Plain speaker
Hugh Brogan
With Malice Towards None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln Stephen B. Oates (Allen & Unwln E8.95) lie was not only the greatest of American Presidents, but the greatest leader ever Produced by Western democracy; not only that, but a man of saintly character. Like most saints, he had his failings; but all in all, his greatness is as undeniable as it is comPelting. It is natural for democrats, even after more than a century, to turn to Abraham Lincoln for enlightenment and encouragement, and it is most desirable that every generation should be given its own Study of him. This new life has a good Chance of doing the job for ours.
The book is not quite all that it might be. One fat volume, it cannot be the full-length biography that the publishers claim it is; full-length, in Lincoln's case, surely means something on the scale of Herndon (three volumes) if not of Carl Sandburg (six volumes) or Nicolay and Hay (ten). It is not of Much use to scholars, since it is equipped With only a minimal apparatus, and discusses none of the cruxes which have preoc
cupied so many historians. Mr Oates is content to state his own view of every point persuasively, and to move on. Nor does he provide an explicit analysis of Lincoln's character, policies, achievements and sig nificance: he leaves all that to his readers.
Of course, his view of Lincoln emerges; but it is not stated outright in any page or sen tence. He seems to hold that the story, well-told, will interpret itself, itself fascinate the reader. He is right, of course; and he narrates the extraordinary saga very well.
The only legitimate complaints are tiny ones: there are some stylistic blunders (`I'd', 'he'd', `should've'); English noble titles are garbled; there are no maps, or guides to further reading. On the whole, this son of Texas is to be congratulated on his account of the great Northern leader. Its scrupulous fairness to all concerned, and its measured tone, are perhaps proof that the Civil War really is over at last.
Lincoln emerges much the same as ever. Perhaps the evolution of his personality is made a little clearer. It is plain that his childhood wounded him; left him (to vary the metaphor) with a heavy burden that chafed him all his days, a burden that only his exceptional strength, of mind, spirit and body, enabled him to carry. Proud, sensitive and ambitious, he was ashamed of his illiterate and possibly illegitimate mother; he seems to have resented being bound, until the age of twenty-two, to the service of his father, who never aspired to be more than a dirt farmer; at any rate there was no sympathy between them. He thought himself hideous and repulsive to women, yet he wanted love as much as he wanted scope for his great abilities. Manhood, marriage and prosperity were only partially assuaging, for he still had to endure many painful humiliations. The Presidency was no help at all: he was incessantly denounced as a clown, a baboon, an incompetent, a weakling; worst of all, at times he agreed with his aides. Some of Mr Oates's most telling pages show Lincoln in the White House during the Fort Sumter crisis, unequal to the emergency, and knowing it. He grew lonelier than ever, for the strains of the Presidency, the war, and a child's death destroyed his wife's mental balance and, with it, the bond between them. No wonder then that he proved the most patient, modest and compassionate of Presidents: he had had to bite on many bullets.
Still, there have been many men who were good but unsuccessful. Luck, but still more ability kept Lincoln out of their ranks. Perhaps Mr Oates does not quite do justice to his hero's wonderful political dexterity, and his sure touch on the reins of government. For instance, Lincoln richly deserves to be remembered as the Great Emancipator, not just because he proclaimed the freedom of most of the slaves in 1863 (many people argued, reasonably, that the measure was long overdue) but because he thereafter made sure that there was no backsliding. He kept Congress up to the mark, and lived long enough to know that the Thirteenth Amendment, which ended slavery entirely and was his own particular project, was safely on its way to becoming part of the Constitution. It was an achievement worth stressing. Still, Mr Oates does bring out the fact that Lincoln quickly developed a deeper strategic insight than any of his generals, except perhaps Grant and Sherman. Probably his training as a trial lawyer, who knew the importance of mastering the technicalities in a brief, was a help; but it was essentially his great natural gifts that made it possible.
By the time of his death he dominated American politics — indeed, America — as no President had done since Jackson, possibly since Jefferson; he was master of Congress, of the army, of the Republican party; yet he was still an adroit collaborator, a man who knew when to compromise, when to give in, when to stand firm. Northern victory had suddenly given him immense prestige. I find it inconceivable that he would have squandered these assets in a futile struggle, like his wretched successor; had he lived, they would have been used, somehow, for the benefit of the United States, and it is strictly true to say that his disappearance was an immeasurable loss to his country.
But in the end it is as a prophet of democracy that Lincoln is most living to us today. What is his message? Although Mr Oates does not say, certain points seem plain enough.
Lincoln himself laid most stress on the three concepts of liberty, equality and America, which he saw as one. The equation, in that time and place, was inevitable. Whatever his discontents in provincial Illinois, Lincoln rejoiced in the fact that its social and political system made it possible for him to fulfil his ambitions; to rise to greatness; and he saw a similar escalation going on throughout America. So he gave his country his total loyalty, and devoted his life to expounding its meaning: 'a new Nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal . . . a new birth of freedom . . . government of the people, by the people, for the people. . .' The great phrases of the Gettysburg Address were to him synonymous, and gained their force from the fact that they said, tersely, what he had been orating upon for twenty-five years. He spoke for, as well as to, his countrymen: the Address is still regarded as one of the clearest statements of the American faith.
Yet he had a darker message, expressed immortally in the Second Inaugural: a message of guilt, justice, duty and repentance. Is there anything more terrible in political literature than the sentence ,in which he accepted the Civil War as a righteous punishment of America?
. . if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.' That his countrymen are less willing to believe, though it awes them; but the voice, an old Puritan one, can always be heard recalling them when they stray. This Lincoln is their conscience still.
And to non-Americans? Perhaps his plain speaking matters most. He had to compromise, of course; one must wish some of his utterances unsaid (particularly the racist remarks of the eighteen-fifties); but on the whole how hard-hitting as well as eloquent he was! Whatever he was in his early days, in the Presidency he was selfless, above personal resentments (Mr Oates chose his title well); he concentrated on getting the best out of men, and because of his earned authority and palpable sincerity, succeeded far more often than the little people of our day seem able to imagine. Lincoln achieved greatness when he shook off all temptation to win short-term advantages by speaking to what was base in his constituents. He was never dishonest; could see any sense there was in any point of view; and acted on the knowledge. I would be much happier about the immediate future of democracy in Britain if there were any leader in sight, in any party, of whom as much could now be said. 'With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan – to do all which may achieve a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.'
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