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.”

Pocahontas

                                    History is His Story

Why did British, not French nor Spanish come to dominate N. America?  Agriculture, faith and a love story are why.

            In 1415, the Portuguese began to venture on the seas and discovered many volcanic islands west of Africa. What crop to grow there?  They found the answer further south in Africa.  African agriculture’s only carbohydrate was sugar cane grown under hot, backbreaking conditions by slaves.  Slavery was long gone from Europe, but the Portuguese began to adopt it, and grew instantly rich as Europe became addicted to sugar--only had honey prior.  Spain came to the new world but struggled to establish a colony for 30 years in Hispanola.  Then Cortez had a bold defeat of the Aztecs and Pizarro of the Incas.  Their model was to colonize the way they had conquered and occupied Moorish Spain—make serfs of the natives and force them to convert. Native American agriculture had little meat, mostly birds that were hunted.  Spanish had cattle, horses, hogs, sheep and chickens, an enticement for native Indians to join a hacienda (plantation).  But Indians died rapidly of smallpox-- 20 million people from Mexico to Peru became 2 million in 40 years.  Hence the Spanish brought slaves to do the labor. One strange group were the natives of Canary Islands, fair-skinned blondes who were deported to Puerto Rico.  Hence there are dark- and light-skinned Puerto Ricans today.

            France was totally absorbed in civil war between Catholics and Calvinists until 1590.  They realized that they needed to grab a portion of N. America before the Spanish owned it all. Indians in what we call the Deep South had some corn/beans agriculture, but were mostly hunter-gatherers among a population of 2 to 5 million north of  Mexico.  France founded 2 forts in Florida that the watchful Spanish destroyed.  Champlain, recognizing the value of fishing and furs established a foothold in Acadia and Quebec. 

            But if common men will risk everything to go to a new place, they must feel that somehow God calls them to go to the wilderness to ply their humble trades, like farming or trapping.  The Spanish brought priests and built churches but the contingent was mostly soldiers.  Likewise the French neglected farming.  The first two British settlements Roanoke and Jamestown, were also soldiers and adventurers with very secular leadership.  They too failed or languished. There were other failed English settlements you’ve probably never heard of, like Sagadahoc in Maine. The English had no cash crop.

            Post Reformation Britain developed a popular myth that England was a Chosen Race, the new Israel. Fox’s Book of Martyrs, a book of stories about Protestants resisting Bloody Mary’s attempt at Catholic restoration was the popular read.  Wycliffe begat Hus begat Luther begat Cranmer, Brits reasoned. The Sea Dog pirates and merchants of England adopted strict Protestantism in their codes of bravery and had a reason to raid Spanish shipping. “God is English.  For you fight not only in the quarrell of your country, but also chiefly in defence of His true religion.” --Queen Elizabeth. Converting Indians was a goal of both Jamestown and Plymouth as they settled colonies but Jamestown was mostly soldiers.  It would have died-off had not Capt. John Smith arrived in 1608 to find 53 survivors.  He organized military discipline, negotiated with the tribes to get enough food to last the winter, and got no thanks for his efforts as he left. The colony again nearly collapsed but a teenage Indian girl, daughter of the chief, befriended the settlers.  But war broke out and Pocahontas was taken hostage by the colonists.  Nonetheless, Pastor Whitaker taught her Christianity and she was baptized in January 1614. (Anglican theology) A truce was put in place, but Pocahantas wanted to stay with the Christians. And later (February?) she fell in love with John Rolfe. Pocahontas and Rolfe married and produced children, thus endearing the Powhattans who showed Rolfe how to grow tobacco. Suddenly 60 settlers in Virginia had a cash crop. In 1619 the British crown hit upon the idea that they could exile convicts to Jamestown. Many had mental problems but others were determined to turn their lives around with faith and farming.  A ship of poor women arrived as well, available for the price of 125 pounds of tobacco. Settler-families started to emerge.  And on July 30, 1619, the first General Assembly of Virginia met in the Jamestown Church.  The colony designed a miniature parliament.  There was nothing like it in all the Americas, the first popular legislature.  At a time when Virginia’s progenitor, Sir Walter Raleigh, was executed by James I over the issue of divine right of kings, this was a significant portent of America’s future.  And by the way, proud Rolfe descendants are numerous in Virginia today.