Obama will use Lincoln’s inaugural Bible again

Barack Obama will use two historic Bibles during his second inauguration this month.  One of them is the Bible used during Lincoln’s first swearing-in, and is the same volume on which Obama took his first presidential oath.  The other belonged to Martin Luther King, Jr.

Lincoln’s first inaugural Bible was an edition that was widely available at the time, provided by a clerk of the Supreme Court.  The widow of Lincoln’s son Robert gave the book to the Library of Congress in 1928.

Ironically, the man who administered the oath to Lincoln in 1861 was Roger Taney, who issued the controversial Dred Scott decision and challenged Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus.

Photo by Michaela McNichol (Library of Congress)

Did Obama’s DNC speech include a fake Lincoln quote?

Probably so, according to James Cornelius.

Lincoln’s team vs. Obama’s team

Todd Purum of Vanity Fair examines President Obama’s cabinet in light of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s work on Lincoln.  Obama’s relationship with his advisors, he claims, differs greatly from Lincoln’s.

Republicans should look to Lincoln, says Obama

While in Chicago a few days ago, President Obama told a fundraiser audience that Republicans should look back on the legacy of the first member of their party to occupy the White House:

Obama told the audience that while his GOP competitors were campaigning in Illinois, they should put aside their “avalanche of attack ads” and focus on the vision of the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln.

“I hope that while my counterparts on the other side enjoy the outstanding hospitality of the people of Illinois and spend some money here to promote our economy. I hope they also take a little bit of time to reflect on this great man, the first Republican President,” Obama said.

Obama argued that unlike the Republicans of today who preach about the importance of less federal government, and more self reliance, Lincoln understood that “we are also one nation and one people and that we rise or fall together.”

You can read more about Obama’s remarks by clicking here.

The Atlantic features Obama on Lincoln

A special Civil War issue of The Atlantic is now on sale, featuring an essay on Lincoln by President Barack Obama.  This edition also features reprints of original pieces by Civil War contemporaries like Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Louisa May Alcott, which first appeared in the magazine in the 1800′s.

“The imperatives of his moment”

E. J. Dionne, Jr. argues that President Obama is facing the same challenge and opportunity that the agitation against slavery presented to Lincoln.  Claiming that the Occupy Wall Street movement is expressing widely held sentiments, he writes:

In their time, the abolitionists were radicals, too. Lincoln, a shrewd politician, understood that public opinion in the North did not fully embrace their cause but was moving in their direction. Lincoln remained a moderate at heart, but he abandoned moderation on slavery when this proved to be morally and politically unsuited to the imperatives of his moment. By following Lincoln’s example and acting against the injustices of our time, Obama could also come to occupy the high ground.

Lincoln’s receptiveness to shifting circumstances and the currents of public opinion—what Dionne calls “the imperatives of his moment”—is one of the central concerns of David Herbert Donald’s acclaimed biography.  Donald noted that Lincoln “preferred to respond to the actions of others.”

Lincoln, Obama, and unilateral war

In an editorial at History News Network, David Gray Adler argues that Obama’s unilateral approach to military action is one Lincoln consistently refused to take:

Lincoln would have been sharply critical of his admirer’s assertion of a unilateral executive power to initiate military hostilities.  In the course of his distinguished political career, Lincoln consistently rejected the concept that the president had the power to initiate war. He understood that the Constitution vests in Congress the sole and exclusive authority to wage war on behalf of the American citizenry.

Obama draws fire for comparing himself to Lincoln

From The Daily Caller:

President Barack Obama said yesterday in Decorah, Iowa, that he absorbs more political criticism than Abraham Lincoln, the assassinated 16th U.S. president, attracted from his Civil War critics.

The comment came during a question-and-answer session where one invited audience member asked Obama how he deals with his congressional critics in the GOP. “The Congress doesn’t seem to be a good partner. You said so yourself, they’re more interested in seeing you lose than [seeing] the country win,” the questioner lamented.

“Democracy is always a messy business in a big country like this,” Obama responded. “When you listen to what the federalists said about the anti-federalists … those guys were tough. Lincoln, they used to talk about him almost as bad as they talk about me.”

Lincoln’s critics were exceptionally vitriolic and numerous, so the comparison has drawn criticism.  The article quotes historian Eric Foner, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Fiery Trial.

