Popular Legacies of Abraham Lincoln
G. Cullom Davis
The Lincoln Festival. Photo by Vicki Woodard.
"Both [sides] read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of others men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged." --Second Inaugural Address (March 4, 1865)
The Abraham Lincoln Industry
The magnitude of Lincoln's unique place in American popular culture led the late Ralph Newman many years ago to speak of "The Abraham Lincoln Industry," noting the innumerable cities, institutions and companies bearing his name. Robert Johannsen, the biographer of Stephen A. Douglas, noted its global impact when he described Lincoln as "one of America's ... great export commodities." A recent and comprehensive survey of the 16th president's enduring place in popular culture is Jefferson scholar Merrill Peterson's fine book, Lincoln in American Memory. What these and many others observers have documented is the pervasive and deeply imbedded stature of Lincoln as our national hero and icon. According to Peterson, he enjoys such eminence because his life and work exemplified five central elements of the American experience: nationalism, humanity, democracy, Americanism and individualism. The evidence of this unrivaled position takes many forms. First there are the dozens of organizations and institutions exclusively devoted to promulgating his memory. Perhaps the most telling example is a trade group, the Association of Lincoln Presenters, which consists of more than 100 bearded impersonators who earn a living by appearing at pageants, schools and conventions. Their own annual meeting has become a news photographer's dream, with dozens of Lincoln look-a-likes parading for the camera. One especially eager member arrives in an automobile that has been remodeled to resemble a mobile log cabin.
Another measure is the plenitude of Lincoln museums, galleries, historic sites and manuscript dealers, collectively too numerous and far-flung to count. Dealers and collectors know that Lincoln relics bring top dollar. Five years ago I was the incredulous middleman (too naive to demand a 10% finder's fee) for the sale at auction of a simple letter that Lincoln wrote in 1860 to a friend of his son Robert. A curator at Christie's had estimated that this touching but inconsequential manuscript might bring as much as $150,000, but when the auction gavel fell the bid was $780,000. One year earlier it took $1.5 million to buy an early draft of the "House Divided" speech, and nearly that much to acquire a mere 75 word fragment from Lincoln's draft of the second inaugural address.
Busily informing their avid readers are more than a dozen Lincoln-centered periodicals. There are newsletters like the Fort Jefferson Lyceum, the Lincoln Ledger, Lincoln Legacy, Lincolnian, Lincoln Letters, Lincoln News National, our own Lincoln Legal Briefs, and even the Surratt Society Newsletter. The more substantive periodicals include Lincoln Lore, The Lincoln Herald, the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, The Railsplitter and the Journal of the Lincoln Assassination.
When it comes to books about Lincoln, the latest count tallied over 17,000 titles, which Merrill Peterson was prompted to label "a vast redundancy." Books in Print identifies well over 100 Lincoln titles currently available, and of the 11 major biographies written before 1960, seven are currently in print, with two more editions forthcoming. The nine volume Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln remained in print for 40 years and sold 40,000 copies, two records bound to inspire envy and humility among all of us. Even at a hefty $75 price, the two volume "Library of America" edition of selected speeches and writing was a Book of the Month Club selection. Without question, the popular appetite for reading about Lincoln is voracious, which prompted the humorist James Thurber years ago to propose stringent government regulation of this genre. He further suggested imposing a $50,000 fine for writing a Lincoln biography without a permit.
One final dimension of this cultural phenomenon is our national habit of idolizing and mythologizing, or what Merrill Peterson calls the "apotheosis" of Lincoln. His martyrdom on a Good Friday launched this cult (literally with a bang), and it has gone unabated for 133 years. It is a fact, for example, that until fairly recently Illinois state highway signs directed tourists to the "Lincoln Shrines." This fall one organization is sponsoring a "pilgrimage" to Lincoln sites in Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois. Somewhat less reverential but considerably more expensive is the forthcoming eight-day Smithsonian excursion, called "In the Footsteps of Lincoln," and costing $5,000 per person.
Feeding off of this hero-worship habit is a parallel and evidently irresistible urge, among public officials in particular, to invoke Lincoln as their philosophical lodestar for partisan beliefs. Fifty years ago Lincoln scholar David Donald aptly called this "Getting Right with Lincoln," i.e., associating one's views with the saintly 16th president. Republicans naturally had the exclusive franchise on this potent weapon until the 1930s, when Franklin D. Roosevelt seized the mantle. Since then Lincoln's sanction has been a bipartisan asset, thereby making it all the more elastic and contentious. LBJ, for example, invoked Lincoln in support of U.S. policy in Vietnam, and Governor Mario Cuomo enlisted him in the war on poverty. Ronald Reagan went a bit too far at the 1992 Republican National Convention, when he quoted Lincoln's legendary "Ten Cannots" as holy writ for his appeal to get government off our backs. Unfortunately his source was spurious; the "Ten Cannots" is in fact an old canard that never came from the lips or pen of our martyred hero.
