Jon Meacham’s Lincoln –
And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and The American Struggle
Lincoln grew up poor and mostly self-taught in Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois. He grew up in an anti-slavery family and attended an anti-slavery church. He was exposed to and repulsed by slavery early on in Kentucky, working on boats along the Ohio River that separated free and slave states and working on boats all the way down to the great slave market in New Orleans. He was self-taught using the Bible and the traditional reading books of his day. His mom died when he was quite young, and he was encouraged to read and learn by his stepmom. He became a prominent local lawyer and then state legislator, eventually president, dedicated to the use of politics for the betterment of the nation.
He was initially attracted to politics as a Whig supporter of Henry Clay and the policies of the “American System”. The Whig platform was gradual emancipation of slaves, internal improvements (i.e., canals, roads and other infrastructure to promote the nation’s economic development), high tariffs (to protect the development of the nation’s manufacturers), a strong federal government, strong and universal public education, and a national bank to stabilize the nation’s financial systems. Clay, a slave owner himself, was the Great Compromiser who cobbled together the Missouri Compromise of 1820 admitting Missouri and Maine and prohibiting the growth of slavery in states and territories above the 36 degrees, 30 minutes parallel, and the Compromise of 1850 which admitted California as a state. Lincoln was a one term Congressman as a Whig. The Whig party broke apart soon after his Congressional term over the issues of slavery, its abolition, and the emancipation of the enslaved.
Lincoln and many northern Whigs joined the new Republican Party during the 1850s, which was the first national party that took a strong stand against slavery. Democrats, led by Southern Democrats but many northern Democrats as well, became the party supporting slavery. The Know Nothings (American Party) from this era were a nativist party opposed to Catholics and immigrants.
Lincoln, running as a Senatorial candidate for the brand-new Republican Party, rose to national prominence from his great debates with Steven Douglas over slavery. He had opposed the Mexican War and the spread of slavery into any of the new territories acquired by the US from Mexico and France.
Lincoln and his colleagues believed that the US Constitution prohibited the federal government from ending slavery in the states that already had it, but the Constitution allowed the federal government to bar slavery in the territories and condition future admissions as states to the abolition of slavery in the state. He believed and contended that slave owners should be compensated for their losses when slavery was abolished. He believed that existing states with slavery would abolish it, if they were surrounded by a multitude of states which barred it.
The US had fought and won a war with Mexico and won vast new territories. Southerners who had strongly supported the war wanted to establish slavery in the newly acquired territories for both political reasons (votes in Congress and especially the Senate) and economic reasons (more cotton growing plantations and other agriculture that would benefit from and rely on slave labor). In the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, Democratic Senator Steven Douglas of Illinois and his Southern and Northern Democratic allies essentially repealed the Missouri Compromise and decided that the territories could by popular vote make their own rules as to whether to bar or permit slavery in their own jurisdictions.
Shortly after, Roger Taney writing for the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case issued a far-reaching and widely descried ruling holding that slaves could never become US citizens, that the black man was inferior, and that the Missouri Compromise restricting the expansion of slavery was unconstitutional. The Southern slave states had reached the apex of their powers and provoked a severe backlash in the North.
The country was bitterly divided over slavery in the 1860 election – not whether to abolish it and to free the slaves, but rather whether to expand or ban slavery in the territories. Lincoln, who as a politician had proposed only to restrict its growth in the new US territories, won an overwhelming Electoral College victory despite only getting 40% of the popular vote because his three opponents split the remaining votes. He won the North; Breckinridge won the deep South; Bell (a unionist with no position on slavery) won the border states, and Douglas won only in Missouri. Breckinridge and Douglas split the Democratic votes; Breckinridge wanted unfettered expansion of slavery in the territories – the same position as the Supreme Court’s Justice Taney; Douglas favored popular votes to ban or adopt slavery in each territory.
Rather than working out their differences in Congress after their resounding electoral defeat, the politicians from the Southern States decided to secede and attacked the North beginning at Fort Sumter to establish their independence. Outgoing President Buchanan through his Secretary of War ensured that US arsenals in the South fell into the hands of the soon to be rebels.
Lincoln fought to sustain the Union – the only issue on which the North was unified. From the South’s perspective, the war was fought to preserve their “way of life” -- slavery. Only after three years of war and many lives lost, did Lincoln decide to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves in the rebel Southern states. And only after five years of war and Lincoln’s assassination by John Wilkes Booth was the nation able to pass the 13th Amendment, barring slavery everywhere in the US. The 14th Amendment assuring citizenship rights, due process, and equal protection of the laws for every person born in the US regardless of their race was enacted in 1868, and the 15th Amendment assuring the rights to vote regardless of race was ratified in 1870 (but leaving out women until the 19th Amendment).
Hundreds of thousands gave their lives, and Lincoln gave his own life to assure these basic democratic rights to every American regardless of their race. Lincoln was our finest President in our direst hour. He inspired the nation and has been a beacon for the world ever since. His religion and upbringing gave him the extraordinary strength and wisdom to lead the nation wisely through these tumultuous times. His personal tragedies of the loss of two children to illness, his own and his wife’s struggles with mental illness gave him the compassion and empathy to bind, heal and inspire the nation with his words and leadership.
I was most struck by Meacham’s beautifully told vignettes of Lincoln and Frederick Douglass meeting in the White House during the war, and of the enormous grief and suffering he experienced at the deaths from illness of his two children and his first true love.
On President’s Day 2023 when another nation, Ukraine, and another leader, Zelensky, fights for its very survival from horrendous oppression, we can celebrate this man, his courage, wisdom and leadership and look into our own souls and rightly ask “what about us, what about now”?