abraham lincoln defender of freed om A Sele^ion of Documents
ABRAHAM LINCOLN DEFENDER OF FREEDOM A Sele^ion of Documents harold h olz e r
tho rn w i llo w p r e s s 2 012
The texts of the documents printed here are all taken from the collected works of abraham lincoln The Abraham Lincoln Association 8 volumes, Washington, D.C., 1953 harold holzer Rye, New York
ďŹ rst edition copyright Š 2012 harold holzer
c o nte nts Abraham Lincoln: Defender of Freedom Notes in a Copy Book, Ca. 1824-1826 Communication to the Voters of Sangamo County, March 9, 1832 Address Before the Young Men’s Lyceum, January 27, 1838 Speech to the House of Representatives on the Mexican-American War, January 12, 1848 Fragment on the Role of Government, July 1, 1854 House Divided Address, June 16, 1858 Cooper Union Address, February 27, 1860 Farewell Address, February 11, 1861 First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861 Message to Special Session of Congress, July 4, 1861 Reply to New York Tribune Editorial, August 22, 1862 Meditation on the Divine Will, September 2, 1862
11 20 21 25 38 52 53 60 87 88 102 122 124
Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, September 22, 1862 Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862 Final Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863 Reply to Albany, New York Democrats on Executive Power, June 12, 1863 Remarks Prepared for a Union Rally, August 26, 1863 Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863 Letter to Albert Hodges on Slavery, April 4, 1864 Speech to the Veterans of the One Hundred Sixty-sixth Ohio Regiment, August 22, 1864 Letter to a Quaker Elder Eliza Gurney, September 4, 1864 Condolence Letter to Mrs. Bixby, November 21, 1864 Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865
126 129 157 161 173 180 185 189 190 192 194
AB RA H A M LIN COLN : D E FE N DE R OF FRE E D OM
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h e c iv il wa r had been over for twenty years, five postwar presi dents had come and gone, and one of them had fallen vi^im to an other assassin’s bullet, by the time the poet Walt Whitman looked back, took the measure of history, and pronounced Abraham Lincoln still “the grandest figure yet, on all the crowded canvas of the Nineteenth Century.” So Lincoln surely still seemed at the time to many of his countrymen, a…er leading the struggle to save the Union and destroy slavery. Still, Whitman wondered: “Who knows what the future may decide?” In fa^, the future has not substantially revised Whitman’s generous appraisal. For a century and a half, Lincoln’s enduring spirit has animated the American experience. His rise from log cabin to White House, from prairie lawyer to master statesman, justifiably remains the most famous and inspiring of all the validations of American opportunity. His face alone, homely yet intrinsically noble—“so awful ugly it becomes beautiful,” in Whitman’s words—remains indelibly inscribed on the national consciousness, whether one imagines it gazing down from the lo…y heights of Mount Rushmore or staring out from the ubiquitous copper penny. In an increasingly diverse culture, it remains a palpable emblem of our common aspirations, itself an icon of democracy. Inevitably, the real Lincoln has also become a vi^im of the irreversible passage of time. His life has entered the firm embrace of legend. The real man in large part has been subsumed by the prolonged leavening of folklore, history, and counter-history. No longer a figure of bright memory but one of the flickering past, he is partially, perhaps permanently veiled by distance and myth.
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Even so, Lincoln may be said to hold his firmest grip on the American imagination through the words he cra…ed to define the boundless possibilities of a free society. His writing was devoted almost entirely to the subje^s of politics and war, but they hold a major place in American literature, too. Nurtured by all hands-on experience, and honing a gi… for precise, powerful writing that elevated him above his contemporaries, Lincoln emerged from the frenzied environment of political debates, mass meetings, contentious lawmaking, and exhausting stump oratory as a spellbinding oracle of democratic ideals. No doubt it is difficult for citizens in today’s o…en mindless era of sound bites and advertising slogans to imagine a time when nearly all politicians could speak coherently in long, complex, compelling sentences; could cultivate serious ideas, argue and debate, convince and convert; could a^ually write incisive, evocative prose. America’s nineteenth-century political culture in fa^ demanded that its leaders come equipped with both a loud voice and an agile pen, and Lincoln had both. He worked so hard to be heard to the outskirts of his vast audiences, for example, that an eleven-year-old boy who pushed his way to the front of one such crowd remembered gazing up at Lincoln and being doused with “falling mist upon my brow” which, he sympathetically explained, “any speaker will emit addressing an outdoor audience.” The boy was forced to keep his red bandanna handkerchief at the read whenever Lincoln “leaned dire^ly toward me.” And yet what Lincoln said seemed so gripping, “I had no thought of changing my position till the last word was said… I had been baptized that day… into the faith of him who spoke.” As historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., pointed out, Lincoln would go on to become “not only our greatest president, but the greatest writer among our presidents.”
