The Presidency of Abraham Lincoln

Book Review

by 'tamerlane'


The Presidency of Abraham Lincoln
by Phillip Shaw Paludan
University of Kansas Press, 1994


A scholarly and insightful overview of Lincoln's administration and leadership style, Phillip Shaw Paludan's The Presidency of Abraham Lincoln offers an enlightening analysis of the workings of Lincoln's mind while bringing to life the events and personalities that surrounded the president. Paludan's prose is lucid, at times dense with detail but never flounders in minutia.

Paludan tackles the material chronologically, but takes a refreshing thematic approach to each of the 16 chapters, for example: "Forging the Resources of War: January to February 1862"; "Cabinet Crisis: December 1862" ; "Emancipation and the Limits of Dissent: January to June 1863."

We see Lincoln balancing conflicting ideals, juggling crises, and managing personnel for maximum effect. Military events are covered in a broad but accurate brush, and Paludan places them in the context of the myriad other concerns facing Lincoln: midterm elections, intra-party rivalries, the threat of foreign intervention, fostering economic growth and expansion. Among a cacophony of competing voices, and with the war both as a backdrop and the catalyst, Lincoln turned his party's vision of a new America into a new version of America:

"The elections of 1863 asked voters how they felt about entering their future so quickly.... When Democrats offered the old world in 1863, the large majority responded that they were ready to accept a new day."

Paludan's analysis of the evolution and impact of the Emancipation Proclamation is the clearest and most profound ever encountered. We are given both the broad political, cultural, military, and constitutional milieu, and a probing analysis of the president's thought process:

"Lincoln did not, as some charged, free the slaves only in places where he could not reach them; he freed the slaves in the only place he could legally reach them - in places that he ruled under presidential war powers. The language of the great deed had to be a lawyer's language because Lincoln was taking legal action. He was placing the great ideal of freedom within the constitutional fabric - the only place that it could have life in a constitutional republic."

Paludan presents us with a visionary president who successfully melded the competing desires of radical abolition and conservative preservation of the Constitution, by defining it as a document of Liberty. "An older idea of liberty from government was being transformed into a vision of liberty because of government." We also see how Lincoln quickly and deftly learned from his mistakes: to thwart discord among his cabinet; or, after indulging the inert McClellan with excessive patience, he wasted little time on Burnside and Hooker.

Delegating without ever relinquishing ultimate authority, letting actors and events play out until his intervention was required, Lincoln steered the nation through its greatest peril, while never once losing sight of its founding principles.

(c) 2009 by 'tamerlane.' All rights reserved.

A photo of Lincoln

Yesterday I visited the Getty Center in Los Angeles with some friends to see a photography exhibit. The Getty has an extensive and amazing photography collection - which they, strangely, dole out in stingy dollops. The current show is called "In focus: Portraits."

The photo of Lincoln included in this post was part of the show. He is standing with Detective Pinkerton (left), and General McClernand. The photo was taken a few days after the battle of Antietam, on the battlefield.

This photo is stunning and humbling. Lincoln is always rendered larger than life. I was trying to express why this photo moved me - and my friend put my thoughts succinctly - "Lincoln is not the landscape, he's in the landscape."

Antietam was the bloodiest single-day battle in American history, with about 23,000 casualties.

He's a man here. A man in the midst of a cataclysm. Lincoln showed up, it seems, as a President and as a witness. The same is true for his trip to Gettysburg and Richmond after it fell. The Gettysburg Address remains powerful because it is a document that bares witness to reality.

Reality was not to be packaged, spun, or molded by the President. It was witnessed.

Lunch Break - mixed bag, miscellany, variety, smorgasbord, potpourri,

A pre Presidency We Told You So: Riverdaughter nails the Daily Kos Krap. I, for one, have no intention of being polite about jackasses like King Cheeto, Avarosis and Andrew Sullivan as President Sunshine collapses into a people pleasing, pro Wall Street amorphous blob. They were and are idiots. Destructive idiots who spent last year whoring for the George Soros crowd. Obama is even turning into a coward on Stem cells research. Bush 3. Bush 3. Bush 3. And, by God, WE TOLD YOU SO. The Huff/Cheetos/Sullivan ninnies are the strongest argument we have for bringing back the stockades and the fine art of tomato throwing. Either knowingly or not, (don't care which) last year Avarosis, Sullivan, Huffington, Cheetos, were on the vanguard of destroying American liberalism for yet another generation. They ruthlessly attacked 3 true reformers - one on the left and 2 on the right - while intellectually masturbating themselves into a frenzy over an unvetted living, breathing question mark of a man - who happened to be a good speaker and, of course, overriding all other concerns, he was not white. President Question Mark is now turning out to be a weenie beholden to the Wall Street interests (and God knows who else) who bought him and then brought him to the White House.

Holidays: Happy M.L. King Day. I am glad we set this day aside. MLK getting his own day, while Washington and Lincoln have had their birthdays merged into a joke holiday set aside for electronic gadget sales is - historically speaking - obscene. And after 240 years we still don't honor a single woman in our yearly round up of three day weekends. That sh*t ain't right.

Music: Inauguration songs I love include:

A Poll:

This poll is entirely fictitious, as all post JFK Americans know that there are no conspiracies in the U.S.A. Anyone who thinks America is subject to the exact same behind the scenes power plays as Ancient Rome, Elizabethan England, or, frankly, anywhere else in the history of civilization, is, we all know, a dolt. We also all know-by virtue of being let in on the joke by the always free and fair American Media/Entertainment Complex- that everything is ironic all the time - except natural disasters, sometimes missing white people but only if they are pretty and/or rich, and the installation of new leaders. Conspiracies are simply not ironic. Therefore they do not exist. But let's just say:

Team of rivals, my arse.

I want to kick every writer who calls Obama's emerging cabinet a "team of rivals"

in the shin...

hard...

...but I won't...

I promise...

This simply is not the case so far.

I am not an expert on Lincoln's Presidency - though I probably know more than most voters, which is hardly bragging - or hard. Nor have I read Doris Kearns Goodwin's book about Lincoln called "Team of Rivals". That said the "rivals" Obama has appointed include much of the previous Democratic administration, Senator Clinton, who is hardly an ideological opponent, Governor Napolitano, a vocal supporter all year, A Carter appointee, and one Republican. Whoop Dee Do. Reagan made his main primary opponent Vice President - no one said he had a "team of rivals". Nixon had a Democrat in his cabinet, as did Reagan and Bush 2.

The desperate need to graft past icons onto Obama is silly and pathetic. My take so far is that Obama is not inviting spirited debate so he can see all sides and then "stop the buck" with a decision. He is hiring a bunch of folks who will make him look good.

Finally dancing between Lincoln, JFK, and Jesus as apt comparisons to BHO is stupid. I see no civil war breaking out before the inauguration. I find no place in Obama's life in which he demonstrated the courage that comes from having one's life threatened in war - google JFK/PT 109 for background here. As for Jesus...these little verbal and visual (see Time) allusions that elevate Obama to messiah like status should be met with revulsion by the religious and the secular humanists alike. Choose your reasons: You are a Christian and find it offensive or you are a small r republican and believe kings, queens, figureheads, and cult leaders have no business being head of state. In the United States, we don't DO kings.

Yet.

P.S. The Lincoln/JFK/Jesus comparisons are also sick - for reasons that should be apparent. Barring impeachment and removal (or revelations about his birthplace) I want Mr. Obama around for 4 years. We might actually have the pleasure of seeing the media challenge him.