SOBRAN'S --
The Real News of the Month
January 2006
Volume 13, Number 1
Editor: Joe Sobran
Publisher: Fran Griffin (Griffin Communications)
Managing Editor: Ronald N. Neff
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CONTENTS
Features
-> The Living Document, RIP
-> Winter Scenes (plus electronic Exclusives)
-> Young Lincoln
-> The Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation
Nuggets
FEATURES
The Living Document, RIP
Both John Roberts and Samuel Alito survived their
confirmation hearings, winning praise for their poise and
legal acumen, as well as rueful respect for their deft
sidestepping of the Big Issue: Roe v. Wade. Liberals
grumbled that they were "extreme" and "outside the
mainstream" for having expressed doubts, at various times
in the past, about Roe and other sacred liberal
precedents, such as those requiring reapportionment of
state legislatures under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Amusingly enough, it was Justice William O. Douglas,
the liberals' liberal, who observed, "No patent medicine
was ever put to wider and more varied use than the
Fourteenth Amendment." Truer words were never spoken --
certainly not by Douglas, anyway. Nearly every judicial
ruling liberals like to call "historic" has relied on
this badly worded and illegally ratified excrescence on
the Constitution. It can be twisted to mean nearly
anything, and has been.
But the very word "historic" suggests the truth:
that all these bold rulings were controversial in their
day, which is to say, outside the mainstream. When they
were handed down, there were certainly two sides to many
issues, with liberal justices audaciously taking the
novel side (and even they were far from unanimous in many
cases). Once that was done, however, it appears that the
traditional views thus overturned became taboo, and it
was the part of conservatives to conserve the liberals'
gains. The old mainstream was dead; long live the new
mainstream!
Henceforth liberals would add a new wrinkle to their
rhetorical zeal for dissent and independent thinking.
When practiced by their opponents, these admirable things
abruptly became vices and acquired pejorative names like
"extremism." Hence the rejection of Robert Bork, who had
indiscreetly criticized the flimsy reasonings and rulings
of both the Warren and Burger courts; hence the pressure
on subsequent Republican nominees to swear fealty to
those things Bork had so rudely profaned.
A liberal is one who can be open-minded about
anything except the past; about that he is strictly a
bigot. He divides the past into two broad categories, the
"progressive" and the "reactionary," and once a thing has
been placed in the latter column (also called
"Neanderthal" or "medieval"), it never gets another
chance. From then on it's "Roma locuta, causa finita," as
it were. The Deposit of Faith has been infallibly
defined. Or, in the terse formula of the Brezhnev
Doctrine, "What we have, we keep." So much for the Living
Document!
Happily, a new era is upon us, liberals have lost
their long monopoly of power, and so this great rule of
liberalism is becoming unenforceable. Roberts and Alito
prudently tiptoed past some touchy questions, with
respectful nods to stare decisis, and lo! The U.S.
Supreme Court, though it still leaves much to be desired,
now has four justices who are willing to view the past
with open minds. At this point, that's about as much as
any reasonable reactionary can hope for.
The Moving Picture
(page 2)
Before, during, and after their confirmation
hearings, John Roberts and Samuel Alito faced the usual
liberal charges that their views were "extreme" and
"outside the mainstream." That is to say, liberal
judicial precedents -- that is to say, Roe v. Wade --
should be regarded as "settled law," eternally fixed, and
nobody suspected of ever having thought independently
about them should be confirmed to the bench. Of course
those "historic" rulings were controversial in their own
day, and Roe remains so. So since when has the Living
Document become immutable?
* * *
Though use of the phrase didn't begin with the
Bush II administration, or even with Bill Clinton's, it's
comical how often news reports of prominent Republicans
these days note that the subject "denies any wrongdoing."
Every presidency begins by boasting that it has
"restored" integrity, honor, patriotism, national pride,
et cetera, to the White House; and a few months later
we're right back to the phase of "denies any wrongdoing."
Next time I go to confession, I must tell the priest,
"I'm a Republican, father, and I categorically deny any
wrongdoing."
* * *
The Semitically Incorrect David Irving has been
jailed in Austria for having committed the crime of,
well, free speech: he has denied that it has been proved
that there were gas chambers at Auschwitz. Though he's
nearly always described as a "Holocaust denier," no such
denial is ever actually cited; in fact, he has said, in
my hearing, "I'm not a Holocaust =denier=; I'm a
Holocaust =skeptic.=" But in Europe, that may be enough
to get him a long prison sentence.
* * *
An Egyptian mullah has issued a fatwa decreeing that
having sexual intercourse in the nude "annuls the
marriage." Setting aside the problem of enforcement, this
raises all sorts of questions. Is it enough to wear
socks? Party hats? And of course, veils? And we think we
have it tough putting up with clergymen like Pat
Robertson!
* * *
Elton John has tied the knot, as it were, with his
boyfriend under Britain's liberalized civil union laws.
We trust the happy couple isn't honeymooning in Egypt,
where tinted sunglasses may not satisfy the law.
* * *
The war in Iraq drags on, as our brave men and women
continue dying to spread democracy and freedom. You have
to wonder whether even the most hardened neoconservative
doesn't sometimes ask himself, in the middle of the
night, whether the cause really warrants sacrificing the
lives of so many shiksas.
* * *
Sad to say, the WASHINGTON POST reports that Colin
Powell and Colonel Larry Wilkerson, his old friend and
former chief of staff, are no longer on speaking terms.
Wilkerson is scathing about G.W. Bush and Co., whom he
accuses of "hard-headedness," "arrogance," "hubris," and
"probably the worst ineptitude in governance,
decision-making, and leadership I've seen in 50-plus
years." He thinks the decision to invade Iraq was a worse
blunder than the Bay of Pigs or the Vietnam war. And he
strongly suggests that his old boss came to share these
views after being "used" and "misled" by Bush into
defending the disaster.
