Great Emancipator image by rejecting this statue as patronizing and inaccurate.

Now, granted we should look with a critical eye at all things Lincoln, indeed all things related to American history. Nor is it a good idea to exaggerate Mr. Lincoln's virtues, give short-shrift to his faults and limitations, or demean the contributions of others to the process of African-American freedom. Regular readers of this blog surely understand by now that I'm not a Lincoln hagiographer.

That said, however, I think it is important to preserve a sense of how African-Americans in the Civil War era themselves felt about Lincoln. If you don't know the story of this statue: it was created largely by nickel-and-dime donations from the freedmen themselves, many of whom had little to give. A freedwoman named Charlotte Scott began the process with a $5 donation she could likely ill-afford, and her efforts grew into a grass-roots campaign that eventually witnessed the erection of this statue in Washington DC's Lincoln Park (see a good overview of the statue's history here).

I'd like to think that, even with all the bad ideas in play by Lerone Bennett and others of his ilk, and even with the useful correctives to Lincoln hagiography provided by more responsible scholars, we'll still preserve this relatively simple truth: Lincoln did a good thing in the Emancipation Proclamation, something which an entire generation of African-Americans valued, and rightly so.

10,000 and counting

Site-Meter tells me I've now had 10,000 visits; a milestone, of sorts, and fairly gratifying. 10,000 is probably small potatoes in the blogosphere, I know--I read recently that some political blogs get over 100,000 hits a day--but it's nice to see this blog is getting read. Thanks to everyone for their support. I'm having fun with this, and I hope everyone else is, too.

Lincoln gets a brick

I saw recently that the town of Lincoln, Illinois awarded Abe a brick on its Walkway of Veterans at All Veterans Park, for Lincoln's service during the Black Hawk War of 1832. The story is here.

Lincoln would have found this a little amusing. Yes, he was a veteran, and yes, he did serve during the war. But he himself thought his time in the militia was a farce. "Did you know I am a military hero? Yes sir," he said during a speech in Congress, "in the days of the Black Hawk war, I fought, bled, and came away....It is quite certain I did not break my sword, for I had none to break; but I bent a musket pretty badly on one occasion....I had a good many bloody struggles with the musquetoes; and, although I never fainted from loss of blood, I can truly say I was often very hungry."

Lincoln in the news

Rather a lot of Lincoln in the news this week:

1. Bogus Lincoln Quote Watch: in a recent collection of random inspiring quotes from an Atlanta newspaper, Lincoln supposedly said, "Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." An interesting choice, really, considering all of the recent attention directed at Lincoln's bouts with depression.

2. A story on collectible coins points out that the penny is sort of the ultimate anti-collectible (rarity being a key facet of collectability), since Lincoln's face on the penny has been reproduced approximately 14 billion times. That's a lot of Abes.

3. In this tense atmosphere of recrimination and and argument over the Iraqi war, I sometimes wondered how long it would take for someone to discover Lincoln's very pointed opposition to the Mexican War; there are certainly interesting analogies between 2006 and 1846. It took a famous and talented historian, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., to do so in an op-ed piece for the Washington Post. Schlesinger points out that Lincoln had some choice criticisms of the whole idea of preventive war, aimed at President Polk. Schlesinger quotes Lincoln thus: "If, today, he [the president] should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us'; but he will say to you, 'Be silent; I see it, if you don't.' "

4. In Columbus, Ohio, a man creates artwork from different colored pieces of linoleum, and has chosen, among other subjects, Abraham Lincoln. Not sure what to say on this one: Lincoln as a carpet?

5. A recent story defending political attack ads points out that harsh rhetoric has always been a feature of American political life. The writer mentions the 1860 campaign, during which he says Lincoln was called "stupid" and an "ape." Actually, he was called a great deal worse, including racially-charged accusations that he had a black mistress, and was partly African-American himself (serious charges in those bigoted times). My favorite was a southern newspaper claiming that Lincoln looked "sooty" and "scoundrelly," resembling a "Yankee nutmeg dealer."

6. An article on the publishing industry lists these "surefire" bestselling topics: "sex, Hollywood, God, dogs, dieting or Abraham Lincoln." Nice to see God and Abe are keeping such heady company these days.

7. An Australian paper quotes an anonymous Washington DC politico who was asked to name a president who had a successful second term. The response: "Abraham Lincoln. But that was probably only because he was assassinated one month into it.''

