Founders' Son: A Life of Abraham Lincoln Read online

  Praise for Founders’ Son

  “Abraham Lincoln is the most written-about man in American history, yet Richard Brookhiser, a historian and writer of extraordinary talent, has written an analysis that is lively, incisive, novel—and brilliant. This book reminds us of Lincoln’s reverence for the Founders, his ‘stubborn concern for first principles’ and—ultimately—the often-overlooked reverence for the Almighty God that guided him in America’s darkest hours.”

  —JOHN BOEHNER, Speaker of the House

  “Lincoln was not a conventional politician, and neither is Richard Brookhiser a conventional historian, nor, fittingly, is Founders’ Son a conventional biography. For the sixteenth president, as Brookhiser dazzlingly argues, ideas mattered—but never so much as when translated into action. Throughout Lincoln’s life, the Founders served as his touchstones, their ideals his lodestars, and he dedicated himself to completing the task they had left unfinished; the destruction of slavery, that Damoclean Sword menacing the Republic since its creation, would be both his monument and his tomb. Founders’ Son is an ingenious intellectual biography, a work of the highest order written by one of our most creative historians about the most brilliant of our presidents.”

  —ALEXANDER ROSE, author of Washington’s Spies: The Story of America’s First Spy Ring

  “It seems impossible, but it’s true: no one has ever looked at Lincoln in quite this way before—and certainly not with Richard Brookhiser’s graceful touch, sly wit, and deep historical knowledge. The Founders’ foremost biographer has turned his eye to their greatest pupil, and everyone who cares about Lincoln (which should be everyone) will be grateful for it.”

  —ANDREW FERGUSON, author of Land of Lincoln: Adventures in Abe’s America

  FOUNDERS’ SON

  Copyright © 2014 by Richard Brookhiser

  Published by Basic Books

  A Member of the Perseus Books Group

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address Basic Books, 250 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10107.

  Books published by Basic Books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 810-4145, ext. 5000, or e-mail [email protected].

  Designed by Linda Mark

  Text set in 11.5 pt Fairfield LT by the Perseus Books Group

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Brookhiser, Richard.

  Founders’ son : a life of Abraham Lincoln / Richard Brookhiser.

  pages cm

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-0-465-05686-6 (e-book)

  1.Lincoln, Abraham, 1809–1865. 2.Presidents—United States—Biography.

  3.United States—Politics and government—1861–1865. I. Title.

  E457.45.B76 2014

  973.7092—dc23

  [B]

  2014021173

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For

  Elizabeth Altham and her students

  CONTENTS

  Note on Spelling and Usage

  INTRODUCTION Two Old Men, One Young Man

  PART ONE

  ONE 1809–1830: Youth

  TWO George Washington and Liberty

  THREE 1830–1840: Manhood

  FOUR Thomas Paine, Laughter, and Reason

  FIVE 1840–1852: Maturity

  SIX Henry Clay and the Fourth of July

  PART TWO

  SEVEN 1854: The Repeal of the Missouri Compromise

  EIGHT 1855–1858: Running for Senate

  NINE 1859–1860: Running for President

  TEN Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence. The Towering Genius (I)

  ELEVEN The Election of 1860. The Towering Genius (II)

  PART THREE

  TWELVE 1861–1863: War, Emancipation

  THIRTEEN Preamble to the Constitution

  FOURTEEN 1864–1865: War, Death

  FIFTEEN God the Father

  SIXTEEN 1865: Victory. The Towering Genius (III)

  EPILOGUE One Old Man

  Acknowledgments

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  NOTE ON SPELLING AND USAGE

  Nineteenth-century rules for spelling and punctuation differed somewhat from ours, and the uneducated followed no rules at all; even Lincoln made a few characteristic mistakes throughout his life (he liked double consonants—verry). I have corrected and modernized everything I have quoted, except for italics used for emphasis (mostly by Lincoln, and by Parson Weems).

  INTRODUCTION: TWO OLD MEN, ONE YOUNG MAN

  WHEN ABRAHAM LINCOLN WAS A YOUNG MAN IN HIS twenties, the last of the founding fathers—the men who won the Revolution and made the Constitution—finally died. As their number dwindled, attentive people hastened to record their thoughts about America, its prospects and its problems, before they passed.

  In November 1831, the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, Charles Carroll, age ninety-four, was visited by Alexis de Tocqueville, a young Frenchman touring America to study its institutions. Carroll, a wealthy planter from the state of Maryland, reminded his guest of an English aristocrat—genial, gracious, proud (“he holds himself very erect,” Tocqueville noted). Carroll was especially proud of the glory days of American independence and of his own role in proclaiming it. In the concluding sentence of the Declaration, the signers had pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to support it; Carroll let Tocqueville know that the fortune he had pledged had been “the most considerable” in America. (“There go a few millions,” another signer commented, with gallows humor, as Carroll signed the revolutionary document.)