Lincoln for the Sages
Now, as the Lincoln bicentennial looms, there is ample evidence that Lincoln belongs as much to the sages as to the ages. The "scholar squirrels" as Gore Vidal has caustically dubbed us, are largely in command of the Lincoln industry. The manifestations of that conquest take various forms that warrant elaboration. Lincoln scholarship, in brief, has become at century's end richly diversified and scattered among many disciplines more open than ever to interpretive and evidentiary disputes, singularly susceptible to intramural fights and factional alignments, more alert than ever to untapped and unconventional sources, and demonstrably if subtly influential on the image of Lincoln that suffuses our popular culture. Together these separate strands constitute an authentic if at times perverse Lincoln renaissance.
Scores of historians represent the core of this dynamic activity. Just in the past five years there have appeared at least nine serious new biographies. More specialized monographs and articles surface frequently on such diverse subjects as Lincoln's native American policy, his law practice, the wartime arbitrary arrests, the Ann Rutledge legend, his religious beliefs, the mail he received, his assassination, and even the size of his toes. Added to this are several anthologies and a cascade of reissued out-of-print works. Opportunities abound for testing one's ideas before an audience of peers. There are four annual conferences: the Abraham Lincoln Symposium, the Lincoln Institute Symposium, the Lincoln Colloquium and the Lincoln Forum, plus frequent ad hoc gatherings.
Scholars in this same group have been busy discovering, editing and publishing volumes of long-neglected documentary sources. There are recent and excellent works on Lincoln's sayings as recalled by others, the interviews that both John G. Nicolay and William Herndon collected about him, John Hay's diary, the writings of John Wilkes Booth, and the wartime newspaper dispatches of Noah Brooks. Forthcoming are a complete edition of The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln, a compilation of his court martial actions, and others.
But this is only the epicenter of Lincoln scholarship. Like the force of gravity itself, Lincoln seems to irresistibly pique the interest of practitioners in other and even remote fields. Beyond Clio's walls are literary scholars like Garry Wills, Robert Bray, and Douglas Wilson, novelists like Shelby Foote and Gore Vidal, language maven William Safire, anthropologists, clinical psychologists molecular biologists, and others. Moreover, the computer age is just beginning to revolutionize research on and access to Lincoln. Among its applications are the CD-ROM edition of his legal papers, the digitization of his printed works into a massive concordance, several commercial CD-ROMS, computer "morphing" of his head and hands for analytical purposes, software that purports to detect plagiarism, and a Library of Congress project to place 15,000 documents from its own holdings on the Internet, as "Mr Lincoln's Virtual Library."
Such varied offerings pose a serious challenge to the ordinary Lincoln specialist. Increasingly we find ourselves called upon to render informed opinions on technical matters we never covered in graduate school. The conscientious historian must be a polymath, as conversant with textual deconstruction, DNA analysis, graphology, content analysis, and computerization, as with the historical method.
Equally perilous are the modern interpretive arguments that divide the professors of Lincolnology. Did Lincoln suffer from Marfan Syndrome, or perhaps venereal disease, or even spousal abuse? Was he in fact author of the famous widow Bixby letter? Did he trample civil liberties under wartime pressure? Is a purported sixth holograph copy of the Gettysburg Address genuine? Was Mary Todd pregnant with their first child when Lincoln hastily agreed to marry her? These and other knotty controversies are mealtime conversation topics at Lincoln gatherings and fodder for an insatiable press.
This contentiousness often leads to outright feuds and angry factions. Sadly, Lincoln's plea for "malice toward none; charity for all" has had no more effect upon the scholar squirrels than it had upon Reconstruction. Nearly ten years ago our guild was torn apart over charges that Stephen B. Oates had mildly plagiarized an earlier biography for his own popular study. Beginning as an intramural professional dispute, it quickly escalated into a public battle, with press releases, ad hominem attacks and official inquiries. The professional division of the American Historical Association twice commissioned studies, leading both times to cautiously worded reports that both sides could invoke. As a central figure in the dispute's early stages, I can testify to the rancor and ill will it generated.