8. An article on political spin claims that Lincoln "used to obsess about camera angles getting his best side." Really? That's a new one on me. I've never run across any such reference, and in fact I've gotten the impression he was rather indifferent to such matters. Besides, how many camera angles could you really expect to get with 19th century camera equipment?

Lincoln and Tad 

Lincoln Image #5: Lincoln and Tad

This photo is admittedly a little heavy on the smarm that nineteenth-century Americans loved so much, and it has that posed quality that makes me long for something spontaneous and unrehearsed--a snaphot of Lincoln trying to clean up his law office after the boys went on one of their famous rampages, for example.

Still, I've always been drawn to this photo, because it is just about the only image we have of Lincoln as a father (not to mention Lincoln wearing spectacles). We tend to overlook Lincoln the dad, sometimes. By all accounts he was a very indulgent father. Herndon has some choice comments on this score, describing in detail how the boys wrecked their office, with absolutely no attempt by Lincoln at prevention. Herndon snarled, "Had they sh-t in Lincoln's boots, he would have laughed and found it right smart."

Scholars see this as a form of rebellion in Lincoln, a subtle remonstrance against his own father and strict upbringing. I'll buy that, but I've often wondered if there was more to it than this--Lincoln's need for a bit of chaos and silliness in his oh-so-serious life.

Maybe Abe had scurvy and the avian flu, too

Well, we can add another item to the list of Lincoln's secret illnesses. An Illinois man is convinced that Lincoln had hypertropia, an eye condition whereby his eyes did not align properly. The story is here.

I try not to sound too cynical about these things, but this strikes me as awfully flimsy. The evidence is apparently a photo of Lincoln--the one I use in my blog's header, in fact--that seems to show Lincoln's left eye is pointed in a slightly different direction than his right eye. That, and an eyewitness account by a man named John Shastid who claimed to have seen Lincoln's eye to be out of focus during a trial.

As far as the photo is concerned: yes, the left eye does appear to be slightly odd in the photo. But Civil War-era photography was far too imprecise a technology upon which to hang such a conclusion. Even the slightest movement by Lincoln during the lengthy time he would have had to sit still for the picture to develop could produce such a quirk. Shastid's testimony is interesting, I suppose, except that I have found, after sifting through a lot of these eyewitness accounts at trial, that they are filled with inaccuracies.

I'm not saying that Lincoln definitely did not have hypertropia--it's certainly possible. But if so, it was at best an intermittent condition. Otherwise, why would only one witness--out of the many, many people who observed every tic and feature of Lincoln's face and physique--make such an observation? Surely such a problem would have been noticed. For that matter, why wouldn't Nicolay and Hay have mentioned it? Or Billy Herndon? This was hardly an embarassing or socially disgraceful malady, and anyone familar with Herndon's biography or Hay's diary knows that they offered extended commentary on nearly every little Lincolnian quirk imaginable. In fact, the overwhelming majority of commentary on Lincoln's health suggest that he was an unusually robust, strong man.

So color me skeptical on this one. And really...between hypertropia, Marfan's syndrome, clinical depression, and God know's what else, you have to wonder how this man--wracked as he appeared to be by apparently countless mystery illnesses--survived to adulthood. It makes JFK look almost healthy by comparison.

International Abe

The Washington Post has a nice little op-ed this morning on a man from Burma named Lincoln. His "parents admired the American president so much that they named their first child after him." He is trying very hard to enter this country, but is having a difficult time because of red tape and restrictions caused by U.S. security concerns.

The article actually has very little to do with Lincoln himself, but it is another example of just how global the Lincoln image has become. I think that, given his status as both the savior of the Union and the Great Emancipator (wouldn't you think that people like this man from Burma would be most inclined to dismiss Lerone Bennett's nonsense?) Lincoln may be our most appealing export. A heckuva lot better than a Big Mac, and perhaps a nice anecdote to some of the darkness and incompetence we've been spreading around in the last few months.

"White suit Lincoln" 

Lincoln image #6: Lincoln in Beardstown, Illinois, May 7, 1858

This choice reflects my particular background as a scholar of Mr. Lincoln's law practice. It was taken on the morning of May 7, 1858, in the town of Beardstown, Illinois, as Lincoln was on his way to the local courthouse to defend William "Duff" Armstrong in the famous "Almanac Trial." It is therefore the most direct image we have of Lincoln as a lawyer.