The Young Lincoln
(pages 3-12)
[What follows is a chapter from my book in progress, KING
LINCOLN. It deals, lightly I hope, with Lincoln's
formative years, citing details and quoting sources which
most biographers overlook, but which I think are
important for understanding the man he was to become. My
approach here is more sympathetic than critical; I want
to show even the virtues that would later turn into
tragic flaws. And of course a lot of this material is
just enjoyable gossip; yet even that helps us size up the
real man who has been obstructed from our view by legends
and monuments.]
Abraham Lincoln's formative years remain a mystery.
So does the man himself. Among the countless books about
him we find such titles as THE LINCOLN NOBODY KNOWS,
LINCOLN THE UNKNOWN, and THE LINCOLN ENIGMA.
He came from poor and illiterate people who left few
records of themselves and little testimony about him; the
few recorded remarks of his relatives about him are dull
and uninformative. He had been named for his grandfather
Abraham Lincoln, who had been killed "by stealth" by an
Indian.
A kick in the head from a mare once left the boy
Lincoln unconscious for several hours; when he came to,
he finished the sentence he'd begun at the moment of the
kick. Otherwise, his early days appear to have been
uneventful. He summed them up with a line from the poet
Thomas Gray: "The short and simple annals of the poor."
As a grown man, Lincoln had few close friends --
none from boyhood or early youth -- and no real
confidants. He never kept a diary or wrote a full
autobiography; he never poured his heart out even in his
private letters; and it is hard to imagine him disclosing
his intimate memories and thoughts to the reading public.
Apart from his sometimes rowdy frontier humor, he was
like Jefferson in his personal reserve.
Even his long-time junior law partner, the
intelligent and observant Billy Herndon, who knew him as
well as anyone, didn't really understand him very well.
The two men got along together, with no friction and much
mutual respect; but there was a firm (though tacit) line
that Herndon could never cross. Despite Lincoln's
friendly and humble manner, those who met him felt that
he was not a man to take familiar liberties with.
Something about him was always, in an indefinable way,
remote.
But Lincoln was, after all, a human being, not an
impenetrable sphinx. Far from being absolutely opaque, he
merely had an unusually reserved manner most of the time,
and he was too complex to disclose all of himself at once
even if he had wanted to. Spontaneous self-expression was
not his style. And he instinctively hid things from
others -- not necessarily guilty things, but things it
was in his interest to conceal. Often these included his
intentions. They certainly included his origins. For all
his public praises of "our [national] fathers," his own
ancestors were nothing to brag about. All in all, he was
a man who kept his own counsel. And when the time for
words came, he was generally more than ready.
Lincoln never wanted to =seem= mysterious. He
habitually presented himself as a plain, simple man,
"without guile," speaking common sense with unadorned
logic. He argued without pedantry or arcane citations. In
an age of long-winded oratory, he was concise. Unlearned
audiences could understand him. He once cautioned the
intellectual Herndon, "Billy, don't shoot too high -- aim
lower and the common people will understand you. They are
the ones you want to reach -- at least the ones you ought
to reach. The educated and refined people will understand
you any way. If you aim too high your ideas will go over
the heads of the masses, and only hit those who need no
hitting."
Born in 1809, Lincoln grew up in poverty on what was
then the Western frontier -- Kentucky, Indiana, and
Illinois. His forebears were Quakers, but the family had
long since lapsed; some of them were Baptists by the time
he was born.
He often referred self-consciously to his humble
beginnings, and they haunted him even more than he
showed. According to Herndon, "There was something about
his origin he never cared to dwell on." He seems to have
been ashamed of his father, Thomas Lincoln, and none too
fond of him; if he ever said a good word about the old
man, no record of it has survived. In a pair of brief
autobiographical summaries he recalled that Thomas grew
up "literally without education. He never did more in the
way of writing than to bunglingly sign his own name." The
word "bunglingly" sounds distinctly untender, if not
contemptuous. In Lincoln's background "there was
absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education."
Was his father a drunkard? There is no positive
evidence either way; but if he was, it might explain
Lincoln's aversion to liquor and his early passion for
the temperance movement.
As for his mother, Lincoln once confided to Herndon,
"My mother was a bastard." Her illegitimacy pained him as
a reflection on himself. But he added, "God bless my
mother; all that I am or ever hope to be I owe to her."
Then he fell silent for a long time, and never mentioned
the subject to Herndon again. The only route of escape
from his origins he saw was hard work and
self-improvement, and he took it.
Everyone who knew the young Lincoln agreed on one
thing. He read constantly. As a boy, he read everything
he could lay hands on; as a lawyer on the circuit, he
would read by firelight as his roommates snored in the
same room; as president, he would lie reading on the
floor of the White House, propping his head against a
chair. His reading also isolated him from those around
him. Though physically present, he was not really with
them; he was with Blackstone, Shakespeare, or Euclid; or
with the prophet Isaiah. No wonder he seemed remote and
aloof without meaning to.
His mother died when he was nine. His father
remarried; his stepmother adored him -- "the best boy I
ever saw," she called him -- and Lincoln seems to have
been much closer to her than to his father. But on the
whole, Lincoln remained distant from his poor relations.
He never introduced them to his wife, his children, or
his friends; Thomas Lincoln never met his grandchildren.
As Lincoln rose in society, his kin became embarrassing
to him.
It was different with his own children: he doted on
them, enjoyed every moment he could spend with them, and
disciplined them so little that they were a severe
annoyance to others, even interrupting his cabinet
meetings without reproof. Herndon observed tartly, "Had
they [defecated] in Lincoln's hat and rubbed it in his
boots, he would have laughed and thought it smart."
Lincoln first made his local reputation as a
funnyman. His gifts as a storyteller and mimic attracted
people from miles around a country store where he worked
for a living. "As a mimic he was unequalled," Herndon
recalled. His demeanor had little of the dignity and
melancholy later associated with him; the crowds he kept
roaring with laughter never imagined that this fun-loving
youth's violent death would one day shock the world.
His jocularity didn't sit well in Washington during
his presidency. His enemies portrayed him as a heartless
buffoon, joking while men were dying in agony. His own
cabinet found his droll stories unseemly.