Recriminations erupted again in 1995, this time over a contested election for president of the Abraham Lincoln Association. Once again your genial, mild-mannered speaker was at the storm's center, being the successful challenger in what critics called a palace coup, and defenders a leadership crisis. The venerable ALA, founded in 1909 and headquartered in Springfield, has a distinguished record of promoting scholarship through its journal and publishing basic Lincoln sources like the Collected Works. It is also, however, like slavery, a "peculiar institution," with an unwieldy 42-member board consisting of Springfield aristocrats, Lincoln buffs and tradesmen, civic leaders, and scholars. Shaken by the unseemly public feud, the ALA has sought to mend fences, enlist new leaders and reinvigorate its record of service.
During the 1990s, for some reason, the search for new Lincoln sources has been more intense and fruitful than at any time in the past fifty years or more. Our own six-year painstaking search located 100,000 document pertaining to Lincoln's law practice, including several hundred new items in his handwriting. Thomas and Beverly Lowry have devoted their retirement years to patiently inspecting and cataloging 80,000 Civil War court martial cases at the National Archives, and early this year they announced the discovery of 600 Lincoln signatures and/or notations. Michael Burlingame, a prolific member of the scholar squirrels, has specialized in uncovering long ignored tertiary and reminiscence sources. He has published some of these materials and is using others for his forthcoming multi-volume biography.
One reported discovery, the so-called Hoffman daguerreotype, bears special mention. Robert and Joan Hoffman announced this acquisition four years ago, claiming scientific proof that it was the earliest (1843) image of young Abe Lincoln. Supporting their claim was a plausible provenance and the testimony of a physician, forensic anthropologist, photographic historian, and specialist in biomedical computer morphing. Both at that time and in recent months this story has been widely noted in the press.
Many Lincoln experts rejected the claim, and a vascular specialist concurred after comparing the vein pattern on the subject's right hand with known Lincoln photographs. Christie's decided to auction this controversial artifact as "Portrait of a Young Gentleman, Believed to be Abraham Lincoln." Bid estimates stretched as high as $1 million and as low as $5, in effect leaving it to the market to determine authenticity. On October 6 the market spoke, with a $150,000 bid that was too low to satisfy the owners. In my opinion they should have taken the money and disappeared.
Publicity about manuscript discoveries and record-breaking auction prices may help explain a parallel and unpleasant development of this decade, the rising incidence of alleged forgeries, hoaxes and thefts. Several years ago a prominent Lincoln collector announced that he had acquired the second page of a sixth holograph copy of the Gettysburg Address. Immediately sides formed supporting and rejecting the claim, then the talk subsided, leading many to doubt the document's authenticity. Another suspect manuscript is the purported oral history reminiscences of Mariah Vance, a laundress for the Lincoln family in the 1850s. The owner and editors spent nearly 20 years seeking a prestigious publisher for this intimate portrait of domestic turmoil, first under the title "Mistah Abe" and later "A House Divided." Failing in that, they did release it in two hefty volumes from Hastings House in 1995, called Lincoln's Unknown Private Life. Judging from today's obsession with peephole politics, choosing that title three years ago was an act of great prescience, but that has not satisfied reviewers, who generally have dismissed the memoir as a fraud.
In the course of our massive search for Lincoln legal documents in 88 county courthouses and scores of other repositories, we took pains to carefully recruit and train researchers, and to establish credibility with circuit clerks and curators. It therefore was a deep shock one year ago to discover that some of the documents we had identified and photocopied for our files later surfaced at auction and dealer sales. Further, our worst suspicions were confirmed last winter, when authorities charged a former staff member, Sean Brown. Since then he has pleaded guilty in two separate court trials to stealing hundreds of documents written by contemporaries of Lincoln, plus at least two written by Lincoln. Brown awaits sentencing later this fall. There is an exquisite but painful irony in this affair. It was our training that qualified Brown to identify valuable records, and our hard-earned stature that gained him easy access to places we already had visited. On the other hand, it was our own meticulous record keeping that enabled us and then criminal investigators to detect the theft and identify the guilty party. My colleagues can attest to the sense of embarrassment and betrayal we feel. Incidentally, the October 1998 issue of Chicago Magazine featured a profile of Brown labeled, "The Man Who Stole Lincoln."
Escape from History: Lincoln Populi
Finally, what impact, if any, has the Lincoln renaissance by scholars had upon the broader public and their absorption with the Lincoln industry? Has contemporary American popular culture been measurably influenced by the writing and ranting of the professors of Lincolnology? A definitive and comprehensive answer is not possible, but there are some intriguing if scattered signs that say yes. They strongly suggest that our serious work has a way of indirectly creeping into the media mainstream, for good or ill.
Book sales are a typical but inconclusive measure. Among the scores of new and reissued titles this decade, many have sold respectably and several were book club selections. Only one deserves special mention, David Donald's 1995 biography, Lincoln. A career-culminating synthesis by the twice Pulitzer Prize winning author, it has enjoyed good reviews and sales of over 300,000 copies, impressive for a 700-page, $35 tome.
