The Colorado Confederatarian

By Dr. Clyde Wilson

Alas! it is delusion all;
The future cheats us from afar,
Nor can we be what we recall,
Nor dare we think on what we are. —Lord Byron

“The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart: his words were softer than oil, yet were they drawn swords.” —Psalm 56:21

In our time M.E. Bradford was the pioneer who blazed a new trail into the wilderness of the Lincoln legacy where lurk so many of the evil demons of our public life. Several years ago, when I began to explore the dark and bloody ground on my own, I used the label “The Lincoln Myth” to describe the yawning gap between Lincoln the historical person and the Lincoln icon that is the commanding symbol of America.

I knew that “myth” was not quite the correct term, but I was consciously setting up a counter to the fashionable history-mongering then and now underway in regard to the so-called “Myth of the Lost Cause.” According to Establishment historians, everything favorable that Southerners (or anybody) believe about the Confederates—their courage, skill, dedication, sacrifice, principle—amounts to nothing but a deceitful “Lost Cause Myth” that was invented after the fact by Southerners to put a pretty face on their evil deeds and disastrous failure. This now mainstream characterization of the central event of American history is an ideological reassertion of the old Radical Republican stance, with a bit of Marxism thrown in, masquerading as expert knowledge. Among its many flaws, it abuses the term “myth,” misappropriating an intellectual-sounding word as a substitute for falsehood.

Properly considered, a myth is neither true nor false—it is art. It is a story rising out of the collective unconscious to give a meaningful pattern to a people’s history and nourish their identity. Some myths that we know come from remote times and other peoples—the siege of Troy, Romulus and Remus. Some are idealized versions of more recent but poorly known history—King Arthur, Joan of Arc, Robin Hood. It never occurs to scholars who prattle about the Lost Cause Myth that they are as human as the people they libel and that they may be labouring under a few “myths” of their own. In 2002 I suggested to the purveyors of the Lost Cause myth as historical explanation, that before they dismissed the whole Southern case as dishonest or deluded mythology, they ought to research a little into the extravagant glorification of the Union cause that dominated American discourse for decades after the war and involved, among other things, the virtual (and blasphemous) deification of Lincoln. That mythology persists powerfully to this day. It is at least as unfactual as the “Lost Cause” and the source of far more evil consequences. A little admiration for Lee and the boys in grey by their descendants and others is harmless in comparison with a self-righteous stamping-out-the-grapes-of-wrath mentality.

I now see that the Lincoln story qualifies as fable rather than myth. My Webster’s Collegiate has as its first definition of fable: “a fictitious narrative or statement.” A myth is a product of the folk, while a fable usually has a known author or authors and time of creation. A myth contains a kind of poetic meaning even if it is not literally accurate. By this reckoning, the Lincoln story is a fable. We know when and how it was created and we know that it is essentially fictitious. The interesting question to be asked, is why was the fable created and what purpose does its false story serve?

For most countries, the iconic national person is a figure of heroic action fighting for his people—Joan of Arc, William Tell, Frederick the Great, Simon Bolivar, Garibaldi. This was the role filled by Washington for earlier Americans—Washington the brave and virtuous leader on horseback or the incorruptible Roman lawgiver. What are we to make of a people who replace that Washington as their commanding national symbol with a corporate attorney in an armchair? Nobody has ever been able to make to make Lincoln into a soldier. Even his brief active militia service is treated mainly as a source of humorous stories. They have a little better luck with Lincoln the Lawgiver, by highly inventive interpretations of the Emancipation Proclamation and the Gettysburg Address, which uses powerful prose to sanctify a deceitful history and a barbarous war of conquest.

One postwar Southern commentator remarked that “the dead Lincoln was worshiped because the living one had no admirers.” It is true that the living Lincoln was not highly valued by those on his side. It was the circumstance of his assassination that forwarded the creation of the fable. Stanton emerged from Lincoln’s death chamber to proclaim “Now he belongs to the ages.” For the previous four years Stanton had freely referred to Lincoln as “the Gorilla” and considered him a third-rate man unequal to his duties, who had to be managed into moving in the right direction. (Somewhat like how Dick Cheney must view George W. Bush.)