Was this a conscious attempt to subtly manipulate the feelings of the jury, wearing white as a way of injecting just a tiny note of innocence or purity in a trial during which he had to defend an accused drunkard and murderer? Maybe. As I point out in my upcoming book, Lincoln was not averse to dressing the part in the courtroom (like any good lawyer). If he needed to look like a rube for a given case, he dressed sloppily; if he needed to look like a gentleman, he tied his tie properly and combed his hair.

On a more humorous note--can you imagine what he was thinking as he stared at himself in this suit, perhaps in the hotel or boarding room mirror in Beardstown that morning? "Mary will never believe I wore this; I gotta get my picture taken before the trial."

Lincoln in the News

A fair amount of Lincoln in the news this week:

1. More on the saga of Booth's former home. Since it failed to sell at auction last week (for over $900,000, which seems to be what its owners invested in sprucing up the place), the possibility has arisen that it may be purchased by the local county and turned into a museum. Interestingly, there is some sentiment that the museum should place an emphasis on Shakespeare and theater history rather than the assassination, given the Booth family's distinguished acting pedigree.

2. Yesterday Washington DC hosted a small, poorly attended parade celebrating the 144th anniversary of Lincoln's signing the bill abolishing slavery in the city. Few people realize that Lincoln did this, several months before he began drafting the Emancipation Proclamation, because there was no constitutional question about his and Congress' power to do so. At any rate, yesterday's parade was a rather sad affair--few participants, and some onlookers who had no idea what they were celebrating.

3. In Boston, a collection of rare historical memorabilia was auctioned recently, including a gold watch that Lincoln planned to give to Mary. I couldn't find any details concerning the watch. Was this an anniversary gift, or perhaps something dating back to their courtship days?

4. An article on celebrities and their religions lists Lincoln as a Baptist (along with Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson and Chuck Norris; boy, Abe sure is keeping some heady company here). Well, I suppose this was technically true, since Lincoln's family had a Baptist background. But he was hardly a true believer.

5. Bogus Lincoln Quote Watch: a British politician is mentioned as having a fondness for Lincoln's saying, "You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong." No mention of that one anywhere in a trustworthy Lincoln source. I might start collecting these, and maybe publish them in a book titled Lincoln Never Said This

6. Bogus Lincoln Quote Watch II: President Bush quoted Lincoln in a recent speech as having said, "I have often gone to my knees in prayer out of the conviction that I had no place else to go." Another one that can't be verified. There are a lot of religious-based faux Lincoln quotes, I think fabricated out of desperation by otherwise well-meaning Christians who wanted to claim Lincoln as one of their own.

7. Bogus Lincoln Quote Watch III. Another religious commentator quotes Lincoln as having said, "We must work earnestly in the best light God gives us trusting that so working still conduces to the great ends He ordains." See item 6 above.

8. A nice little story about an immigrant who was having trouble getting his green card in the weeks immediately following 9/11. He bought a picture of Lincoln, hung it in his home, and prayed to Lincoln every night to help him get his green card. The card arrived four months later. At least the guy didn't fabricate some fake Lincoln quote to ge with this tale.

Lincoln in my Civil War class

My Civil War class this semester is the best I have had in years--a great bunch of kids with a variety of viewpoints, who aren't afraid to speak up. Classroom experiences like this are the reason I became a professor.

Yesterday we wrapped up the war with a lengthy look at the Lincoln assassination (yeah, I have to wrap up Reconstruction in two weeks; we've had so many great discussions that I've gotten behind on my class schedule--a good problem to have, actually), and I talked a bit about Booth's early plan to kidnap Lincoln and ransom him for Confederate POWs. A fun discussion ensued about what might have happened, had this plot succeeded. Would the North have taken such a deal? Most of my students believed not, and I tend to agree.

We then discussed the various political and constitutional ramifications of such a plot. On the Confederate side: what would Jefferson Davis have done, had this alcoholic actor and his band of merry fellows shown up on his doorstep, Lincoln in tow? Of course, there are those who think Davis was giving the orders to Booth all along, up to and including the assassination. I have serious doubts about this; to my knowledge no direct link has ever been established, and anyway it doesn't sound in character for Davis, however angry the Confederate president may have been concerning the Dahlgren raid and other Union excesses, real and alleged. At any rate, I wonder if Davis would have risked the international outcry that might have ensued, had he given an official Confederate stamp of approval to the scheme.

On the Union side: who would have made decisions here? Talk about a murky constitutional area in 1864. Presidential succession was hardly clear-cut, and anyway Lincoln was still alive. It's difficult to imagine Andrew Johnson having the force of character to take charge. I'm thinking Stanton would have bulldozed his way to the front, and likely would have made the serious decisions about what to do. And my guess is that he would have--with great reluctance--written Lincoln off as a casualty of war and refused to make any deals.

