Early in his biography, And There Was Light – Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham spins one of many yarns told about — and often by — our 16th president:
[He] was splitting rails one day when a man with a gun passed by and called to Lincoln to look up — which he did, [and] the man raised his gun in an attitude to shoot. A surprised Lincoln asked the man what he was doing, and the passerby replied that he had promised to shoot the first man he met who was uglier than himself. Lincoln asked to see the man’s face and after taking a look remarked, ‘If I am uglier than you, then blaze away.’
The tale tells much about Lincoln. He kept his cool, was the first to admit he wasn’t handsome and often poked fun at himself, taking himself down a peg, and the other guy too — not “putting him down” but letting him down gently, with just enough wit to disarm his antagonist and defuse the situation.
Wit and storytelling were Lincoln’s superpowers. People loved him because he responded with malice toward none and charity for all.
We would all do well to channel Abraham Lincoln as we celebrate his 215th birthday on Feb. 12. Lincoln’s story is the archetypal American story. Which is why he feels so current and close. I think often of our greatest auto-didact and democrat and occasionally require a healthy dose of inspiration from him — which Meacham’s book provides, revealing the “whole Lincoln,” not just the mythologized version that focuses only on his greatness, or the more recent revisionized version that highlights only his shortcomings: that he took too long to free the slaves, that his whole heart wasn’t in it.
Meacham contends, “To depict Lincoln as only a reluctant warrior against slavery and for an egalitarian future fails to do him justice.” We miss not only his story, but our story too — one nation still, despite the lesser angels of our nature and because of the better angels of his.
But some historians and civil rights advocates want to pull the pedestal out from under him because his attitudes about race don’t measure up to today’s standards. It’s true — and not surprising — that he expressed personal misgivings about full racial equality. He was, after all, the product of a nation founded on white supremacy. He was also seeking political power, hoping to heal a deeply divided and racist country in crisis. The more pertinent question is, did he evolve? The evidence, based on observations from those who knew him, indicates he did.
Meanwhile, on his three core beliefs, Lincoln was admirably consistent. Throughout his life he firmly opposed slavery and wanted to see it abolished. “As I would not be a slave,” he once said, “so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.”
On democracy, i.e. government of, by and for the people, the Declaration of Independence served as his True North. To Lincoln, “all men are created equal” meant “all human beings are created equal” with unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — and all that implied, even if all of it wasn’t possible yet politically.
Above all, he prized preserving the Union, which, after exhausting all other options, involved fighting a war that could not be avoided. Though it preserved the Union, it did not end slavery. Neither did his Emancipation Proclamation, which could have been overturned by a future president.
A profoundly practical person, he knew that permanent change could only come through the Constitution. As abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens puts it in Steven Spielberg’s film, Lincoln, the president wanted “the first and only mention of slavery [in the Constitution to be] its absolute prohibition.”
Lincoln won a bloody civil war to save the Union. He won a messy legislative battle to end slavery. And he did it all in one term, long before most dared believe it was even possible. He was murdered before he could take on the next battle: to achieve full equality for all Americans, the battle we are still waging 160 years later. This country would be infinitely better off had he lived through his second term, giving us a good start on a new birth of freedom.
“Lincoln was not all he might have been,” Meacham writes, “vanishingly few human beings are — but he was more than many men have been. … And, as Lincoln himself would readily acknowledge, we can always do better. In that cause, we must try to see Abraham Lincoln — and ourselves — whole.”
Lincoln critics might consider what Frederick Douglass, former slave and great national prophet of the 19th century, said in his assessment of Lincoln, looking back in 1876:
“Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent: but measuring him from the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined.” Douglass also said, “I do not despair of this country. The fiat of the Almighty, ‘Let there be Light,’ has not yet spent its force.”
Meacham adds, “It fell to Abraham Lincoln to shed that light in the darkest of hours.”
And there was light.