Lincoln Lore

Bulletin of the Louis A. Wattcn Lincoln l..ibrory o.nd Museum. Mark E. Neely, Jr., Editor. Mary Jan6 Hubler. Editorial A&~iiJtant. Publiehed each month by Lhe June, 1979 Uncoln National Ufe ln•uronct: Company, Fort Wayne. Indiana 46801. Number 1696

LINCOLN AND THE HATEFUL POET

No one hated Abraham Uncoln as thoroughly as Edgar Lee Beloved in life of Abraham Uncoln, Masters did. He COilld fmd little to admire in Uncoln'a ~" Wedded to him, not through union, oonal rbaracter and )...,. in the Sixteenth President'a palibcal But through separation. legacy. Master$'• book, Lincoln: Tlu Man (New York: Dodd Bloom forever, 0 Rep11blic. Mead, 1931), waa a publishing sensation which caused tidaf From the dust of my booom! wavea of indignation acroe3 America. Today, the book and the controversy over it are almost completely forgotten. The A closer look at Master$' a early years reveals that he was book is d08ervedly forgotten, but the controveny over it both a partofhisenvironmentand a man at odds with il His merits some attention. It marked the end of an era in papular grandfather was a Democrat with little sy_mpathy for the literature in America. It was something of a turning point in North during the Civil War. Edgar Lee Masters's father, the career of Lincoln's image in modem America. And it reo Hardin W. Masters, ran away to enlist in the army during the vealed here and there some of the great intellectual currents of war, but his father brought him back. Hardin Masters be­ that era of depression. came a lawyer and dabbled in Democratic palitics. He crossed Masters was an unlikely Lincoln·hater. Had he written a the prohibition·minded Republicans of Lewistown on more bock which praised Lincoln, reviewers and critics would have than one occasion. found it easy to explain. Edgar Lee Masters They would have pointed continued the family tra· to Masten'I roote in Lin· clition of affiliation with coin co11ntry. Though the Democratic party. He born in Garrett, Kansas, toobecamealawyer,afler in 1869, Masters ~ew up graduation from Knox near the site which baa College in Galesb~>rg, prompted more senti· and established a prac­ mental revery about Un· tice in Chicago. He con· coin than any other, New tinued to practice law Salem. That village be­ somewhat unhappily un· came a ghoat town even til biB literary career in Uncoln'e life, but allowed him to give it up nearby Petersburg, in 1920. which took its village life Lincoln: The Man was &om New Salem'e death, Edgar Lee Masters's flrat sllrvived. There,.and in biography. He had aJ. Lewistown, Maetera w~s been interested in spent his youth. The ro­ pohtics and in history. mance of this Sangamon Biography was im· River country capti· menaely popular in vat.ed even Masters. Hie America between the Spoon Ri!H!r Anthology World Wan, in part be­ (1914), which made cause o new style of bier Master$ famous aa a graphical writing poet, included an oft­ titillated the papular im· quoted epitsph for Ann agination. This was the Rutledge: great age of the "de­ Out of me unworthy bunker," who alayed and 11nknown American heroes in print The vibration• of by the dozens. The deathleaa music; prudtl8 and the reli· "With malice toward gioll8ly earnest, like none, with charity Henry Ward Beecher and for all." William Jennings Out of me the Bryan, were natural tar­ forfi ven eee of gets ~or this ag_e ofrevolt mil ions toward LINCOLN ~WASHINGTON agatnst Victonan milHons, morality, but soon the And the beneficent .. tv NVMBEI\... * 1909 •u• political figures were the face of a nation objects of attack. George Shining with justice l"rom tllf! UJuu A. Wo.rrt'tl Washington fell to the and truth. r.~ru:oln Library oml MU#~Ifm pen of Rupert Hughes in I am Anne Rutledge FIGURE 1. Before World War I, pop11lar magazin es dealt rev­ 1926. George Washing· who sleep beneath erentially with Lincoln and Washington. Debunking was not k>n: The Human Being & these weeds. the fashion. The Hero (New York: 2 LINCOLN LORE

