The life and writings of Abraham Lincoln Book

They are the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world. You will find that all the arguments in favor of kingcraft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people—not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden. That is their argument and this argument of the judge is the same old serpent that says, “You work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it.”

This consists of two books. The first is a biography of Lincoln by Philip Van Doren Stern. The second is a collection of his writings, both speeches and letters. Thus, the life, and the writings.

The Life of Abraham Lincoln

Judging from the prefatory matter, the biography was written around 1939 to 1942. It’s short, and a very interesting read, keeping in mind that it will not include more recent scholarship. On the other hand, it’s only about three quarters of a century after his death at that point, which is also an interesting perspective.

It’s also a history of the beginning of the Republican Party; Lincoln was only the second presidential candidate for the party (the first was John C. Frémont in 1856) and you can see the pattern of contested elections hardened into the body politic already. You’ve already got government officials opposed to the incoming President working hard against him—in this case even sending war material from military installations in the north to military installations in the south, so that if war broke out over secession, the South would have them and the north wouldn’t. Some officials who opposed Lincoln remained in their offices, so as to send information to the South.

Whenever Lincoln attempted to state the obvious, that, for example, the United States was “a house divided”, he was accused by Democrats of being the one causing national divisions. And when extremists attempted violence, they still tried to pin it on Republicans, as Stephen A. Douglas did over John Brown at Harper’s Ferry:

The Harper’s Ferry crime was the natural, logical, inevitable result of the doctrines and teachings of the Republican Party, as explained and enforced in their platform, their partisan presses, their pamphlets and books, and especially in the speeches of their leaders in and out of Congress…

Is not the Republican Party still embodied, organized, confident of success, and defiant in its pretensions? Does it not now hold and proclaim the same creed that it did before the invasion? It is true that most of its representatives here disavow the act of John Brown at Harper’s Ferry. I am glad that they do so; I am rejoiced that they have gone thus far; but I must be permitted to say to them that it is not sufficient that they disavow the act, unless they also repudiate and denounce the doctrines and teachings which produced the act. Those doctrines remain the same; those teachings are being poured into the minds of men throughout the country by means of speeches and pamphlets and books, and through partizan presses.

The terms are different, but Douglas is basically railing against hate speech, defining hate speech as disagreeing with him (on slavery, in this case), and, in fact, suggesting not just that people should refrain from such divisive speech but that such speech should carry criminal penalties.

In Washington, his wife was shunned by DC society; and those who could not look past appearances sneered at the President’s manners. “He brought to the White House the unvarnished manners of the frontier and the small town.”

The issue that animated both sides was not just slavery, but the revivification of slavery. Armed groups from both sides were going to Kansas to either keep slavery out or make sure it got in; and when the vote came to elect a legislature, Democrats crossed the border to vote illegally in that election, so as to ensure a pro-slavery legislature. They also wanted to revive the slave trade—legally, as it still existed illegally.

We often hear the legend about how Lincoln had a dream predicting his death; but this is less miraculous on reading that Lincoln’s life was under constant threat. Lincoln had planned on returning to his business after his terms as President; he specifically asked his partner at Herndon & Lincoln to leave his name on the law practice: “If I live, I’m coming back some time, and then we’ll go right on practicing law as if nothing had ever happened.”

Van Doren writes that John Wilkes Booth had tried to “force his way nearer to the President” earlier at Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, had been stopped by the guards, but not arrested.

Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored—contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong: vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man…

The Writings of Abraham Lincoln

The second part of the book, and the majority of it (pages 219-852), is the amazing part. It collects (and in many cases excerpts from) Lincoln’s letters, notes, and speeches. It outlines just how hard Lincoln tried to avoid war, and then to end it peacefully, even at the expense of maintaining slavery in the states where it already existed—as long as slavery was not introduced into any new territories and as long as the slave trade remained illegal. He believed that as long as it did not become entrenched in all the states, slavery would eventually end in all states.

Both the letters and the speeches are fascinating. The letters often contain out-of-school anecdotes about the political process, such as when he related to Joshua Speed that, in the initial discussion of “the Nebraska bill” which repealed the famous Missouri Compromise by which slavery was confined to those areas where it already existed, all but three of the seventy Democrats opposed the bill; however, when their leadership sent word that the bill ought to be passed, “the way the Democrats began to see the wisdom and justice of [the bill] was perfectly astonishing”.

Also amazing is how, in his speeches, Lincoln would say something deeply prejudiced, but then go on to conclude with something completely right:

I protest against the counterfeit logic which concludes that, because I do not want a black woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. I need not have her for either. I can just leave her alone. In some respects she certainly is not my equal; but in her natural right to eat the bread she earns with her own hands without asking leave of anyone else, she is my equal, and the equal of all others.

Or:

I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that, notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the Negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence—the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects—certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man.

Lincoln has prejudices and principles, but his principles override his prejudices.

In his letters and notes his prejudices are more equivocal, as for example in his 1858 notes where he wrote “Suppose it is true that the Negro is inferior to the white…” a construction, which, in our time at least, usually implies strongly not only that the contention is in doubt but that the speaker disagrees with it.

Even publicly he argues unequivocally that the Declaration of Independence must include blacks or it includes nobody—in fact, according to Lincoln, Stephen Douglas had already gone so far as to say it only included whites from England, excluding everyone else, white or any other color. Lincoln responded with:

Let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man, this race and that race and the other race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position. Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal.

“The chief and real purpose of the Republican party,” he said in an 1859 speech, “is eminently conservative.” He meant this in the sense of not being the radical party that the Democrats accused it of being, of adherence to the old policies adopted by the founders. But he could also have meant the word in its more modern form of classical liberalism. The principles he espouses, the ones that allow him to overcome his prejudices, are the same that conservatives today call their own, such as when he argues continually in favor of the right to keep the bread you earn during the Lincoln-Douglas debates:

It is the eternal struggle between these two principles—right and wrong—throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, “You toil and work and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.” No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.

Or when he, as president, speaks to a New York workingmen’s association about the importance of private property:

Property is the fruit of labor; property is desirable; is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.

The book also includes much of his dry humor, as when he talks about “a horse chestnut or a chestnut horse” not being the same thing or when he writes that:

By general law, life and limb must be protected, yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb.

And in an address to an Indiana regiment, says:

I always thought that all men should be free; but if any should be slaves, it should be first those who desire it for themselves, and secondly those who desire it for others. Whenever I hear any one arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

A civil war as deadly as ours, on a topic of such importance, will by its nature be an immensely important part of our history. This selection of Lincoln’s writings before and after he became president is essential to understanding it.

A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, “Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!”