Posted on 06/20/2002 1:32:32 PM PDT by H.R. Gross
H.L. Mencken on Abraham Lincoln
From "Five Men at Random," Prejudices: Third Series, 1922, pp. 171-76. Some time ago a publisher told me that there are four kinds of books that seldom, if ever, lose money in the United States—first, murder stories; secondly, novels in which the heroine is forcibly overcome by the hero; thirdly, volumes on spiritualism, occultism and other such claptrap, and fourthly, books on Lincoln. But despite all the vast mass of Lincolniana and the constant discussion of old Abe in other ways, even so elemental a problem as that of his religious ideas—surely an important matter in any competent biography—is yet but half solved. Was he a Christian? Did he believe in the Divinity of Jesus? I am left in doubt. He was very polite about it, and very cautious, as befitted a politician in need of Christian votes, but how much genuine conviction was in that politeness? And if his occasional references to Jesus were thus open to question, what of his rather vague avowals of belief in a personal God and in the immortality of the soul? Herndon and some of his other early friends always maintained that he was an atheist, but the Rev. Willian E. Barton, one of the best of later Lincolnologists, argues that this atheism was simply disbelief in the idiotic Methodist and Baptist dogmas of his time—that nine Christian churches out of ten, if he were live today, would admit him to their high privileges and prerogatives without anything worse than a few warning coughs. As for me, I still wonder. Lincoln becomes the American solar myth, the chief butt of American credulity and sentimentality. Washington, of late years, has bee perceptible humanized; every schoolboy now knows that he used to swear a good deal, and was a sharp trader, and had a quick eye for a pretty ankle. But meanwhile the varnishers and veneerers have been busily converting Abe into a plaster saint, thus marking hum fit for adoration in the Y.M.C.A.’s. All the popular pictures of him show him in his robes of state, and wearing an expression fit for a man about to be hanged. There is, so far as I know, not a single portrait of him showing him smiling—and yet he must have cackled a good deal, first and last: who ever heard of a storyteller who didn’t? Worse, there is an obvious effort to pump all his human weaknesses out of him, an obvious effort to pump all his human weaknesses out of him, and so leave him a mere moral apparition, a sort of amalgam of John Wesley and the Holy Ghost. What could be more absurd? Lincoln, in point of fact, was a practical politician of long experience and high talents, and by no means cursed with idealistic superstitions. Until he emerged from Illinois they always put the women, children and clergy to bed when he got a few gourds of corn aboard, and it is a matter of unescapable record that his career in the State Legislature was indistinguishable from that of a Tammany Nietzsche. Even his handling of the slavery question was that of a politician, not that of a messiah. Nothing alarmed him more than the suspicion that he was an Abolitionist, and Barton tells of an occasion when he actually fled town to avoid meeting the issue squarely. An Abolitionist would have published the Emancipation Proclamation the day after the first battle of Bull Run. But Lincoln waited until the time was more favorable—until Lee had been hurled out of Pennsylvania, and more important still, until the political currents were safely funning his way. Even so, he freed the slaves in only a part of the country: all the rest continued to clank their chains until he himself was an angel in Heaven. Like William Jennings Bryan, he was a dark horse made suddenly formidable by fortunate rhetoric. The Douglas debate launched hum, and the Cooper Union Speech got him the Presidency. His talent for emotional utterance was an accomplishment of late growth. His early speeches were mere empty fire-works—the hollow rodomontades of the era. But in the middle life he purged his style of ornament and it became almost badly simple—and it is for that simplicity that he is remembered today. The Gettysburg speech is at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history. Put beside it, all the whoopings of the Websters, Sumners and Everetts seem gaudy and silly It is eloquence brought to a pellucid and almost gem-like perfection—the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Nothing else precisely like it is to be found in the whole range of oratory. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination—"that government of the people, by the people, for the people," should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in that battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves. What was the practical effect of the battle of Gettysburg? What else than the destruction of the old sovereignty of the States, i.e., of the people of the States? The Confederates went into battle free; they came out with their freedom subject to the supervision and veto of the rest of the country—and for nearly twenty years that veto was so effective that they enjoyed scarcely more liberty, in the political sense, than so many convicts in the penitentiary.
First printed, in part, in the Smart Set, May, 1920, p. 141
What special credentials qualify HLM to interpret the meaning of the Battle of Gettysburg or the relationship of liberty and self-determination to secession or nullification? I don't know that he has any more qualifications in that area than you do. He was a newspaperman.
Mencken's Lincoln-hating isn't a theory--it's a diatribe. Mencken was a bitter, irrelevant, crusty old fart and atheist who could write well. In this he was remarkably similar to Ayn Rand, except that Rand couldn't write well.
The idea that state sovereignty equals the sovereignty of the people of the states equals freedom is another that can be called into question. The idea of minority rights defended by "state's right's" advocates can also be applied against "state's rights." If I am not free because of the abuses of majorities at the federal level, do abuses of majorities at the state level leave me any freer? Similarly, the idea that "the Confederates went into battle free" is also open to debate. It depends on how one defines "Confederates" and "free." Mencken's sentence opens up too many cans of worms to be accepted at face value as true.
Great job. Great summary of Mencken's error in oversimplifying the issues and misrepresenting the words of Mr. Lincoln. Anyone who earnestly consults the record--particularly a certain well known fellow named Washington and another one folks might have heard of named Madison--will find that secession does not equal self-determination, least of all in our system. Washington and Madison said so explicitly more than once. I daresay they are qualified to speak on the subject.
If some reader doesn't believe me (and why should you?) please go do a thorough investigation. I am sure WhiskeyPapa has a few quotations handy to point you on your way. Again, great job x. You nailed it.
