Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln (12 February 1809–15 April 1865) was the most fearsome vampire hunter in nineteenth-century America third cousin four times removed of Tom Hanks[2] 16th President of the United States from 1861 to 1865 played by Daniel Day-Lewis.[3] A Republican (this was back when the Democrats supported slavery and the Republicans wanted to end it.)[4] from Illinois, he is most remembered for making the South angry enough to secede upon his victory, triggering the American Civil War (1861–1865), and for his fondness for railways. However, we here remember him as the President with the most pet goats.[5]

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“”In his company I was never in any way reminded of my humble origin, or of my unpopular color.
—Frederick Douglass[1]
“”Lincoln becomes the American solar myth, the chief butt of American credulity and sentimentality. Washington, of late years, has been perceptibly humanized; every schoolboy now knows that he used to swear a good deal, and was a sharp trader, and had a quick eye for a pretty ankle. But meanwhile the varnishers and veneerers have been busily converting Abe into a plaster saint, thus making him fit for adoration in the Y.M.C.A.’s.
—HL Mencken

One of these is not like the other

There are two interpretations of Abraham Lincoln's presidency, depending on what historian you're talking to.

Lincoln immortalized on the most useless U.S. currency ever created.[6]

President Lincoln was one of our greatest leaders

The first and most popular one is that Lincoln was one of the greatest (if not the greatest) presidents in American history. He managed to keep the nation intact in the Civil War (perhaps not doing the best possible job, but still not bad) and almost singlehandedly made abolition politically palatable.

He is also remembered by WWE[7] for being an absolutely fantastic wrestler and has a place in the wrestling hall of fame.[8] Seriously, his wrestling exploits were often used during his political campaign, and after beating the leader of a gang by outright choke slamming him,[7] thereby inventing that particular move, he earned their respect, and they became some of his earliest political supporters. What have you done lately?

President Lincoln abused and overstepped his presidential powers

The second, less popular view is that Lincoln grossly abused the United States' executive branch's power.[9] In particular, he suspended the writ of habeas corpus, spent money without the approval of Congress, and imprisoned 18,000 suspected Confederate sympathizers without trial. While there are legitimate criticisms to be made of Lincoln here (like any president, or, hell, person ever), an entire cottage industry of pseudohistories demonizing Lincoln has popped up, mostly pushing the Lost Cause of the South narrative (see also Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War).

It's true that such actions are unconstitutional and would be inexcusable in a time of peace. However, it is essential to note that Lincoln was president during a brutal conflict that was a hair close to tearing the United States apart.[10] If there is any better "national security" excuse, we'd like to hear one.

Soft on slavery!
President Lincoln and his cabinet, presumably busy freeing slaves...while posing for pictures.
“”Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined.
—Frederick Douglass, 1876[11][12]

When running for Illinois' seat in the U.S. Senate in 1858, Lincoln was tarred as a "closet abolitionist" (the political equivalent of being called "soft on terrorism" today) by his Democratic opponent Stephen Douglas. Douglas claimed Lincoln would allow such horrors as voting rights, jury duty rights, and (horror of horrors) interracial marriage rights for blacks. Lincoln got around this by expressing what would today be considered horrifyingly racist things. In Lincoln's own words:

“”I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people...and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.

His anti-abolitionist credentials secured, he promptly turned around and stated that blacks deserved the same right to freedom, the "right to eat the bread without the leave of anybody else which his own hand earns," as he put it.[13] In his own words, "[T]here is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man."

This was actually a very calculated move; Lincoln, himself a lifelong opponent of slavery and an abolitionist early in his life, knew the actual abolitionists had no one else to go with but him. He needed to woo the moderates and wingnuts of the time to get elected, so he tried to play to both sides as a way to preserve the Union. (Southerners were straight-up calling him a "Black Republican," for Christ's sake.[14])

The South promptly left the Union anyway, leading to the Civil War. With no need to play to the slaveowners anymore, Lincoln set about to defeat the Confederacy, force the South back into the Union only if they abolished slavery, emancipate self-freed slaves who crossed the border, and permanently abolish slavery. During the war, he ordered the Union Army to protect freed slaves, made sure they treated freed slaves as equals while in the Union Army and encouraged the border states to free their slaves. When Lincoln was about to go to sleep after re-election, he noticed a crowd of black DC natives who had been waiting patiently outside the White House to congratulate him. He went outside and spent several more sleepless hours personally shaking every one of their hands.

