Lincoln, the Politician

by T. Aaron Levy

From such an origin Lincoln came. Biographers seek to illumine its poverty in vain. He was reared amid a shiftless family. No external inducement guided him in his wearisome journey. He was in the daily presence of vulgarity. He alone of all his companions started in a titanic conflict with an enslaving environment.

The store was the social center of the pioneer town, the place to hear the latest gossip. There the neighbors met to pass judgment on events of general and local interest. The proprietor was often the only possessor of the weekly newspaper. It was not as in later days the abode of loungers mainly. It played a big part in the education of the frontier community. It was the school of many men and the home of wit and wisdom. Politics, religion and other problems were here subjected to the scrutiny of men blest with good sense and judgment.

The store drew the choice spirits in story telling, and its hero was the man who could best kindle laughter. In a community where this art was the highway to the general good will, Lincoln soon became the master among the many contestants for that distinction.

Wherever men congregated Lincoln sought supremacy. Political discussions were frequent. The newcomer soon tried his hand in the art of controversy. He gradually gained headway in the esteem of the soberminded for the clearness of his statements, for the keenness of his vision, and the honesty of his manner. Day by day he gathered strength and wisdom. It is improbable that any other young man so soon won the general good will or was so widely respected by all classes of men. In this, even as a youth, he was unique. He had the splendid tact, the inherent humanity that appealed to the various elements that constituted the transitional frontier when it was evolving into a higher community.

There is very little satisfactory evidence of the political opinions of Abraham Lincoln in Indiana. Lamon states that his family were all Jackson Democrats; that Lincoln's employer, Jones, the grocery keeper of Gentryville, was a Jackson Democrat, and that Lincoln read papers that championed the principles of the Democratic party of that day, and that he was in the beginning a follower of that eminent political sage.[40] There is no corroboration of this testimony that Lincoln was ever avowedly an attendant in the school of Jackson. Lincoln frequently refers to the fact with pride that he was an old time Whig, and it might be inferred from his speeches and statements that he was a devoted follower of Clay from the very first. However, Lincoln was somewhat an admirer of Andrew Jackson. It may be that early in life he passed through the several stages of political development, and was thus aided in becoming a tolerant politician.

From childhood until 1829, Lincoln lived in Gentryville. In that year he made a trip by boat to New Orleans with Allen Gentry. It was on this venture that Lincoln had his first vital meeting with the members of the race in whose destiny he was to be so deeply concerned. While their boat was moored near Baton Rouge and they were fast asleep, they were startled by footsteps on board. They knew "that it was a gang of negroes come to rob, and perhaps to murder them. Allen, thinking to frighten the intruders, cried out, 'Bring the guns, Lincoln; shoot them.' Abe came without a gun, but he fell among the negroes with a huge bludgeon, and belabored them most cruelly," but "received a scar which he carried with him to his grave."[41] It is strange that this incident did not jaundice the youthful Lincoln against the unfortunate people. Though his life was endangered by these wayward sons of Ethiopia, it did not affect his sympathy in any degree for the burdened and oppressed race, nor change his judgment as to the injustice of their treatment.

The origin of Lincoln's anti-slavery sentiments is somewhat of a mystery. That Stephen Douglas, reared in New England, should become the foremost champion of the Southern slavery policy, and that Abraham Lincoln, a son of Kentucky, that of the bondsman, baffles the wisdom of the historian.

Various efforts have been made to account for his views on the slavery issue. The claim that he derived them from his parents in Kentucky has been noted. Ida Tarbell enumerates the various abolition movements in the western domain that may have influenced him. In 1819, Charles Osborn published a paper advocating emancipation. A few years after Benjamin Lundy issued the Genius at Shelbyville. Scarcely one hundred miles from Gentryville the Abolition Intelligencer was started. There were abolition societies in Kentucky and Illinois. The same author states that "it is not impossible that as Frederick Douglas first realized his own condition in reading a school speaker, the 'Columbian Orator,' so Abraham Lincoln first felt the wrong of slavery in reading his 'Kentucky' or 'American Preceptor.'"[42]

Considering the slowness of communication, the casual appearances of even well-known journals, it is doubtful if Lincoln heard of the abolition movement to any serious extent. It is at least significant that Lincoln alone, of his entire family and of his associates, saw the magnitude of the slavery evil. Like his sympathy for the suffering animal world, his anti-slavery sentiments baffle explanation. He hated the infliction of wrong instinctively.

There is a duality to the life of Lincoln that should command more attention. Intellectually, he lived in a world of his own, a world in which he found little companionship. Still he was not altogether the fruition of a subjective life. He shared the common pioneer craving for human society. It may have been rendered even more intense in his case by the loneliness of his mental existence. Neither the forest, prairie nor storm, the sunset or constellation were his friends as men were. He loved his kind more than nature.