Some thoughts about Lincoln

1 comment February 9th, 2009

It’s Abraham Lincoln’s 200th birthday this week. Because of the mythological proportions he’s been assigned over the years, I’ve always tried to see through those in an attempt to find the real man. One thing I’ve learned is that you can’t simplify a political career that spanned three decades. He’s much more interesting as a real person than as America’s civic god.

Some observations:

Lincoln was a keen, ambitious  politician who aligned his interests with those of the state of Illinois, as he saw them.

When he was elected to the legislature in 1834, the capital was in Vandalia, in southern Illinois. Lincoln, however, was from New Salem, near Springfield. He and other lawmakers from the region (called the Long Nine because they all were over 6 feet tall)  wheeled and dealed to get the capital moved to Springfield in 1839.

Springfield, they argued, was in the middle of a state that was 400 miles long. Vandalia, they said, was too isolated. Even though the Vandalians built the state a capitol building free of charge in a desperate attempt to keep the government htere, the move took place anyway. Clout speaks.

As a member of the pro-business Whig Party, the predecessor of the Republicans, Lincoln in the legislature supported building the Illinois and Michigan Canal, which was an efficient way to move freight. Only problem was the state built it too late. By the time the canal was opened, railroads had taken most of the business away from canals. The canal nearly broke the state.

The Republicans were the successors to the Whigs. As the first Republican president, Lincoln helped create the land grant universities (University of Illinois is one) and he chartered the Union Pacific Railroad to help settle the west. Railroads were granted subsidies by the government to extend their lines across the vast, open spaces.

As a congressman for one term, 1846 to 1848, Lincoln took unpopular stands, such as opposing President James Polk’s popular with Mexico. He said Polk acted unconstitutionally. It’s probably why he was a one-term congressman.

Lincoln’s primary achievement as president was his ability to quell the Southern rebellion and put the Union back together, albeit at a cost of 600,000 lives when battlefield casualties and disease are added together. Modern sanitation methods were a generation away.

I’ve been amused in recent years how Lincoln has been reinterpreted  about his views on race. Lincoln always opposed slavery, but he was not an abolitionist. His primary goal in the Civil War was to preserve the Union. He lived in a society where racism was considered an obvious law of nature, and he protected his political viability.

The Republican Party was formed as a pro-business free-soil party. Republicans realized that if slavery triumphed in the western territories that would become states, they were doomed. Northern entrprises had to pay workers; Southern  businesses using slaves did not.

But Lincoln’s oppostion in slavery was beyond economic interest. He thought it morally wrong. And although his Emancipation Proclamation actually freed no slaves because it only applied to southern states beyond Union control at the time, it did set the moral tone for total emancipation and the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments.

I used some facts from an excellent Lincoln site: http://lincoln.lib.niu.edu/