One of the peculiarities of the Southern psyche, and one of the internal contradictions that have been a part of Southern history, has been a tendency on the part of some Southerners to want to absolve Abraham Lincoln of the guilt that is most deservedly associated with his name. Perhaps it is the innately Southern penchant for lost causes that makes us feel sympathy for a man shot from behind. Or perhaps it simply is the lingering effects of a hundred and more years of yankee propaganda that was calculated to wring crocodile tears from anyone gazing upon that ``sad but noble'' old visage at the Lincoln Memorial. A lifetime of pennies and five-dollar bills has made that visage second nature to us, and, if we are not on our guard, we may find ourselves drawn into the Lincoln Myth.
I am reminded, for example, of Thomas Dixon, of Winston-Salem, NC, author of The Clansman, the novel that inspired the great film Birth of a Nation. The story, which dealt with the attempts of a vanquished Southern society to defend itself from the chaos of military occupation, nevertheless unaccountably treats Old Abe with sympathy, even reverence. So, too, do most authors, contemporary and otherwise, even those nominally on ``our'' side. Consider Shelby Foote, for example, that one shining light in the Burnsean darkness. In one of Burns' episodes, Foote tells of speaking with a descendant of General Forrest, remarking to her his belief that two bonafide geniuses emerged from the War: her ancestor and Abraham Lincoln. The lady paused unexpectedly, then replied: ``In my family, Mr. Foote, we don't think too well of Mr. Lincoln.''
Well, in my family neither do we. As a boy, I enjoyed playing with my "Civil War" set of toy figures by Marx, which included a yellow figure of Lincoln. After every battle, ending in an inevitable Confederate victory, I would tie a short length of tobacco twine around the old tyrant's neck and he would proceed to swing grandly for his many crimes against humanity.
For Abraham Lincoln was a tyrant, surely the most evil American in history, who to preserve his own political regime brought death to at least 600,000 Confederates and Yankees, and destroyed the lives and the way of life of uncounted millions of Southerners. In addition, he oppressed his own people in the North to such an extent that huge numbers of them, from New York to Chicago and beyond, were ready late in the War to rise up and throw off his dictatorship. His was a regime dedicated to power and held together only by the most brutal and draconian power ever employed in America.
Religion
Although he was fond of using religious imagery in his
speeches, L. was nonreligious, even anti-religious. He even wrote a short book
as a young man attacking Christianity and the Bible. Charges that he was an
atheist and that he had referred to Jesus Christ as ``an illegitimate child''
went undenied.
His Parentage
Speaking of illegitimacy, L. liked to boast that his
own mother, Nancy Hanks, was illegitimate and that her "real" father was a
Virginia planter, and not the ignorant backwoodsman L. knew him to be. Nancy
Hanks' parents were in actuality married, of course, but that did not prevent L.
from bringing shame to his own dead mother's name for the sake of his own
ambition and fantasies. (L. himself may have been illegitimate, however; see
below.)
His Sanity
Space does not permit even a summary of L.'s apparent
mental aberrations. Throughout his adult life, L. was delusional to the point
that we would today call him psychotic and those in his time would have said he
was "tetched in the head." He had frequent "spells" and hallucinations; along
with his wife he organized seances in the White House to talk to the dead; and
he foresaw and probably craved his own death. As a teenager, L. had been kicked
in the head and knocked unconscious by a horse he was whipping. Some believe his
mental problems began then. Mrs. Lincoln, of course, was forcibly locked inside
an insane asylum by her own son after the War, and L. himself might well have
joined her if not for JWB.
Tormented by nightmares throughout his life, from which he frequently awoke screaming, L. was also prone to extremely vivid waking visions. On one occasion, in November, 1860, just after his election to the Presidency, L. looked in a mirror and had a strange vision. His head had two faces, one of them extremely pale. L. interpreted this as a premonition of death, and tried unsuccesssfuly to duplicate the vision later at the White House. He was still talking about the experience four years later. In addition, on the very week of his death, L. dreamed of his death by assassination, yet insisted on going to Ford's Theatre without a bodyguard. His insistence on putting himself in harm's way has prompted many authorities to suggest a death wish as an explanation. He leant credence to this theory in the 1832 "Lyceum Address,'' given to the Young Men's Lyceum in Springfield. In that bizarre speech, speaking almost wistfully, Lincoln rhapsodized about the founding fathers' having achieved glory in death. Somewhat surprisingly, he also warns his young audience about the possibility of a genius rising up in America, who, in his quest for fame, might attempt to destroy the country. He counseled his bewildered audience that they must help defeat this evil genius.
