Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer

417 Pages·2008·1.97 MB·English

by  Fred Kaplan

Lincoln
The Bi o g r a p h y
of a Wr it er
Fred Kaplan
To the memory of my father, Isaac Kaplan (1906 1987); and
to Hattie M. Strelitz, the teacher who, on the Lower East Side
of New York City in December 1918, awarded him a copy of
The Perfect Tribute, an idealistic myth about the writing of the
Gettysburg Address. It was given to him for “Proficiency and
Excellent Class Spirit” and came into my hands a generation
later. It impressed me deeply with a truth that empowers us
all: the power of Lincoln’s language.
Contents
Reading Lincoln’s Words 1
CH A P T ER 1
“All the Books He Could Lay His Hands On,” 1809–1825 3
CH A P T ER 2
Shakespeare, 1825–1834 30
CH A P T ER 3
Burns, Byron, and Love Letters, 1834–1837 60
CH A P T ER 4
“How Miserably Things Seem to Be Arranged,” 1837–1842 99
CH A P T ER 5
“Were I President,” 1842–1849 144
CH A P T ER 6
“Honest Seeking,” 1849–1854 198
CH A P T ER 7
“The Current of Events,” 1855–1861 242
[ iv ] Contents
CHAPTER 8
The Master of Language and the Presidency, 1861–1865 294
Annotated Bibliography 357
Notes 363
Acknowledgments 385
Index 387
About the Author
Other Books by Fred Kaplan
Credits
Cover
Copyright
About the Publisher
Reading Lincoln’s Words
F
or Lincoln, words mattered immensely. His increasing skill in their use
during his lifetime, and his high valuation of their power, mark him as the
one president who was both a national leader and a genius with language
at a time when its power and integrity mattered more than it does today.
His was a personality and a career forged in the crucible of language.
The novelist William Dean Howells’s claim about his friend Mark Twain,
that he was the “Lincoln of our literature,” can effectively be rephrased
with the focus on our sixteenth president: Lincoln was the Twain of our
politics. Since Lincoln, no president has written his own words and ad-
dressed his contemporary audience or posterity with equal and enduring
effectiveness.
Lincoln was born into a national culture in which language was the
most widely available key to individual growth and achievement. It dom-
inated public discourse. No TVs, DVDs, computers, movie screens,
radios, or electricity, and no sound-bites. Language mattered because
it was useful for practical communication and for learning and because
it could shape and direct people’s feelings and thoughts in a culture in
which spoken or written words had no rival. In Lincoln’s case it also mat-
tered immensely because it was the tool by which he explored and de-
fined himself. The tool, the toolmaker, and the tool user became insepa-
rably one. He became what his language made him. From an early age, he
[ 2 ] Fred Kaplan
began his journey into self-willed literacy, then into skill, and eventually
into genius as an artist with words.
Lincoln is distinguished from every other president, with the excep-
tion of Jefferson, in that we can be certain that he wrote every word to
which his name is attached. Though some presidents after him wrote
well, particularly Grant, Wilson, and Theodore Roosevelt, the articula-
tion of a modern president’s vision and policies has fallen to speechwrit-
ers and speech-writing committees, with the president serving, at best,
as editor in chief.
Lincoln was also the last president whose character and standards
in the use of language avoided the distortions and other dishonest uses
of language that have done so much to undermine the credibility of na-
tional leaders. The ability and commitment to use language honestly and
consistently have largely disappeared from our political discourse. Some
presidents have been more talented in its use than others. Some, such
as Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, have had superior speech-
writers. But the challenge of a president himself struggling to find the
conjunction between the right words and honest expression, a use of
language that respects intellect, truth, and sincerity, has largely been
abandoned.
CHAPTER 1
“All the Books He Could Lay
His Hands On”
1809–1825
A
t six years of age, for a few weeks in the fall of 1815, in the town of
Knob Creek, Hardin County, Kentucky, the boy went to his first school,
taught by a typical frontier teacher commissioned by local parents to pro-
vide children with basic skills and only sufficiently knowledgeable him-
self to rise modestly above that level. Teachers were in short supply on
the frontier that ran along the western ridge of the Appalachians; beyond
was the sparsely settled western portion of Ohio and the territories of
Indiana and Illinois; southward, much of the states of Kentucky and Ten-
nessee. Cash also was in short supply. Material possessions were mini-
mal. By modern standards it was a starkly rudimentary life.
In this community of Protestants the supremacy of the Bible as the
book of daily life encouraged acquiring basic reading skills. Simple arith-
metic came next. “His father,” the grown-up boy later recalled, “sent him
to this school with the avowed determination of giving him a thorough
education. And what do you think my father’s idea of a thorough educa-
tion was? It was to have me cipher through the rule of three.” Beyond
that, education was a luxury that neither time nor money permitted. In-
tellectual curiosity in a society in which it had no likely practical reward
was rare, except for the occasional child who, inexplicably, without any
[ 4 ] Fred Kaplan
relation to who his parents were and what the community valued, was
transfixed by the power of words.
Words and ideas were inseparable in a nation in which the Bible dom-
inated. It was given full currency as the source of the dominant belief
system. It was also the great book of illustrative stories, illuminating ref-
erences, and pithy maxims for everyday conduct. More than any other
glue, it held the society together, regardless of differences of interpreta-
tion among Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists. This was a world
of believers. Here and there was a deist, an agnostic, or an atheist, but
even those who had grounds of disagreement with Christian theological
claims generally did so within the tribal circle and expressed themselves
in small deviances, such as not attending church regularly or at all. De-
istic voices from afar, from the East Coast, from the Founding Fathers,
even from Europe, occasionally could be heard in the Appalachian woods
and beyond. The deists rationalized religion, eliminated mystery: there is
a creator, a God; otherwise, human beings are on their own, dependent
on reason and action. But rural American Protestants in the nineteenth
century much preferred miracle, redemption, brimstone, the literal
truth of the Bible, and the apocalypse to come. As six-year-old Abraham
Lincoln began to learn to read, his household text was the Bible.
His parents were fundamentalist believers, regular worshippers.
Without education and illiterate, Thomas Lincoln was also blind in one
eye and had weak sight in the other, which may have perpetuated his il-
literacy. To sign his name, he made his mark. To worship, he recited and
sang memorized prayers and hymns. Since words and beliefs were insep-
arable, he depended on cues from others and especially on his memory,
which was the agent of sacred prayer and biblical knowledge. Both liter-
ate and illiterate American Christians often memorized long stretches of
the Bible. And as young boys like Abraham became literate, they devel-
oped their ability to remember. From an early age, Lincoln had a tena-
cious memory. By modern standards, few books were available to him.
Those he could recite almost by heart.
His first teacher was his mother, who had learned to read but not