So one aspect of the proliferating Lincoln fable was the cynical use far into the future of the fable of a martyred leader of supreme virtue for emotional ammunition to keep the Republican party in power. Another aspect of the fable is far more troublesome—the creation of Lincoln the Christ figure. It can be and has been thoroughly documented that this icon was created in post-assassination sermons. As a historian two generations back put it: “That the Lord had sent Lincoln to earth as his mysterious representative, to die for his people, was a belief that rose from many Easter sermons and grew with time to blend into the faith that the humble backwoodsman had been by some miracle the savior of the Union.” The literature that created the Lincoln/Christ is vast and stomach-turningly blasphemous. And, of course, it is never asked just what made saving the Union such a divine cause.

The Lincoln thus imagined and propagated was a fictitious narrative which has long been proclaimed to contain the true account of American history and the essential meaning of America. The fable gained its purchase in the midst of war, revolution, assassination, violent and vengeful self-righteousness, and most important and worst of all—religious disintegration. Lincoln the Christ figure was thrust into the vacuum created by the erosion of belief that had been steadily undermining Northern Protestantism in the previous decades. Out of public anxiety and near hysteria was created the religion of Americanism: America The Father, Lincoln The Son, and Democracy The Holy Spirit.

To this day and to the immense peril of our souls and bodies, many of our fellow citizens are incapable of distinguishing between God and “America” or comprehending that one who occupies the throne of Lincoln and uses the hallowed terms that Lincoln used can be capable of wrong. 

There are a couple of curious aspects of the Lincoln story that are worth mentioning here. The two men who knew Lincoln best, Herndon, his longtime law partner, and Lamon, his confidential agent during the war, both ridiculed the Lincoln fable that was being created in their time. To them Lincoln was no saint; he was the tough, cunning politician who carried off the difficult feat of consolidating the Republican coup d’etat. Another curious thing is that Lincoln’s son destroyed vast quantities of his father’s papers, which were never seen by anyone except the two adoring secretaries/biographers Nicolay and Hay. One must wonder why. You would think that every scrap of paper associated with such an important and revered figure would be cherished. That is normally the case. If you had a slip of paper with an authentic Lincoln signature on it, you could put it on the market today for $5,000 to start.

Known facts about Lincoln, both as a public and as a private man, contradict or seriously undermine the fable at every point. What I have to say does not include any amazing discoveries or brilliant insights. It is simply information that has long been known. Establishment historians either deny the obvious or are, as Professor Thomas DiLorenzo has pointed out, fabulously creative in finding excuses. James G. Randall, once known as the leading Lincoln scholar, admitted that, yes, Lincoln was something of a dictator. But that was all right because he was only dictatorial when he had to be, and the power could not have been in safer hands. Lincoln is not a question of evidence and reason; he is a question of Faith. To question the Faith is like flushing the Koran in front of a Muslim.

Lincoln never looked like a handsome young Henry Fonda or Raymond Massey even at his best. His face was partly deformed, he had a degenerative disease, and his arms and legs, as everybody noticed, were too long for his trunk, almost to the point of grotesqueness, which is why Stanton called him “the Gorilla.” Besides, he had been kicked in the head by a horse or a mule and ever after had frequent doddering blackouts, though usually lasting only a few seconds.

Despite ten thousand Mother’s Day sermons about the tender and loving son, Lincoln callously walked away from his natal family and never looked back. At times his wife drove him from the house in a rage, and she ended up in an insane asylum suffering mental and physical deterioration that have been described as resembling advanced syphilis. On the record, Lincoln was no poster boy for son, husband, or father. According to the fable Lincoln suffered greatly from the tragic early death of his first love. There is no evidence whatsoever for the Ann Rutledge story. However, we do know that Lincoln cold-bloodedly jilted one lady when he found another of higher status. Even then, he stood up the new fiance at the altar the first time.