He was a natural leader for several reasons, his
humor being only one of them. There were also his
commanding height and physical power. His brawny strength
awed other men even on the tough frontier; as a wrestler
he took on all comers and won. He served a brief stint in
the Black Hawk war of 1832; though he saw no fighting, he
won the respect of his fellows, who elected him their
captain. His honesty and fairness caused people to like
him, and he was often sought to referee games or
adjudicate disputes. He was also kind and gentle, his
tenderness extending even to animals in distress; there
are stories of his solicitude for dogs, turtles, birds,
even a hog.
Though unassuming, Lincoln was also, despite his
lack of education and polish, strikingly intelligent. His
natural qualities commanded respect without any effort on
his part. He had the power to hurt and humiliate others,
if he wanted to; he was too good-natured to want to, but
his force of personality nevertheless made itself felt.
Beneath his seeming humility Herndon noticed his
deep-seated arrogance, "an unconscious feeling of
superiority and pride."
His words might not sparkle with brilliance, but in
their plainness and logic, they had weight. After his
death Isaac Arnold would recall that "as a
conversationist he had no equal. One might meet in
company with him the most distinguished men, of various
pursuits and professions, but after listening for two or
three hours, on separating, it was what Lincoln had said
that would be remembered. His were the ideas and
illustrations that would not be forgotten." Arnold had
known men who preferred Lincoln's conversation to an
evening at the theater.
His habits were sober; he abstained from liquor and
tobacco. And he had a natural tact and refinement: much
as he loved a bawdy story, he minded his tongue in the
presence of women.
Lincoln was gauche around the opposite sex. His odd
looks must have made him feel ugly as a youth; he was
clumsy and ill-dressed to boot. His humor didn't seem to
help him make small talk with the girls; he found himself
reserved, overproper, tongue-tied. Like many serious
young men, he probably tried too hard and felt himself a
failure. Women and their special needs and expectations
simply baffled him. "Lincoln had none of the tender ways
that please a woman," Herndon remarked. Mary Owens, whom
he briefly courted, found him "deficient in those little
links which make up the great chain of a woman's
happiness.... I thought him lacking in smaller
attentions." But she remembered with amusement that he
could pity even a hog in distress.
Among men, though, Lincoln was a success. With them
he was self-assured, poised, and popular. They in turn
recognized him as a budding politician and urged him to
run for office. The idea appealed to him. In his first
race for the state legislature he narrowly lost, but he
won his own precinct 277 to 7. He was elected to the
legislature on his second try, in 1834. In 1836, 1838,
and 1840 he was easily reelected, until he chose not to
run again in 1842.
Lincoln soon excelled as a speaker and tactician.
His speeches were both persuasive and entertaining; his
jokes and yarns enlivened his performances, in contrast
to the standard heavy oratory of the age. His fellow
Whigs and the Democrats alike were delighted by his
manner of speaking, the chief exceptions being the
targets of his sarcasm and satire.
In his mid twenties, during his first term as an
Illinois legislator, he fell in love with a pretty girl
named Ann Rutledge, whom he hoped to marry, despite her
ambiguous engagement to another man, who had mysteriously
gone away to New York. She suddenly took sick and died in
1835. Billy Herndon (who never met her) may have
exaggerated her importance in Lincoln's life, but later
biographers have gone to the other extreme in discounting
the story. Herndon, who was honest as to facts however
unreliable in his judgments, quotes Lincoln as saying of
Ann's grave, "My heart lies buried there."
There is no reason to doubt that Lincoln said and
meant it. We can only guess whether he would have married
her had she lived. Many years later, after his election
to the presidency, a New Salem friend asked him if it was
true that he had fallen in love with Ann Rutledge. "It is
true -- true indeed I did," Lincoln replied; "I did
honestly and truly love the girl and think often -- often
of her now." We needn't take this to mean, as Herndon
spitefully did, that Lincoln regretted marrying Mary
Todd, whom he met four years after Ann's death. He
recovered enough to woo at least one woman in the interim
between Ann and Mary; he took her rejection with good
humor. But like the rest of us, Lincoln must have
thought, as he aged, of the road not taken.
If the "real" Lincoln is elusive, a chief reason is
his humor. He could see any situation from more than one
angle, and he regarded even himself with irony.
Anticipating Groucho Marx, he told his close friend
Joshua Speed he would hesitate to marry any woman who was
"blockhead" enough to accept him; a quip that in its way
forecast the graver irony of his Second Inaugural
Address, in which he contrasted the purposes of both
North and South with those of Divine Providence. "Men are
not flattered by being shown that there has been a
difference of purpose between the Almighty and them," he
told Thurlow Weed shortly after that speech. Even as a
young man, Lincoln could step back from himself. And even
in the heat of a civil war in which the temptation to
self-justification was overwhelming, he never quite lost
this rare capacity for self-detachment.
In a superficial way, humor was Lincoln's immediate
link to his fellow men; in a deeper way, it isolated him,
keeping him aloof from the normal partisan passions of
those men, even when he shared those passions.
Lincoln's recurrent depressions were the obverse of
his ambition; they began about the time he was admitted
to the Illinois bar in 1836. As for his ambition, Herndon
said, "That man who thinks Lincoln calmly sat down and
gathered his robes about him waiting for the people to
call him, has a very erroneous knowledge of Lincoln. He
was always calculating, and always planning ahead. His
ambition was a little engine that knew no rest." Herndon
also observed that Lincoln, when he chose, could be "the
most secretive -- reticent -- shut-mouthed man that ever
existed."
Lincoln's friend David Davis echoed this portrait
almost verbatim: "He was the most reticent, secretive man
I ever saw or expect to see." Another lawyer, Leonard
Swett, added, "He always told only enough of his plans
and purposes to induce the belief that he had
communicated all; yet he reserved enough to have
communicated nothing." He could sidestep a question with
extraordinary skill; or with a joke. His speech was
literally accurate, as a rule, but it would be stretching
a point to call him candid. He seldom blurted his
thoughts.
