Texas Pages

How has your own opinion of Lincoln changed over the years?

I first began looking at his career and activities seriously as a scholar when I was in graduate school when I was at Johns Hopkins a half-century ago now, almost, and I wound up doing my doctoral dissertation on the abolitionists during Civil War reconstruction. And they were -- some of them at least -- highly critical of Lincoln, especially in the first half of the war, when they wanted the war to immediately become a war to abolish slavery. ...
As many young historians do, I tended to adopt the point of view of the people I was studying.
So I was kind of critical of Lincoln in my early career. But the more I learned about him, and the more I learned about him and the multiple pressures from all directions that he was under, the more I came to empathize with and admire the political skill with which he negotiated between right and left, between radical antislavery and conservative pro-slavery, trying to keep together a coalition that would support the war effort and all the while moving at a pace that public opinion could support toward a more radical policy on emancipation.
I came to the conclusion that if he had moved as quickly as the abolitionists wanted him too in the first year or so of the war that he would have alienated large elements of his Unionist war coalition. Including the border slave states. He was smarter than his critics were on that question.
Over time, the more I've studied him, the more I do come to see things from his point of view and to appreciate the skill -- not only political but in my more recent work, military skill. He turned out to be a better strategist or at least ... come up with better ideas of how to win the war than some of his generals did.

Lincoln always seems to be exactly what America wants him to be at any particular moment.

That's absolutely right. He becomes a touchstone for every age and every point of view .... David Donald back in the 1950s wrote a now-classic essay called Getting Right With Lincoln in which he pointed out all the ways in which people and politicians from the late 19th century right on down to the time he was writing felt that they had to find some kind of Lincoln quotation -- and if they couldn't find it they'd make it up -- that supported their point of view on any particular issue. A classic case is Ronald Reagan's address to the 1992 Republican National Convention in which he quoted Lincoln -- a complete apocryphal quotation. But that's not unusual. That's been done by many people on many different occasions.
So I think Lincoln has become a touchstone for a succession of contemporary viewpoints. The gay community wanted to find a gay Lincoln, so they managed to do that, with or without evidence. The radical civil rights movement sometimes invoked Lincoln, as Martin Luther King did in his "I Have a Dream" speech. ... But then Lerone Bennett damns Lincoln as a white supremacist who held back the cause of black freedom and equality.
So everybody has to find Lincoln as either a supporter or as a whipping boy. It's a remarkable phenomenon. I don't think it's true of any other American. You don't find that happening very much, let's say, with George Washington. But you do find it with Lincoln.

In light of President Barack Obama's frequent use of Lincoln symbols, do you have advice for a leader who would want to be "Lincolnesque?"
The more obvious one is to use words -- speeches, eloquence -- in an effective way to persuade people. And Lincoln certainly was effective at that. And I think that's one of the things that Obama has tried to do too, probably consciously.
But the other thing that has struck me about Lincoln that would be a good guide for any modern leader or modern president is that Lincoln listened. Whenever he was facing an important decision -- and he faced a lot of then -- he would listen to all points of view which were reflected in his Cabinet for example and in the congressional leaders of his party. But he also would listen to the public. He basically kept office hours, when any member of the public could just walk in. They might have to wait a long time to see the president, but they might get in. Lincoln called this his "public opinion baths."
He would listen to all points of view, and before he would make a decision he would try to examine every aspect of it, its possible consequences, possible unanticipated consequences -- the pros and cons of any particular decision he had to make ... and then he would make up his mind.
And once he made up his mind, he stuck with it. He carried it through.
In other words, he didn't make quick decision. But once he made the decision, it was firm. That of course, applied on emancipation, and the Emancipation Proclamation, and all kinds of other issues as well. ... So I guess the advice to a modern president would be to open yourself to all points of view before you make a decision. But once you make a decision, you're responsible for it. It's your decision. Don't blame anybody else. Take the responsibility for it and stick with it.

Aside from your own books about Lincoln, do you have any favorites in the current crop?
I think one of the best books appearing in this current crop is Ronald White's biography [A. Lincoln], which is just out in the last couple of weeks. It's pretty sizable -- it's 700 pages. I also liked Harold Holzer's book Lincoln President- Elect. Craig Symonds' book Lincoln and His Admirals, which is in a way kind of a counterpart of mine, since I focus more on his relationship with generals rather than admirals.
These books are pretty good. Also William Lee Miller's book on Lincoln's presidential years ... [President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman]. Those are some of the best.
Going back a ways, do you also recommend David Herbert Donald's Lincoln as the classic biography?
Donald is a classic ... in some ways I think White's book is better, and in other ways not better. White and Donald as single-volume biographies are probably the two best.

(Author photo courtesy Penguin Press; Lincoln and Obama images are AP/Dallas Morning News file photos.)