The fable presents us with a pious, praying, saintly Ole Abe, a rail-splitter of humble birth, rather resembling a well-known Carpenter of similar background, and who also was martyred on Good Friday and wafted to Heaven by flights of angels. So far as we know the real Lincoln was an agnostic who was a prolific retailer of dirty stories and who cynically made his political speeches sound like the King James Bible. One of the few evidences of belief he showed was in the Second Inaugural when he blamed the war on God, for whom Humble Abe Lincoln was but an innocent instrument.

Then, there is Honest Abe, the poor boy who made good through earnest effort and integrity. He was born in a log cabin. Big deal. Most people were born in log cabins in those days and many very successful men were self-educated. Lincoln’s rival Stephen Douglas was born in a log cabin in Vermont and walked all the way to Illinois. He became a successful lawyer without the prestigious sponsorship of well-connected Southern families that Lincoln enjoyed. But a public that fell for “Horatio Alger” was ripe for a log cabin spiel. Lincoln was not the country lawyer who defended the poor widow whose cow had been killed by the railroad. He was the attorney for the railroad and a rich man. That his career was somehow in defense of the “common man” is concocted political propaganda endlessly repeated as a fact. His success as a lawyer was based on a mastery of cunning tactics with juries, not on deep and noble learning.

Then there is the young prairie idealist whose integrity and potential greatness was sensed by the people, who propelled him forward into leadership despite his humility. In fact, according to Herndon, ambition—a relentless, almost pathological ambition—was the dominant trait of Lincoln’s character. No one was ever elected to the Presidency before or since who was more unknown and with less real popular support. After all, 60 per cent of “the people” voted against him. He rose by mastering all the mechanics of politics—packing and manipulating conventions, secretly buying up newspapers, meeting vital issues with elegant sounding but ambiguous positions. Idealist? David Davis, whom Lincoln appointed to the Supreme Court, said that Lincoln was “the most secretive man I ever knew,” an observation supported by others. What we have here is not an idealist but a self-taught and very talented Machiavellian.

In fact, Lincoln calculated and dissimulated even more than is normal for ambitious politicians. One of the reasons we have trouble understanding how bad it was is that he permanently debased the standards of public discourse so that we now take for granted things that were egregious innovations in his day. Lincoln admitted he named his chief rivals in the party to his cabinet so he could keep his eye on them. This is now regarded as clever and amusing. Washington and Jefferson would have regarded it as corrupt and dishonourable. Lincoln drove even his admirers and supporters mad with his habit of never answering a question, but instead proffering a humorous story. This again is now regarded as cute and clever. Can you imagine Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, or Jefferson Davis conducting his public duties this way? 

Lincoln fits quite well the personality type that has been described as the Crackpot Realist. A crackpot realist is one who believes that everyone is just as cynical and self-serving as he is, and in knowing that and being clever, he can manipulate others to his advantage. That well describes Lincoln’s legal career and his relationship to the voters. Lincoln in Illinois: I have neither the intention nor the power to interfere with slavery. I would not know what to do if I had the power. Lincoln in New York: A house divided against itself cannot stand. It must become all one thing or all the other. What exactly is your position on the slavery controversy, Mr. Lincoln? Well, that reminds me of the story about the farmer and the pig . . . Lincoln was not against slavery; he was just in favor of reducing Southern political power so that the South could not block politicians and capitalists from looting the Treasury and defend itself from exploitation or interference. 

I think Lincoln’s crackpot realism caught up with him in the secession crisis. He really thought, and his party certainly preached to the Northern public, that Southerners were not serious about secession. He thought they were merely using maneuver and rhetoric for advantage, which was his own method and his only conception of politics. He did not understand that Southern leaders came from an older world in which a man said what he meant and meant what he said. Lincoln believed that firmness and perhaps a little show of force would bring the South to accept what he regarded as realism and after awhile buckle under to the fait accompli. Refusing any sort of negotiation, he maneuvered for an excuse for force. When he got Fort Sumter he called for troops. The call for troops immediately more than doubled the population and resources of the Confederacy, put the border states into bloody play, and guaranteed a loing and horrible war. One must conclude that this great wise and all-seeing statesman either wanted the war or else he made the most terrible miscalculation in American history.

