Rev. Ann C. Fox
(508) 992-7081
RevAnnFox@aol.com
Unitarian
Universalist
Society of Fairhaven
Lincoln’s
Legacy
President’s Day Weekend
a sermon by Rev. Ann C. Fox
February 15, 2009
Note: All quotes are from One Man Great Enough
Is there one amongst us who does not have a fascination for Abraham Lincoln?! To read his story is to learn about how hard life was for immigrants, especially for women. As you may know, Lincoln was born in the tiniest of cabins in the woods of Kentucky on February 12, 1809. When he was 8, the family moved to slave-free Indiana mostly because Tom and Nancy Lincoln despised the institution of slavery. They built a larger cabin, 18’ by 20’ feet. Two years later, Abe and Sarah’s mother died. Abe was 10 years, Sarah 12 years. Tom Lincoln married a widow, also named Sarah, with 3 children.
Sarah brought order, energy and affection to the family. Abe got a year of very basic education but enough to set him on the road to being an avid reader. Stepmother Sarah admired the mind of young Abe feeling he was like her and she encouraged his in his studies. She said, “He was a good child who was never cross…He never told me a lie in his life…. He treated everybody kindly and was the best boy I ever expect to see. He cared nothing for clothes…He was witty and sad and thoughtful by turns.”
From the beginning, Abe had a remarkable mind. He read books—anything he could get his hands on—while others played. Family and friends remember him lying under a tree reading with his long legs up the trunk. He copied into a notebook what he wanted to remember. If there were no paper, he’d write on wooden boards. Each day, he’d commit to memory or “treasure up” what he’d learned. He confessed to a friend that he was a very slow reader but once he’d taken in the information, he was slow to forget it. (I was struck by how comfortable he was with himself and his style of learning.) He loved poetry, Shakespeare, history, the Bible, and he carried a volume of Euclid with him when he traveled. He committed large tracts of poetry to memory.
In those days, the primary entertainment was itinerant preachers and politicians. Abe would entertain the other children by giving speeches and mimicking the preachers and politicians. He made up stories and jokes and was generally great fun. He would do this all his life, increasing his popularity, at least with men, while also helping himself to get through severe bouts of depression, or melancholy as they called it then.
I cannot help wondering what our society would be like to live without television and computers to distract us. Would we be more “comfortable” with ourselves? Would we be more widely read and deeper thinkers?
Lincoln grew to a striking 6’4”, which was most unusual then. He was plain with unruly hair and most people, even little children, commented on how sad he looked. When the sisters and brothers in Abe’s household married, the whole family moved to New Salem, Illinois, in 1831. Abe was 21 years old. His father had loaned him out on farms since he was 9 years old and it was said that he was “born with an axe in his hand”. He was extraordinarily strong and it was woe to anyone who would tackle him. Abe began a series of jobs in stores, ploughing, harvesting, fixing fences, planting railroad ties, and in his spare time he studied law. There must have been something about the 21-year old that commanded respect for he was hired as a surveyor and quickly learned how to do this. He gained the confidence of many that disputed the boundaries of their property.
He was also hired as postmaster; he particularly liked this because he would have access to his greatest love: newspapers from all around the country. He got to know everything about politics in the country before delivering the papers to the subscribers. Abe didn’t just read the newspapers—he read them out loud. When he later shared a law office with William Herndon, this was a major distraction for William (who was also to be his prolific biographer). When he asked Abe why he did this, Abe replied that it helped him remember it all so that he didn’t have to write it down. (If we want to preserve our relationships, however, we might not want to emulate this practice!) The jobs of surveyor and postmaster were to support him for many years.
Abe gained great knowledge from the newspapers for when politicians would come through the town and speak and debate on street corners, he would enter into the debate. (I wonder whether you have read the TIME article about saving our newspapers. We learn a great deal from them and they help us to keep us free and have free speech. I worry about the many bankruptcies and mergers of newspapers currently in progress. The least we can do is become subscribers!)
