The consensus of historians is that our three greatest Presidents were Washington, Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt, and you’ll get no argument from me. All of them were remarkable men, and served their country well at moments of supreme crisis. Of the three, however, it is Lincoln who stands out. He had the farthest to go, and his was the finer character.
Washington and Roosevelt had every advantage in life. Washington was born among the planter elite in the most important of the American colonies. Although denied a college education by the deaths of his father and older brother, he was nevertheless known to, if not related to, many of the wealthiest and most powerful people in Virginia, and given opportunities not available to most. And, of course, he married the wealthiest widow in the Old Dominion. Although not a politician in the strict sense, he was part of the governing elite, and by the time he became President he had commanded Continental Army, which entailed dealing with the leading men of every colony/state in the Continental Congress, and chaired the Constitutional Convention.
Roosevelt was born to old money, and lived in luxury all his life. He received the best possible education, going to Groton and Harvard, and Harvard Law. His entry into politics was made a great deal easier by his relationship to his distant cousin, and his wife’s uncle, President Theodore Roosevelt. He was a state representative and state senator in New York, Assistant Secretary of the Navy in WWI, unsuccessful Vice Presidential candidate in 1920, and governor of New York. Few if any of our Presidents have had more or better experience upon assuming the Presidency.
Abe Lincoln’s story, on the other hand, was as he put it, part of the short and simple annals of the poor. He truly was born in a log cabin, one which for part of his youth only had 3 walls. He spent his youth in manual labor in a household with few books, and his father actively opposed his love of learning. He had only one year of formal education as a child. He was a rail splitter, a clerk in a country store, a local postmaster, and a surveyor, and took flatboats down the Mississippi on two occasions. That he then taught himself the law, became a state representative, and served one term in Congress with such a background is remarkable enough. That he could become a national figure based on a series of debates in the course of an unsuccessful Senate campaign, and a speech at Cooper Union was even more remarkable. But few have had less or less relevant experience upon taking office as President, at a time when seven states had already seceded.
Wealth, education, experience—these are hardly enough to make a good President, as the careers of James Buchanan or Herbert Hoover or George W. Bush can testify. But they certainly make it easier to become President, and they can shorten the learning curve in office. That Lincoln achieved greatness with none of these advantages is testimony to his remarkable intelligence and ability.
All people have their flaws, and the greatest often have more than their share. Washington was by all accounts a highly virtuous man, honest, faithful to his wife, and high minded. He was also the owner of hundreds of slaves. And during most of his life he was not a reluctant slave owner, even pursuing runaways while he was in office. It must be said that as he got older he appeared to have doubts about the rightness of slavery. He freed his slaves in his will (when, of course, he didn’t need them anymore. But this is more than Jefferson ever did). And he made provisions for his freed slaves to be given education, training, and old age pensions. Still he remains, in Henry Wiencek’s words, an imperfect god.
FDR’s faults are well known. He repeatedly cheated on his wife, even after his illness. He was notoriously slippery—perhaps Herbert Hoover’s only good line was his description of Roosevelt as a chameleon on plaid—and could lie with the best of them. He compromised with Southern senators on many key issues, leaving most Blacks uncovered by Social Security or minimum wage, and tried to pack the Supreme Court. During the war he never took on Congress on the issue of allowing Jews into the country, and rejected the idea of bombing the concentration camps. And, of course, he interned more than 100,000 US citizens of Japanese descent.
Lincoln was as honest as Washington, and a lot more so than FDR. He was faithful, as far as we know, to one of the more unstable women around (there’s a story that she once chased him down the streets of Springfield with an ax). He was a wonderful father. His kindness and charity are the stuff of legend.
The attacks on Lincoln’s character which are most often made involve his allegedly extra-Constitutional actions, in particular his suspension of habeas corpus, and his purported racism. The first can be dealt with fairly easily. It is true that Lincoln spent money to raise an army without Congressional approval, and that he suspended habeas corpus. The need for urgent action to protect the country seems pretty clear, and Congress subsequently ratified all his actions (recall that Congress was not in session in April, 1865, and in those days it took a while for them to gather. Lincoln needed troops NOW). The Constitution authorizes the suspension of habeas corpus in the event of invasion or rebellion, and Lincoln faced both. The Supreme Court subsequently held that the placement of the suspension language in Article I meant that it was up to Congress to suspend the writ, but that was after the war. Lincoln used this power to prevent the State Legislature of Maryland from seceding, and thus leaving Washington DC in the middle of the Confederacy. I cannot fault Lincoln for taking action which was envisioned by the Constitution to ensure the preservation of the Constitution and the country.
The charge of racism is not so easily refuted, and I certainly don’t have time or room enough to do so here. I’ve written a lot of comments on this subject, so my thoughts are available, and I’ll only summarize.
It’s clear that Lincoln was a lifetime opponent of slavery, but that’s not the same thing as freedom from racism. A lot of Whites opposed slavery and hated Blacks. The notion that Lincoln was only a reluctant emancipator, though (e.g., Lerone Bennett’s Forced into Glory) is preposterous. He was willing to allow war rather than compromise on the expansion of slavery. He had to focus on Union only in the beginning of the war, and made emancipation its goal only a year later (he read his first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation to his Cabinet in July, 1862). His efforts to end slavery forever by Constitutional amendment are now well-known, thanks to Steven Spielberg.
As to racism, though, there are issues. Lincoln said a lot of things that grate on us today, things we’ve heard from racists and white supremacists ever since. The vast majority of them, though, were said in one particular context—the 1858 Senate campaign against Stephen A. Douglas. Illinois was widely regarded as the most racist of the Free States, and Douglas’ campaign was particularly vicious. Douglas hammered Lincoln as a proponent of “social equality” between Whites and Blacks. Any hint of this would have ended Lincoln’s career, so he disavowed the social equality of the races, though always extolling their legal equality. In short, he compromised. He sold out, you might say. (And thank God he did, or slavery might not have ended and the Union might not have survived).
Even Lincoln’s “racist” remarks were almost always qualified, or slippery, or lawyerly. “If one race must be superior, I want it to be the white race” (a paraphrase)—but he doesn’t actually concede that one race must be superior. “A Black woman may not be my social equal, but in her right to keep the bread she’s earned by her labor she is my equal” (another paraphrase)—he is ambiguous about whether she’s a social equal but clear that she’s a legal equal.
After all that has been written and spoken about Lincoln, his clearest and most profound critic remains his friend, Frederick Douglass. Douglass never experienced any ill treatment from Lincoln, but he said that Lincoln “shared the prejudices common to his countrymen towards the colored race.” But, said Douglass, this was part of what enabled him to save the Union and end slavery:
Looking back to his times and to the condition of his country, we are compelled to admit that this unfriendly feeling on his part may be safely set down as one element of his wonderful success in organizing the loyal American people for the tremendous conflict before them, and bringing them safely through that conflict. His great mission was to accomplish two things: first, to save his country from dismemberment and ruin; and, second, to free his country from the great crime of slavery. To do one or the other, or both, he must have the earnest sympathy and the powerful cooperation of his loyal fellow-countrymen. Without this primary and essential condition to success his efforts must have been vain and utterly fruitless. Had he put the abolition of slavery before the salvation of the Union, he would have inevitably driven from him a powerful class of the American people and rendered resistance to rebellion impossible. Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined.
So Happy 207th Birthday, Mr. Lincoln! Happy birthday to our greatest President, and I daresay, the greatest American in our history.