It was impossible to guess what Lincoln was
thinking, and he did a lot of thinking. His powers of
concentration were great; his long silences were
notorious. So were his evasions. "Lincoln never confided
to me anything," Davis complained. "I can get nothing out
of him," a political associate once reported; while
another observed that "he seems to make it a matter of
pride not to commit himself."
Lincoln was renowned for his scrupulous honesty, but
this was partly strategic: he knew the value of good
credit (rather than declare bankruptcy, he worked for
many years to pay off debts a deceased business partner
had stuck him with) and the danger of being exposed as a
deceiver. As he told Herndon, "I han't been caught lyin'
yet, and I don't mean to be."
His honesty was to some extent a modus operandi; so
was his secretiveness, as during his long public silences
before his inauguration and during the Sumter crisis.
Sometimes he let his subordinates mislead people, but
Lincoln himself was never "caught lyin'." His lawyerly
balance between accuracy and reserve has given rise to
many of the enigmas that still surround him. He remains,
as Richard N. Current has put it, "the Lincoln nobody
knows." In short, he was a master equivocator.
Yes, Lincoln was honest, in the sense that his words
were nearly always strictly accurate, as far as they
went; but his honesty should not be confused with
impulsive and uninhibited candor. It was never that. It
was always guarded and calculating. The words might be
true enough, but the inner man remained hidden. And even
the words might bear a cunning double meaning.
What was the nature of Lincoln's ambition? For an
answer, we may study his 1838 speech to the Springfield
Young Men's Lyceum. In that speech, titled "The
Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions," he argued
that the American people faced no serious foreign threat;
any danger "must spring up amongst us. It cannot come
from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves
be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we
must live through all time, or die by suicide." The chief
peril he saw lay in mob rule, riot, anarchy.
But he foresaw another peril too. The Founding
Fathers had sought "celebrity, and fame, and
distinction," in building the institutions of the
Republic. "If they succeeded, they were to be
immortalized; their names were to be transferred to
counties and cities, and rivers and mountains; and to be
revered and sung, and toasted through time." But today,
he said, "this field of glory is harvested," and in the
future, "men of ambition and talents" -- such as "an
Alexander, a Caesar, a Napoleon" -- may decide to achieve
fame by destroying the free institutions the Founders
built:
Towering genius disdains a beaten path.
It seeks regions hitherto unexplored. It sees
=no distinction= in adding story to story,
upon the monuments of fame, erected to the
memory of others. It =denies= that it is
glory enough to serve under any chief. It
=scorns= to tread in the footsteps of =any=
predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts
burns for distinction; and, if possible, will
have it, whether at the expense of
emancipating slaves, or enslaving freemen. Is
it unreasonable then to expect, that some man
possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled
with ambition sufficient to push it to its
utmost stretch, will at some time, spring up
amongst us? And when such a one does, it will
require the people to be united with each
other, attached to the government and laws,
and generally intelligent, to successfully
frustrate his designs.
Distinction will be his paramount
object; and although he would as willingly,
perhaps more so, acquire it by doing good as
harm; yet, that opportunity being past, and
nothing left to be done in the way of
building up, he would set boldly to the task
of pulling down.
Some have supposed that Lincoln was unconsciously
(or even consciously) prophesying his own career, even
his assumption of dictatorial powers during the Civil
War. We need not go that far; it is enough to see that
Lincoln, even as a young man, conceived the ultimate
fulfillment of ambition not in power or wealth, but in
distinction, fame, glory, monuments -- historical memory.
In this sense the speech is deeply self-revealing: from
the beginning of his political career, Lincoln, whose
"towering genius" was still latent and unsuspected by
others, craved to be remembered in history.
The reason may be connected with Lincoln's views on
religion. As Robert V. Bruce has argued, Lincoln probably
aspired to =historical= immortality because he never
believed in =personal= immortality: "Lincoln's antidote
for despair was the concept of immortality through
remembrance, eternal consciousness by proxy in the mind
of posterity."
"History" and "memory" are the motifs of Lincoln's
utterances. His words are so memorable in part because
they are about memory itself. "The mystic chords of
memory ... The world will little note, nor long remember
... Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this
Congress and this administration, will be remembered in
spite of ourselves ... The fiery trial through which we
pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the
latest generation ... The world will not forget that we
say this ... the world will forever applaud ... impartial
history will find ... and call us blessed, to the latest
generations ... We run our memory back over the pages of
history ... cherished memories ... "
Raised as a Baptist, Lincoln never belonged to a
church as an adult; as a young man he was strongly
anti-religious. Herndon tells us he had been influenced
by his reading of Enlightenment skeptics like Voltaire,
the Comte de Volney, and Thomas Paine. More than one
friend said Lincoln "bordered on atheism." Others thought
him more of a Deist, believing in a general Providence
but not a personal God. Lincoln's favorite poem, a grimly
maudlin thing titled "Mortality," by William Knox,
offered no hope beyond the grave.
The young Lincoln was surprisingly militant in his
skepticism. Herndon relates that around 1834 Lincoln
wrote a short book attacking the basic tenets of
Christianity, including the truth of the Bible and the
divinity of Christ. "He carried it to the store [where he
worked], where it was read and freely discussed. His
friend and employer, Samuel Hill, was among the
listeners, and, seriously questioning the propriety of a
promising young man like Lincoln fathering such unpopular
notions, he snatched the manuscript from his hands and
thrust it into the stove. The book went up in flames, and
Lincoln's political future was secure."
"But," Herndon goes on, "his infidelity and his
skeptical views were not diminished. He soon removed to
Springfield, where he attracted considerable notice by
his rank doctrine." It is amusing to reflect that but for
Hill's intervention, Lincoln might have published the
book, foreclosed any chance of a political career, and
been remembered in American history, if remembered at
all, as a minor freethinker.
Over the years Lincoln tried to confine his doubts
about Christianity to private conversations with friends;
but he had made such a reputation as an infidel that by
1846, when he ran for a seat in Congress, the local
clergy strongly opposed him. He found it necessary to
publish a handbill denying that he was "an open scoffer
at Christianity." It was a guarded denial, carefully
avoiding any statement of his positive beliefs. "That I
am not a member of any Christian Church, is true; but I
have never denied the truth of Scriptures; and I have
never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion in
general, or of any denomination of Christians in
particular."
