I find Abraham endlessly intriguing. One of the most complex political figures in our American history. Elected to the presidency with what seems the least experience and the fewest prospects of success of any who have assumed that office, Lincoln now towers as one of the most important figures in our national story.
Among the complexieties he was undoubtedly opposed to slavery but not strictly speaking an abolitionist in the sense of such luminaries as our own Unitarians Ralph Waldo Emerson and Theodore Parker.
Lincoln was, I think, more a liberal than a radical.
These days within the circles I normally travel the liberal is disparaged by the radical. Often I find myself discomforted by the open disdain expressed by those who seek purer stands than are usually offered by liberals. I feel this discomfort for a variety of reasons, but not least among them is that radicals often are consumed by their need to be pure. I think of those who threw their hearts and hands into the presidential hopes of Ralph Nader and Dennis Kucinich. In particular I think of a conversation with one of Congressman Kucinich’s supporters who wanted me to attend a rally for the congressman. His sales pitch was that the congressman was the only pure candidate. I could only think of that line about how fish don’t survive in pure water. And I think the pure rarely prevail.
It could be argued and has been that Lincoln’s moderation was what it took to bring the country to end slavery while remaining a single country. Took a lot of blood, no doubt. But I fear the bloodletting was inevitable unless the North were willing to capitulate completely. And that would be at the cost of letting one of most evil things happening in North America to continue without obvious end. Given what seem to be the givens of that time and place, by pursuing a policy of union and the containment of slavery until it could be ended while never taking the high road, by always owning the sins of slavery as common to North and South and never forgetting the humanity of those who violently called for preserving the state’s right to slavery; he threw out seeds that would eventually lead toward healing. Toward, I admit. The consequences of such an evil as slavery continue to this day.
But, I suspect without Lincoln a very different and worse state of affairs might well have happened. I believe would have happened.
His path, gentle as a dove, as wise as a serpent, seems one for us all to consider in these harsh and dangerous times.
For more I recommend Doris Kearns Goodwin’s magisterial Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.
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