When the Confederates threatened to re-enslave or murder black Union troops, Lincoln retaliated with a promise to execute rebel prisoners of war for every black Union soldier that was re-enslaved or murdered. During the war, Lincoln pushed for equal pay for Black soldiers, legalized black witnesses in federal courts, was the first president to invite a black man, Frederick Douglass, to the White House, dropped his plan to colonize freed blacks outside the Union after Douglass convinced him to do so, and desegregated services in the US Mail and DC streetcars.

He established the Freedman's Bureau to help freed slaves to get on their feet and make decent lives for themselves. He appointed his power-hungry and politically treacherous Secretary of the Treasury to Chief Justice because he knew the man would support and protect cases and laws dealing with freed slaves and equality.

The reason he was killed by actor John Wilkes Booth? Lincoln suggested, as the hallmark of Reconstruction, equality of suffrage, and civil rights for blacks. To Booth, that meant "Nigger citizenship [...] That is the last speech he will ever make."

"Soft" indeed.

Modern political symbolism

Many modern politicians have, either directly or indirectly, drawn analogies between themselves and Abraham Lincoln. President Barack Obama, while balking at outright equivalencies, often subtly encourages surrogates and fans to do the same: he opened his bid for the presidency at the Illinois State House (Lincoln's old stomping grounds), dined on china patterned after Mary Todd Lincoln's directly after his inauguration, was sworn in on Lincoln's Bible, and openly sought to create a "team of rivals," historian Doris Kearns Goodwin's phrase to describe Lincoln's cabinet.

But Obama was by no means the first. Because Abraham Lincoln was America's first Republican president, some Republicans attempt to trace a "continuity of political thought and philosophy from Lincoln, the country’s first Republican president, to the era of George W. Bush."[15] However, the two men share little more than the same party name: Lincoln was a social progressive, fighting intensely for, and building his reputation on, opposition to the quite status quo institution of slavery.[16] He imposed the US's first ever progressive tax to pay for the war,[17] was responsible for the creation of the National Academy of Sciences,[18] and historian Merrill Peterson even called him "the best friend labor ever had in the White House."[19] And Lincoln was at least a deist,[20][21] one of only three presidents that did not join any church.[22]

Furthermore, the Republican Party has reinvented itself three times since the 1860s — first to become the anti-Southern, freedmen's rights party after Lincoln's death, second to become the deregulation party in the 1930s, and finally to place social conservatism above fiscal conservatism in the Reagan era; the bastions of the Union now drenched in blue. Clearly, the fact that Lincoln and modern Republicans share a party name does not mean they share anything more than that.

Keep scrolling down if that's tl;dr.

