Lincoln as permissive parent Part 4: Goats in the White House!

On one occasion Tad Lincoln harnessed his pet goat Nanko to a chair and drove this make-shift charriot through the East Room during a White House reception!

Lincoln as permissive parent Part 3: Executive Pardon for The Doll Jack

One day Lincoln’s two sons held a solemn court martial in which a soldier doll named Jack was found guilty of desertion, and sentenced to death by firing squad. But since that would require his burial in the Rose Garden and the anger of the gardener, that wanted “Paw” to solve their problem.

So the President of the United States of America interrupted what was probably a very crowded day and drew out a sheet of Executive Mansion stationary and wrote the following: “The Doll Jack is pardoned by order of the President.” And he signed it “A. Lincoln.”

The Lincolns as permissive parents, Part 2: Grassroots capitalism in Action.

These “Public Opinion Baths” didn’t go unnoticed by the Lincoln boys. They saw that people came from far and wide to visit their father, so [naturally?] the two boys charged each visitor a nickel for what they called an “admission fee.”

In the tradition of classic American can-do capitalism, Willie and Tad Lincoln found a need [more or less], and filled it!

Lincoln’s “Public Opinion Baths”

Those around Lincoln strove from beginning to end to erect barriers to defend him against constant interruption. He disliked anything that kept people from him who wanted to see him. 'You will wear yourself out,' his advisors pleaded with him. Lincoln of course agreed, but they wanted so little - how could he refuse to see them?

He gave a considerable amount of time to these meetings [Lincoln himself called them Public Opinion baths]’ they took place from 10 - 2 on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and 10 - 12 on Tuesday and Thursday.

All a person had to do was merely show up in the White House at the stated time and wait their turn.

Usually he would greet people with 'what can I do for you?' Then he would listen and would promise to do what he could if the request were reasonable. If it wasn’t, or if he was in a hurry to get rid of someone, he would crack a joke and with both of them laughing he would ease the caller out the door.

People availed of this opportunity for any number of reasons.  Of course, one of those reasons might be, and often was, because the person concerned wanted a job [“Mr. President, you never would have won Cobbs County except for my influence; make me a US Marshall!”].

On the other hand the person’s concern just might be something Lincoln needed to know about, something about which he could learn in no other way. [Washington DC had, and some say still has, a way of warping beyond anything recognizable the sincere concerns of a normal person.]

These public opinion baths were Lincoln’s answer to another age’s opinion poll. More time-consuming than opinion polls to be sure, but far more full-proof.

Lincoln and Compassion, Part 2

Lincoln said, and meant, the following: “To ease another's heartache is to forget one's own.”

Of course, one can easily dismiss that pithy observation as a cutsey little nothing, but Lincoln practiced the kind of compassion he preached.

One day during the Civil War Lincoln was visiting the sick and wounded. He entered a tent in which lay Confederate wounded. A correspondent quoted him as saying they were “enemies through uncontrollable circumstances.”

After a silence, Confederates came forward and without words shook the hand of the President. Some were too sore and broken to walk or to sit up. The President went among these, took some by the hand, wished them good cheer, and said they should have the best of care. The correspondent wrote, “Beholders wept at the interview. Most of the Confederates, even, were moved to tears.”

You’re going to lose a few: Lincoln’s reaction

Lincoln was once dismissed by an acquaintance who said, “I can't understand those speeches of Lincoln.” Lincoln laughed: “There are always some fleas a dog can’t reach.”

Lincoln as Flip-Flopper, Part One

Would we take to a man who wanted to be President who said anything remotely similar to this: “My policy is to have no policy”?

Lincoln’s Cabinet: Not a Friend in Sight!

The six members of President-elect Lincoln’s cabinet in 1860 had not a yes-man among them. That cabinet was made up of three defeated rivals for the Republican presidential nomination in 1860 [William Sward as Secretary of State, Salmon Chase as Secretary of the Treasury and Edwin Bates as Attorney General] and three Democrats [Gideon Welles as Secretary of the Navy, Montgomery Blair as Postmaster General and, eventually, Edwin Stanton as Secretary of War.] Clearly, each man had reason[s] aplenty to look down on and/or be antagonistic to the new President, especially in that age of knee-jerk spite.