He added,
I do not think I could myself, be
brought to support a man for office, whom I
knew to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at,
religion. Leaving the higher matter of
eternal consequences, between him and his
Maker, I still do not think any man has the
right thus to insult the feelings, and injure
the morals, of the community in which he may
live.
This was a pretty noncommittal and evasive denial,
and probably in large part false, if his old friends are
to be trusted. But as a politician, Lincoln did believe
in one thing: "public opinion" or "public sentiment."
"With public sentiment," he said in 1858, "nothing can
fail; without it, nothing can succeed." Or, as he would
say in his 1854 speech on the Kansas-Nebraska Act, "A
universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, cannot
safely be disregarded."
This may explain why he was so often willing to
quote the Bible in his speeches: he knew that "public
sentiment" accepted Scriptural authority, whether or not
he himself did. Bible-based Christianity was the
foundation of American public opinion. And Lincoln was
always ready to deal with public opinion as he found it.
He was a politician, not a martyr.
Bruce notes that Lincoln, when consoling the
bereaved, was always careful not to affirm his belief in
an afterlife. He found lawyer-like formulas that sounded
vaguely pious; yet he could never bring himself to say
the conventional words about reunion with the dead in
heaven. Like many close students of Lincoln, Bruce notes
that he had "a genius for saying precisely what he meant
and no more, yet in such a way that at first impression
it sounded like what his audience wanted to hear."
Lincoln grew increasingly secretive about his
religious beliefs. If he had become more orthodox with
age, he would have had no obvious reason to conceal the
fact; whereas if he remained skeptical, as Herndon
insisted he did, he had every reason to keep it to
himself. On a few occasions he is reported to have
endorsed the Bible, in a general way; but many
essentially irreligious people might do as much. (His
brief 1860 campaign autobiography avoids the whole
subject of religion and church membership.)
His own wife sounded none too sure about his views
on religion: "Mr. Lincoln had no faith and no hope in the
usual acceptation of those words. He never joined a
church; but still, as I believe, he was a religious man
by nature. He first seemed to think about the subject
when our boy Willie died, and then more than ever about
the time he went to Gettysburg; but it was a kind of
poetry in his nature, and he was never a technical
Christian." One senses that Lincoln never really confided
his thoughts even to Mary Lincoln; reticence indeed!
Still, he was fluent in the rhetoric of piety. His
speeches are full of Biblical and religious resonances:
"house divided, chosen people, hallow, consecrate,
devotion, dedicated, under God, the judgments of the
Lord, true and righteous, imploring the assistance of
Divine Providence, His appointed time, this mighty
scourge of war, the widow, the orphan, the better angels
of our nature, call us blessed, even unto the latest
generation ... "
Lacking Latin, Greek, and even French, Lincoln,
thanks to King James and Shakespeare, had a marvelous ear
for English words with ancient and archaic echoes. (His
witty secretary John Hay sometimes referred to Lincoln in
his diary as "the Ancient.")
Among Shakespeare's plays Lincoln's favorite was
MACBETH. It fascinated him to the end of his life,
perhaps because of its themes of political ambition and
equivocation: Macbeth is fatally misled by "th'
equivocation of the fiend that lies like truth ... these
juggling fiends ... that palter with us in a double
sense, That keep the word of promise to our ear and break
it to our hope." The witches deceive Macbeth without
being "caught lyin'." Echoes of this and other
Shakespeare plays may be found in several of Lincoln's
speeches.
As a courtroom lawyer, Lincoln was skillful. His
friendly, folksy style concealed a deep cunning. "His
analytical powers were marvelous," Joshua Speed recalled.
"He always resolved every question into its primary
elements, and gave up every point on his own side which
did not seem to be invulnerable. One would think, to hear
him present his case in court, he was giving his case
away. He would concede point after point to his adversary
until it would seem his case was conceded entirely away.
But he always reserved a point upon which he claimed a
decision in his favor, and his concession magnified the
strength of his claim. He rarely failed in gaining his
cases in court."
He would give up a minor point with a cheerful,
disarming, "Well, I reckon I was wrong," then move on to
the next issue without looking back. His friend Leonard
Swett described Lincoln's concessive courtroom manner in
similar terms: "When the whole thing was unraveled, the
adversary would begin to see that what [Lincoln] was so
blandly giving away was simply what he couldn't get and
keep. By giving away six points and carrying the seventh,
and the whole case hanging on the seventh, he traded away
everything which would give him the least aid in carrying
that. Any man who took Lincoln for a simple-minded man
would very soon wake up with his back in a ditch."
Lincoln had a way of inducing his foes to underestimate
him; and they usually did, to their cost.
Another lawyer, John Littlefield, remembered the
same style from a slightly different perspective: "The
client would sometimes become alarmed, thinking Lincoln
had given away so much of the case that he would not have
anything left. After he had shuffled off the unnecessary
surplusage, he would get down to 'hard pan,' and state
the case so clearly that it would soon be apparent that
he had enough left to win the case with. In making such
concessions he would so establish his position in
fairness and honesty that the lawyer on the opposite side
would scarcely have the heart to oppose what he contended
for."
Swett added this observation: "The first impression
he generally conveyed was that he had stated the case of
his adversary better and more forcibly than his opponent
could state it himself." His rare ability to comprehend
his foe's position made Lincoln himself a powerful foe.
Despite Lincoln's excellence in courtroom forensics,
his colleague Stephen Logan judged that "his general
knowledge of law was never very formidable." Herndon
found him "strikingly deficient in the technical rules of
the law." More interested in principles than in details,
he was rarely thorough in preparing his cases; he relied
on his logic, wit, and ability to sway a jury to get him
through the day. He was particularly adroit at using
jokes to bring home analogies; jurors laughed as they saw
his points. His adversaries must have heard the verdict
in the hilarity. But though his humor was his strong suit
with juries, Lincoln could be equally effective in teary
pathos or roaring indignation. His displays of anger were
rare, but when they erupted they were crushing.
