Lincoln: Right or Wrong

DEPENDABLE as the Spring, if not always as fresh, are the perennial books about our great men. Someone without too great exaggeration has estimated that there has been a book a week about Napoleon ever since his death. Thus far this year there are at least four books aimed at Lincoln, with assuredly more to come.

HERE are four books that, taken together, evoke the aura of t he American Civil War. Reading them one after another, or, more often, comparing them by topics, one lives through the storm and stress and splendor of those heroic days. In each ease the publishers have shown admirable tact in choosing as illustrations contemporary portraits, or cartoons from Leslie’s Weekly and Vanity Fair. Let us begin with An American Proscession, by William A. Croffut (Atlantic Monthly Press and Little, brown, $3.00). The author is a born gossip who early in the day happened to learn shorthand, acquiring a fluent and racy but hardly a distinguished style, and through a long series of editorial years interviewed notable persons and recorded significant events. Since he crossed Charon’s ferry some years since, one need not hesitate to note that his pages bubble with innocent selfsatisfaction; he is perpetually pleased with his own accomplishments, and vastly and engagingly interested in the amazing company in which he passes his active days. To the record of the Civil War he adds an impression of no little interest and value.

After telling us how Stephen A. Douglas with fine courtesy field Lincoln’s hat. during the delivery of the first inaugural, Mr. Croffut adds: ‘It was estimated that two thirds of the audience were secessionists, and their sympathies were indicated by the frequent interruptions, sometimes drowning the voice of the speaker.’ The bitter hostility he was facing adds a new meaning to Lincoln’s superb rhythmic sentences: ‘I am loth to close. We are not, enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. . . .’ There is an excellent story about General Lee’s predicament immediately after Gettysburg, when General Meade’s failure to stop Lee’s retreat reminded Lincoln of ‘an old woman trying to shoo her geese across the creek.’ There is first-rate gossip about three women, Dr. Mary Walker, Mrs. Greeley, and Peggy D’Neill, who should be the heroine of the great American comedy: The Merry Wives of Washington. Perhaps John Drinkwater could be persuaded!

In certain ways Lincoln and His Cabinet, by Clarence Edward Macartney (Scribners, $3.50), is the richest of the four volumes under review. Some of the portraits are admirable, particularly that of Stanton, Organizer of Victory. Like Clemenceau, who bore the same title in a later war, Stanton was a good deal of a tiger, with magnificent valor and resourcefulness, but distinctly carnivorous. This book gives us a very convincing picture of Stanton’s fiery determination and high capacity. We remember how, a few years hack, the Gov - ernment took over all the railroads of the country and directed their energies to military ends. The expedient was Stanton’s. He had already accomplished the same results nearly seventy years ago. In the same way the telegraph system of the entire country came to a focus in one of the rooms of the War Department. At any moment any army, commander, garrison, post, was in immediate and intimate touch with Stanton. He worked miracles. The greatest was the miracle of his own fiery energy and faith.

This book is further notable because it brings out so forcibly the part played by the Union Navy in winning the Civil War, notably in blockading some three thousand miles of coast, and the tremendously creative part played by Gideon Welles in the victory of the Navy. Apart from Farragut and Porter, the Navy’s work was not conspicuous. But it was immensely effective. The full-length portrait of Chase does not greatly alter our conception of the masterful Secretary of the Treasury, It is good, but more conventional. Seward remains the enigma he has always been. Despite every consideration, misgivings regarding his loyalty remain.

With Lincoln the Politician, by Don C. Seitz (Coward-McCann, $4.00), we come to a very valuable compilation, more conventional in form, following more closely the lines of the standard lives of Lincoln. Don Seitz enjoys building books. He had gathered an immense mass of Lincoln records, so it was entirely natural that he should go ahead and write the inevitable life. But it was necessary to give it an original tag, so lie added to the President’s name the words ‘ the Pol it ician.’ They are warranted to the extent, that a great deal of stress is laid on speeches, letters, and details of political organization. But one wonders whether the color of the words, as used in this country to-day, is not somewhat misleading when applied to Lincoln. If we surmise that Don Seitz is ‘a deserving Democrat,’his half-admiring, half-apologetic attitude toward General McClellan becomes intelligible. None the less, the excerpts from the letters of McClellan to his wife supply material for a formidable indictment. There remains the enigma of Lincoln’s great tenderness for the border states, which many of his most sincere friends regarded as ill-judged and excessive. With it went a certain acceptance of slavery as an established fact. May we not trace this attitude to the fact that Lincoln himself was a son of one of the border states? That Mary Todd was an enthusiastic Southerner, with kin fighting against the Union? Her description of Seward as ‘an Abolitionist sneak,’ her sending dowers from the White House to the pro-slavery Fernando Wood, are sufficiently indicative of the stormy home atmosphere which she must have created and maintained, and which without question influenced Lincoln day and night.

In those years of tempest, there was yet another element of which we have said nothing. It is true that Stanton called Lincoln a gorilla, a missing link, an awkward ape. But Stanton fought for the Union magnificently. There were many who, holding equally contemptuous and insulting views of Lincoln, and with more or less frankness expressing them, did not fight for the Union at all, but did all that malicious and destructive ingenuity could suggest to bring the Union to ruin. For enemies of this type the period chose the appellation ‘Copperhead,’ perhaps as describing mingled subtlety and venom. Without adequate representation of this pervasive fog of hostility, our evocation of the great years of the Civil War would be incomplete. Exactly this element is supplied by Edgar Lee Masters, in Lincoln the MAN (Dodd, Mead, $5.00). The subtitle would have been more candid if, borrowing from Stanton, he had said, ‘the Gorilla. It is both curious and interesting to discover that the Spoon River Anthologist has no personal animosity toward Lincoln. The Martyr President is for him only a symbol of an attitude toward life — an at tilude, by the way, that seems somewhat morbid and insincere; worked up for sensational effect, like some of the famous Spoon River epitaphs. The book is not really a study of Lincoln. It is an autobiography of Edgar Lee Masters.

CHARLES JOHNSTON