As Doris Kearns Goodwin observes, “Every member of this administration was better known, better educated, and more experienced in public life than Lincoln. Their presence in the cabinet might have threatened to eclipse the obscure prairie lawyer from Springfield.”

Admittedly, it was a balanced cabinet, more or less accurately representing the soon-to-be-bloody divisions that were poised to swamp the ship of state in a titanic Civil War. It was also, pound for pound, arguably the most talented cabinet in American Presidential history. But along with the talent were six egos the size of barns. In short, cabinet meetings stretching to the dim distant horizon seemed doomed to fight the war in miniature at their twice-weekly meetings.

And what of that obscure prairie lawyer from Springfield? Lincoln was warned about his cabinet choices at the very outset: “They’ll eat you up!”  Remarkably, Lincoln just laughed. “They’re as likely to eat each other up,” he countered.

What he seems NOT to have said – here or at any other of the many perilous points in his remarkable career – is anything remotely like, “Maybe I’ve bitten off more than I can chew.”

Lincoln and the 2012 Campaign: Not a Fit, Part 22

As a people we listen to news outlets not for information but for ammunition.
We have degenerated to a state of endemic name-calling, of assuming the world will end If The Other Crowd Gets Eelected. Nothing, it seems, can shake our faith in bumper-sticker political discourse. We face real problems that are shunted off into a siding, presumably because it’s more important to blame instead of solve. We’d see this vast communal behavioral pattern as silly [which it is] if it weren’t so tragic. In short, none of us seems to put any real value on reconciliation.

On the other hand, nobody was as passionate about reconciliation as Lincoln, and in the world he lived in passionate hatred spilled over into a war producing more casualties than all the other conflicts this country has been involved in, from the Revolution to Iraq and Afghanistan.

We may not value reconciliation, but Lincoln did.

At one point he was visiting the sick and wounded, and came on a tent filled with Confederate wounded – the enemy. Shot-torn in both hips lay Henry L. Benbow, a colonel om the 23rd South Carolina artillary, and according to Colonel Benbow, “the President halted beside my bed and held out his hand. I was lying on my back, my hands folded across my breast.

“Looking him in the face I said, ‘Mr. President, do you know who it is to whom you offer your hand?’

“‘I do not,’ he replied.

“I said, ‘You offer it to a Confederate colonel who has fought you as hard as he could for four years!’

“‘Well,’ said he, ‘I hope a Confederate colonel will not refuse me his hand.’

“‘No sir,’ I replied, ‘I will not,’ and I clasped his hand in both of mine.”

Lincoln and the 2012 Campaign: Not a Fit, Part 21

We sometimes choose tawdry, media-construct leaders who, if truth be told, are not all that comfortable living inside their own skin, and so they end up choosing people in their immediate circle who are inclined to agree with him/her more than, perhaps, is good for the country.

Not so Lincoln

An old friend of Lincoln advised him not to take Salmon Chase into his cabinet “because Chase thinks he’s a great deal bigger than you are.” “Well,” asked Lincoln, “do you know of any other men who think they are bigger than I am?” “I don’t know that I do,” the man replied, “but why do you ask?” “Because,” answered Lincoln, “I want to put them all in my Cabinet.”

Lincoln and the 2012 Campaign: Not a Fit, Part 20

We don’t take kindly to any politician who bears the slightest whiff of “flip-flopper,” so we’d have difficulty tolerating Lincoln who not only said the following, but even seemed COMFORTABLE about it!

“I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.”

Lincoln and the 2012 Campaign: Not a Fit, Part 19

We assume a leader who doesn’t have an answer for every question is not a real leader. We’d have trouble with Lincoln who seemed, maybe, comfortable with his own ignorance!

“I am rather inclined to silence, and whether that be wise or not it is at least more unusual nowadays to find a man who can hold his tongue than to find one who cannot.”

Lincoln and the 2012 Campaign: Not a Fit, Part 18

Politics is a blood sport – if you’re playing the game and you screw up, trust me, you’ll get bloodied. Not true for Lincoln!

“I choose always to make my statute of limitations a short one.”

Lincoln and the 2012 Campaign: Not a Fit Part 17

Presidents have, over the years, devolved into a purveyer of the Nice-Nice.