Lincoln's skills were sufficient to make him a
successful and highly respected lawyer. He argued
hundreds of cases before the state supreme court and won
most of them. One Illinois newspaper ranked him "at the
head of the profession in this state."
He also had a reputation for honesty in his
profession. Logan added that Lincoln "had this one
peculiarity: he couldn't fight in a bad case." Herndon
agreed: "With him justice and truth were paramount. If to
him a thing seemed untrue he could not in his nature
simulate truth. His retention by a man to defend a
lawsuit did not prevent him from throwing it up in its
most critical stage if he believed he was espousing an
unjust cause."
Another lawyer, Joseph Gillespie, remarked after
Lincoln's death, "It was not in his nature to assume or
attempt to bolster up a false position. He would abandon
his case first." David Davis is worth quoting on this
head: "The framework of his mental and moral being was
honesty, and a wrong case was poorly defended by him. The
ability which some eminent lawyers possess of explaining
away the bad points of a cause by ingenious sophistry was
denied him. In order to bring into full activity his
great powers it was necessary that he should be convinced
of the right and justice of the matter which he
advocated. When so convinced, whether the cause was great
or small he was usually successful."
Lincoln could be so moved by honest grievances that
he sometimes took cases for poor clients without
accepting a fee. But in 1847 he also represented a
Kentucky slaveowner named Robert Matson who sought to
recover his fugitive slaves in Illinois; that case didn't
seem to disturb Lincoln's conscience. Maybe he felt that
representing a slaveowner was part of his business, like
representing murderers and other criminals. But there is
a clear difference between getting a man acquitted of a
wrong already done and helping him commit a wrong.
At any rate, the Matson case casts a strange light
on Lincoln's claim that he had always hated slavery for
its "monstrous injustice." He later told Speed, "I
confess I hate to see the poor creatures hunted down, and
caught, and carried back to their stripes, and unrewarded
toils"; the sight of a dozen slaves shackled together on
the Ohio River had been "a continual torment to me," and
slavery still had "the power of making me miserable."
These vivid words, addressed to his closest friend,
deepen the enigma of the relation of the public Lincoln
to the private one.
Lincoln himself deplored the "vague popular belief
that lawyers are necessarily dishonest." He advised, "Let
no young man, choosing the law for a calling, for a
moment yield to this popular belief. Resolve to be honest
at all events; and if, in your own judgment, you can not
be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a
lawyer. Choose some other occupation, rather than one in
the choosing of which you do, in advance, consent to be a
knave." Successful as he was, Lincoln was to all
appearances almost indifferent to profit and careless
about money. Herndon said he lacked "money sense."
In 1839 Lincoln met Mary Todd, daughter of a banker
and cousin of his law partner John Stuart. By the fall of
1840 he was engaged to her. They were married two years
later.
Mary Todd Lincoln has always had a bad press, and
she brought it on herself with her explosive temper and
violent tongue. No First Lady has ever made uglier scenes
or behaved more eccentrically. She was known to insult
dignitaries and accuse their wives of flirting with her
decidedly unflirtatious husband. Her jealousy would have
been comical, except for the very real pain it caused.
Lincoln's two (male) secretaries called Mary (behind her
back, of course) "the Hell-Cat." Herndon's epithets
included "she-wolf," "tigress," and "the female wild cat
of the age."
But Mary's worst moments came at periods of extreme
stress. She had lost two young sons, one of them, Willie,
during some of the hardest days of the Civil War, when
her marriage was under special strains. Several of her
relatives, three of her brothers among them, also died in
these days, fighting for the Confederacy. During her
years in the White House she began to lose her sanity;
Lincoln saw it coming and warned her to get a grip on
herself, lest he be forced to put her into an asylum, and
years later their son Robert found it necessary to have
her confined.
The fact remains that Mary was among the first women
ever to see anything promising in Abraham Lincoln. She
was a rich, polished, popular Kentucky belle, of good
family and education (she spoke fluent French) and with
ambitions of her own (her sister said, maybe jokingly,
that Mary believed "she was destined to marry a
President"). She was a brilliant conversationalist;
Herndon acknowledged that she was "witty," "quick," and
"intelligent," though "sometimes terribly sarcastic."
Among Mary's many beaux was the short, brilliant,
cocksure Stephen Douglas, a dandy in dress and a lion in
speech, who was already rocketing to fame and, though
four years younger than Lincoln, was leaving Lincoln in
the dust. The two men had already met in debate in 1838
and 1840. Even when not confronting him in person,
Lincoln attacked Douglas by name in a remarkable number
of speeches over more than 20 years; Douglas was always
the rival he measured himself against, and Lincoln
usually got the worst of their contests. He also viewed
Douglas as politically unethical. Yet there was
remarkably little personal ill feeling between them.
Mary's conversation left Lincoln helplessly dumb
with admiration. Yet she had the discernment, even as a
young woman, to choose this shy, gawky, shabby bumpkin
over his more sparkling rivals. She saw in him qualities
that were invisible to others. Her detractors seem to
assume that Lincoln's potential greatness must have been
obvious from the start. It was not. Most people saw
nothing but his oddities, which were impossible to
overlook.
But he was determined to make something of himself.
He mastered Blackstone on his own; even after entering
Congress he studied Euclid by night until he had
conquered all six books. Having neither wealth, family,
nor formal education to recommend him, he realized that
his one sure resource was his own mind. Mary must have
been a woman of rare insight to appreciate the inner man
who was taking form within his humble, almost grotesque
outward appearance. (One thinks of Tetty Johnson's remark
that Samuel had struck her as "the most sensible man" she
had ever met.) Some of Mary's friends urged her not to
marry him.
Still, Lincoln broke off their engagement for a
while and fell into a deep depression. Speed recounts
that he despaired that "he had done nothing to make any
human being remember that he had lived." The sources of
his depression -- "the hypo," as he called it -- were no
doubt deep-seated, but it is of interest that he should
offer this explanation of his mental state, echoing his
Lyceum speech. The thought that he should be forgotten
distressed and discouraged him. The ambition of "towering
genius" -- to make his mark on history -- already
possessed him.
