Myths about Lincoln: Peeling the Onion

MYTHS ABOUT LINCOLN: PEELING THE ONION DavidL. Lightner Waldo W. Braden, ed. Building the Myth:SelectedSpeechesMemorializing Abraham Lincoln. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990. vii + 259pp. Mario M. Cuomo and Harold Holzer, eds. Lincoln on Democracy. New York, Harper Collins Publishers, 1990. xlvii + 416 pp. Robert W. Johannsen. Lincoln, theSouth,and Slavery. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991. xiii + 128pp. James M. McPherson. Abraham Lincoln and theSecondAmericanRevolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. xiii+ 173pp. Mark E. Neely Jr. The Fate of Liberty:Abraham Lincoln and CivilLiberties. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. xvii + 278pp. Louis A. Warren. Lincoln's Youth:Indiana Years,Sevento Twenty-one[1959]. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1991. xxii + 298 pp. David Zarefsky. Lincoln, Douglas,and Slavery:In the Crucibleof PublicDebate. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. xiv + 309pp. In his inaugural address in 1861, Abraham Lincoln appealed to Southerners to abandon secession, pointing out that even if the North and the South were to separate politically, they still would be joined geographically: Physically speaking we cannot separate. We cannot remove our respective sections from each other, nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced, and go out of the presence, and beyond the reach of each other; but the different parts of our country cannot do this. They cannot but remain face to face; and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them. Is it possible then to make that intercourse more advantageous, or more satisfactory, after separation than before? Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends? Lincoln ended his speech with a fmal plea for patriotism and unity: I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to 442 David L. Lightner every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.1 Lincoln's words have resonance for present-day Canadians. As they grapple with Quebec separatism and the possibility of national dissolution, Canadians may ponder with special interest the man who led the United States through its great crisis of national unity. Understanding Abraham Lincoln is no easy task, however, for if recent writers agree on anything it is that the real Lincoln is shrouded in myth. As Harold Holzer puts it, the life of Lincoln "has entered the firm embrace of legend. The real man in large part has been subsumed by the prolonged leavening of folklore, history, and counter-history." Similarly but more specifically, David Zarefsky says that Lincoln's famous debates with Stephen Douglas "have receded into folklore, into what Norman Corwin described as 'a shadowy zone in the back of the head where one files away miscellaneous impressions based on knowledge, half-knowledge, and misinformation."' Waldo Braden quotes with approval the observation that "Lincoln the man was swallowed by the myth," and Robert Johannsen agrees that "to penetrate the crust of legend that surrounds Lincoln, to viewLincoln in something other than presentist terms, is both a formidable and intimidating task." And yet, historians continue to try to peel away the layers of myth from the Lincoln onion. James McPherson, recalling that a reporter once asked him where Lincoln would stand today on the issues of abortion and the federal deficit, acknowledges that presentism is a danger, yet dares to hope "that readers will find new insights"in his essayson Lincoln and his times; and Mark Neely breaks fresh ground on the crowded terrain of Lincoln scholarship by attacking what he considers to be a major myth about the Lincoln presidency.2 The seven books under review here touch on every stage of Lincoln's life and legend, from his frontier childhood to his post-assassination apotheosis. Beginningnear the beginning, Louis Warren's Lincoln's Youth is an account of the years between 1816 and 1830 that Lincoln spent...