Of course this is all just counterfactual guesswork. But it was a lot of fun bandying these various scenarios about in class yesterday. I wonder if there's an article in this subject someplace...

Lincoln at his second inaugural ceremony, standing just behind the little white table 

Lincoln image #7: Lincoln at the Second Inaugural, March 1865

Civil War enthusiasts and scholars quickly become accustomed to the fact that the visual images from the era usually lack spontaneity--especially the photographs. This was a function of technology, of course, but I think it may also have been partly cultural. Victorian-era Americans seemed to have a preference for the weighty and the statuesque.

Whatever the case may be, I think we all at one time or another long for an image of the era that has some movement, some better sense of the fleeting moment. This is especially true with Lincoln. Would that some photographer had managed to capture the man laughing, for example. Humor was a legendary part of his personality, yet no one can really say for certain what Lincoln's laugh looked like.

That said, I like the rare Lincoln photograph which at least approaches a degree of naturalness, of Lincoln in-the-moment. This image of Lincoln's inaugural address does this, with it's sense of the crowd's swirl and movement, of Lincoln's own movement as he delivers his greatest address. You can almost feel the day here, in a way that just doesn't quite happen in most other Lincoln photos. The fact that you can barely make Lincoln out is actually a bit of an advantage here, in a way. You can even make out the glass of water sitting on the table in front of him--another nice touch that speaks of the moment.

I wonder if this relative lack of spontaneous imagery for the Civil War is an advantage or a disadvantage for Civil War enthusiasts. Sure, I envy my colleagues who write of the twentieth century, and have all manner of photos, film footage, etc. to draw upon. On the other hand, couldn't one argue that we Civil War types must exercise our imagination with more verve and sophistication precisely because we lack such material? Would William Faulkner, for example, have been as vivid and moving in his famous description of how Southern boys imagine themselves at Pickett's Charge if he had possessed actual film footage of the charge? Wouldn't Bruce Catton have lost at least some of his artistry as a writer? Wouldn't Ken Burns be a lesser artist? I think so.

Blogging and ranting

The Washington Post ran a story this morning about the extraordinary anger and rhetoric emanating from some quarters of the blogosphere. Politics aside--and as I've said before, I do not want my blog caught up in the ideological wars between Left and Right--the blogging practices described in this article are more than a little disturbing.

I've had some interesting reactions when I tell people about my Lincoln blog. My students generally think it's a good idea, and have even on occasion visited my blog. They seem totally comfortable with the idea of the blogosphere. Quite a few of my colleagues, however, react differently. They look uncomfortable, like I had just confessed to regularly visiting strip clubs. I get the sense that several think the whole idea of a professor blogging is inappropriate.

This attitude reflects a basic ignorance about blogging. I think it's no coincidence that in most cases, my colleagues who react this way are also the ones who can barely check their own emails. Still, when I read in the Post about the way blogs are used by some people to just vent like a wounded animal (in what one describes as a "long, sustained scream"), I can understand why blogging often creates a negative reaction.

Sensible, responsible bloggers can't do anything about the lunatic fringe; that's the beauty and the problem of the Internet. But I think we have a responsibility here, to show by our words and deeds that blogging is a value-neutral tool, no more and no less. And I'm rather proud of the fact that the small but growing community of Civil War weblogs reflect the best that blogging has to offer. So lets keep it up, guys, and maybe we can do our part to legitimize this medium and gently but firmly push to ranters off to their own little corner of the Internet, where they can slowly rant themselves into oblivion.

Carpenter's painting, Lincoln's cabinet 

Lincoln image #8: Francis Carpenter Painting of Lincoln's Cabinet

Of all the many contemporary paintings and prints of Lincoln, I've always been partial to this one. I'm not sure exactly why. Part of the reason, I suppose, is the fact that I very much like Carpenter's memoir, The Inner Life of Abraham Lincoln: Six Months at the White House. It is one of the better reminiscences out there, especially the passages in which Lincoln describes to Carpenter his thinking about why he issed the Emancipation Proclamation in the summer of 1862. Carpenter's description has an air of authenticity about it.

So does the painting. Sure, it has a posed, rather stiff quality--what painting from that era doesn't? But it does give the viewer a nice visualization of what his cabinet meetings might have looked like, simply by virtue of it's accurate rendering of Seward, Chase, etc. Want to impress someone with your knowledge of Lincolnia sometime? Show them the painting, then name all the cabinet members. Great way to pick up chicks :-).