Obama on Lincoln as a compromiser

By Michael Lynch

Like many other American politicians, President Obama invokes the legacy of Abraham Lincoln from time to time.  He did so while discussing the current debt ceiling controversy, referring to the Emancipation Proclamation as an example of Lincoln’s willingness to make compromises:

“This notion that somehow if you’re responsible and you compromise, that somehow you’re giving up your convictions — that’s absolutely not true,” the president said at a University of Maryland town hall.

While the proclamation declared slaves who were in areas that had rebelled against the Union to be free, Lincoln exempted five slave states from the terms of the agreement.

The basis for the proclamation was its utility as a war measure and Lincoln excluded several areas on the basis that they were not at war against the U.S. because they remained loyal to the Union.

“Now think about that,” Obama said. “The Great Emancipator was making a compromise in the Emancipation Proclamation because he thought it was necessary in terms of advancing the goals of preserving the Union and winning the war.”

With the August 2^nd deadline to default rapidly approaching, Obama asked if Lincoln can do it, why can’t Congress?

“So, you know what?  If Abraham Lincoln could make some compromises as part of governance, then surely we can make some compromises when it comes handling our budget,” Obama said.

Obama was correct in noting that the proclamation did not completely and immediately eradicate slavery.  Lincoln considered abolitionists’ calls for an immediate and total end to slavery to be unrealistic, and believed that he lacked the authority to simply extinguish slavery by decree.

When he finally issued his Emancipation Proclamation, he did so as a war measure, exercising his military authority in a time of rebellion.  Those states and portions of states still in revolt were the only areas where Lincoln could invoke this extraordinary power.  The loyal border states of Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky and Missouri were therefore exempt.  So was Tennessee (much of which had fallen into Union hands), along with parts of Virginia (particularly those western counties in the process of becoming a separate state) and southern Louisiana.

This map shows the Emancipation Proclamation's reach. Slaves in areas colored red were declared free. Slavery existed in the light blue areas, but these regions were exempt from the proclamation. Image from Wikimedia Commons

Critics of Lincoln sometimes claim that the proclamation was both ineffectual and hypocritical—ineffectual because it supposedly freed no one, and hypocritical because it applied only to areas over which Lincoln’s government had no effective control.  These critics are wrong on both counts.  The proclamation did free many slaves, and it did so immediately. Parts of the Carolinas, Alabama, and Virginia had fallen behind Union lines but weren’t exempted, so thousands of slaves in these regions became free when the proclamation took effect on January 1, 1863.  And, of course, slaves who were still in Confederate-held territory on that date eventually experienced emancipation once Union armies penetrated and occupied the areas where they lived.  The claim that the proclamation did not free anyone is therefore simply untrue.

Having taken the fateful step of moving against the institution, Lincoln also played a crucial role in securing freedom for those slaves in the areas exempted under the proclamation.  He sought and achieved the passage of a constitutional amendment which permanently and completely eradicated slavery in the United States, and the states ratified this Thirteenth Amendment after his death.  This measure freed those slaves who remained in bondage in Kentucky and Delaware; Maryland and Missouri had already taken action to end slavery within their borders by that time.

While portraying the Emancipation Proclamation as a half-way measure is somewhat accurate, it minimizes the political and constitutional realities Lincoln faced.  He acted decisively and dramatically, but he did so within the limits of what he believed his authority to be at the time.  The proclamation was thus something of a paradox—a measure both cautious and radical at the same time.

—Michael Lynch graduated from LMU with a degree in history, worked at the Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum as an assistant curator, and now teaches survey-level history courses on campus.  He holds an M.A. in history from the University of Tennessee and blogs about historical topics at pastinthepresent.wordpress.com.

When are Lincoln analogies legitimate?

By Michael Lynch

A piece on President Obama’s recent Afghanistan speech drew some analogies between those remarks and Lincoln’s second inaugural address:

Obama has made it no secret that he draws sustenance from Abraham Lincoln. And as he faces a challenging re-election season, he may be seeking more inspiration from the 16th president who also found himself facing re-election at during an unpopular war.

In 1864, many northerners had grown frustrated and exhausted with a Civil War that dragged on longer than they expected at its outset and which saw the Union Army suffer repeated setbacks. It had gotten so bad that Lincoln seriously doubted he would be re-elected. But he was, just as Obama hopes to be.