William Morrow) began (1928), Masters argued by describing George that "As no new fact of Washington's mother as moment about Lincoln "a very human, cantan· can now be brought to kcrous old lady" who light, the time has arriv· Hsmoked a pipe in· ed when his apotheosis cessantly" and "dragged can be touched with the his pride into the dust by hand of rational seeking a pension dur­ analysis. u Masters's de­ ing his lifetime, by bunking spirit was ..,. wheedlings and borrow· pecially informed by the ings and complaints anti·warspirit which per· among the oeighbol1!.'' vaded intellectual cir­ Hughes hated Washing· cles in America after ton's first biographer, "a World War I. Heroic rep· canting sentimentalist 1 utations and wars went Parson Weems." ana hand in ha_nd. "War,'' stressed that Wash· Masters wrote, "makes ington was not ua brutes of those who prac­ man of piety." Chapter tice it, and cowards and XXVIII ended with this sycophants of those who characteristic passage: have to endure it against But George Wash· their will; and when ington had left old thinking is cowed and England to her own judgment is shackled, devices. He was bent great reputations can be upon saving himself built both by stifling crit­ fil1!t. He was deep in icism and by artificing debt. He was betrothed the facts." to a woman of great The portrait of Lin· wealth. He was going coin that Masters drew to marry and settle was savage. The Rail· down to the making of splitter was "profoundly money. Which ,afterall, Walt Whitman F10m lht Lo11{6 A. K'ctrr..n ashamed of the poverty is one of the most im· Unc:oln Libf'tlty and Mu..-um of his youth" and, ther& portant duties of any FIGURES 2, 3, 4. Masters thought that Lincoln's fame unfairly fore, married for money patriot. overshadowed the fame of Rnlph Waldo Emerson, Thomas and leagued himself Masters wrote in the Jefferson, and Walt Whitman. Lincoln himselfthougbtJefferson politically with the priv· same debunking spirit. ''the most distinguished politician of our history." Emerson ileged classes in the thought Lincoln was "the true representative of this conti· Whig party. Though Inspired in part by nent. ., Whitman believed that Lincoln was "the grandest figure ''mannerless" and "un· the success of Albert yet, on all the crowded canvas of the Nineteenth Century."1'hey kempt," Lincoln was no Beve.ridge's Abraham would not have complained about the distribution of fame as back-slapping common Lincoln, /809·1858 Mas te rs did. man. He was "cold," and LIN CO LN L O RE 3 no one called him "Abe." He was also calculating; there a nalytiCOll, and too willing to warm over and serve up his simply "wu no time when he was not thinking ofhia career." earlier successes His popularity waned, the public turned to His mind wu "hu y." He never studied and u a result knew newer lights, and now hia 'Abraham Lincoln, the Man' little of the hiotory of his country and its institutions. He wu a appears - a volume of protest." He noted also that MasW$ "slick'• and ..cr afty .. politician. called Jefferson, Whitman, and Emerson the greateet Ameri· Masten~ relied on Beveridge's recent biography and COlns from whose fame "the praiM that has be<-n bestowed on William H. Herndon'• older one for the details to support thie Lincoln is a robbery." Jefferson waalong dead by the time of hostile portrait of Lincoln's personalicy. But Herndon and Lincoln's Presidency, of coursef but Emerson and Whitman Beveridge wrote little or nothing about Lincoln's Presidency. both praised Lincoln. Officia s of the National Uncoln For his appraisal of that part of Lincoln'slife, Masters relied League referred aimply to the author's "oommercialited base­ on his own ~litical prejudices. He dedicated the bol>k " To the neu.'' Me171()ry o{ THOMAS JEFFERSON THE PREEMINENT Thoughtful reviewers ranged widely in their assessments of PHILOSOPHER - STATESMAN OF THE UNITED the book. A writer for the Hugo (Oklahoma) News read the STATE§_.hAND THEIR GREATEST PRESIDENT:{ WHOSE New York Times Magazine review of Lincoln: The Man and UNIYE=AL GENIUS THROUGH A LONG L FE WAS comolimented it: DEVOTED TO THE PEACE, ENLIGHTENMENT AND It was wisely observed by the . .. reviewer that Masters' LIBERTY OF THE UNION CREATED BY THE CON· work is no Confederate biography - that it is a copperhead STITUTION 0~' 1787." Lincoln "was a Hamiltonian alwnya, biography- that it is such a book as o Knight of the Gold· though his awkwardness and pover(y, and somewhat gre­ en Circle would have written. For it is personal. It is spite­ garious nature and democratic words seemed to mark him ae ful. It is hateful. It is mean. A Confederate writer probably the son of Jefferson." He centralized power. would criticise the principles and policies or the war presi· Lincoln, Maaters argued, could and should have avoided dent, but he certainly would eulogiu the kindly personalicy the Civil War. Instead, he ordered the invasion of the South. and