In 1842 friends arranged a reconciliation between
Lincoln and Mary. The couple were not only happy but
playful together, and once they giddily joined in a prank
that went sour. They began writing pseudonymous letters
to a local newspaper satirizing James Shields, the
Democratic state auditor of Illinois. Shields was enraged
and, discovering Lincoln's authorship, challenged him to
a duel. (Lincoln concealed Mary's hand in the affair.)
Knowing Shields's reputation as an excellent shot,
Lincoln chose broadswords as weapons, because "I could
have split him from the crown of his head to the end of
his backbone." But when the two men met at the dueling
site in Missouri (Illinois banned dueling) friends
intervened and prevented the fight. Lincoln and Shields
settled their quarrel peacefully, shook hands, and went
home.
The memory of the incident embarrassed Lincoln for
the rest of his life. He and Mary agreed never to speak
of it again, and many years later Lincoln sharply warned
an army officer never to mention it "if you desire my
friendship." He had learned both the wounding power of
his words and the necessity of curbing his sharp wit.
"Quarrel not at all," he advised a young captain during
the Civil War. "No man resolved to make the most of
himself, can spare time for personal contention.... Yield
larger things to which you can show no more than equal
right; and yield lesser ones, though clearly your own.
Better give your path to a dog, than be bitten by him in
contesting the right. Even killing the dog would not cure
the bite." He used to say to Mary, "Do good to those who
hate you and turn their ill will into friendship."
Swett testified, "He was certainly a very poor
hater. He never judged men by his like or dislike for
them. If any given act was to be performed, he could
understand that his enemy could do it just as well as
anyone. If a man had maligned him, or been guilty of
personal ill-treatment and abuse, and was the fittest man
for the place, he would put him in his cabinet just as
soon as he would his friend. I do not think he ever
removed a man because he was his enemy, or because he
disliked him."
The mature Lincoln avoided making enemies
needlessly. He would fight only over things worth
fighting about, keeping his fights as impersonal and as
free from acrimony as possible; some of them would be
bitter enough anyway. James Shields later became a U.S.
Senator; during the Civil War he offered his services to
the Union cause, and Lincoln, with typical magnanimity,
appointed him a brigadier general.
More than once Lincoln's sharp wit caused hard
feelings. On one occasion he ridiculed and mimicked a
fellow legislator so hilariously that he brought down the
house -- and brought the man himself to tears. When
Lincoln realized what he had done, he sought the man out
and made profuse apologies. After that he was usually
careful not to use his gifts to wound. Often, even as
president, he would discharge angry sarcasm in a letter,
which would remain unsent.
Over the years Lincoln developed a genius for tact.
His homely diplomacy rarely had need of circumlocutions;
he learned to speak plainly without inflicting pain. He
was delicately sensitive to others' feelings, and he
explained his philosophy of persuasion to a Springfield
temperance society in 1842, when he was 33:
Human nature ... is God's decree, and
can never be reversed. When the conduct of
men is designed to be influenced, persuasion,
kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be
adopted. It is an old and a true maxim,
that a "drop of honey catches more flies than
a gallon of gall." So with men. If you would
win a man to your cause, first, convince him
that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a
drop of honey that catches his heart, which,
say what he will, is the great high road to
his reason, and which, when once gained, you
will find but little trouble in convincing
his judgment of the justice of your cause,
if indeed that cause really be a just one.
On the contrary, assume to dictate to his
judgment, or to command his action, or to
mark him as one to be shunned and despised,
and he will retreat within himself, close all
the avenues to his head and his heart; and
tho' your cause be naked truth itself,
transformed to the heaviest lance, harder
than steel, and sharper than steel can be
made, and tho' you throw it with more than
Herculean force and precision, you shall no
more be able to pierce him, than to penetrate
the hard shell of a tortoise with a rye straw.
Such is man, and so must he be
understood by those who would lead him, even
to his own best interest.
No wonder Dale Carnegie would constantly cite
Lincoln as an exemplar in such popular self-help books as
HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE. His rare tact
and patience would serve him well in the presidency.
In November 1842 Lincoln and Mary were married. He
gave her a wedding ring with the inscription "Love is
eternal."
The Lincolns' marriage had its difficulties; after
all, it was a marriage, and their temperaments could
hardly have been more opposite, in large ways and small.
They must have appeared about as incompatible as a man
and a woman could be. But Mary's sister recalled, "So far
as I could see there was complete harmony and loving
kindness between Mary and her husband, consideration for
each other's wishes, and a taste for the same books. They
seemed congenial in all things." This sounds a little too
good to be true. Neighbors once saw Lincoln force Mary
out of the house, shouting, "You make the house
intolerable, damn you, get out of it!" That their
marriage survived, that they learned to put up with each
other, and that they remained affectionate to the end,
does credit to them both.
They began their life together in a small rented
room, surely a trial for a girl raised in privilege and
attended by servants all her life. Within a year the
birth of their son Robert made it even more cramped. But
the following year they acquired the comfortable house in
Springfield that became their permanent home.
Tall, grotesque-looking, awkward, with sleeves too
short for his arms and with trousers that always seemed
to expose his lower legs, Lincoln cut a strange figure on
the streets of Springfield. Henry Clay Whitney, a young
lawyer who knew Lincoln, remarked that "he probably had
as little taste about dress and attire as anyone that was
ever born." Years later, a foreign correspondent thought
"it would not be possible for the most indifferent
observer to pass him in the street without notice."
Another young Springfield lawyer bluntly called him "the
ungodliest figure I ever saw." Mary was defensive about
his appearance; when he was compared unfavorably to
Stephen Douglas, she replied, "Mr. Lincoln may not be as
handsome a figure [as Douglas], but the people are
perhaps not aware that his heart is as large as his arms
are long."