As far as I know, no one has ever considered Lincoln’s war against the South in the light of traditional Just War Theory. Fort Sumter was not a causus belli, merely an excuse. The reduction of the fort was bloodless and the garrison was allowed to depart with honors, nor had the garrison been terribly harrassed and beleagured in the way that was reported in the Republican press. Every other federal military post in the seceded states had already passed peacefully into possession of Southern authorities. (Except for Fort Pickens at Pensacola, and there the Union military and Florida officials had made a truce preserving the status quo until the situation was settled by the politicians.) To justify his position Lincoln was forced to pretend that the constitutional and legally elected governments of seven states and the expressed will of their people was merely a “combination of lawbreakers” that he could on his own authority suppress. 

According to Just War Theory, which in general rests upon assumptions that war should not be a tool of politics but be defensive action, damage inflicted by the aggressor must be lasting, grave, and certain, and all other means of response must be shown to be inadequate. Does the surrender of Fort Sumter justify Lincoln’s call for troops to invade the South under this perspective? When vast opportunities for negotiation and peaceful settlement were available and underway and had the support of large numbers of influential citizens in every part of the country? Just War theory requires that war not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be fought and have a reasonable prospect of success. Does the vast destruction of life and property and constitutional freedoms justify Lincoln’s war under this view? The prospects for success? Success was acheived only by a previously inconceivable vastness of mobilization, casualties, and debt, and, even so, was long in doubt. Let’s not even mention Lincoln’s violations of Just War theory in systematically terrorizing the noncombatant population of the South. 

And then, we have the Great Emancipator. He took a raft trip down to New Orleans as a young man and had his eyes opened to slavery, which he vowed to strike against. There is no evidence for this Road-to-Damascus experience. What we do know is that Lincoln shared in the property of his wife’s slaveholding family and on at least two occasions was counsel for slaveholders seeking return of runaways. It seems clear that he used the N-word all his life and that he was a white supremacist like all other Midwesterners of the time (and later). The only options he offered to emancipated blacks were to be sent out of the country or to “root hog or die,” in any case to stay out of the North. In answer to these facts, the apologists have imagined a Lincoln who wanted racial equality but had to adjust his public words in order to advance a recalcitrant people as far as they were able along the path of righteousness. Or else, we are told, he mysteriously “evolved” into an egalitarian, perhaps using the same magic by which the Supreme Court “evolves” the Constitution.

Then there is Lincoln the innocent party, who, after having been chosen by the people, found himself with the terrible burden of a rebellion against his rule—it being inexplicable why anyone would resist such diviine rule unless depraved by innate wickedness like Southerners. This innocent-victim business rather ignores some things—that his sectional candidacy and minority electoral victory were deliberately provocative, that he made no effort in word or deed to preserve peace but rather maneuvered for an excuse to invade the South.

Then, of course, he had to carry on his shoulders the terrible burden of the war itself. After all, though usually disappointed by those around him, his was the divine mission to save government of the people. by the people, and for the people from perishing from the earth. Despite his martyr’s burden he never wavered in his unexampled Christian benevolence and mercy, even toward his enemies. Although he was a military genius, he was time and again deprived of victory by bad generals. 

One hardly knows where to begin in dealing with this rampant balderdash. Who appointed those generals? General Sherman himself observed that many of Lincoln’s appointments looked like they had been made to purposely lose the war. In fact, Lincoln’s conduct is understandable only if you perceive the real pattern of consistency—that his primary objective was to keep himself and his party in power and that the war was the instrument for that objective. This was the tender-hearted leader who auhroized ruthless terrorism against women and children, refused generous offers of prisoner exchange while declaring medicine a contraband of war, accepted Grant’s costly policy of losing three men for every one Confederate killed, was not above keeping his own son out of harm’s way, and invited his own fate by clandestinely organizing the attempted assassination of Jefferson Davis.