"Towering genius disdains a beaten path.... It thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves, or enslaving freemen. Is it unreasonable then to expect, that some man possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time, spring up among us? And when such a one does, it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs."
Could L. just possibly been speaking of his own evil side and could the two faces exemplify his schizophrenic nature? Could L. himself be the "house divided against itself'' that he spoke of years later?
Gettysburg
L.'s taste for vulgarity was legendary. On the very
occasion of his much adored "Gettysburg Address," he had a vulgar and profane
song, "Picayune Brother," sung on the battlefield itself, prompting Union
General Donn Piatt to refer to Gettysburg as "the field that he shamed with a
ribald song."
His Appearance
"Ugly," wrote an English journalist. "Dirty," said
Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. "Grotesque," wrote Union General Carl Schurz.
"Homeliest" man in Illinois, said J.H. Burnham of Bloomington. H. C. Whitney, a
fellow lawyer from Springfield, wrote that L.'s skin was "a dark, sallow color,
his features were coarse, his ears were large; his hair...stood out all over his
head, with no appearance of ever having been combed." L. was six-four, and
weighed about 180 pounds. His head was unusually small, with deep-set eyes, the
left of which was a "roving eye." He had a sunken chest, somewhat like that of a
consumptive, and was stoop-shouldered. His arms were abnormally long, with his
fingertips extending below his knees. His hands and feet were enormous, which
combined with his peculiar sidewise style of walking, gave him an apelike
appearance. In fact, General McClellan called him the "royal ape," and Stanton
referred to him as an "African gorilla." L. probably suffered from Marfan's
Syndrome, a genetic disease that frequently leads to an early death. Without a
doubt, L. was physically the strangest occupant in the history of the White
House.
The Draft
L.'s conscription policies caused widespread animosity.
L.'s government attempted to call up about 2,975,000 draftees, but only about 6
percent were actually inducted. The provision for paying a bounty enabled many
to stay out, including the rich and important, such as J.P. Morgan, J.D.
Rockefeller, and Grover Cleveland. L. himself paid for a substitute, though he
was of course exempt, and his son Robert Todd remained at Harvard until his
graduation in 1864. Junior did eventually enlist, however: on January 21, 1865,
once the War was nearly over, when he was given Captain's rank and assigned to
General Grant's headquarters staff as an escort for big shots. In fact, the only
members of the family who actually served were Mary's relatives, and they fought
for the Confederacy!
Emancipation
Probably the central myth about L. is the image of him
as the "Great Emancipator." In actuality, as most knowledgable persons are
aware, L. was motivated only to "preserve the union," and by his own admission,
it was immaterial whether he freed "some of the slaves, all of the slaves, or
none of the slaves." Emancipation was a political expedient only; in fact, the
Proclamation itself pretended to free only those slaves in states "currently in
rebellion." Slaves in border states loyal to the Union were to remain enslaved.
Hardly a friend of the Negro, L. had declared in the Lincoln-Douglas debates
that he had no intention of granting such privileges of citizenship to freedmen
as making them lawyers or jurors, since he considered them racially inferior.
L. was a member of the American Colonization Committee, along with many prominent figures, North and South, which favored repatriating freedmen to Liberia. As late as two weeks before his death, he met with General Benjamin Butler in the White House and asked him to investigate how best to return the freed blacks to Africa. (NOTE: If L. was in fact serious about this, it is probably the only important position the man ever took that was morally defensible.)
His Sexuality
Rumors persist to the present day of alleged
dalliances between L. and Marine guards in the White House, though those remain
unproved. Keep in mind that in those days, there were no female Marines.
