The True Lincoln

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If his contemporaries quickly contradicted his ideas, they were also slow to elevate him as an icon, even though he had all the ingredients to be one: an epic time (the split of a nation and a war over its future), bold ideas (union and liberty) and a violent death. One reason is that while people felt strongly the symbolic loss of a President through the nation's first assassination, few knew what to make of Lincoln as a man. Beneath the spectacular symbols of mourning--houses draped in black, endless ceremonies as his body was taken by train from Washington to his home of Springfield--was an intense ambiguity: stories circulated regularly about him as a religious doubter, a teller of vulgar stories, an uncouth and awkward man, a usurper of power. But Republicans saw him as a great asset and tried to build a myth that would last--and do the party lasting good. In May 1865, the Republican editor Josiah Holland interviewed the President's law partner William Herndon at length. When the subject of religion came up, Herndon told him, "The less said, the better," doubting that the pious Holland would want the details of Lincoln's unorthodox history. How, for example, Lincoln had doubted the divinity of Christ and the infallibility of the Bible. "Oh, never mind," Holland said. "I'll fix that"--and his book made Lincoln a model Christian.

Holland wasn't alone in trying to "fix" Lincoln. "Those who have spoken most confidently of their knowledge of his personal qualities," Pennsylvania Republican Alexander McClure said of Lincoln, "are, as a rule, those who saw least of them below the surface." And many real Lincoln intimates kept a low profile, wishing to avoid the media circus. Meanwhile, one man who tried to talk about Lincoln in a complex and honest way paid a heavy price. After Lincoln died, Herndon solicited memories from men and women who had known him, identifying and tracking down crucial sources, then hounding them until they gave a statement or an interview. We call that kind of material oral history, but in the late 19th century it was just as likely to be called gossip--or, worse, scurrilous trash. Herndon thought that history should tell the full truth about a man and that Lincoln's character could only be magnified by a full portrait of it. He dug hard on matters that polite people thought should be left to rest: that Lincoln's mother had been born out of wedlock, for example, and that Lincoln as a young man had serious, nearly fatal depressions. Down on his luck, Herndon didn't publish his book until 1889. It didn't reach many readers, but he caught plenty of flak. "It vilely distorts the image of an ideal statesman, patriot, and martyr," the Chicago Journal said of his book. "It clothes him in vulgarity and grossness. Its indecencies are spread like a curtain to hide the colossal proportions and the splendid purity of his character."

The Journal, it's important to note, was a Republican paper. Today, when Lincoln is the favorite of everyone from George W. Bush to Mario Cuomo (not to mention Fidel Castro), it is easy to forget how partisan his memory once was. In the late 19th century, a kind of cult of Lincoln grew up among the party faithful, with banquets on his birthday as a rite, while Southerners licked their wounds and Democrats rebuilt an organization that had been split in the war.