Lincoln--the inner man

President's Day. You think politics is divided today?  In 1861 it was so divided that South Carolina led 7 southern states to secede from the country (eventually 3 more) and our worst war took place.  This shutdown occurred when the only man who could have prevented it by his moral arguments was shut out of office for 5 months awaiting inauguration. 

            Abraham Lincoln was an anomaly in politics, a humble man of moral genius.  Jesus often taught that our actions must reflect our faith, but usually it’s the opposite.  Northerners and Southerners of the same church denominations split those churches over their own moral righteousness of their cause.  Lincoln was home-schooled by a mother who had only a Bible and a biography of George Washington.  Abe grew up without going to church and never did go.  Yet he had moral teaching, was moral by nature, and constantly quoted the biblical law (not gospel).  When he said “God” he often meant Providence. But he had humility and logical acumen, to figure out how morals must guide us.  In his campaign for President he said, “I come from nowhere.” (in a frontier log cabin) He believed his mother was illegitimate and she probably was.  His father was harsh and he had no important ancestors. Abe became a self-taught lawyer, failed in business, and the love of his life died.  He then married the prominent Mary Carter, who had money and famed ancestors.  She pushed him into politics because he was a master story teller and had good relations with all. But when he came home, she described him as ‘most useless, good-for-nothing man on earth’, a man who would just sit and read.  But Lincoln was thinking about life.  The issue of the day was slavery, the cruelty of which he had witnessed on many occasions. The one-term congressman wrote in 1849, “If A can prove, however conclusively, that he may of right enslave B, why may not B snatch the same argument…and enslave A? A is white and B is black—is it color then? Take care—by this rule, you are to be the slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own…You mean whites are intellectually superior? Take care again—you are to be the slave of the first man you meet with an intellect superior to your own.” In the Lincoln Douglas debates of 1858: “If slavery is good for negroes in the South, why not extend it to white men as well?” “Slavery happens when Liberty is destroyed. Our Union comes from the cause of Liberty.  Liberty and Union, now forever, inseparable.” Republican Convention: “We read in scripture that a man should receive the fruits of his labor.  Slaves are denied this God-given right.” “A house divided against itself cannot stand.  I believe this government cannot endure half slave and half free.” Douglas was a compromiser, who kicked the can of controversy down the road. Douglas won the Senate seat, but Lincoln became the conscience of the country. “The South knows that slavery is wrong. Why have so many slaves been set free, except by the promptings of conscience?” And concerning the Supreme Court Dred Scott decision on runaway slaves: “you can fool all the people some on the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” Lincoln succeeded in making people confront the issue and the South reacted with paranoia.  Abolitionists had decried slavery for years but Lincoln made perfect sense to any farmer, frontiersman, or shop-owner.

            The result was the Republicans ran Lincoln in 1860.  The Democrat Convention split into North and South nominations, and Whigs nominated a border state guy. Lincoln won the lowest-ever 39.9% of the popular vote but won an electoral college majority. South Carolina, who had first brought slave culture to colonial America, seceded followed by 6 other states via state conventions.  Hence, 697 men, mostly wealthy plantation owners, in state conventions, voted ‘secession’ and  initiated the war. All the while Pres. Buchanan sat indecisive for 5 months as Lincoln awaited inauguration. More ironically, the South had held all the political cards yet threw the game in a temper tantrum. Abolition would have required an Amendment and southern Democrats held control of Congress.

            But what of Lincoln’s faith?  As the war wore on and the toll skyrocketed, Lincoln agonized. “To anyone who reads his letters, speeches, and conversations, it is hard to believe that whatever his religious state of mind before the war, he acquired faith before it ended.”(historian Paul Johnson)  He began reading his Bible daily, talking about his prayers, “The Lord is always on the side of right. But it is of my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation should be on the Lord’s side.” “I am but a fallible man.” Second Inaugural Address: “With malice toward none, with charity to all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right.” So while everybody else seemed to be claiming to be an Agent of God’s Will, “the Elect Nation” or as a general called himself “a dictator for righteousness,” Lincoln remained humble.  As Sherman put it, “he invariably did the right thing, the God-fearing thing.”