Medical historian Thomas P. Lowry relates in his recent book The Story the Soldiers Wouldn't Tell: Sex in the Civil War how L. slept in the same bed with merchant Joshua Speed for four years. When Speed announced that he was getting married, L. got so depressed he was unable to attend to his responsibilities as an Illinois state legislator. His friends were afraid he might commit suicide. As quoted in the Life of Lincoln, published in 1888 by L.'s friend William Herndon, L. wrote to Speed: "Your [letter], announcing that Miss Fanny and you are `no more twain, but one flesh,' reached me this morning....I feel somewhat jealous of both of you now. You will be so exclusively concerned for one another that I shall be forgotten entirely...I shall be very lonesome without you."
Soon thereafter, L. married--reluctantly, according to Herndon--Mary Todd, with whom he had earlier broken an engagement.
In an interview in Civil War magazine (Nov. 1994), Lowry concludes: "[W]hy was he so emotionally devastated when the man he had slept with for four years was about to get married? I don't know.'' Lincoln biographer Carl Sandburg, apparently did know, however. In his 1926 book Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years he repeatedly described L. and Speed as having "a streak of lavender and spots soft as May violets."
Recently, L.'s perverse sexual nature has become a matter of some pride for certain Republican homosexuals known as the "Log Cabin Club." They have outted Old Abe with great delight. For example, W. Scott Thompson, a prominent Club member, has written an article entitled "Was Abe Lincoln Gay, Too? A Divided Man to Heal a Divided Age," in which he reports L.'s homosexuality. The more radical homosexual activists have also gotten involved in L. outing. Charley Shively has written a book titled Drum Beats: Walt Whitman's Civil War Boy Lovers, in which he recounts L.'s sexual exploits as well as Whitman's. Not only have the homosexual activists taken up the L. story, but so have mainstream historians, such as Michael Burlingame, who describes L.'s homosexuality as well as his sado-masochistic marital relationship (he was frequently beaten by his wife) in The Inner World of Abraham Lincoln.
The Election of 1864
L. had received less than forty percent of the
popular vote in 1860. The 1862 elections had gone heavily against the
Republicans. The War was extremely unpopular across the Union. For all these
reasons, right up to election day in 1864, L. had very little reason to expect
victory. This did not prevent him for employing every dirty trick to win,
however. To obtain the extra electoral votes, he pushed through the admission of
Nevada to the Union. He railroaded the admission of "West Virginia" (and in so
doing contradicted his own interpretation of how the Union was configured: if
Virginia was still in the Union and had not seceded, as he claimed, how could
part of her be admitted separately? Similar arguments held true for Louisiana,
Texas, Florida, and Arkansas, each of whom L. wanted back, when according to him
they had never left, with only Republican voters being enfranchised, of course.
Fearful that N.Y. soldiers, who could vote in the field, would vote Democratic,
L. had the N.Y. electoral commissioners arrested as they passed through
Washington on their way to the troops encamped in Virginia. On the other hand,
soldiers from states judged likely to vote Republican, such as Pennsylvania and
Indiana, were given furloughs to go home and vote. In border states such as
Maryland and Missouri, would-be Democratic voters were arrested or driven away
from the polls by Union troops. To enforce proper voting there, New York City
was occupied by 5000 western troops. In the end, L. received 2,272,183 votes to
McClellan's 1,819,111. The Union Army, with its ballots and bayonets, had made
the difference.
Order No. 11
Four days after William C. Quantrill's raid on
Lawrence, Kansas (which itself was in retaliation for mistreatment of
pro-Confederate internees), Union General Thomas Ewing issued his infamous Order
No. 11. This order commanded all residents of Jackson, Cass, and Bates counties,
and the northern part of Vernon county, to leave their homes. They were
permitted to carry nothing but the clothes on their backs. Many even had their
shoes and hats confiscated by the outlaws-turned-guerillas under Ewing's
command. All persons, including small children and old people, were required to
walk, some up to hundreds of miles. Many men were killed by the guerillas,
although they were attempting to obey. Old people died of exhaustion, and babies
died of starvation in their mother's arms.