Not Lincoln

Early in the war when a delegation of women visiting the White House asked Lincoln for a word of encouragement, he replied bluntly, “I have no word of encouragement to give. Our people and our generals have not yet made up their minds that we are involved in an awful war. Our officers seem to think the war can be won by plans and strategy. That is not true. Only hard and tough fighting will win.”

Lincoln and the 2012 Campaign: Not a Fit, Part 16

It seems clear that Abraham Lincoln no longer fits the context of an American political campaign. But you be the judge: can you think of any of our current crop of candidates – from president to dog catcher – who would express anything like the following?

 “Passion has helped us, but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason must furnish all the materials for our future support and defense.”

Lincoln and the 2012 Campaign: Not a Fit Part 15

It seems clear that Abraham Lincoln no longer fits the context of an American political campaign. But you be the judge: can you think of any of our current crop of candidates – from president to dog catcher – who would express anything like the following?

 “When our own beloved country once, by the blessing of God, united, prosperous and happy is now afflicted with faction and civil war, it is peculiarly fit for us to recognize the hand of God in this terrible visitation, and in sorrowful remembrance of our own faults and crimes as a nation and as individuals, to humble ourselves before Him, and to pray for His mercy.”

Lincoln and the 2012 Campaign: Not a Fit. Part 14

It seems clear that Abraham Lincoln no longer fits the context of an American political campaign. But you be the judge: can you think of any of our current crop of candidates – from president to dog catcher – who would express anything like the following?

“Avoid popularity if you would have peace.”

Lincoln and the 2012 Campaign: Not a Fit. Part 13

It seems clear that Abraham Lincoln no longer fits the context of an American political campaign. But you be the judge: can you think of any of our current crop of candidates – from president to dog catcher – who would express anything like the following?

 “Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?”

Lincoln and the 2012 Campaign: Not a Fit. Part 12

It seems clear that Abraham Lincoln no longer fits the context of an American political campaign. But you be the judge: can you think of any of our current crop of candidates – from president to dog catcher – who would express anything like the following?

“I cannot understand why men should be so eager after money. Wealth is simply a superfluity of what we don't need.”

Lincoln and the 2012 Campaign: Not a Fit, Part 11

It seems clear that Abraham Lincoln no longer fits the context of an American political campaign. But you be the judge: can you think of any of our current crop of candidates – from president to dog catcher – who would express anything like the following?

“I hope to have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky.”

Lincoln and the 2012 Campaign: Not a Fit Part 10

It seems clear that Abraham Lincoln no longer fits the context of an American political campaign. But you be the judge: can you think of any of our current crop of candidates – from president to dog catcher – who would express anything like the following?

Is Lincoln in a class by himself, or what?

 “I don’t like that man; I must get to know him better.”

Lincoln and the 2012 Campaign: Not a Fit Part 9

A Third Victory Speech:

In November 1864, “Having served four years in the depths of a great, and unended national peril, I can view this call to a second term, in nowise more flatteringly to myself, than as an expression of the public judgment that I may better finish a difficult work in which I have labored from the first, than could anyone less severely schooled to the task.”

Lincoln and the 2012 Campaign: Not a Fit Part 8

A Second Victory Speech:

And again, in 1860, “In all our rejoicing let us neither express, nor cherish, any harsh feeling towards any citizen who, by his vote, has differed with us. Let us at all times remember that all American citizens are brothers of a common country, and should dwell together in the bonds of fraternal feeling.”

Lincoln and the 2012 Campaign: Not a Fit Part 7

Victory Speech

Winning the Presidency in 1860, he said, “I have been selected to fill an important office for a brief period, and am now, in your eyes, invested with an influence which will soon pass away; but should my administration prove to be a very wicked one, or what is more probably, a very foolish one, if you, the people, are but true to yourselves and to the Constitution, there is but little harm I can do, thank God!”

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Lincoln and the 2012 Campaign: Not a Fit Part 6

Concession Speech

In losing the race for the Illinois senate seat to Stephen Douglas in 1858 Lincoln gave the following answer when asked for his reaction to his defeat:

“I feel like the boy who stubbed his toe rather badly; he was hurt too much to laugh and he was too big to cry,”           

Lincoln and the 2012 Campaign: Not a Fit. Part 5

It seems clear that Abraham Lincoln no longer fits the context of an American political campaign. But you be the judge: can you think of any of our current crop of candidates – from president to dog catcher – who would express anything like the following?

“We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.”