At the age of 23, in 1932, Lincoln entered the race for state representative. He won in his area but lost the race. With his knack for working alongside working people while talking to them about politics in plain, clear language, he was easily elected two years later. For the first time, he had a suit made for him that wasn’t 3 inches higher than his ankles! He was Illinois Assembly’s tallest lawmaker. He was also instrumental in making Springfield the capitol of Illinois.
One might wonder why he wore such a tall hat, making him even taller. Perhaps he just liked the fashion or perhaps he liked that he could use the hat in which to keep his bankbook, other important records and ideas that he jotted down to keep! It was his portable filing cabinet. The other filing remained in a pile on his desk.
Abolitionists had forced the entire country to confront the issue of slavery and had brought strong reactions and sometimes mob-violence upon themselves. Abe had inherited from his parents an abhorrence of slavery. As a young man he said, “I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so think and feel.” In March 1837, he crafted as a young legislator a clever resolution expressing that allowing slavery in their state would be immoral. This was his first public stand an at least this kept slavery out of Illinois. He also believed in voting rights for all who paid taxes, including women.
Abe was a born leader. He led; others followed. However, Springfield, Illinois was still a rough frontier town. Lincoln used to tell the story of a preacher who applied for permission to give a series of lectures at the State House. When asked what the subject of the lectures would be, the preacher said, “They are on the Second Coming of our Lord.” The secretary of state responded, “If you will take my advice you will not waste your time in this city. It is my private opinion that if the Lord has been in Springfield once, he will not come a second time.”
Abe was accused of being godless. Although Lincoln did not belong to an organized religion, he responded to such accusations that he had a very deep faith. He frequently quoted this couplet:
There’s a divinity
that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them as we will.
I have a small book of quotes from the New Testament and the Psalms in my possession that is said to be Abraham Lincoln’s pocket Bible. But his religious leanings are interesting. He said, “There are no accidents in my philosophy. Every effect must have its cause. The past is the cause of the present, and the present will be the cause of the future. All these are the links in the endless chain stretching from the finite to the infinite.” He seemed to think there is such a thing as destiny but choice is there as well.
The run for the presidency in 1860 took Lincoln across the country when he found northerners, especially in Massachusetts, particularly appreciative of his abolitionist view and his speeches. In New York, he was fascinated by Niagara Falls and mused at the “mysterious power” of that mighty, roaring tumult. He said that it called to his mind the “indefinite past when Columbus first sought this continent…when Moses led Israel through the Red Sea…when Adam first came from the hand of his Maker—then as now, Niagara was roaring here.” There is little doubt in my mind but that Abe was a spiritual man who felt deeply “called” to be President at that crucial time in history.
Lincoln was thought to be “homely” looking. When he was accused of being “two-faced”, he quipped, “If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?” Though he had a few relationships with women, none had worked out. It was in Springfield where Abraham was introduced to Mary Todd. They made plans to be engaged, even though most of their friends and Mary’s family counseled them against the match. Mary was 5’2’, chubby, passionate, and loved to dance. Abe was 6’4”, thin, totally not passionate, and couldn’t dance. Mary was known as a “violent little Whig” (of the Whig party) and that attracted him. They both loved politics and poetry.
