How Pop Culture Defines Abe Lincoln

Vir Gules
Feb 20, 2009 7:42 AM CST

Oh, oh, oh!  I know!  I know! 

We suspend the right of habeas corpus, we replace criminal court with military tribunals and eliminate a civilian’s right to appeal from the military’s decision, we free the slaves in the states over which we have no control, we extol the virtues of manumission and praise Liberia as the real home of African Americans, and we push through only legislation that helps businesses operate cheaply.  Now do we look like Abe?

Nawh.  it’s too real.  Let’s hire a bunch of hagiographers to write him up and get the ABA to promote it.  Now, that’s entertainment.

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Ron X.
Feb 20, 2009 9:27 AM CST

Those people applying 21st century sensibilities to a man born 200 years ago are doing him a disservice and showing their own lack of moral or intellectual honesty.  Rather than judging him by your standards, read what Frederick Douglass had to say - he thought he was one of the greatest men ever and treated him as an equal.  Lincoln did what was necessary to save the Union and freed slaves, as well, knowing that that was the right thing to do. Was he perfect?  Of course not, but he was a man with a vision and amazing strength of will who corrected a great wrong in this land. Very few of our other presidents would have or could have done half as well.

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HVB
Feb 20, 2009 10:17 AM CST

No, Ron; to understand history you have to understand more than you learned in grade school.  Lincoln knew that by freeing slaves ONLY in the South, he would destabilize it and end the War, while maintaining Union stability with the status quo as to it and the border states.  Yes, it was a means to an end—ending slavery—but it was not purely a moral-based move, as it might have been if he had applied it to his own states.
Also, Douglass may have considered Linclon an equal, but the feeling was not mutual: Lincoln did not consider the Negro the same as the Whites. He believed they should be treated equally under the law but not necessarily socially.  But I would not hold that against him, as you said, “under 21st century sensibilities”  or hold it against others of the period.  Their thinking was flawed by our standards, perhaps objectively wrong, but not under the conventional “wisdom” of the day.
He was not a saint nor a villain, despite some views of history. BTW I am not ignorant.

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JimmyG
Feb 20, 2009 11:45 AM CST

These posts fixate on the slavery issue, which at the time was not the most important issue to anyone (except the slaves).  The real question should be whether his attempt to “save the Union” and void the (until that moment) entirely legal secession of almost half of the country was or was not an immoral or illegal act.  The principal issue of his time was whether to engage in a War with the Confederacy.  That war resulted in more American deaths than all of our other wars before and after combined.  He did not attempt to reach an amicable peace with his neighboring nation.  He thought that his judgment that the Union should be preserved was more important than the thoughts, concerns or very lives of the people of both countries.

The result was that the Union was preserved, and America is one nation, not two, or three or twelve.  Most people now believe that is a good thing, and consider him a hero.  But with more than a hundred and fifty years passed since the end of the War Between the States we should be able to discuss and question whether his self-appointed imperial-like presidential actions are things we should admire and emulate; or whether these same characteristics are totally unacceptable in a Republic and should be an example of what will not be tolerated by “We the People”.

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