Within fifteen days following the order, the counties in question had been depopulated. Meanwhile, the Union Army commenced to steal and destroy. They carted away every trunk and wardrobe, every stick of furniture, all clothing and bedding. They stole every head of lifestock they could steal and what they couldn't steal they slaughtered. Likewise, of the property they could not cart off in their wagon trains that stretched for miles, they burned. They burned every building outside the major towns, and when the buildings were burned, they set fire to the prairie itself. The fires raged over hundreds of square miles and dense clouds of smoke filled the air. The counties of Cass and Bates became known for long after as the "burnt district.''
It was one of the the most heinous acts of the War, rivaling Sherman's march and Sheridan's devastation of the Valley. And who was responsible for Order No. 11? In 1877, General Schofield, who had been the commander of the Department of the Missouri at the time, revealed the answer. Order No. 11 came directly from the Commander-in-Chief, A. Lincoln.
The Place of His Birth
I have been asked, Have you nothing good to
say about Mr. L.? To which I can now reply, Why, yes. At least for anyone else
it would be something good to say. About him, it saddens me to admit it, but L.
may in fact have been a native of our own North Carolina. The story, which I
touched on in an earlier installment, and which is dismissed by most historians,
makes for an interesting one, if nothing else:
Prof. James C. Coggins, president of Atlantic Christian College, in Wilson, NC, wrote a series of books in the first half of this century arguing for the notion that not only were both L. and his mother illegitimate (which Coggins regarded as a hopeful condition, considering the social and intellectual level of their kin), but that L. was actually born in our fair state of North Carolina. In such books as Abraham Lincoln, a North Carolinian and The Eugenics of Abraham Lincoln, Coggins claimed to have discovered evidence of various unpublished manuscripts documenting that L.'s mother Nancy Tanner (not Hanks) was brought as a child from Virginia to Rutherford County, NC, by her unwed mother, Lucy Hanks. Nancy's father was one Michael Tanner, supposedly a respected Virginia planter. Young Nancy lived more or less the life of an orphan in the home of Abraham Enloe near the Western N.C. town of Bostic. Enloe began to take liberties with the young girl, resulting in her becoming pregnant. When Mrs. Enloe found out, she forced Nancy from her home. Little Abe, whose last name was properly Enloe, was born shortly thereafter. His biological father, Abraham Enloe, then arranged for Nancy and he to move to Kentucky, where his daughter lived. Once there, she eventually met and married Thomas Lincoln, who gave L. his name.
If all this sounds vaguely reminiscent of the muddled history of the current occupant of the White House, recall that yet another Southern President, Woodrow Wilson, wrote: "Abraham Lincoln came from the poorest white trash of the south.'' Though Coggins labors mightily to raise L. from that level, his very account argues for the truth of Wilson's evaluation.
His Newspaper Attacks
After the Speed affair, and before his
marriage to Mary, L. became involved in an anonymous letter-writing campaign to
the editor of the Sangamo (Ill.) Journal, attacking the Illinois state
auditor James Shields. In a weird sex reversal, probably related to his perverse
nature (discussed above) L. assumed the name "Aunt 'Becca,'' and wrote (perhaps
with the assistance of Mary): "Now I want to tell Mr. S____ that, rather than
fight, I'll make any apology; and, if he wants personal satisfaction, let him
only come here, and he may squeeze my hand...and, if that ain't personal
satisfaction, I can only say that he is the fust man that was not satisfied with
sqeezin' my hand.'' The letter then goes on to mockingly propose marriage to
Shields, then to agree to a duel, though "I'll tell you in confidence that I
never fights with anything but broomsticks or hot water....''
This bizarre challenge to Shields was answered by Shields' demand of the editor to know the letter writer's name. When informed that it was Abraham Lincoln, Shields challenged L. to a duel for real. L. accepted at first and, as was his prerogative, chose cavalry broadswords as the weapon. On the day in question, however, he had thought better of the situation and read a formal apology denying that he had written the letter (although he admitted earlier assuming the "Rebecca'' persona to attack Shields) and blamed it on Mary Todd. He insisted that he had first assumed responsibility only to protect her. Now that his own lavender and yellow self was in danger, however, it seemed less important to protect the lady. Thus did L. chicken out of his duel with the offended Shields, although he bragged, "If it had been necessary I could have split him from the crown of his head to the end of his backbone.''
