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LINCOLN UP." MR. PRESIDENT
In retrospect, Obama's election was a lot
like the moon landing. Immediately afterward,
we were all swept back into the vortex of our
lives, but for a single collective moment, we
stared at our screens in wonder. He did it. I'/e
did it. We broke a barrier. If this is possible,
anything is possible. Maybe we can—maybe
we shall—overcome.
Three years later, America seems like a
“can't do" country. Like his predecessor,
Obama stands on a pile of rubble, but this
time it is an economic ruin; this time, we took
the edifice down ourselves, and no one can
brandish a bullhorn and make a speech and
galvanize us to action. In a variety of ways,
for a variety of reasons, we are spent.
Easy comparisons have already been
made: Lincoln and Obama came into office
two gaunt, young, inexperienced, relatively
funny-looking Illinois lawyers, each seeking to
soothe a bitterly divided nation. Such kinships
would mean nothing, however, if they didn't
mean so much to Obama. Author Sarah Vowel
has said that Lincoln is like one of those nov
elty mirrors with the beard painted on—all
politicians want to see themselves reflected
in his image. But some politicians look longer
and deeper into the mirror. Sharing a house
with Lincoln for eight years. President George
W. Bush once quipped: "I'm often asked, 'Do
you see Lincoln's ghost?' and I tell people, I
quit drinking 22 years ago.'" Obama's relation
ship with Lincoln's ghost seems more pro
found. In his article, "What I See in Lincoln's
Eyes," Obama claimed to see "tragedy altered
into grace" whenever he looked into the 16th
president's face. "On trying days, [his] por
trait, which hangs in my office, soothes me,"
Obama wrote. "It always asks me questions."
One wonders what questions Lincoln's
ghost is asking now. Perhaps, if it is a good
ghost, eager to help, it might offer up a few
answers.
In February 1861, Lincoln stood on a ruin
of his own—seven states had already left the
Union and no one knew if others would follow.
Politicians approached him with yet another
compromise—extending the 36°30' line to
the Pacific—but he rejected it out-of-hand.
Slavery was a S3.5 billion dollar interest, but
it was also a monstrous evil that had cor
rupted American politics and made a mockery
of American values. "The tug has to come,"
Lincoln said. On the question of slavery in
the territories, he would "hold firm, as with a
chain of steel." "Let us have faith that RIGHT
MAKES MIGHT," he said, "and in that faith,
let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we
understand it."
A hundred days into his term, Lincoln
confessed that if he'd known how difficult it
was going to be when he started, he'd scarcely
have thought it possible to survive. By the
time Pope was defeated at Second Manassas,
witnesses said Lincoln seemed "almost ready
to hang himself." After Fredericksburg he
seemed "heart-broken... and
soon reached a state of ner
vous excitement bordering on
insanity."
"If there is a worse place
than hell," he said, "I am in it."
When Harriet Beecher Stowe
asked about his plans after the
war, Lincoln supposedly laughed:
"After the war? I shall not be
troubled about that. The war is
killing me."
By the spring of 1864,
Republican Horace Greeley, editor
of the largest circulating news
paper in the North, came out
against the president's renomi
nation. "Mr. Lincoln is already
beaten," he claimed. "He cannot
be elected. And we must have
another ticket to save us from
utter overthrow."
Lincoln was almost inclined
to agree. "Do you expect to be
elected?" someone asked him.
"Well," he replied, "I don't think
I ever heard of any man being
elected to an office unless some
one was for him."
As it happens there was a quiet army of
someones who were for Lincoln—the army
itself—70 percent of whom voted for him and
helped to give him his margin of victory. A
few had always been "Lincoln Men." Far more
had been convinced by degrees that they had
been wrong, and he had been right: the tug
had to come. And now they, too, would hold
firm, as with a chain of steel.
It may be that political "warfare" is killing
Obama. It may be that Obama never existed;
possibly we fabricated him from our hopes,
and killed him when they proved unrealistic.
None of that matters now, because 2012 is an
election year, and it is time to lock arms with
someone.
But if Obama should win, let us hope in
his second term he takes another look in that
mirror. The Lincoln he wants is not the one
he's been sold—the post-partisan consensus-
builder who sagely assembles a "team of
rivals." The one he wants is the unyielding
man of principle who wages relentless war
on billion-dollar interests that are bad for
America.
Stephen Berry
Stephen Berry is associate professor of history at the
University of Georgia, where he teaches courses on
America in the Civil War Era. His latest book is House
of Abraham: Lincoln and the Todds. A Family Divided
by War. which was the Book of the Month Club main
selection for March 2008.
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