As a lawyer Lincoln was remarkably disorganized,
carrying business papers in his hat (he joked that it was
his "office"). The fashion-conscious Mary must have been
mortified, and she wasn't one to keep her feelings to
herself. She made scenes; and Lincoln hated scenes. His
patience, amounting to fatalism, must have gone far to
saving their union. If others saw her as a harridan, he
realized he was lucky to have her, and he made the best
of it. (His willingness to put up with her may be a clue
to the intensity of his memories of home life with Thomas
Lincoln.)
Herndon relates that on one occasion a man angrily
approached Lincoln to demand satisfaction for a
tongue-lashing he had received from Mary; Lincoln gently
took the man aside and said, "My friend, I regret to hear
this, but let me ask you in all candor, can't you endure
for a few moments what I have had as my daily portion for
the last fifteen years?"
As Herndon told it, "These words were spoken so
mournfully and with such a look of distress that the man
was completely disarmed. It was a case that appealed to
his feelings. Grasping the unfortunate husband's hand, he
expressed in no uncertain terms his sympathy, and even
apologized for having approached him. He said no more
about the infuriated wife, and Lincoln afterward had no
better friend in Springfield."
Such stories must be taken with reserve. Herndon
became Mary's worst enemy, and he published the most
damning stories about her after her death, when they were
impossible to rebut. But, though she could show
captivating charm when she pleased, even to Herndon,
there is plenty of other testimony of her wild temper,
cruel tongue, and sometimes impossible manners.
Lincoln the lawyer spent much of his time riding the
circuit, and his colleagues noticed that there were many
nights when he preferred working late at his Springfield
office to going home. They also noticed that he rarely
spoke of his home life.
Still, the Lincolns lived an active social life in
Springfield. They once entertained a gathering of more
than 300 people at their home.
Lincoln's surviving letters to Mary, even late in
their marriage, are full of tender and affectionate
touches. He was not by nature a lyrical man, and those
letters deal largely with practical matters; still, they
are not stiff or terse, and they usually conclude with an
obviously sincere wish to be with her soon.
Not all old married couples, even happy ones, enjoy
each other's touch after many years together; but Lincoln
seems to have had an unfeigned love for Mary to the end,
and they were holding hands when he was shot. After his
death she was deeply wounded by public insinuations that
she had made his life unhappy, or that he had harbored a
lifelong yearning for Ann Rutledge. Mary had made many
enemies, but her beloved husband was not one of them.
Maybe she realized, with implicit gratitude, that he had
been extremely patient with her. People aren't always as
unaware of their faults as they seem to be.
Throughout his sixteen years of partnership with
Herndon, nine years his junior, the two men never
quarreled. Herndon hero-worshipped Lincoln, who in turn
was always loyal to him. They had differences: Herndon
was an Abolitionist, Lincoln was not; Herndon drank
heavily, Lincoln abstained entirely. When Lincoln finally
departed for Washington after his election in 1860, he
quietly, and without reproach, asked Herndon about his
drinking.
Gesturing at the sign bearing the name of their law
firm, Lincoln said, "Let it hang there undisturbed. Give
our clients to understand that the election of a
president means no change in the firm of Lincoln and
Herndon. If I live I'm coming back some time, and then
we'll go right on practicing law as if nothing had ever
happened." But he added that he felt he would never
return alive. Then he grasped Herndon's hand, bade him a
fervent "Good-bye," and disappeared down the street.
Lincoln's warmth was sincere. Yet in all the years
they had worked harmoniously together, Billy Herndon had
never been invited to dinner at the Lincolns' home.
The Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation: An Explanation
by Fran Griffin
(page 12)
The Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation was founded in
2003 by Fran Griffin and a Board of Directors committed
to the survival of the glorious culture of the West. The
Foundation's mission is to engage in projects aimed at
instructing the pubic on the great heritage of our
nation. A generation of children have grown up not
knowing what Western Civilization is. The Foundation is
planning programs, seminars, and writing projects
covering various aspects of culture and society
including, but not limited to, science, religion,
education, art, music, literature, journalism, poetry,
the English language, the Latin language, and law.
Resident Scholars include Joe Sobran and W. Thomas
McPherren. Samuel Francis, before his death last year,
was a Resident Scholar as well.
FGF Books, the publishing imprint of the Foundation,
has as its goal to print books by worthy authors who may
not otherwise get the exposure they deserve. The first
such book will be available this spring: SHOTS FIRED: SAM
FRANCIS ON AMERICA'S CULTURE WAR. Others, including works
by Joe Sobran, will follow.
Contributions to the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation
are tax-exempt under the 501(c)(3) code of the Internal
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write
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NUGGETS
EERIE SILENCE: The Democrats are showing unwonted
restraint. During the entire Roberts-Alito confirmation
battle, you had to wonder if their hearts were really in
it. Not once throughout the hearings did they play the
pubic hair card. (page 5)
SILVER LINING: One hopeful result of these confirmation
fights, surely, is that conservatives won't allow the
Republicans to give a courtesy pass to the next liberal a
Democrat president names to the Court. (page 6)
THAT'S HIM, ALL RIGHT: Maureen Dowd, current occupant of
the Anna Quindlen Catholic Girl seat on the NEW YORK
TIMES op-ed page, can, I must say, turn a phrase.
Surveying the Bush administration's domestic spying
program, she has dubbed Vice President Dick Cheney "the
Grim Peeper." (page 7)
PHYSICIAN, N.: A man who informs you you have brain
cancer, then tries to cheer you up by telling you they've
found a cure for baldness. (page 10)
THE GAL THAT GOT AWAY: He's a handsome young man, a
college student, and the son of a U.S. senator from
Massachusetts. Unfortunately, his father isn't John
Kerry. THE NATIONAL ENQUIRER reports that he was begotten
by Teddy Kennedy, who, in keeping with his deepest
convictions, begged the mother to exercise her
constitutional right to an abortion. But she refused, and
he was forced to buy her silence. Now the story has
erupted, and the safest seat in the Senate may be in
danger. That's what Teddy gets for having a fling with a
woman who knew how to swim. (page 11)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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