Fortunately for the braggart L., his obsequious letter of apology made such proof unnecessary. Not surprisingly, according to historian David Donald, in his Lincoln Reconsidered (1956), "The whole affair remained a sore memory to Lincoln, and he disliked hearing the episode referred to.''
Lincoln and the Indians
As documented above, L.'s friendship with
the black race was a sham. So too was any suggestion that L. was a friend of the
red man. During the War, when several tribes in Minnesota rebelled against his
policies, L. sent General John Pope to put them down. After the rebellion was
quelled, with the white Minnesotans' demanding vengeance, L. had Pope select 39
Indians for execution after a mock trial. According to James and Walter Kennedy,
in The South Was Right, "Lincoln is America's only president to order a
mass execution!''
Summary
Well, there you have it, a potpourri of facts about our
illustrious 16th president. I have been chided that our purpose here and in this
organization (SCV) is to commemorate the Confederacy and not to denigrate
Lincoln. Unfortunately, I cannot commemorate our fallen nation without accusing
the man who brought about its fall. The inescapable truth about Lincoln is that
he single-mindedly sought to destroy the Confederacy, the South, and her way of
life, not out of any ideals dreamed up by his yankee apologists, but rather,
because he lacked any ideals whatsoever and was directed by two mutually
exclusive motivations: (1) the lust for power, and (2) his underlying hatred for
himself and his origins.
As we have shown, Lincoln as a young man mocked and rejected religious values. Finding nothing to take their place, the inner processes of his mind became corrupt, vulgar, and probably psychotic. He married a woman he did not love, having been abandoned by a man he did, and he endured a sado-masochistic relationship with her. He cynically used the black man, the soldier, and the Union dead, to preserve his power, stealing elections at gunpoint and locking away without trial his political enemies. He suffered from psychological and genetic disorders, and probably belonged more in a carnival sideshow than in the White House of the United States. He foresaw his own death throughout his life and at some point began to crave it. Finally, with his bloody goal at last in hand, he gave in to his self-loathing and sought the respite that only death could bring.
Lincoln was in fact a brilliant man, what psychologists would call an idiot savant: a severely defective individual with a genius for doing one thing better than anyone. Lincoln's genius was in achieving and holding power, in spite of his lack of breeding, character, ideals, popularity, indeed, in spite of all the characteristics that are supposed to determine the appeal of a democratic leader. He knew how to achieve power, and he kept firing generals until he found two ruthless enough to help him hold it.
The secession of South Carolina and the other Southern states after the election of Lincoln in 1860 was no accident. More discerning than the rest of the United States and endowed with a clearer eye for the qualities of men, the South viewed the election of Lincoln, to whom she had given not a single electoral vote, as an unacceptable horror. Like a midwife attending the birth of a monster, she tried to escape it. That the monster prevailed is an everlasting tragedy to both her and to the entire American nation.
I want to close this series with excerpts from a poem entitled "The Downfall of Our Union.'' It was written shortly after the War by one Ira Caster, a yankee farmer from Ellisburg, New York. Sent to me electronically by a student in the North, this poem was recently uncovered amidst Caster's papers. To my knowledge, this is its first publication anywhere. Mr. Caster was not an educated man, and I have corrected numerous errors of spelling and grammar. Nor was he a particularly gifted poet, but the sentiments here are representative of those of many residents of the North during L.'s reign, persons who were nearly as oppressed by the man and his regime as were our countrymen, and who looked to the South as a symbol of resistance.
As you read it, imagine the small farmers of the North, taxed to the limit, their sons conscripted as cannon fodder for L.'s adventure, powerless to resist or even voice opposition. Perhaps then you can understand that the real enemy in our War, as today, was not those men, themselves also the sons of 1776. Instead, it was, as always, the leviathan that hunkered and schemed behind the barricades and the cold, grim walls of Washington City.