Doing the uniform thingy 

Doing the "uniform thingy"

I broke out the Civil War uniform for my American history survey class yesterday, and talked one of my students into taking a couple of pictures. I do a lecture on the everyday life of the soldiers, demonstrate how the musket worked, that sort of thing. I always enjoy doing this, and my students seem to, as well. They call it my "uniform thingy."

I took up re-enacting in the mid-1980s, during my college days at the University of Central Arkansas. My favorite professor, Gregory J. Urwin (now a distinguished military historian at Temple) did both Revolutionary and Civil War impressions, and I was mesmerized. So I scraped the money together and did both Union and Confederate impressions for several years. I stopped when grad school came along. Spare time was at a premium, and the thrust of my research moved away from military issues a bit and more in the direction of law, ideas, and politics. But I still have the uniforms, so I use them for teaching purposes every once in a while.

I must confess I am a bit ambivalent about Civil War re-enactment. On the one hand, I learned a great deal, particularly about the difficulties involved in moving large bodies of men across battlefields. I also find that re-enactment has proven to be an excellent teaching tool, on a variety of levels. And I suspect that re-enactment has had a postive impact on my thinking and writing about the war on visceral levels of which I am not entirely aware.

On the other hand, I've met some fairly scary people re-enacting. One reason I dropped out was an encounter with fellow Confederate soldiers at Shiloh in 1986 who discussed at length how much fun it would be to re-enact the Fort Pillow massacre. I also found that re-enactment units seem more prone than usual to squabbling and bickering within the ranks. And I worried that the re-enactment experience might eventually cause me to delude myself into thinking I fully understand the experience of Civil War combat. Stomping around in a muddy field and sleeping in a dog tent for a weekend most assuredly does not convey the terror of combat, the hard, dark heart of the Civil War.

Still, re-enactment was on the whole a positive experience. One thing is certain; my students pay attention when I bring a gun to class.

Lincoln in the News

Lincoln shows up in a few places in the news this week:

1. A letter writer in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution asked an interesting question: does the modern Republican Party, with it's powerful Christian wing, possess what amounts to a litmus test for its candidates that requires them to overtly affirm their Christian principles? The writer apparently knows something about Lincoln, citing Lincoln's letter that re-affirmed (in a rather roundabout way) his faith during the 1846 congressional campaign, but also admitted that he did not belong to an organized church. "How ironic that, in all likelihood, Lincoln would be unable to secure the nomination of the Republican Party for any office, much less the presidency, if he were to reaffirm that 'he was not a member of any Christian church,' the writer observes, "Of even greater import today, would a candidate of high moral character and competency be denied Republican Party support for public office if that candidate repeated the words of Lincoln?"

2. Another letter to the editor (this time in the Baltimore Sun) calls for President Bush to fire Donald Rumsfeld and also draws a comparison to Lincoln, suggesting that Bush should follow Lincoln's example when he fired ineffectual military leaders like McClellan, etc. in his search for victory.

3. The former home of John Wilkes Booth failed to sell at a recent auction (I wrote about this house a few weeks ago). The sellers wanted over $900,000, but when the bids dropped to $805,000, the auctioneer stopped the bidding. Interesting thing, here; in 1999, when the house was originally put up for auction, it attracted a crowd and national media attention, and quickly sold. The more recent auction attracted barely 25 people, and did not sell. I wonder why.

4. Bogus Lincoln quote watch: in an Australian newspaper, where Lincoln is offered up as an example of failure turned into success through dogged persistence (a popular motif for Lincoln these days). ''I discovered that we are all a mixture of success and failure; good and bad," Lincoln supposedly wrote, and "I decided then and there not to be too hard on myself, and on others.'' I can't find any such quote from Lincoln in a valid source. Where do people get this stuff--in the land down under, no less?

5. A writer in a Connecticut newspaper referenced Lincoln's bouts with depression, and summed up the matter thus: Lincoln was "one sad dude." I think I'll use that in a lecture someday.

Striner's Lincoln

Picked up a copy of Richard Striner's new book on Lincoln and emancipation, called Father Abraham: Lincoln's Relentless Struggle to End Slavery. It looks like another salvo in the Lerone Bennett wars, if the blurbs are any indication. Striner seems to want to argue that Lincoln was very much the Great Emancipator, and a moral crusader of the first order. The statements on the book jacket and reviews are rather breathless on this account, so I have to admit a bit of skepticism here: first impression is that this might be a choice bit of Lincoln hagiography. I'll keep an open mind here; we'll see.