  The Revolution had been won, and Carroll kept his millions. Now, however, he fretted about the nation he had made, for America was becoming too democratic for his tastes. He mourned “the old aristocratic institutions” of Maryland, by which he meant property qualifications for voting, which had been abolished in 1810. (Before then, a Marylander had to own fifty acres of land to vote—no problem for Carroll, who owned 13,000.) He feared even more changes. “A mere Democracy,” he warned Tocqueville as the visit ended, “is but a mob”—willful, possibly violent. Fortunately, America had a safety valve: “Every year we can push our innovators out West.” This was Carroll’s vision of the frontier: as a dumping ground for democrats. Carroll died in 1832.

  In February 1835, the last surviving signer of the Constitution, James Madison, played host to another curious traveler, Harriet Martineau, an English writer making her own study of the United States. Madison, an eighty-three-year-old Virginian, was a grander figure than Carroll, for he was a former president as well as the signer of a founding document. Physically he had aged harder than Carroll—rheumatism confined him to a favorite chair in his bedroom—but his mind and his conversation sparkled: Martineau, clearly enchanted with him, called him “wonderful,” “lively,” “playful.” Madison’s upbeat temperament suited his politics, for unlike Carroll, he had no fear of democracy. He was a democratic politician par excellence; he and his best friend, Thomas Jefferson, had founded a political party (first called the Republican Party, then the Democratic) that had dominated American politics for over thirty years. “Madison,” as Martineau put it, “reposed cheerfully, gaily . . . on his faith in the people’s power of
wise self-government.”

  He had a concern of his own about the state of the nation, however, and that was slavery. Like Carroll, Madison was a planter and a slave owner. He had grown up with the institution, knew its evils from the inside, and discussed them frankly with Martineau. Slavery kept owners in a state of perpetual fear. It degraded slaves’ minds, even when it did not brutalize them physically (he cited promiscuity and cruelty to animals as bad habits encouraged by lives of bondage).

  How could the country free itself of the evil? Ideally, Madison believed, slaves should be freed (though he had not freed his own). But where then could they go? Free states did not want them—many had stringent laws to keep out black immigrants; Canada, he thought, was too cold for them. Maybe they could be sent back to Africa (Martineau thought that scheme was fantastic: American slaves were Americans; they would not want to leave). Where slavery was concerned, the last of the founders “owned himself to be almost in despair.” In 1836 Madison died.

  If the dying founders were anxious about their legacy, their heirs were no less troubled to see them go. Fathers should die before their children; it is the order of nature. But then responsibility and anxiety shift to new shoulders.

  In January 1838 Abraham Lincoln gave a speech to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, on “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions.” His speech was both a farewell to the founding fathers and a somewhat fearful look ahead.

  Lincoln himself was a young man as he delivered it—he would turn twenty-nine in two weeks. No curious foreigner interviewed him; his remarks were printed in the Sangamo Journal, a local newspaper.

  Illinois was the west that Carroll had spoken of to Tocqueville—almost the frontier of American civilization. Northwestern Illinois had been the scene of an Indian war only six years earlier (Lincoln had served in it). No one would ever mistake Lincoln for an English aristocrat: he was the son of a subsistence farmer and carpenter, and his own property consisted mostly of debts. He had spent his early twenties bouncing from job to job—river boatman, clerk, storekeeper, postmaster, surveyor—until he settled on politics and law, getting himself elected to the state legislature and becoming the law partner of an older officeholder. Socially he belonged to the democratic mass, and the life he had chosen to pursue was climbing the ladders of democratic politics and litigation.

  Lincoln was an autodidact—all his schooling amounted to no more than a year in one-room schoolhouses—and he gave an autodidact’s speech to the Young Men’s Lyceum: well-planned, but stiff and a little fancy, like a brand-new suit. One phrase foreshadowed the Lincoln to come: in his peroration, he said, of the founding fathers, “what invading foemen could never do, the silent artillery of time has done. . . . They are gone.” Lincoln’s artillery metaphor had the force and paradox of great poetry: artillery is the loudest thing on a battlefield, as it is the most destructive; but the deadliest artillery of all is noiseless, quieter even than the ticking of a watch. Lincoln’s metaphor also had the music of great poetry. It was a three-word variation on the letters i and t. Silent—a long i, trailed by a soft final t. Artillery—a sharp t, followed immediately by a short i. Time, the monosyllable—a sharp t with a long moaning i. The music underscored the image: Silent (ready) artillery (aim) time (fire—direct hit). For the rest, Lincoln’s thoughts and his language were sometimes interesting, sometimes half baked. That was all right; he had years of baking ahead.

  The institutions whose perpetuation he discussed at the Lyceum were those of American democratic republicanism: “a system,” he told the young men grandly, “conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us.” This system was the handiwork of the founding fathers: “a legacy bequeathed us” by “hardy, brave and patriotic” ancestors.

  How was the legacy doing in 1838? Lincoln was worried; though he had not read Carroll’s or Madison’s last thoughts, some of his worries echoed theirs. He had a lot to say about mobs—an “increasing disregard for law,” he argued, “pervades the country,” a point he illustrated by describing recent lynchings in Mississippi, Missouri, and Illinois. If mobs raged unchecked, the people, disgusted, might turn to a Napoleon, a dictator, to tame them. He had a little to say about slavery: the man the Illinois mob had lynched—in Alton, a town only sixty miles southwest of Springfield—had been the editor of a crusading antislavery newspaper.