I do not know whether Lincoln was personally corrupt in that he made money from his office. I do know that he was politically corrupt—that he took to previously unimagined levels the use of government jobs and contracts to buy political support and by design made the government a machine for doing favors for the wealthy and well-placed that has remained the hallmark of the U.,S. Government to the present day. Historians again give Abe a free pass. He was somehow the innocent victim of the corruption of the day. Mysteriously, the Great Barbecue blossomed without his awareness or complicity. But in fact, corruption was implicit and endemic in his political platform and his political conduct. This is not noticed because we are so used to what he created, but it would have shocked earlier generations and did shock honest people at the time. Just one example: until Stanton made him stop, Lincoln freely signed and gave out to his financial supporters what were called “cotton certificates.” This gave them leave to conduct an illegal and immoral trade with the enemy. A brisk business developed on the coast of Confederate Texas where Republican industrialists traded gold, medicine and other goods for Southern cotton.

There is a simple and obvious thing which we must always remember but is almost always left out of discussion of the War to Prevent Southern Independence. What happened in American in the years 1861–1865 was, rhetoric aside, a brutal war of conquest. The South was invaded, laid waste, a fourth of its men killed off, and its people deprived by force of their American right to self-government and subjected to military rule. At the same time peaceful critics of Lincoln’s government were suppressed in fashion previously unthinkable to Americans. The Union of the Founding Fathers was not saved. It was destroyed and replaced. The Gettysburg Address covered up the revolution by a rhetorical feat of having it both ways. By religious-sounding language and evasion and misrepresentation of fact, Lincoln made his destruction of the Union seem to be simultaneously a preservation of the old and sacred and “a new birth of freedom.”

Mel Bradford was wise and correct, I think, that Lincoln is best discerned through his rhetoric. Lincoln provided the rhetoric by which the rational republican discourse of earlier generations of Americans was replaced by sermonistic verbiage of the pseudo-religion of Americanism, like “saving the world for democracy.” Perhaps the ultimate limit of this poisonous style has been reached by George W. Bush, who uses words like “freedom” as magic incantations devoid of content.

Lincoln’s rhetorical model has an irresisstible appeal for political conmen and wanabee intellectuals, two types which America produces prolificically. One of the most acute examinations of Lincoln was that of the poet Edgar Lee Masters, who came from Lincoln’s home territory. He characterizes the Gettysburg Address as embodying “a refusal of the truth,” designed to disguise the real agenda of Lincoln’s war as well as its horrors. Masters believed that the American national character had been permanently disfigured by Lincoln’s refusal of the truth and that Lincoln’s real goal and real accomplishment was the empowerment of the state capitalists who had been held somewhat in check since Hamilton’s day. The truth was that the goal and result of the war was not expressed by the Gettysburg Address but by a Boston capitalist’s brag that one hundred rich men in New England controlled more votes in Congress than any Southern state.

The Lincoln fable is the Gordian knot of American identity. When we saw away at it we threaten the very heart of a people’s consoling idea of its self. If the Lincoln fable is not true, American is living a lie and has been for a long time. In one of his essays on Lincoln’s legacy, Bradford observed that America had long lived by what I have called the Lincoln fable. We would continue to do so, he said, at our peril. In our time of Lincolnian imperialism and executive arrogance covered by Lincolnian rhetoric, Bradford’s warning is ever more true and urgent. 

This article was drawn from a paper presented at the Abbeville Institute conference on “Re-Thinking Lincoln,” July 7-15 at Franklin, Louisiana. Audiotapes of this and presentations by Thomas DiLorenzo, Donald Livingston, H.A. Scott Trask, Joseph Stromberg, and others can be obtained from www.abbevilleinstitute.org.

 Clyde Wilson is a professor of history at the University of South Carolina, editor of The Papers of John C. Calhoun, author of Carolina Cavalier, and a contributing editor for Chronicles.