Too many awesome quotes
“”A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South.
—The most famous passage of Lincoln's House Divided speech.
“”In your hands, my dissatisfied countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you...you have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it.
—Lincoln, warning the South in his Inaugural Address.
“”Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose, and you allow him to make war at pleasure.
—Lincoln, managing to predict the rise of Dubya in 1848.[23]
“”As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except Negroes." When the Know Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except Negroes, foreigners, and Catholics." When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty — to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.
—Sound familiar?[24]
“”Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.[25]
“”The severest justice may not always be the best policy.[26]
“”I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
—Lincoln, on pragmatism.[27]
“”The Bible says somewhere that we are desperately selfish. I think we would have discovered that fact without the Bible.[28]
“”The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others, the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name — liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names — liberty and tyranny.
—Lincoln, 1864[29]
“”Already the liberal part[ies] throughout the world, express the apprehension "that the one retrograde institution in America, is undermining the principles of progress, and fatally violating the noblest political system the world ever saw." This is not the taunt of enemies, but the warning of friends. Is it quite safe to disregard it — to despise it? ... In our greedy chase to make profit of the Negro, let us beware, lest we "cancel and tear to pieces" even the white man's charter of freedom.
—Ann Coulter, this is for you.[30]
“”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 defence.[31]
“”I do not like that man. I must get to know him better.
—Lincoln, just being awesome.[32]
“”In relation to the principle that all men are created equal, let it be as nearly reached as we can. If we cannot give freedom to every creature, let us do nothing that will impose slavery upon any other creature.
—Lincoln, continuing to be awesome.[33]
“”You say you are conservative — eminently conservative — while we are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the sort. What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried? We stick to, contend for, the identical old policy on the point in controversy which was adopted by "our fathers who framed the government under which we live;" while you with one accord reject, and scout, and spit upon that old policy, and insist upon substituting something new. True, you disagree among yourselves as to what that substitute shall be. You are divided on new propositions and plans, but you are unanimous in rejecting and denouncing the old policy of the fathers.
—Lincoln, telling off slaveholders in the most awesome way possible.[34]
gollark: HOW soon?
gollark: Excellent. Time to begin Project 129.
gollark: SOON™?
gollark: <@!309787486278909952> THERMALDYNAMICS
gollark: It's not new, but yes.

See also
  • The Gettysburg Address - All 272 words of it. Possibly the most remarkable homage to fallen veterans ever written.

References
  1. Frederick Douglass, 1818-1895, UNC
  2. https://famouskin.com/famous-kin-chart.php?name=7637+abraham+lincoln&kin=9361+tom+hanks
  3. Whitehouse.gov official biography
  4. http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Southern_Democratic_Party
  5. Inside the whitehouse
  6. Well, look on the bright side: He's also on a considerably more useful piece of currency worth 500 times as much as the one pictured. (And on the 2010 presidential dollar coin, but nobody ever spends those.)
  7. Abraham Lincoln: president ... and wrestler? WWE
  8. Honoree: Abraham Lincoln National Wrestling Hall of Fame
  9. Indeed, some said he was little more than a big government socialist.
  10. "The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it."
  11. Frederick Douglass: Expression of Gratitude for Freedom, Unveiling of the Freedmen's Monument, Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C., April 14, 1876
  12. Abraham Lincoln: lukewarm abolitionist or radical? by Allen C. Guelzo (February 14, 2016, Updated: February 14, 2016, 4:15pm) San Francisco Chronicle.
  13. Smithsonian magazine's article (page 4) on the Lincoln-Douglas debates.
  14. Election of 1860, Dickinson College (He played a very similar game in his first inaugural addressFile:Wikipedia's W.svg as a last effort to persuade the South not to secede; the Civil War began the day after, and the Emancipation Proclamation was conceived the next year.)
  15. "Old School - Greenberg remembers" at Halfway There
  16. A Southern GOP Can't Be the Party of Lincoln, New York Magazine
  17. See the Wikipedia article on Revenue Act of 1862. (Indeed, throughout his political career he was very willing to soak the rich.)
  18. Founding and Early Work, National Academy of Sciences
  19. Lincoln's Prophecy, Snopes
  20. Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals, ch. 3.
  21. Seemed to use more religious-tinged words during his presidencyFile:Wikipedia's W.svg, but nowhere close to the Baptist fundie-speak of the time. (His law partner, William Herndon, even called him a pantheist. )
  22. The Religious Affiliations of U.S. Presidents, Pew Research
  23. Letter to William H. Herndon, University of Michigan (opposing the Mexican-American War)
  24. Letter to Joshua Speed, Library of Congress
  25. Letter to Henry L. Pierce and Others, University of Michigan
  26. Dictionary.com
  27. Letter to Horace Greeley, The New York Times
  28. Seventh Lincoln-Douglas Debate at Alton, National Park Service
  29. Address at Baltimore Sanitary Fair, UC Santa Barbara
  30. New light on a Lincoln quote, Rice University
  31. Lyceum Address on Wikisource
  32. Colorado State University
  33. Speech in Reply to Senator Douglas at Chicago, Tufts University
  34. Cooper Union Speech, National Park Service
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