Summoning “the better angels of our nature”

Four score and 120 years ago, Abraham Lincoln was born today.

Of course the story of Abraham Lincoln is a story of Dickensian proportions— born in poverty and rising to the highest office in the land, holding together the country during a great war that threatened its existence, issuing an order to free some slaves, the first American president assassinated.

This is the American around whom, and in whom, I cultivated my love of history.

As some of you may know, when I was in the 2nd grade I was hit by a car (walking across the street on a walk-light, he hastens to add!) and was in the hospital for about six weeks, then home in a body-cast for several months, and finally walking oh so tenderly on crutches. My mother was not about to have this out-of-school time become a mental miasma playtime, so she said I should write a biography (mind you, I had just begun to learn to write cursive!). I chose Abraham Lincoln as my subject. Over the next few weeks I read every book an 8 year-old could manage and then set out to write my own biography of the 16th president, the legendary “Honest Abe.” Since I had shown such interest in the six-foot-four-inch Abe I was delighted to discover upon my return to the family home that my bedroom had been festooned with every kind of Lincoln memorabilia possible: bedspread, portraits, busts, book-ends, pennants—my mother must have combed the Midwest to find Lincoln souvenirs.

Later that spring, my grandmother took me on a trip with my sister and mother on the Lincoln Trail. We began in Hodgenville, Kentucky, seeing a facsimile of what might have been like a Lincoln birthplace cabin circa 1809 (and the uber-Lincoln Log home inside of a Parthenon-like building). We moved through boyhood times in Indiana, and on to Illinois, touring Springfield, Illinois. I could not have been happier—it was a junior historian’s dream come true. My sister, my dear Elizabeth, could not have been more unhappy. Poor thing—she even had this recurring nightmare that she would be left by this weird history-loving family at some battlefield.

For the next few years, as I expanded my love of history, Abraham Lincoln was at the centerpiece of my—there’s that word again—mania, for history. I remember in the 4th grade when my best friend Andy’s mom gave birth to a sister for Andy on February 12th, I thought, “Golly, she is so lucky—born on Lincoln’s birthday!”

In high school I let Lincoln go. I had discovered European History, and the quaint stories of Lincoln’s honesty and thrift just paled next to the sexy exploits of Catherine the Great, Teutonic madmen, and Reformation zealots.

It took until the mid-1990s, when I started teaching at Hackley, and “forced” to return to United States history, that I re-discovered Abraham Lincoln. He is even better as an adult. He is wonderfully complicated, and each season yields books that unravel more and more layers of this enigmatic statesman. I also enjoyed studying the historiography, or actually, hagiography of Lincoln, too—observing how each generation discovers Lincoln anew, seeing him through the prism of their own times. And then there is Lincoln’s writing. It was only as I became an adult that I became more able to ascend the heights of Lincoln’s rhetoric. I spent the summer of 2000 in Washington, D.C. working at Georgetown University, and I would spend some free time at the glorious Lincoln Memorial on our National Mall, re-reading his prose in astonishment. One can read Lincoln’s speeches and discover the wonder that virtually every sentence could be included in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations.

There may not be a finer paragraph than at the close of his First Inaugural Address. Just for kicks—it his birthday, after all, let’s read his words. First, let’s remind ourselves of the context on that cold day in March, 1861: the national upheaval of secession was a grim reality. Jefferson Davis had been inaugurated as the President of the Confederacy two weeks earlier. The former Illinois Congressman had arrived in Washington by a secret route to avoid danger, and his movements were guarded by General Winfield Scott’s soldiers. The inaugural speech ended with a message to the Secessionists whom Lincoln would soon oppose in the bloodiest war in America's history. Speaking to those who would divide the United States, Lincoln ended the speech with,

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

What and who are the better angels of our nature? Lincoln was suggesting these were humaneness, compassion, goodwill, tolerance, and other good things. What lay ahead though was four years of savage war and 600,000+ deaths before those positive values could be invoked again by Lincoln in his Second Inaugural Address, asking these better angels to bear “malice towards none, with charity for all . . .” Again…a lofty challenge for us to summon those “better angels” eschewing hate and embracing friendship.

The bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth is marked by the first African-American in the White House. Many perceive we are in a time of crisis. It may be mere coincidence that Obama is, like Lincoln, an Illinoisan with a relatively short resume of electoral service. Lincoln had served only one two-year term in the House of Representatives before a resounding defeat. Lincoln was also derided by some as just a good writer (lest we forget his brilliant “A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand” speech)—he wouldn’t have any mettle, and there was no substance there, said some from his own party! Besides the Illinois bond, though, it is interesting to note some major differences between Lincoln and Obama. Lincoln came into office with some of the lowest expectations for an elected official. This man—a scant five years older than Obama is now—hardly engendered any hope at all.

By contrast, the expectations for Obama are incredibly high—approaching awe from many. As has been asked by so many commentators, how long will this euphoria last? Oh he has been chastised for a carefully crafted ambiguity, and one columnist I read said he must “establish a consistent philosophical vision.” You know what is funny—all the New York columnists said the same thing about Lincoln’s ambiguity and philosophical vision! We are reminded of the essential message of American politics from a speech Lincoln gave on the campaign trail: “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise—with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew and then we shall save our country.”

Over the course of the Civil War, Lincoln transformed what that war was about—it began as a “state’s rights” issue, and he let people think it was about saving the union. But—dig a little into the history—Lincoln rejected a compromise plan (a big ole band-aid was what it was) called the Crittenden Compromise in late 1860 that would have, according to the bi-partisan committee, save the union. Lincoln rejected it. What was his vision? I think he was hoping Americans would summon those better angels, end slavery, and manage hope better than it had been before.

As we work through President Obama’s first 100 Days, it is right to speak of hope—a hope that America’s Democrats, Independents and Republicans will again embrace the notion of politics in the highest sense. Many of us still believe that this great nation can and should be what Lincoln imagined: “the last best hope of Earth.”

So on Lincoln’s birthday, we need to summon the strong and righteous angels of wisdom, humility, compassion, and tough love now in our current struggles—personally, domestically and internationally. We need to reject the weak and evil angels of pride, hate, arrogance, intolerance, racism, and the belief that force is the answer to all problems—or, indeed, that we in the United States have answers to all problems.

We must also listen for the stirring of the wings of the angels of our better nature.