Suddenly, Lincoln became enamored of a pretty 18-year old girl and broke off the relationship with Mary. However, he suffered a great crisis of conscience over breaking his word to Mary that he fell into a depression so deep that his friends feared for his life. Finally, he decided to marry Mary if she would have him back. They were married. He was greatly relieved to be right with his conscience. Interestingly, Mary Todd had always told her friends that she would marry a man who would be president. The marriage worked for Abe because he spent most of his time away from home. When he came home at weekends, Mary’s temperament drove him away again but also set him free to do his political work and become well-known across the country. I suspect that if I look into Mary’s life, I’ll find that she felt lonely and abandoned; thus her anger towards her husband
In the years between his stints in Congress, Abe turned to law and rode the “circuit” with the Circuit Judge, covering hundreds of miles on horseback and serving the people wherever they went. He was a brilliant trail lawyer, relying exclusively on his logic for justice and without regard to precedent or the law books. Juries always decided in favor of his client. “The circuit was like a road show, wrote Jane Martin Johns, a woman who watched it pass through Decatur twice a year, with its retinue of lawyers, clients, witnesses, itinerant peddlers, showmen, gamblers, and many who followed it just for its entertainment value….” Another said, “The storytelling virtuoso of those leisure hours was Lincoln, with his apparently God-gifted talent for mimicry.” (Waugh, p.176-177)
Abe was a devoted but distracted father. A neighbor reported that Mr. Lincoln, while reading a book, pulled along his little children in a wagon behind him. When she brought to his attention that one of the babies had fallen out of the cart, he walked back, picked up the child, plopped him back in the cart, and then resumed his walk, and his reading! Nevertheless, he loved the children to pieces and never, ever disciplined them! Mary would prove to be a most excellent President’s wife although she always hankered after the days when she had slaves to do most of the household chores!
Lincoln’s political party was the Whigs. They believed everything that he did: Government ought to exist to support development while shaping the economy and society: they believed in an internal-improvements system (or public works), a national bank, and a high protective tariff. It seems to me that they could be speaking to us today in our current situation. The TIME Magazine article that you heard from this morning also points out these beliefs of Lincoln and his party. President Barack Obama cited these beliefs during his campaign in an attempt to persuade us that government must take an active role, especially in times of crisis, such as today.
The Whigs were also against slavery but adhered to the plan of having the government buy the slaves from their owners and repatriate them to Liberia so as not to align themselves with the abolitionists, which would have meant political suicide. (The Democrats of their day believed in an idyllic nation of small farmers and shops and as little government as possible.) The Whigs were later to be called the New Republicans. (These names and what they stood for are all very interesting today since the Republicans and Democrats were to reverse what they stood for a 100 years later!)
Lincoln was convinced that it was his burden to be president in order to end slavery though it would likely cost him his life. Embracing this knowledge, he steeped himself in every possible argument for slavery and then he set about presenting every possible argument against it. His arguments were so persuasive that he convinced huge numbers that slavery was immoral. His speeches across the country moved audiences so deeply that even reporters put down their pencils and just listened; so there are many speeches that are “lost” to history for he did not write these speeches down himself. He was indeed elected in 1860 and the whole of his tenure was taken up with the Civil War. During the second term, the war was still winding down. This second term was not to last long.
Lincoln had a premonition, a dream, that “the president” had been assassinated. When he told his wife, she said he should put it out of his mind and go off to the theater with her. That was the night that Lincoln gave his Pinkerton security guard the night off for he had worked the whole day. On April 14, 1865, which was Good Friday, John Wilkes Booth, an unbalanced actor, shot Lincoln to death in his box at the theater, leaped to the stage and shouted, “The South is avenged!” It was a senseless death for so great a man. The nation was deeply grieved, especially on such a day that gave a sense of a life being sacrificed or martyred.
Lincoln gave us so much in terms of his character. We Unitarian Universalists are fond of saying that for us “salvation is by character.” We might say that Lincoln led the way to good character. He was an exemplar, a person that lacked malice even towards those who opposed everything he believed in; he knew only truth and righteousness, without prejudgment, and lived his life for others. He once said to his colleague, William Herndon, “How hard—oh, how more than hard—it is to die and leave one’s country no better for the life of him that lived and died…!” He need not have worried for he left us so much better off for his having lived. Perhaps we can emulate his courage and his zeal for truth and justice.
Reference
Waugh, John C. One Man Great Enough, New York: Harcourt, Inc., 2007.
© The Rev. Ann C. Fox