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The Age Lincoln

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The Age Lincoln 20084_a-b_i-x_1-420_r16ks.qxp 5/16/07 5:37 PM Page iii 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 THE AGE 10 11 of 12 13 LINCOLN 14 15 16 17 18 19 Orville Vernon Burton 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 hill and wang 32 A division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux 33 34 New York 35 36 S 37 R 4th Pass Pages 20084_a-b_i-x_1-420_r16ks.qxp 5/16/07 5:37 PM Page iv 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 hill and wang 13 A division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux 19 10003 14 Union Square West, New York 15 Copyright © 2007 by Orville Vernon Burton 16 All rights reserved 17 Distributed in Canada by Douglas & McIntyre Ltd. 18 Printed in the United States of America 19 First edition, 2007 20 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 21 Burton, Orville Vernon. 22 The age of Lincoln / by Orville Vernon Burton.—1st ed. 23 p. cm. 24 Includes bibliographical references and index. 25 ISBN-13: 978-0-8090-9513-1 (hardcover : alk. paper) 10 0-8090-9513-0 26 ISBN- : (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. United States—History—19th century. 2. United States— 27 History—Civil War, 1861‒1865. 3. Lincoln, Abraham, 1809‒1865. 28 4. Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865‒1877) I. Title. 29 E415.7.B87 2007 30 973.5—dc22 2006037960 31 32 Designed by Cassandra J. Pappas 33 34 www.fsgbooks.com 35 10987654321 S 36 R 37 4th Pass Pages 20084_a-b_i-x_1-420_r16ks.qxp 5/16/07 5:37 PM Page vii 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 The Kentuckian, LINCOLN, defended the Declaration of 10 Independence against the attacks of the degenerate Vermonter, 11 DOUGLAS, and against BRECKENRIDGE and the whole ruling 12 class of the South. Here was a Southerner, with eloquence that would 13 bear a comparison with HENRY CLAY’S, defending Liberty and the 14 North against the leaders of the Border Ruffians and Doughfaces of 15 Illinois. 16 —Belleville Weekly Advocate (Illinois), October 22, 1856 17 18 If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we 19 of the North as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our 20 complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause 21 to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God. 22 —Abraham Lincoln to Albert Hodges, April 4, 1864 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 S 37 R 4th Pass Pages 20084_a-b_i-x_1-420_r16ks.qxp 5/16/07 5:37 PM Page ix 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Contents 10 11 12 13 14 15 Prologue 3 16 one Kindred Spirits and Double-Minded Men 11 17 two “Gale of Simple Freedom” 32 18 three To Carry Out the Lord’s Vengeance 50 19 20 four Washed in the Blood 77 21 five “Southern by Birth” 104 22 six 134 “The Coming of the Lord” 23 seven 168 “A Giant Holocaust of Death” 24 eight “I Want You to Come Home” 193 25 nine “To Square Accounts” 212 26 ten The Promised Land 234 27 eleven “The Safeguard of the Republic” 271 28 twelve “A Dead Radical Is Very Harmless” 300 29 30 thirteen The New Colossus 323 31 fourteen A Cross of Gold 351 32 33 34 371 Bibliographical Essay 35 Acknowledgments 401 36 S Index 405 37 R 4th Pass Pages 20084_a-b_i-x_1-420_r16ks.qxp 5/16/07 5:37 PM Page 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 THE AGE of LINCOLN 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 S 37 R 4th Pass Pages 20084_a-b_i-x_1-420_r16ks.qxp 5/16/07 5:37 PM Page 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Prologue 10 11 12 13 14 15 Rivers of blood flowed as Americans turned against each other in 1 (1lh) battle. The land was torn asunder. Four and a half months after the Bat- 2 tle of Gettysburg, standing in the November chill of a military cemetery 3 (2lh) still hardly half-finished, President Abraham Lincoln articulated the 4 meaning of the battle, of the war, of the American dream. He called for 5 a “new birth of freedom.” 6 In Mathew Brady’s famous photograph of that day, Abraham Lin- 7 coln looks ordinary, indistinct, trivial. The crowd of twenty thousand 8 had come to hear another man, silver-tongued Edward Everett, onetime 9 president of Harvard and former senator from Massachusetts, speak of 10 valor and values and victory, the stuff of melodrama that the age so 11 loved. None could have anticipated the president’s confession, the bene- 12 diction, and the challenge he set forth in the sweep of a few sentences. 