Obama obviously had Lincoln on his mind Wednesday evening. At the end of his Afghanistan speech, Obama said:

Now, let us finish the work at hand. Let us responsibly end these wars, and reclaim the American Dream that is at the center of our story. With confidence in our cause; with faith in our fellow citizens; and with hope in our hearts, let us go about the work of extending the promise of America – for this generation, and the next.

It was an intentional echo of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural in which that earlier president from Illinois said:

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.

The analogies between Lincoln and Obama on the one hand, and between the Civil War and the conflict in Afghanistan in the other, have stirred up some criticism.  The Weekly Standard, for example, called the comparison “ludicrous,” arguing that Lincoln’s commitment to see the Confederacy defeated was of a different stripe than Obama’s desire to focus on domestic efforts: “So one leader (Lincoln) urged the nation to ‘strive on to finish the work we are in,’ shortly before winning the war the nation was fighting. And the other leader (Obama) says, ‘let us go about the work of extending the promise of America,’ immediately after calling for America to cut and run from the war the nation is currently fighting. See the parallel? Apparently it’s visible only to NPR hosts.”

An editorial in the Greensboro, NC News & Record argued that the strategic situation of the Union was fundamentally different from that of the U.S. in 2011:

Furthermore, NPR’s analysis of the military situation in 1864 is faulty. Union victory was all but assured after Lee’s defeat at Gettysburg and the fall of Vicksburg in July 1863. It was simply a matter of pushing through to the end. Obviously, Lincoln had to maintain the nation’s political will to complete the task. But the end was in sight, and he knew how to achieve it.

There is no end in sight in Afghanistan, no sure outcome and no clear plan to accomplish our objectives. Under those circumstances, trying to exit with honor makes sense.

It isn’t a matter that Obama isn’t Lincoln. Of course he’s not, but circumstances aren’t remotely comparable. Even Lincoln couldn’t be Lincoln in dealing with Afghanistan. So NPR’s analogy is a poor pretense and trying to make Obama appear Lincolnesque is flawed flattery.

Regarding the situation in 1864, I’m afraid that it’s the editorial writer’s analysis that is faulty, or at least highly over-simplified. The dual Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in July 1863 were indeed critical.  Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was never so formidable after its defeat at Gettysburg as it had been beforehand, and Grant’s capture of Vicksburg was possibly the most decisive military achievement of the war.  But to say that after those victories the Union effort “was simply a matter of pushing through to the end” doesn’t fully capture the complexities or significance of the campaigns that took place after those two turning points. Formidable southern forces with considerable offensive capability remained in the field, and important points remained in Confederate hands.  This is not to say that the situation the Obama administration faces in 2011 is fundamentally the same as the situation Lincoln faced after 1863, but simply to point out that Lincoln had a much tougher slog ahead of him by that point than the writer seems to indicate.  Indeed, as late as August 1864, Lincoln was stating outright that Americans were so dissatisfied with the war’s progress that he would be “badly beaten” in his bid for re-election.

Still, the writer has a point.  Lincoln’s main objectives in the war were pretty clear.  He wanted the Confederate armies out of commission, loyal state governments restored, and (after the Emancipation Proclamation made freedom a war aim) slavery eradicated in the areas which had rebelled.  Lincoln knew what he wanted to accomplish; perhaps this editorial writer is correct in arguing that this isn’t true of the current American effort in Afghanistan.

Ultimately, though, I don’t think the exactness of these analogies between Lincoln and Obama and between the Civil War and Afghanistan matter all that much.  Americans have been harkening back to Lincoln’s wartime rhetoric in virtually every conflict they’ve fought since 1865, regardless of how much the situation at hand resembled the crisis which Lincoln faced.  That Obama would try to echo Lincoln’s cadences and that some observers would try to extend the comparison seem to me little more than the latest variations on a very old American theme—drawing on the cultural capital of Lincoln and his struggle for Union in order to make sense of present-day challenges.  The NPR piece wasn’t the first occasion in which someone has visualized Lincoln’s shadow hanging over an embattled administration, and it probably won’t be the last.

—Michael Lynch graduated from LMU with a degree in history, worked at the Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum as an assistant curator, and now teaches survey-level history courses on campus.  He holds an M.A. in history from the University of Tennessee and blogs about historical topics at pastinthepresent.wordpress.com.