There has never been, nor will there ever be, a time when living politicians are generally admired. Even Abe Lincoln, in death so revered, was reviled while he lived—indeed, he was finally murdered by one of his haters.
Democracy places leaders in a bad position. To govern, they must navigate whatever middle ground can be found between political extremes. Even in doing this well they are called indecisive or two-faced. Any decision vexes one side and very often displeases both.
Some claim our divisions are worse today than ever before, but it would be hard to find a time they were better. The nadir was the Civil War, when Lincoln found himself caught between intractable forces. Steve Inskeep, the genial NPR host who spends his days respectfully eliciting the views of all, finds in our 16th president a model for our age.
He has written an instructive and entertaining introduction to Lincoln by telling the stories of 16 men and women whose lives intersected with his, ranging from William Seward, his scheming secretary of state, to his troubled wife, Mary.
Most will be familiar to avid Lincolnophiles, but some less so, such as Lean Bear, the Cheyenne chief who was part of a delegation that met with Abe in the White House in 1863; and William Florville, the Haitian barber and entrepreneur who cut Lincoln’s unruly hair in Springfield.
What emerges is a multifaceted picture of a man who collected friends from everywhere. The book’s title comes from a letter Lincoln wrote in 1855 to his old Springfield buddy Joshua Speed, a Kentucky man from a family of enslavers. Lincoln admonishes Speed for admitting the “abstract wrong” of slavery without freeing his own, but the argument is without rancor. “If for this, you and I must differ, differ we must,” he wrote, and ends the letter, “Your friend forever.”
Inskeep’s method suits Lincoln. He loved people. He nurtured friendships, overlooked differences, and seemed constitutionally incapable of holding a grudge. Nearly always the tallest man in a room, he never looked down on anyone. He routinely ignored slights. But for all that flexibility, his convictions were like iron. The only barb that seemed to rankle him was to be branded wishy-washy.
“I am charged with vacillating,” he responded to one prominent critic, “but … I do not think the charge can be sustained; I think it cannot be shown that when I have once taken a position, I have ever retreated from it.” This to Frederick Douglass, the eloquent champion of freedom and one of Inskeep’s subjects. Then America’s most prominent Black man, Douglass had accused Lincoln of being “tardy, hesitating, and vacillating” on the subject of slavery. Abe was willing to accept the first two, but not the third.
The only barb that seemed to rankle him was to be branded wishy-washy.
In time, Douglass came to appreciate how sure-handed Lincoln had been. We see more clearly today the reason for Douglass’s impatience, but perhaps less clearly the ugly reality that encumbered Lincoln. Unwavering in his abhorrence of slavery, he knew that any hope of ending it depended on winning the war. If the Confederacy triumphed, slavery would endure and spread. The only path to freedom was victory. The Union could not afford to lose border states in this fight, nor would millions of racist Northerners rally under an abolitionist flag. So union had to be the firm priority. He admired Douglass, but he could not afford to imitate his moral clarity.
Lincoln’s benevolence was a natural trait, but he was shrewd enough to realize its utility. He refused to make enemies. One of the lesser-known portraits here is of Illinois state senator Joseph Gillespie. Originally, like Lincoln, a Whig, Gillespie became a prominent member of the Know Nothing party, an anti-immigration and anti-Catholic movement that Lincoln disdained. In that same letter to Speed, he wrote that if the Know Nothings gained power, “I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty — to Russia for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”
Yet he kept Gillespie close. He liked the man, and, perhaps as importantly, needed him. The Know Nothings had substantial strength in parts of Illinois, voters Lincoln needed in order to prevail in any statewide canvass. Gillespie’s support came close to winning Lincoln a seat in the U.S. Senate in his race against Stephen Douglas, in 1858, and would help thrust him into the White House two years later. Lincoln was capable of holding his nose if it meant success.
When he visited Richmond after the rebel government finally collapsed, in April 1865, one of the first to seek him out, much to his surprise, was John A. Campbell, who had left his position as a U.S. Supreme Court justice to become an assistant secretary of war for the Confederacy. Campbell was a bitter enemy, but also a friend. He had scorned his country but retained his affection for its leader, who returned it.
Years after that 1855 letter, Joshua Speed helped keep his key border state of Kentucky in the Union throughout the Civil War. It was as important as any battlefield victory. Union triumph would ultimately free those enslaved on Speed-family plantations, yet he and scores of his family members donated to raise a monument to the assassinated president in Springfield. They differed, but Lincoln prevailed.
While it is always useful to hold up an example like Lincoln, the bad news is we may never see another like him in our public life. His political achievements owed as much to his cunning as to his character. And for all of his eloquence and magnanimity, even he could not bridge the chasm in 1860. It would take an army and an ocean of blood to bring the slave power to heel.
Mark Bowden’s latest book is Life Sentence: The Brief and Tragic Career of Baltimore’s Deadliest Gang Leader