  But the backdrop for Lincoln’s talk—its framing anxiety—was the passing of the founding fathers and the void they left. The men who had built the country had been personally committed to its success, but now that they were gone, that commitment would inevitably weaken. “I do not mean to say, that the scenes of the [American] revolution are now or ever will be entirely forgotten; but that like every thing else, they must fade upon the memory of the world, and grow more and more dim by the lapse of time.” History would tell the story of the founding fathers’ great deeds, but now that they had died, it could no longer be living history. “They were the pillars of the temple of liberty; and now, that they have crumbled away, that temple must fall, unless we, their descendants, supply their places with other pillars.”

  In 1838 Lincoln had a not-quite-thirty-year career ahead of him; much of it would be preoccupied with the founding fathers—their intentions and their institutions, and how to fulfill and perpetuate them. As a lawmaker and a lawyer, he worked within the systems they had left behind. As a politician, he wanted to wrap himself in their aura. As a poet and a visionary, he drew on them for rhetoric and inspiration.

  But Lincoln invoked the founding fathers not just to do his jobs, win elections, or speak well, but also to solve America’s problems. His perceptions of those problems would change over the years, but in the climax of his career, from 1854, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise “aroused him,” as he put it, “as he had never been before,” through 1865, the end of his presidency and the Civil War, he tried to solve the problem of slavery—James Madison’s—by solving the problem of democracy—Charles Carroll’s.

  America had been a continent of slaveholders since colonial times, and the founding fathers had accepted the evil fact (reluctantly, Lincoln said). But, he would argue, they had hoped slavery would one day die out, and they had taken steps to contain it (ending the slave trade, forbidding slavery in the Northwest Territory). They had left words expressing their repugnance: the first self-evident truth in the Declaration of Independence was that “all men are created equal.” They had also left silences: even though the Constitution protected slavery in several ways, it never named it (so that, Lincoln said, there should be no trace of slavery “on the face of the great charter of liberty” after slavery had finally vanished).

  But how could an institution as deeply rooted as American slavery ever be made to vanish, even over the very long haul? (At different times Lincoln envisioned end-dates as remote as 1893, 1900, or deep into the twentieth century.) The forum of democratic politics posed a danger—and offered an opportunity. If Americans embraced slavery, or even became indifferent to it, then it would spread nationwide (Lincoln would fear it was doing just that in the 1850s). If a minority of Americans, having lost an election, simply left the country, as happened in 1861, they could take slavery with them—and cripple the very notion of republican government on their way out. (What good is a form of government that cannot maintain itself?) But if Lincoln could convince enough Americans that slavery was a blight and persuade them to vote their convictions, then slavery would be contained. If he could convince enough of them that the Union was worth fighting for, then it could be saved—and slavery extinguished sooner than 1893.

  Lincoln’s most important allies in these efforts were the founding fathers. They were dead. “They were a forest of giant oaks,” Lincoln told the young men of Springfield, “but the all resistless hurricane has swept over them.” But Lincoln called them back to life for his purposes. Their principles, he maintained were his; his solution
s were theirs. He summoned the past to save the present. (To make the founding fathers effectual allies, he first had to edit them a bit—to use the past, he had to save it from aspects of itself.) Lincoln turned the founding fathers into his fathers—and the fathers of a revitalized American liberty to come.

  For Lincoln, the road to the future always began in the past—America’s, and his. As a boy he admired George Washington as a champion of liberty. As a young man he found in Thomas Paine lessons about religion, which he ultimately abandoned, and about how to win arguments, which he retained for the rest of his life. At the height of his career he embraced Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence as a statement of principle (an “apple of gold,” he called it, quoting the Bible) and the Preamble to the Constitution, which named the people as the beneficiaries and guardians of freedom.

  The life of a man so preoccupied with symbolic fatherhood naturally makes us curious about his relationship with his actual, flesh-and-blood father. What did Abraham Lincoln owe Thomas Lincoln (1778–1851)? Not a lot, Abraham himself would say when he talked about his origins, which was seldom. But the son owed Thomas more than he ever admitted. Some women also had a profound effect on him—though not his lovers, except for one who died. Some of the most potent women in Lincoln’s life were widows, beginning with his stepmother; some were figures of his imagination (and some of these imaginary women were black).

  There were many problems for Lincoln in his efforts to use the founding fathers. Not least was the fact that other politicians and writers used them too, for very different purposes of their own. Maybe the founders were models of moral virtue, with no application to modern political problems. “Give us his private virtues,” wrote Parson Weems in his Life of Washington, which Lincoln read. “It was to those old-fashioned virtues that our hero owed everything. . . . Private life is always real life.” Or maybe the problems that Lincoln found so pressing were not problems at all, and the founders were the source and bulwark of an ideal status quo. “Why cannot this government endure divided into free and slave states, as our fathers made it?” asked Stephen Douglas, a senator and an old rival of Lincoln’s.