charitable spirit of Lincoln. And it may be observed He wa& a conqueror. He oblit..rated stat..s' rights and with that in no other section of the country is the Lincoln name them the true republic. In this crusade Lincoln wedded reli· attaining such stature right now aa it is attaining at the gious cant to centralizing politics ("Hebraic Puritanism," south. The revelatory works of Claude Bowers and Striker Masten~ called it) and ushered in the forces of induotrial plu· and C..Orge Fort Milton are t..sching southerners how tocracy, prohibition, and political corruption. terrible a loss they suffered when Lincoln was killed and his Even for an age used to debunking, Mast..rs went too far. peace-making policies were repudiated by political radicals. Ru_P.ert Hughes had been more cireumspecl "As a god," he Moot southerners now believe that if Lincoln had lived, he srud, ·~'aehington was a woeful failure; as a man he wn.s tre­ would have been more successful than Andrew Johnson in mendous." Masters did not give Lincoln any praise except to hie efforts to prevent the onrush of the reconstruction terror. say that he had a sense of humor. The result was a howl of in· This astute writer put his finger on a principal reason why dignation all across America. School teachers, Boston book· Masters found almost no aUies at all in his attack on Lincoln. sellers, preachers, and Lincoln admirers denounced the book Several editorials from former Confederate states, though in dozens of letters to the editor, articles, and sermons. they showed no special interest in defending Lincoln, did link Charles E. 'l'raccwcll put it very succinctly in the Washington him with Andrew Johnson and the(then)newview that John· Star: "He overdid it.' son tried to follow Uncoln 'o mild Reconstruction policies and Reactions to the book ranged from the sublime to the ridicu· to fend off a Radical Republican conspiracy to rape the South. lous. Lewis Gannett in the New York Herald Tribune con· The reviewer's assessment of opinion m the South was fessed "to a total disbelief in heroes and a profound convic­ accurate. Times had changed since 1865. tion of the high virture of debunking. The conventional Few wasted any kind wordo on Mutero'o effort. Pro­ mythology according to which all great men were born great fessional cynic H. L. Mencken. whose review in the New York and never otole cherries or told fibs encourages small boyo to Herald Tribune was widely quoted and attacked, praised the feel guilty if ther are not prigs. It is a loathsome philoeophy." book. Mencken agreed that "Lincoln turned his back on the He quarreled With Masters not because he debunked but be­ Jacksonian t.adition and allowed himself to be carried out by cause he rebunked. It wa.a usheer poetry.tt and "'heroic the tide that was eventually to wash away the old Republical· moralizing" but ell for the other side. "Mr. Masters too hae a together and leave in ita place a plutocratic oligarchy hard to spoUe&S hero," Gannett oaid, "Stephen A. Douglas, and hia distinlflli&h from the Roman." Lincoln's "moot memorable hordes of angela are the soldiers of the Confederacy." The feat." Mencken wrote, "was his appointment of the Lord God Oneida (New York) Dispatch said that "Masters' arguments Jehova to the honorary chairmanship of the Republican fall or their own weight, inasmuch as his only declaration in National Committee." The Bill of Rlflhta, Mencken added, Lincoln's favor is that fhe had a sense of humor.' ', Yale's "has never recovered" from Lincoln a repre88ive adminis. William Lyon Phelps was disgusted. "Never in history," he tration. said. "has literature been so consistently filthy and rotten ao Claude Bowers, newspopermon·tumed·historian and an today .. .. it is JtettinK so a good man is afraid to die." Repre­ octive Democrat, ca1led the book "intensely interesting" and sentative Joe Crail of California, who had not read the b0ok1 "challenging." Harry Elmer Barnes thoul{ht the book might called it "ob8C\lne, lewd, lascivious, filthy and indecent" ana "compel the devotees of the Lincoln cult to listen to reason, introduced a bill in Congress to ban ita circulation through the something which they have not done in our generation." mail. And the custodian of the Uncoln tomb declared: "I have Barnes had argued "at the very progre88ive Twentieth Cen· 800 picture.! of Lincoln, taken at various ages aft..r he wao 5 tury Club in SO..ton" that Lincoln waa unpopular in his own years of age, showing him in many poses, and not one even day; Barnes only "narrowly ....,aped phyaical aoeault at the hints that he waa 'unkempt.' ... His clothes were neat, his hands of an Anglican Bishop who was r,resent." Masters hair well combed and his featurt.