13 With the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln proclaimed the hopeful determi- 14 nation of the human spirit. That determination is, ultimately, the theme 15 of this book, which traces the forces and events that led Lincoln to speak 16 of liberty in a Pennsylvania graveyard in 1863, and considers the path 17 Americans would take across the next three decades. This determina- 18 tion for freedom and the numerous contests it would inspire would be- 19 come the legacy of the Age of Lincoln. 20 Lincoln began his brief remarks at Gettysburg with a grand, over- 21 S reaching claim, declaring that eighty-seven years earlier “our fathers” 22 R 4th Pass Pages 20084_a-b_i-x_1-420_r16ks.qxp 5/16/07 5:37 PM Page 11 1 2 3 4 5 One 6 7 8 9 Kindred Spirits and 10 11 Double-Minded Men 12 13 14 15 1 (1lh) 2 From the rocky shores of Maine to the Ohio Valley and beyond, 3 (2lh) men and women by the thousands rose up early on the morning of 4 October 22, 1844. Quickly and carefully they bathed, put on spotless 5 new clothes, and expectantly went outside. They looked up toward 6 heaven. Before the day was through the skies were to open, the angels of 7 the Lord were to descend, and the world they knew was to come to an 8 end. Today was the day appointed for Christ’s return to judge mankind 9 and establish God’s rule on earth. 10 It was not to be. Although their leader, a Baptist minister named 11 William Miller, had promised through thirteen years of vibrant preach- 12 ing that the advent of the millennium had been calculated down to that 13 very day, their faith was disappointed. Many had abandoned farms and 14 workshops; others had given away worldly possessions in expectation of 15 the Second Coming. They knelt on rooftops, bowed their heads in prayer, 16 and waited, shivering in an early winter’s wind and rain, for the Savior’s 17 return. Finally they stood up in confusion, went home, and continued on 18 with their lives. That was an act of faith of a rather different sort. 19 In the 1800s many Americans came to embrace a new and radical 20 idea, that they could advance the millennium by right living. Faithfully, 21 S eagerly, defiantly, they took up cudgels against the evils they saw around 22 R 4th Pass Pages 20084_a-b_i-x_1-420_r16ks.qxp 5/16/07 5:37 PM Page 104 1 2 3 4 5 6 Five 7 8 9 10 “Southern by Birth” 11 12 13 14 15 (1lh) 1 On January 27, 1838, men and women in Springfield, Illinois, braved 2 the winter weather and gathered at the Baptist Church to attend the (2lh) 3 Young Men’s Lyceum, a public meeting where they were audience to 4 talented speakers perfecting their eloquence on a wide assortment of 5 topics. The speaker that evening was a member of the Illinois House of 6 Representatives and a resident of Springfield, having recently moved 7 from the frontier town of New Salem, Illinois. Disturbed by recent mob 8 violence in Mississippi and the city of St. Louis as well as the killing of 9 abolitionist editor Reverend Elijah Lovejoy in Alton, Illinois, Abraham 10 Lincoln was to deliver a speech on “The Perpetuation of Our Political 11 Institutions.” 12 Displaying a loquaciousness he would prune in subsequent years, the 13 young representative staked the nation’s future on “a reverence for the Con- 14 stitution and law” (Lincoln’s emphasis), for which he recommended that 15 “every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor.” He 16 worried that nationwide “wild and furious passions” refused to concede 17 to the “sober judgment of the courts,” and the “mobocratic spirit” of 18 the times rendered extrajudicial judgment against gamblers, abolition- 19 ists, suspected slave insurrectionists. Evoking the specter of dead men 20 “literally hanging from the bough of trees upon any roadside,” Lincoln S 21 called on Americans to renew their patriotic attachment to sober rea- R 22 son, to law and order, and to the political edifice of liberty and equal 4th Pass Pages 20084_a-b_i-x_1-420_r16ks.qxp 5/16/07 5:37 PM Page 105 “Southern by Birth” 105 rights bequeathed them by their forebears. All too aware of human frail- 1 ties, Lincoln readily granted the existence of bad laws, of grievances for 2 which “no legal provision have been made.” The “political religion” he 3 espoused was necessarily a never-ending exercise, a halting process 4 toward greater justice, not perfection.
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