While I rehearse my story, Americans give ear,
Of all our fading glory,
you presently shall hear,
I'll give a true relation, attend to what I say,
The downfall of our nation, in North America
Condemn the Abolitionist, that black and stinking name,
And all the black
republicans who glory in their shame;
Tis what they're striving after, to
take our rights away
And rob us of our Charter, in North America
There's scores of wicked speakers, throughout this continent,
Who always
have been seekers, some mischief to invent,
There's Seward, Chase, and
Greeley, this horrid plan did lay
For to destroy the union, of North
America.
They tried the art of magick, to bring their schemes about,
Attending? the
gloomy project, they artfully found out,
Their plan was long indulged, in
clandestine way.
But lately was divulged, in North America
They searched the gloomy regons, of the infernal pit,
To find among those
Legions, one who excelled in wit
To ask of his assistance, to tell them how
they may,
Subdue without resistance, this North America.
Old Satan the arch traitor, resolved a voyage to make,
Who reigns soul
navigator, upon the burning lake,
For the Atlantic ocean, he launches fast
away,
To land he has no notion, short of America.
He takes his seat in Washington, it was his sole intent
Abe Lincoln's
throne to sit on, and rule the cabinet,
His comrades are pursuing, a
diabolick way,
For to complete the ruling, of North America.
These subtle arch combiners, addressed the Lincoln court
All were
undersigners, to this obscene report,
There is a pleasant landscape, that
lies nor far away
Towards the broad Atlantic, the land is called Dixie.
There is a wealthy people, who sojourn in that land
Their churches all
with steeples, most delicately stand,
Their houses like palaces are painted
red and gay,
They flourish like the Lily, down south in old Dixie.
On Turkeys, Fowls, and Fishes, most frequently they dine,
With gold and
silver dishes, their tables always shine,
Wine sparkles in their glasses,
they spend a happy day,
In merriment and dances, down south in old Dixie.
With gold and silver laces, they do themselves adorn,
The rubies decks
their faces, resplendent as the morn,
They crown their feasts with butter,
they eat and rise to play
In silks the ladies flutter, all o'r the land
Dixie
Now Abe this is the sequel, of what we here proscribe,
It is not just and
equal, to tax this wealthy tribe,
The question being asked, Abe Lincoln did
say,
My subjects shall be tamed, down south in old Dixie.
I'll let them know and understand, they must submit to me
And soon will
let them know, also, the Negro shall be free,
If they indulge rebellion, or
from my precepts stray
I'll send my whole batallion, and conquer old Dixie.
I'll rally all my forces, by water and by land,
My light dragoons and
horses, shall go at my command
I'll burn both town and city, with smoke
becloud the day
I'll show no human pity, to those in old Dixie.
Go on my hearty soldiers, you need not fear of ill
Ward Beecher, Wade and
Cheever, their fortunes will fulfill
They tell such ample stories, believe
them sure we may,
One Northern man, will whip out ten, down south in old
Dixie
Oh Abe you are engaged, all in a dirty cause
A cruel war have waged
repugnant to all laws;
Go tell the savage nations, your crueler than they,
To Fight your own relations, in North America.
I'll tell you Abe in metre, give e're unto my Call
Your throne begins to
teater, and you will shurely fall,
Tho rebels you declare them, they're
strangers to dismay,
Therefore you cannot slave them, that live in old Dixie
They never will knock under, O Abe they do not fear
The rattling of your
thunder, nor lightning of your spear,
You'd better now skedaddle, before
your strength doth fail
And up salt river paddle, and split another rail.
The billion you've expended, ten thousands millions more,
Their riches
you intended, Should pay the mighty score,
Who now will be your sponsor,
your charges to defray,
For you will never conquer, those that live in
Dixie.
Confusion to the Tories, that black infernal name,
In which Abe's party
glories, forever to their shame,
We'll send each foul revolter to smutty
Africa,
Or nose them to a Halter, in North America.
The Conclusion
But Abe is done, his race is run
Cut down by
Heavens decree
For through his head, a ball of lead was sent to set us free
He was a tool, and a great fool
Led by the nose, But he Was on a level,
worse than a Devil
To rule America.