ABE, THE ULTIMATE AMERICAN LEGEND

There is a very nice Disney cartoon about Amos the Mouse helping Ben Franklin in his good works for the betterment of the nascent American Republic. There are references to Washington, Jefferson, and to several other Founding Fathers in similar historical cartoons out of Hollywood, and in various children’s books on the fruitful subject of the American Revolution. But, in so far as American folklore as such is concerned, no other historical figure has ever spawned as many tales, fables, bedtime stories, and such, as the persona of Abraham Lincoln, who can be rightly called, as I call him, The Ultimate American Legend. His tall hat, on top of the squarish, bearded face, is instantly recognizable, winning the headwear contest hands down over any other hat in the wardrobe of American heroes. His beard is, of course, the most famous of all American beards, and his classic silhouette has no rivals in leading us without any additional clues to an instant identification.

The sixteenth President of the United States Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) is widely known to the world as the emancipator of slaves, the savior of the American Union, and a martyr in the cause of freedom. Was the American Civil War indeed an act of humanitarian liberation and political self-preservation, or was it an act of naked aggression from an impartial legal standpoint on the part of this freedom-loving gentleman? I used to be mulling over this question from time to time in the past, but today, in the dark glow of so many deadly internecine squabbles, tearing peaceful nations apart, and setting neighbors against neighbors, changing the face of the world map, and promising even more bloodshed and division, with no end in sight, the answer is quite clear. The American Civil War did, indeed, preserve the American nation, and no matter how high the terrible toll in blood and treasure had been, it was the right thing to do, and in this respect President Lincoln merits a full vindication.

But as I have been saying from the beginning of this sketch, Abe Lincoln is much more than what history is ready to acknowledge. He is a figure of great personal charm, the stuff of his own legends, whose real-life persona is in striking harmony with the benign fairytales spun around him.

Of humble birth, his mother dying when he was nine, Lincoln knew poverty before he knew anything else. He received very little schooling, if any. In his own words, there was “absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education. Of course, when I came of age I did not know much. Still, somehow, I could read, write, and cipher to the rule of three; but that was all.”

Used to hard physical labor from childhood, he had no desire to settle as a farmer, and after applying for a variety of manual jobs, in 1832 he enlisted as a volunteer in the Black Hawk War. In the meantime, he was eager to educate himself, and was so successful in this effort, that in 1836 he was able to pass the bar exam and was licensed to practice law.

As a lawyer, he became one of the most successful and honored members of his profession, noted not only for such professional qualities as shrewdness and common sense, but also for his utmost moral probity and utter fairness.

In those turbulent times, when the slavery issue was coming up front and center in American politics, and a war with Mexico was increasingly dressed as a question of moral legitimacy, it was natural for Lincoln to engage himself in politics, where he had a truly bumpy ride, with great disappointments and frustrations, to the point of almost leaving politics forever. The 1854 birth of the antislavery Republican Party, however, revived his political ambitions, as he soon became a Republican himself, and, in the wake of the celebrated 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates, resulting in Lincoln’s moral and political victory, he became the new Party leader, on his way to the Presidency.

Before President Lincoln ever took his office, in March 1861, the secession crisis, leading to the formation of the Confederacy, was already in full swing, but in his Inaugural Address he clearly stated his reluctance to engage in an aggression. “The power confided to me,” he said, “will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property… belonging to the government… but, beyond that, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere.” At issue was the fate of Fort Sumter, a U.S. military base, located in Charleston Harbor, and garrisoned by federal troops. Before negotiations about this base could properly proceed, the Confederacy fired the first shot, and what became known as the Civil War between North and South thus became unavoidable. In other words, Lincoln was never responsible for starting the war. In his own Inaugural words addressed to the Southerners, “You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors”, and by opening fire on Fort Sumter, the South became the aggressor.

On April 14, 1865, as he was fatally shot in a Washington DC theater President Lincoln entered history in a very special way. “Now he belongs to the ages,” was said about him (by the prominent contemporary politician-lawyer Edwin M. Stanton), and it was proven true in a very special way. As a result of his remarkable life and work, culminating in his martyr’s death, Abe was to become the ultimate American hero, not just in the limited historical sense, but in the highest cultural sense that a man can become a hero to his nation: by transcending the borderline between fact and fiction, and becoming the ultimate Legend.