~ pleasant." "rendered a genuine constructive service ' by establishing Richard F. Fuller, treasurer of the Board ofTrade of Boston "the precedent for fearless inveetigation of the career of the Book Merchants and a prominent member of the American Great Emancipator." The Syracuse (New York) StGndGrd in­ Booksellers' A880ciation, wrote a letter to the Boston Htrald terviewed faculcy members at the local universicy, one of stating that he wu glad that Lincoln: The Man wu not whom, history professor Edwin P. Tanner, also thought selling well. The Boston newspaper speculated that"thecraze "Masters ... rendered us a real S<'rvice." Hisiorian H. G. for biography" was ebbing, but Masters's publisher reported Eckenrode praised the book as "an exceedingly powerful and no disappointment with sales in New York. William L. Nevin, convincing work."' president of New York'a John Wanamaker department store, Moot thoughtful critics - like Louis A. Warren in Lincoln refused to place the book on sale. Wanamaker's Philadelphia Lore; Paul Angle, then the Secretary of the Abraham Lincoln store did the some. Association; and historian Claude M. Fu~a - dismissed the Masters hod a fine reputation as a man of! etters, C8pecially book because it was less a history than an indictment. as a poet, and Samuel B. Howe of the South Side High School Masters hod been a lawyer as well as a poet, and he argued a in Newark, New Jersey, found it beyond his "powers of belief case against Uncoln as though he were fightinK for a client's that a man like Masters could say the things he is quoted as life. FuC8s noted the excessee of Masters's language. The say in~." It wos not an angry young man's book. Mo.ater8 was principles of !be Whig party "were plunder and nothing else.'' over SIXty when he wrote it, and this fact invited speculation The Republican party was "conceived in hatred and mothered about hie motive. Famed Lincoln collector Oliver R. Barretto f in hatred, and went forth from a diseased womb without a Chicago said that Masters "glimpsed over the top ofmediocri· name.'' Lincoln's record in Congress was "a tracing of his cy" with hie Spoon Riuu Anthology, "but from the infection of wavering mind. his incoherent thinking." He was uan under· that fatal praise he beeame too fearleas, too painfully l<'xed man.'' His nomination at Chicago was the result of 4 LINCOLN LORE

"brutality and cunning." His attitude toward the South was More than one reviewer had ready at hand this anecdote to one "ofhidden and doop malignancy." Warren noted that the scotch the debunking spirit; author was consumed by t!uee passions. He hated the Two or three years ago another American writer made a Christian religion; he hated "modern Americanism, and spooch about George Washington in which he said things especially the political party now in power (Republicans]"; resented by the people, who revered the memory of the and he hated most American heroes. Angle noted the Father of His Country. The day after the speech was made paradoxes of Masters's hatreds: the Washington correspondents asked President Coolidge An advocate of slavery as a social system, he criticizes what he thought about the things that had been said. Lincoln for not opposing its existence in the South. An Coolidge turned, looked out of the window toward the opponent of ca~italism, he lauds Douglas as a statesman towering Washington monument, and said: "I notice it is of the industrial era. A scathing critic of those who would still up there." pass moral judgments, there is hardly a page in his book on which he has failea to condemn or justify. Masters's book was the last gasp of the debunking spirit in Lincoln: Tlu! Man, then, was a personal book, more in~ America between the wars. The popular Lincoln books and teresting for what it revealed about Masters than for what it plays of the Depression era praised Lincoln. Robert Sher· said about Lincoln. Reporters in New York City were able to wood's play, Abe Lincoln in 1/Jinois, and Carl Sandburg's interview the author, and the newspaper reports of these in· mammoth biogTaphy are the obvious examples. Predictions terviews were revealing. Earl Sparling of the New York Tele· that Masters's "Copp