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In all, over the course of more than thirty years in public life, Lincoln composed more than a million known words. He did almost all of his writing himself. Even as president, he employed neither speechwriters nor ghostwriters to place words in his mouth or thoughts in his head. The rare note dra…ed by a secretary for his signature, the occasional, boilerplate diplomatic correspondence or proclamation composed at the State Department, were very much the exceptions, not the rule. In his day, such creativity was not unusual. What set Lincoln apart from other politicians was not that he cra…ed his own arguments but that he did so brilliantly and memorably, in resonant words that enriched the political dialogue of his age. Despite almost no formal education, this son of a farmer who could manage little more in the way of writing than to “bunglingly sign his own name” helped forge a new American political idiom, liberating it from the grandiloquent verbiage and ripe classical allusions then common to such oratory, and instead achieving, particularly a…er 1854, a simple grace, an assurance, a lively wit, an unshakable logic, and at times a soaring beauty. We will never know for sure how the young Abe Lincoln mastered the skill of self-expression. What we do know is that few masters of the written word ever enjoyed so little training or education. In the “wild region” where he grew up, Lincoln remembered, “there were some schools, so called; but no qualification was ever required of a teacher, beyond ‘readin, writin, and cipherin,’ to the Rule of Three… There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education. Of course when I came of age I did not know much.” He could write “to the Rule of Three”—meaning something like third-grade level—but that was all. Ultimately the pen became, in Lincoln’s expressive hands, one of the most powerful weapons of the age. A^ually, he probably did not have
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the opportunity to use a real pen until he was near adulthood. Pens were for wealthy people, or people who lived in cities. As a youngster growing up in the wilds of Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois, he might scratch words on the back of a shovel with a rock. He could scrawl in the dirt with a stick, or perhaps find a slate and chalk to use if he happened to be attending a school that had such supplies. If he were fortunate, once in a great while he might even obtain a real pencil. If he did, he would use it until he wore it down to a stump. Basically, Lincoln learned writing by reading. He read the Bible and Aesop’s Fables as soon as he was able, and in later years he devoured the poetry of Robert Burns and the plays of William Shakespeare. He was especially fond of one particular life story of his hero, George Washington. “Away back in my childhood, the earliest days of my being able to read,” he recalled many years later, “I got hold of a small book… ‘Weems’s Life of Washington.’ I remember all the accounts there given of the battle fields and struggles for the liberties of the country.” Between its covers, Lincoln believed, he discovered the origins of the “great promise” that America offered “to all the people of the world to all time to come.” Lincoln would echo that promise in his own writings. Words did not come easily to Lincoln. His law partner remembered, “In the search for words Mr. Lincoln was o…en at a loss.” That was because “in the vast store of words,” there were “so few that contained the exa^ coloring, power, and shape of his ideas.” One can only imagine how many hours each day Lincoln devoted to writing. In fa^, it is difficult to imagine that he had much time for anything else. Lincoln particularly mastered the art if the so-called public letter, several examples of which are included in this colle^ion. These were written to specific individuals, but invariably released by the White House
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to the press so all Americans could read their contents. In an age in which Presidents held no news conferences and only rarely appeared before the public to speak (Lincoln was no exception: Gettysburg was a rare occasion), such letters helped shape public opinion and defend executive policy. Sometimes even Lincoln’s private and personal letters found their way into print. This caused the president much embarrassment. Once, a famous a^or of the day sent Lincoln a gi…, and the president dashed off a thank-you note in which he described his favorite plays by Shakespeare. The a^or was so proud of this letter that he allowed it to be printed in the newspapers. Some newspapers, in turn, teased Lincoln cruelly for his taste in drama. The a^or wrote back to apologize, but Lincoln laughed it off. “I have endured a great deal of ridicule…,” he declared. “I am used to it.” Such experience helps explain why he worked with such care on his official writing. He wanted to make sure it could not be criticized. To be sure, not all the results were literary gems. Lincoln spent an especially long time cra…ing the Emancipation Proclamation. This was not only his most important a^ as president but arguably the most important piece of writing he ever composed. With it, Lincoln proved that the pen was as mighty as the sword. His words would help break the chains that enslaved millions of African Americans. Some then and since have criticized the Emancipation Proclamation because of its dry, uninspiring language, complaining that Lincoln failed to rise to this great occasion with an unforgettable composition. But Lincoln intentionally wrote the proclamation as a legal document, not an exercise in resounding rhetoric. He wanted to make certain that if it were challenged years later in court, it would not be overturned, sending blacks back into slavery. There would be time later to inspire.
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