Lincoln at 200
By Frank J. Williams
(January 2009 Civil War News - Preservation Column)

The memory of Abraham Lincoln belongs to two groups of Americans. There is the general population, who knows too little about him – a scant paragraph or two of facts, regarding rail splitting, speech making, slave-freeing and, fatally, play-attending.

Then there is the considerable subculture of Lincoln fanatics who perhaps know too much, parsing what actually is known about the legends, and myths, that have grown up around the 16th President.

Is it too much about too little, as Lincoln might have said? There comes a point with historic figures where everything important has been published.

But the rising wave of new books about Abraham Lincoln makes clear that that point hasn’t arrived yet with the 16th President. At least one book a week about Lincoln has been published in the last year and about 50 titles more are due by early 2010.

The numbers are probably unprecedented for so short a period, and the range of angles is wide. There are three complete biographies; books of essays and photographs; books about Lincoln as a youth, as president-elect, as a military leader, as a writer, and as an inventor;

Also, books about Lincoln and his family, about Lincoln as victim of conspiracy, about Lincoln and his connections with others – his secretaries, his admirals, abolitionist Frederick Douglass, scientist Charles Darwin – who was born on the same day as Lincoln, Feb. 12, 1809, and even the poet Robert Burns. At least seven children’s books that have been published.

One reason for this outpouring is that Feb. 12, 200,9 marks the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth – and readers are there. Why does the reading public care? It is partly because of the kind of person Lincoln was and partly the kind of people we are.

To begin with, Lincoln had an apparent plainness and simplicity, as well as a warmth and good humor, that make ordinary people identify with him.

Lincoln scholar and author of Lincoln: President-Elect, Harold Holzer, has said, “He is one of us, not like a prince or a king.”

Some are attracted by his emotional vulnerability and moral struggles. “He was the most deeply spiritual person to hold the office before or since,” said James A. Percoco, author of the recently published Summers with Lincoln: Looking for the Man in the Monuments.

In 1876, Frederick Douglass observed that “No man can say anything that is new of Abraham Lincoln.” The usually prescient Douglass was wrong.

Even today, the enormous body of work on Lincoln — almost 16,000 books and pamphlets having been published on the man — seemingly should have exhausted all manner of questions about him and his place in history. These new studies demonstrate a deeper appreciation of the genius and power of Lincoln as a writer.

But it will not just be more books that will honor the 16th President. Washington, D.C., will present some 80 exhibits, lectures, tours and programs that will be part of the city’s celebration of the Lincoln bicentennial, “Living the Legacy: Lincoln and Washington, D.C.”

In addition to the U.S. Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, 35 states have created bicentennial commissions of their own. In addition, Lincoln symposiums are planned in France, England and India. For news and links to more bicentennial activities, go to the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission Web site, www.lincoln200.gov.

But Lincoln was not always popular in his day. The president is nothing more than a “single meaning baboon,” said a one-time Democratic presidential candidate. The quote was not made regarding Iraq or President George W. Bush. As the Civil War raged in a fourth year in 1864, it was directed toward President Abraham Lincoln.

Equating epic struggle for the constitutional right to self-sovereignty, preservation of the Union, and, ultimately, the end of slavery with our current wars on terrorism is appropriate because similarities exist and warrant discussion.

Last year marked the sesquicentennial of the great debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas which transformed a contest for the U.S. Senate seat into a battle for the future of the Republic. Replication of the debates will be held in each of the seven towns where they were first heard 150 years ago.

The Supreme Court helped launch Abraham Lincoln’s national political career with its 1857 Dred Scott decision, which declared that no African-American could be a citizen and that even free states must respect the property rights of slave owners.

This gave the Illinois lawyer an issue he would ride to the White House. His opposition to Dred Scott animated his debates with Stephen A. Douglas in 1858 and pervaded the New York speech in February 1860 at Cooper Union that propelled Lincoln to the Republican nomination.

As all of this demonstrates, Americans’ heightened interest in Lincoln might say as much about our times as it does about the man. Lincoln says much about what it means to be a leader in wartime. In a way, it represents a search for ourselves.

Frank J. Williams is retired Chief Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court and a member of the U.S. Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. He is the founding Chair of The Lincoln Forum and at work on an annotated bibliography of all books and pamphlets published about Abraham Lincoln since 1865.