Lincoln family statue, downtown Springfield, Illinois 

Lincoln image #9: Lincoln family statue, Springfield, Illinois

Anyone who has been to Springfield recently knows this statue well. It's located down the street from his former law office, and across from the old state capitol building--just the place, in other words, where such a scene might well have taken place.

The noble, marble Lincoln images are wonderful, of course; but I like this one, as well. It is a side of Lincoln we often forget; the family man. I rather like seeing Mary in this light, too. I'm one of those scholars who believes the Lincoln marriage probably wasn't a very happy one, sometimes, and the image of Mary on an emotional rampage sticks in my head more often than not. But there was another side to her, and this statue captures it beautifully: the devoted wife who loved her husband, despite their mutual foibles and faults.

More on civil wars, American and Iraqi

Well, this is interesting timing. An op-ed piece in today's Washington Post by a military studies professor at Bard College, Caleb Carr, addresses some of the same issues I raised in my last post. The article may be found here.

Carr likewise draws some interesting connections between our civil war and the one apparently underway in Iraq. His take on Lincoln is interesting, too. He writes:

"If the Europeans found [the American Civil War's] violence deplorable and horrifying, said Lincoln, that was understandable; so did he. But as he explained in his second inaugural address, in words that we revere so deeply that we have carved them into his memorial: 'If God wills that [the war] continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'"

"Iraqis may refer to their Lord by a different name, but the principle in their case is the same. We are not dealing with several groups of roughly equal recent experience; we are dealing with one extreme minority, the Sunnis, many of whom have for years, under the leadership of the worst international tyrant since Pol Pot, persecuted and murdered the other two -- on a genocidal scale."


Carr's take on Iraq and Pol Pot aside--and please, I very much do not want to turn my blog into a current events debate--I think this argument is right on target. Lincoln essentially used God to find moral purpose for the war. In so doing, did he not on some level suggest that the war was a necessary step in American democracy? That perhaps it had to happen?

If so, this raises some very interesting points. We all know of the antebellum dimension on this matter: Lincoln's "House Divided" speech, and whether or not he could accurately be identified with Seward's "irrepressible conflict" doctrine in the 1850s (a very radical and politically dangerous territory for Lincoln). But no one ever seems to much deal with this matter in Lincoln's thought after 1860.

I myself have always wondered how this man, gentle and non-confrontational in so many ways, could find within himself the means necessary to order so many men to their deaths, and do so with little outward appearance of dismay--indeed, with a certain ruthless quality, at times. Maybe the answer lies in a confluence between his belief in cold reason, his religious fatalism, and a philosophy that civil wars are indeed sometimes a necessary step on the path to democracy.

Random musings on Lincoln, civil war, and democracy

Listened to a rather harrowing report today on NPR dealing with the descent into violence and chaos of one Bagdad neighborhood. The conditions were horrific, with assassinations, reprisals and ethnic tensions between shiites and sunnis running very nearly unchecked.

So is it a civil war, or not? Hard to think what other label one might apply to this mess. And yet, listening to the report, I wondered: could one argue that an Iraqi civil war is an inescapable, indeed necessary stage in the development of an Iraqi democracy? Or any democracy, for that matter.

A few weeks ago I read a columnist in the Washington Post who pointed out that Hamas' stunning victory in the recent Palestinian election was an unfortunate risk one had to run when introducing democracy to any group of people. Sometimes, democracy will lead people to make bad choices, and Americans would be extremely naive to think that our promotion of democratic reform in the Middle East will necessarily lead to the establishment of regimes we like. So could one therefore argue that civil war in Iraq is a legitimate democratic choice? After all, America deliberately loosened the authoritarian bindings of the Hussein regime, and in doing so allowed Iraqis to make their own decisions. Well, it appears a fair number of Iraquis have chosen, more-or-less freely, to pick up their guns and start firing.

Now, what does this have to do with Lincoln or the American Civil War? Recently I argued that Civil War historians must find ways to make our subject relevant to 21st century issues. Here then is an opportunity to do so. For wasn't the Confederate position that white Southerners had chosen secession and its concomitant civil war as a freely available democratic choice? Their essential position was that, under the U.S. Constitution, civil war was a democratically legitimate (if terribly drastic) option.

