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Lincoln The Hack?
Eric Alterman, reply by James Oakes AUGUST 15, 2019 ISSUE
In response to:
The Great Divide from the May 23, 2019 issue of New York Review of Books
To the Editors:
James Oakes writes, “It is a commonplace among historians that…in his
early career [Lincoln] was something of a Whig Party hack” [“The Great
Divide,” NYR, May 23]. I find this statement amazing. How in the world
do those words apply to the brave, eloquent, and politically costly
words and actions undertaken by the first-term congressman Lincoln in
opposition to James K. Polk’s mendaciously undertaken war of conquest
against Mexico?
Congressman Lincoln was lonely and indefatigible in his defense of both
Congress’s role in the decision to go to war and in attempting to hold
Polk accountable for the lies he told to justify the conflict. Rarely
has any representative risen to such heights of eloquence as when
Lincoln accused the president of having
trusted to avoid the scrutiny of his own conduct by directing the
attention of the nation, by fixing the public eye upon military
glory—that rainbow that rises in showers of blood—that serpent’s eye
that charms but to destroy; and thus calculating, had plunged into this
war, until disappointed as to the ease by which Mexico could be subdued,
he found himself at last he knew not where.
Warned by his closest political advisers that he was risking his career
in doing so, Lincoln persisted:
Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall
deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so,
whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose—and
you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any
limit to his power in this respect.
Given the jingoistic times, his views proved so unpopular with his
constituents that he decided to forego a campaign for reelection, and so
retired from Congress. In his 1858 debates with Stephen Douglas for the
Illinois senate, the latter tried to mock his opponent by accusing him
of trying “to dodge the responsibility of [the Republican Party]
platform, because it was not adopted in the right spot.” He teased him
as “Spotty Lincoln.” Douglas also deployed the same tactics that Polk
would use against his critics: insisting that Lincoln had “distinguished
himself by his opposition to the Mexican war, taking the side of the
common enemy, in time of war, against his own country.” Douglas said it
“is one thing to be opposed to the declaration of war, and another thing
to take the side of the enemy against your own country, for the war
commenced and our army was in Mexico at the time.”
If this is Mr. Oakes’s view of hackery, I say this country could surely
use more such hacks as Congressman Abraham Lincoln.
Eric Alterman
CUNY Distinguished Professor of English
Brooklyn College
Brooklyn, New York
James Oakes replies:
I assure Mr. Alterman that I admire Lincoln’s stance against the
Mexican-American War as much as he does. But when historians speak of
Lincoln as a Whig Party hack in his early years, the years they refer to
are the four terms he served in the Illinois legislature beginning in
1834. Though he had few legislative achievements, Lincoln nevertheless
earned a reputation as a brutal partisan attack dog. He published
pseudonymous letters and anonymous editorials satirizing the religious
convictions of his opponents or belittling their manhood. Worst of all
was Lincoln’s penchant for race-baiting. He implied that Democrats would
give blacks the vote and that Illinois would “be overrun with free
negroes.” He described Martin Van Buren’s running mate as “the husband
of a negro wench, and the father of a band of mulatoes.” He published
fake letters endorsing Democrats in “negro dialect.” That’s the early
Lincoln who was, by my standards at least, a partisan hack. The Lincoln
who went to the House of Representatives in 1847 was a very different
man. In addition to his courageous criticism of Polk’s war, Lincoln
voted repeatedly for the Wilmot Proviso, which would have banned slavery
from all the territory snatched from Mexico. He also drafted the first
statute I know of that would have abolished slavery in Washington, D.C.
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