LOL. That's a good line. But Kevin, Mencken could really write well and Ayn Rand really couldn't. Much as I enjoy Mencken's style and wit, I can't argue with the basics of your description.
LOL. That's a good line. But Kevin, Mencken could really write well and Ayn Rand really couldn't. Much as I enjoy Mencken's style and wit, I can't argue with the basics of your description.
Imagine a US WITHOUT Taxachooseits and Pres Kennedy AND Senators Robert and Tubby (er, Teddy)!!!!
I dunno.
People were thinking things were going down hill pretty fast under the Articles.
"What stronger evidence can be given of the want of energy in our government than these disorders? If there exists not a power to check them, what security has a man of life, liberty, or property? To you, I am sure I need not add aught on this subject, the consequences of a lax or inefficient government, are too obvious to be dwelt on. Thirteen sovereignties pulling against each other, and all tugging at the federal head, will soon bring ruin to the whole; whereas a liberal, and energetic Constitution, well guarded and closely watched, to prevent encroachments, might restore us to that degree of respectability and consequence, to which we had a fair claim, and the brightest prospect of attaining..."
George Washington to James Madison November 5, 1786,
"I do not conceive we can exist long as a nation, without having lodged somewhere a power which will pervade the whole Union in as energetic a manner, as the authority of the different state governments extends over the several states. To be fearful of vesting Congress, constituted as that body is, with ample authorities for national purposes, appears to me to be the very climax of popular absurdity and madness."
George Washington to John Jay, 15 August 1786
Old GW wasn't mincing his words. Makes you wonder how his image got shanghaied onto the greal seal of the CSA, doesn't it?
What you are saying is that Washington wanted a national union, but failed to obtain one.
The record doesn't support that, does it?
I mean after all, the rebellion did collapse, didn't it?
Walt
NY --the powers of government may be reassumed by the people
RI -- that the powers of government may be resumed by the people
These quotations make my point, not yours.
Walt
I don't think the record supports this very well.
"To the efficacy and permanency of your Union, a government for the whole is indispensable. No alliance, however strict, between the parts can be an adequate substitute; they must inevitably experience the infractions and interruptions which all alliances in all times have experienced. Sensible of this momentous truth, you have improved upon your first essay, by the adoption of a constitution of government better calculated than your former for an intimate union, and for the efficacious management of your common concerns. This government, the offspring of our own choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support. Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true liberty. The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government."
-- George Wasington, Farewell Address
It doesn't look like Washington's words square with Cabot's interpretation.
Well, my goodness.
That is not what Jefferson Davis thought.
Nosirree!
He thought the federal government could coerce the states. He wasn't real big on states rights.
"Conscription dramatized a fundamental paradox in the Confederate war effort: the need for Hamiltonian means to achieve Jeffersonian ends. Pure Jeffersonians could not accept this. The most outspoken of them, Joseph Brown of Georgia, denounced the draft as a "dangerous usurpation by Congress of the reserved rights of the states...at war with all the principles for which Georgia entered into the revolution." In reply Jefferson Davis donned the mantle of Hamilton. The Confederate Constitution, he pointed out to Brown, gave Congress the power "to raise and support armies" and to "provide for the common defense." It also contained another clause (likewise copied from the U.S. Constitution) empowering Congress to make all laws "necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers." Brown had denied the constitutionality of conscription because the Constitution did not specifically authorize it. This was good Jeffersonian doctrine, sanctified by generations of southern strict constructionists.
But in Hamiltonian language, Davis insisted that the "necessary and proper" clause legitimized conscription. No one could doubt the necessity "when our very existance is threatened by armies vastly superior in numbers." Therefore "the true and only test is to enquire whether the law is intended and calculated to carry out the object...if the answer be in the affirmative, the law is constitutional."
--Battle Cry of Freedom, James McPherson P.433
If the Constitution limits and defines the powers of the federal government, one of those powers -- according to Jefferson Davis now -- was providing for the common defense, which allowed the government to coerce the states.
How about that?
Walt
Enter what? The Union?
As free and independent states, just as it says in the D of I. But, as Chief Jiustice Jay said in 1793, they nevertheless saw themselves as one people, and managed their affairs sccordingly.
I don't see anything that Jay said that conflicts with what President Lincoln said:
"The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was further matured, and the faith of all the then thirteen States expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in 1778. And finally, in 1787, one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution was "to form a more perfect Union."
Do you see anything that conmflicts with what Jay said and what President Lincoln said?
Walt
As in who ratified for Georgia, and who entered the union with her ratification? Could Georgia's ratification admit Rhode Island?
Just curious.
Ratification of what? The Articles? By ratifying the Constitution, the people of Georgia plighted themselves to support the Union and nationalizled their citizenship in that union -- which was, as George Washington stated, the goal of every true American.
Now, Mr. Tippy toes, on what basis did Governor Brown of Georgia threaten to secede from the so-called CSA?
On what basis did he raise troops that could only be used in Georgia and on what basis did he exempt 9,000 men from CSA service?
Can you say, "died of a theory"?
Walt
The Constitution obviously. Who entered with her ratification? Who could deny her ratification? Who could force her ratification?
No, no, no. Answer my questions in #75.
Walt
You're right, it was only about 66%. Now it's down to 0%.
I suppose slavery could have ended here the way it ended in England and Brazil -- nonviolently. Instead we chose to slaughter a million people and discard the original vision of the republic. Oh well, at least slavery's gone, huh?
You're right, it was only about 66%. Now it's down to 0%.
I suppose slavery could have ended here the way it ended in England and Brazil -- nonviolently. Instead we chose to slaughter a million people and discard the original vision of the republic. Oh well, at least slavery's gone, huh?
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