Now of course, Lincoln's point of view differed greatly. He argued that secession and civil war were fundamentally a rejection of democracy. Southerners had lost the election of 1860 fair and square, he argued, and now they wanted to reverse the results at gunpoint. Secession and Civil War were not democratic; they were, he argued, the very antithesis of democracy.

Or at least, so he said in 1861. But maybe he had come to believe otherwise by 1865. Could not one argue that his Second Inaugural implies the war was almost a necessary step by which Americans rid themselves of slavery? Isn't he basically saying that, since slavery was an American sin, the war was a divinely sanctioned byproduct of that sin--a terrible ordeal through which the nation had to pass to achieve a greater stage of freedom and more fully realize the ultimate goals of the Declaration of Independence?

In which case, could one take a Lincolnian position on the civil war in Iraq that that war is a more or less necessary ordeal the Iraquis must endure to shed the sins of the Hussein regime? Or more generally, if one studied civil wars as a subject across time and space, would one find that many were waystations on the road to democracy and liberty?

These are just random musings inspired by a radio broadcast and a long drive this afternoon. I'm not sure where they're going, or indeed if they're going anywhere at all. But then, this was one purpose I had in starting this blog: generating ideas that may or may not lead someplace. Feedback welcome, as always.

A plague on both their houses

Pardon me for straying from subjects Lincoln and Civil War to offer my two cents worth on an article I read this morning in the Chronicle of Higher Education concerning a recent "showdown" debate between far-Right academic gadfly David Horwitz and far-Left cause celebre Ward Churchill at George Washington University (the article may be found here, but unfortunately is password protected).

The subject was "Can Politics Be Taken Out of the Classroom -- and Should It Be?" The perspectives of the two men were naturally polar opposite. Horwitz--current sponsor of a conservative "bill of rights" for America's universities--of course answered in the affirmative, while Churchill--bane of conservatives everywhere for his provocative remarks concerning 9/11 and other hot-button topics--replied that politics cannot and should not be removed from the classroom. No news there.

In fact, according to the article, the entire affair was predictable, and a crashing bore. "I'm hoping for a fistfight," enthused one audience member. Instead, what he got was civility, heaven forbid, as the two men traded little more than one-liners and anecdotes.

The entire affair was predictably worthless. Why? Because both Churchill and Horwitz are as intellectually shallow and uninspiring as they are famous. I don't think Mr. Churchill has anything remotely resembling an original idea: basically warmed-over Marxist postmodernism, dressed up with just enough current events flavor to get him time on The O'Reilly Factor. As for Horwitz--I caught part of his act during a taped lecture on C-SPAN recently, and I was struck by the utter lack of nuance in his words and behavior: table-thumping anger, but not much else. If "liberal bias" is a problem in higher education, this man doesn't have the capacity for solving it.

But what really brought home the shabbiness of this entire affair was a quote from Churchill. The debate was set up by a conservative student group at GW, and their original idea was to have Churchill debate the group's president. They had to go get Horwitz, however, because, as Churchill put it, "I told them I'm not debating some undergrad."

"Some undergrad"? The contempt in that statement for college students, coming as it does from a professor, speaks volumes. Neither of these men have any business on a college campus.

Okay, if anybody has a caption idea for this one, send it to me. 

Lincoln in the News

A few interesting items this week:

1. It's interesting how and in what context Lincoln appears in forums related to President Bush and the Iraq War. Retired General Anthony Zinni, for example, recently cited Lincoln as an example for Bush to follow in making "tough choices," such as forcing Donald Rumsfeld to resign. On perhaps the other end of the spectrum, a letter writer in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote that "Mr. Lincoln embarked on saving the Union. Mr. Bush has embarked on saving civilization....Mr. Lincoln's pursuit of universal freedom in America went largely unrealized for generations. The current iteration of that goal also will take generations to achieve. I pray that those candidates who succeed in coming campaigns will sustain and build on that goal.Our civilization may well depend on it."

2. The Chicago Sun-Times ran a list of celebrities' favorite books, and Governor Pataki of New York listed Goodwin's Team of Rivals as his personal preference.

3. A couple of recent stories listed as a fact that Lincoln had Marfan's Syndrome; the "Famous People With Marfan's" link on www.marfan.com lists Lincoln's name. We've all heard the theory that Lincoln suffered from this disease, but has it actually been proven beyond a reasonable doubt?

