Public opinion about Lincoln remains divided
Today marks the 150th anniversary of the death of Abraham Lincoln.
Most Americans regard Lincoln almost mythically as a president universally admired, universally loved.
This is baloney, of course. Lincoln was beloved, for sure; but his enemies, including a great many residents of Fayette County, could hardly abide the man.
Surely, one reason was that Lincoln was a partisan politician. In fact, he was one of the great partisans of all time. It’s easy to overlook Lincoln’s devotion to partisan politics amidst all the chatter about his devotion to the Union.
Indeed, one reason for his fealty to the country was precisely because he was a dedicated seeker of votes. He found repugnant the idea that the South would opt out of the Union on account of its losing an election or two. Democracy can’t work if the other side decides it won’t participate — decides to take its bat and ball and shuffle off the old ballfield while trailing. Lincoln knew this to his core.
I don’t know if Lincoln loved politics. (There are indications that he did. More on that in a minute.) But he certainly played the game extremely well, and he was diligent about it. He studied politics.
In his pre-presidential days in Illinois, he was once asked to lay out a winning election strategy.
Lincoln said a candidate would be well-advised to “raise a cause that will produce an effect, and then fight the effect.”
There’s never been a better definition of practical politicking.
Lincoln was a political lifer. He was a professional politician. He was almost always angling for office. Moreover, he wore his ambitions on his sleeve. A close acquaintance remarked that Lincoln’s ambitions were like a heart that never stopped beating.
He was as much a politician as Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon were in the 20th century. Or John Kennedy, our other sainted president, at least to some. Practically from the time he returned from World War II in 1946, JFK never stopped running. He was politicking right up to the moment of his death.
So before complaining about “career politicians,” think first and remember the names Lincoln and Kennedy. For that matter, think Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Hubert Humphrey, Robert Taft, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.
Two guys by the name of Jefferson and Adams also come to mind.
Back to Lincoln.
In Pittsburgh, Federal Street scoots past PNC Park. A short walk from the Stargell statue heading toward Allegheny Commons is a U.S. Post Office. In Lincoln’s day this was the site of the Ft. Wayne and Chicago Railroad station. Lincoln and his entourage arrived at this station on a cold rainy evening in February 1861, on the way to Washington, the president’s inauguration, and the Civil War.
Lincoln, wife Mary, their three sons, and a party that included newsman, several old friends, two young aides, a manservant, and a bodyguard, started their journey eastward several days earlier in Springfield, Ill. They were having a rollicking good time. Lincoln was having the best time of all. He loved the huge crowds that came out to cheer him. It was like the campaign for president he never waged, it being more or less tradition in the 19th century that presidential candidates not barnstorm, not appear too eager for the job they all longed for.
“Well,” the president-elect told the throng on hand to greet him in Pittsburgh, “I am reminded that there is an Allegheny City as well as an Allegheny County. … I am glad to see both, and the good people of both.”
Someone in the crowd shouted, “Three cheers for the Union as it is.”
Lincoln stopped in Uniontown in November 1847. He came alone except for Mary and sons Bob and Eddie. They probably stayed the night at the McClelland House, a hotel, on Main Street, where the First National Bank is now.
The Lincolns left Uniontown on a stagecoach, taking the National Road over the mountains to Cumberland. Their trip ended in Washington, where Lincoln served a single, two-year term in Congress.
Lincoln was a Whig then. He joined the new Republican Party in the 1850s. The party he raised to prominence is very different now. It’s an astonishing historical reversal that the Northern-based nationalist party that saved the Union and freed the slaves is today a South-based party, a champion of states-rights, and mostly hostile to the national government.
It’s little wonder then that in 2015 Lincoln has a new cadre of detractors. Some are vehement in their denunciations of the man. Our greatest president as well as our greatest politician is still dividing people.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown and is the author of two books – Grand Salute: Stories of the World War II Generation and Our People. He can be reached at grandsalutebook@gmail.com.