Eric the Blue

In Patriotic Gore, his book on literary figures of the Civil War, Edmund Wilson writes that, “with the possible exception of Edgar Allan Poe,” no American has been the subject of more “romantic and sentimental rubbish” than our sixteenth president. The villain here is Carl Sandburg, whose multivolume biography of Lincoln I dimly remember occupying an entire shelf in the school library. I didn’t check out any part of it, and according to Wilson, I wouldn’t have benefited if I had. Sandburg is the source for Honest Abe, the railsplitter and spinner of homespun yarns who was disappointed in love but nevertheless saved the Union, etc., and we’ve all already internalized all that. It’s a tribute, of sorts, to Sandburg. You don’t have to read his “sentimental rubbish” to believe in it, so diffuse is it in the cultural air.

Here is a taste of Wilson’s revisionist view, which is based on a close reading of Lincoln’s speeches, writings, and public utterances, augmented by the recollections of William Herndon, his law partner in Springfield, Illinois, and others who knew him well:

Now, aside from this self-confident ambition, what kind of man was Lincoln? . . . The amorphous and coarse-meshed Sandburg is incapable of doing justice to the tautness and the hard distinction that we find when, disregarding legends, we attack Lincoln’s writings in bulk. These writings do not give the impression of a folksy and jocular countryman swapping yarns at the village store or making his way to the White House by uncertain or awkward steps or presiding like a father, with a tear in his eye, over the tragedy of the Civil War. . . . The raw realities of Lincoln’s origins–the sordidness of his childhood environment, the boorishness of his first beginnings–are unflinchingly presented by Herndon, and the public has always found them repellent; but Herndon brings into the foreground Lincoln’s genius and his will to succeed as the more romantic writers do not. From those who knew Lincoln best, we learn that he was naturally considerate, but essentially cold and aloof, not really caring much, Herndon tells us, about anyone but his wife and children. He seems always to have had the conviction of his own superiority. The legend of the log-cabin, the illiterate father, the railsplitting, the flat-boat and all the rest has vulgarized Lincoln for the vulgar even in making him a backwoods saint. . . . John Hay, who was Lincoln’s secretary and observed him at close range all the time he was in the White House, insisted that it was “absurd to call him a modest man. No great man is ever modest. It was his intellectual arrogance and unconscious assumption of superiority that men like Chase and Sumner could never forgive.”

No law states that the truth will reside around the midpoint between antipodes, and I’m persuaded by Wilson’s case, which includes also a detailed account of Lincoln’s religious skepticism. If you’re interested, get Patriotic Gore and read one of the great works of nonfiction by an American. The chapter on Grant is possibly of even greater interest than the one on Lincoln, and I’m not sure that either of these is quite the revelation, at least for me, as the one on Alexander Stephens, who was the vice president of the Confederacy. But back to Lincoln. Probably on account of some of our current president’s recent speech acts, a personal letter he (Lincoln) wrote to a friend, Joshua Speed, a Kentuckian and supporter of slavery, in 1855, has been making the rounds on social media. The conclusion:

I do oppose the extension of slavery, because my judgment and feelings so prompt me; and I am under no obligation to the contrary. . . . I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that “all men are created equal.” We now practically read it “all men are created equal except negroes.” When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read “all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.” When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty–to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy [sic].

Mary will probably pass a day or two in Louisville in October. My kindest regards to Mrs Speed. On the leading subject of this letter, I have more of her sympathy than I have of yours. And yet let me say that I am

Your friend forever

A. Lincoln

If this letter were to be entered as evidence in the dispute between Sandburg and Wilson, I’d say that the friendly aspect is a mere form and the actual content stern to the point of being haughty. It’s hard to miss the implication that his friend’s opinions on slavery are merely the convenient belief of a slave owner, and that the opinion of the author, being “under no obligation,” is the true one. Adopting the view of Wilson does not tend to make me love Lincoln less. I think I love the author of this letter as much as Carl Sandburg could have.