4. Charles Neale made the Yonkers, New York "Wall of Fame" because he was one of the doctors who treated Lincoln on the night he was shot by Booth. Neale shares this privilege with, among others, Stephen Tyler of Aerosmith. If I had Lincoln's gift for humor, I'd find some kind of joke in that.

5. A woman in California collects miniature books, defined as being no larger than 3 inches by 3 inches. She asserts that "Abraham Lincoln often had one in his pocket," but offers no examples. Seems like I read someplace that Lincoln carried a small Bible at times; is this the book to which she was referring?

6. During a recent interview, the Toronto Blue Jays general manager, J.P. Riccardi, mentioned that, if he could invite any 3 people to dinner, Lincoln would be one of them. I wonder what sort of baseball talk Lincoln would like? Maybe he'd find a gentle way to tell Riccardi that he way overpaid for a closer this off-season.

7. An Ohio newspaper recently pointed out that, in an unfortunate happenstance, International Moment of Laughter Day falls on the same day as the anniversary of the Lincoln assassination. Geez.

8. Some bicyclist in Wisconsin recently donned a Lincoln mask and road the streets of his town to "support open communication between county employees and county board supervisors." I'll post the pic.

Rockwell, "Lincoln for the Defense" 

Lincoln image #10: "Lincoln for the Defense," Norman Rockwell

Yes, I know this one reflects my bias in favor of matters related to Lincoln's law practice. Still, I think this painting has much to recommend it, despite the usual Rockwell sentimentalization. For one thing, Mr. Rockwell did at least do his homework, accurately portraying Lincoln wearing a white suit during the Armstrong murder trial (the painting accompanied a 1956 Saturday Evening Post article describing the Armstrong "Almanac Trial"). I also rather like how Rockwell juxtaposed the symbolism of Lincoln's image: the intellectual content of the man as suggested by his scanning the legal brief, set off against his somewhat unruly appearance and brawny forearm, suggesting the simple values of the frontier. This is not to say that the latter isn't highly problematic--Lincoln hated manual labor--but you have to appreciate the artist's more subtle qualities here. Note also the distraught defendant in the background; nice touch there, Norman.

Lincoln images

I had a lot of fun doing my top ten favorite Lincoln documents list, so I thought I'd continue the format by offering my ten favorite Lincoln images. This will include photos and artwork. As with the docs list, these will be subjective, of course, reflecting my personal tastes and interests. Feedback welcome, as always.

On that last point: my apologies for my delays in responding to comments and emails. I do my best, but this is an extremely hectic time of the year for me. My kids are on spring break, and I'm beginning the wacky round of grading, conferences, etc. that lead up to graduation at my university. I'll do my best to get back with you guys ASAP, but please be patient.

Abe and me: on this matter of moderation

I'm in the very early stages of thinking about my newest book project, which will focus on Lincoln and race. That is to say, I'm at that point in which I know generally what I want to do with the book, but need to think through some basic questions guiding my research.

The idea is to provide a much-needed corrective to Lerone Bennett's execrable Forced Into Glory. It is disturbing that someone searching for a book-length study of the subject will be led only to Bennett and perhaps LaWanda Cox's valuable but dated study, Lincoln and Black Freedom. There are some good recent books on Lincoln and slavery--Allen Guelzo's excellent study, for example--but little on Lincoln and race. The subjects are related, of course, but they are quite different.

What I am pondering right now (while I'm driving, running, watching any given Nickolodeon rerun for the thousandth time) is how to approach the matter of Lincoln as a moderate on racial matters. I think most responsible Lincoln scholars--that is, scholars who are neither blinded by hatred or uncritical admiration of the man--would identify Lincoln as a "moderate" white man in the context of antebellum American white society.

Yes...but what does "moderate" mean? It suggests a position between--well, between what and what, exactly? People who hate Lincoln compare him to William Lloyd Garrison and other radicals, and Lincoln looks pretty bad; people who admire him compare him to a vociferous racebaiter like Stephen Douglas, and Lincoln looks pretty good. But it seems to me that the matter is much more complicated. Perhaps Lincoln should be located on a map of racial attitudes with multiple reference points--not just across space, but across time. What of other presidents and race, for example? What of other antebellum politicians running for local office in 1858, when Lincoln and Douglas staged their famous debates?

What I need to come up with, I believe, is what amounts to sort of a racial grid (for lack of a better term) that places Lincoln in a far more complete and nuanced sense of context than the usual binary approach to such matters. And I need to come up with criteria concerning what exactly are the appropriate (or inappropriate) contextual reference points.