One must turn to less conventional and more indirect sources for a fuller answer. By themselves they may be minor revelations, but collectively they make a point. It is a fact, for example, that Lincoln specialists are frequently sought as consultants and talking heads for Civil War and presidential documentaries on television. C-SPAN enjoyed favorable reviews and high ratings for an ambitious series that re-enacted the Lincoln-Douglas debates and included scholarly commentary. Similarly, popular tours of Civil War battle sites as well as the forthcoming Smithsonian excursion to the Land of Lincoln now boast expert historians as guest lecturers. Scholars like James McPherson, John Simon, Harold Holzer and Douglas Wilson ensure that tour guests get history that is accurate and unvarnished.
Last year's hit movie, "Saving Private Ryan," tells a World War II story, but its vital plot device, related by General George C. Marshall, is none other than the legendary widow Bixby letter. True, Steven Spielberg did not interrupt his script with a discourse on Lincoln's disputed authorship, but who can say whether earlier press accounts of this controversy may have fired the film maker's imagination?
Even the tabloid supermarket press likes Lincoln. Several years ago, just after Michael Burlingame's psycho-biography had portrayed Lincoln as the victim of spousal abuse, one paper teased readers with the headline "Wicked Witch of the White House." Those persons expecting an expose of Hilary Rodham Clinton discovered instead Burlingame's case against Mary Todd. Five years ago Weekly World caught readers' attention with a front page headline, "Abraham Lincoln's Corpse Revived." The report was of secret experiments by doctors at Walter Reed Hospital to apply a wonder drug, "Revivitol," to the Great Emancipator's mummified remains. Reportedly the elixir worked, at least for 95 seconds, which was long enough for Lincoln to sit up and declare, in words that must rank among his least memorable, "Gentlemen, where am I?"
Laughable as this story was, it unquestionably was inspired by the public furor over a serious proposal several years earlier, to conduct DNA testing of hair and bone autopsy fragments in storage in Washington since 1865. The purpose, as Walter Reed pathologists explained, was eventually to determine whether Lincoln carried the congenital connective tissue disorder known as Marfan syndrome. As the sole historian among geneticists and other scientists on a special advisory panel to consider the ethical and cultural implications of such a study, I can testify to the intense and widespread public reaction. Reporters and columnists freely speculated that such a procedure could inevitably lead to cloning Lincoln. Therein lay the seed, so to speak, for imaginative tabloid editors to concoct their tale about Revivitol.
My final example comes fresh from the small screen. On Monday evening, October 5, 1998, United Paramount Network (UPN) premiered its outrageous new presidential sitcom, "The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer" (the P is not silent). If my description piques your curiosity, I suggest you watch soon, because this program cannot (and should not) last long. Intended as a satirical sendup of shenanigans in the Clinton White House, it takes viewers back to the Lincolns in 1861. Pfeiffer, the show's protagonist, is an English nobleman of African descent who has emigrated to America and then been hired as Lincoln's White House butler. His diary supplies each episode's farcical plot, which in the first episode was supposed to center on the president's bisexual tendencies, including lust for his voluptuous personal secretary, named Mona (resembles Monica). His conjugal neglect of Mary triggers tantrums and her own adulterous instincts, with slapstick consequences. After accidentally ingesting an aphrodisiac (not Revivitol, but possibly Viagra), Lincoln rekindles sex with his amorous wife. The next morning Mary is so pleased that she declares, "the old Railsplitter is back" then dons his stovepipe hat, stands on a chair, and croons a slow, sultry "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" a la Marilyn Monroe to John Kennedy. Striving futilely to carry this limp story are tasteless gags about slavery, Ulysses Grant's fondness for alcohol, and gay sex. At the last minute producers responded to criticism by substituting another, equally mindless episode, in which Lincoln furtively engages in telegraph sex. These sophomoric stunts prompt Pfeiffer to complain to Lincoln, "You're acting no better than a horny hillbilly from Arkansas."
Mercifully, the program lists no historical consultant, and the actor playing Lincoln has admitted (with mixed metaphors), "we're playing fast and loose with sacred ground." But in fact there are subtle historical allusions in this dreadful show, drawn without doubt from the scholarly findings and controversies I have described. Does the notion of a Black diarist ring bells? What about marital troubles between the Lincolns, and documented gossip about an adulterous Mary Todd, and Lincoln's reported virility, and Mary's emotional instability? Desmond's Pfeiffer's story, like the supermarket tabloids and other emblems of popular culture, demonstrates that scholars like me who live with Lincoln never can foretell where and how our musings may spread. To that extent, and for better or worse, Lincoln belongs to the sages.
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