Lincoln Boyhood Historic Resource Study

THE INDIANA LEGACY

Shortly after reaching Illinois, Abraham Lincoln struck out on his own and left frontier farming for good. In a process of steady upward social mobility, he worked variously as a flatboatman, store clerk, miller, militiaman, merchant, postmaster, surveyor, legislator, and lawyer. His 1860 election to the presidency of the United States was the culmination of a career of shrewd political maneuvering that was strongly informed by his multitudinous experiences on the Indiana and Illinois frontiers. Indeed, Lincoln deliberately cultivated a humble, rural image to advance his political career; on this basis, Winkle refers to Lincoln as an "astute myth maker," who based his career "within the context of personal triumph over inherited adversity." [192]

In Illinois, political campaigning during the mid-nineteenth century required a homespun approach in which candidates traveled through their districts and addressed (often raucous) public gatherings as well as calling upon people within their private dwellings. A contemporary noted, "It was in the family circle, around the fireside, no matter how humble and lowly, that Lincoln felt at home. He entered into conversation with the father and mother relative to their hopes and prospects in life, the schools, farm, crops, stock." His own humble origins, he claimed, allowed him to be especially empathetic to these common concerns. As he said in his first campaign for public office, "I was born and have ever remained in the most humble walks of life," and he came from "undistinguished families," with parents who were "poor and uneducated." In this way, Lincoln was able to couch himself as a common man whose sympathies lay with the interests of the people, while his personal accomplishments showed him to be an epitome of the self-made man and a natural leader. Furthermore, by portraying himself as a humble, ordinary man, he was able to parlay his visually striking appearance into an asset rather than a liability. His unusual height and rawboned frame always attracted his audience's attention, as it was not in keeping with the polished countenances of most nineteenth century politicians. Lincoln used his audience's initial puzzlement to seize their attention. Typically, he began a speech by "leaning himself up against the wall ... and talking in the plainest manner, and in the most indifferent tone, yet gradually fixing his footing, and getting command of his limbs, loosening his tongue, and firing up his thoughts, until he had got entire possession of himself and of his audience." While not everyone was favorably impressed by this approach, the technique worked more often than not. [193]

Later, during his presidency, Lincoln recalled the occasion on which he earned his first dollar, when he worked on the Ohio River and assisted a pair of travelers with their luggage. Each tossed him a half-dollar for his services. Lincoln said, "I could scarcely credit that I, a poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day. . . you may think it a very little thing, and in these days it seems like a trifle, but it was the most important thing in my life." He also maintained an open-door policy and patiently received hundreds of petitioners, office-seekers, and well-wishers at his office. The approach fostered a sense among the American people that this president was one of their own. They dubbed him "Father Abraham," and many brought simple gifts — a firkin of butter, a crate of pears — that indicated their belief in the unpretentious image he projected. With his anecdotes and his patience with an admiring public, Lincoln succeeded at conveying that he was capable of fully empathizing with the people's hopes, fears, wants, and needs. They belied the fact that during his decades of public service, Lincoln became an adroit political organizer and manipulator of party politics. [194]

His political opponents occasionally attempted to sabotage his public image by pointing out that he had married into the very wealthy and exclusive Edwards-Stuart-Todd family. In an 1843 campaign for office in Illinois' Seventh Congressional District, supporters of a rival politician labeled Lincoln as "the candidate of pride, wealth, and aristocratic family distinction." Their allegations played a role in undermining Lincoln's support and he lost the party nomination to another candidate. Although Lincoln was both surprised and outraged by the charge of aristocracy, there was an undeniable element of truth to it. By the 1850s, many of his most loyal supporters were large-scale farmers, landlords, and land speculators, and he did not find it incongruous that railroads, which were the largest corporations in the country, ranked among the clients of his law practice. [195]

But aside from meeting the needs of his political aspirations, Lincoln's self-conscious cultivation of a homespun, humble image also may have served a very personal purpose. He always was very aware of his shortcomings as a proper Victorian-era society man, in that he lacked the polish of many of the well-bred, upper-class contemporaries he encountered. His wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, was known to berate him on a regular basis for failing to maintain the appropriate social distance from servants and flaunting genteel values by such acts as answering the door in his shirtsleeves. Lincoln's response typically was to shield himself from criticism with self-deprecating whimsicality or to rely on traditional gender roles that dictated separate social spheres for men and women. [196]

When he determined that he would run for the presidency in 1859, Lincoln orchestrated a careful, and successful, campaign of building support within the newly formed Republican party and partisan press publications. He and his supporters also continued to play on his humble roots during the campaign. Richard J. Oglesby coined the nickname "The Rail Splitter" for Lincoln, and had brought to a Republican nominating convention at Decatur a pair of wooden rails that reportedly were from a split rail fence that Lincoln had put up in 1830 with his cousin John Hanks. The gamut was highly successful. As Donald noted:

He acquired an image with enormous popular appeal: he could be packaged not merely as a powerful advocate of the free-soil ideology or as a folksy, unpretentious storytelling campaigner, but also as the embodiment of the self-made man, the representative of free labor, and the spokesman of the great West. It mattered very little that this myth — like most myths — was only partially true: Lincoln, in fact, had little love for his pioneer origins; he disliked physical labor and left it as soon as he could; he owed his early advancement as much to the efforts of interested friends like John Todd Stuart, Stephen T. Logan, and David Davis as to his own exertions. Rather than a simple backwoodsman, he was a prominent and successful attorney representing the most powerful interests in emerging corporate America. The delegates at Decatur understood that myth was more important than reality. They cheered now not just for a favorite son but for a viable presidential candidate. [197]

Interestingly, many of Lincoln's closest advisors appear to have believed more in the homespun image he projected than in the reality of his political skills. After winning the presidency, Lincoln proved himself to be quite successful at playing bickering politicians against one another, often within the context of mocking himself or his humble roots. So skillful was he at this mild dissembling that one close advisor, Nathan M. Knapp, remarked, "He has not known his own power — uneducated in Youth, he has always been doubtful whether he was not pushing himself into position to which he was unequal." [198]

In the aftermath of his assassination, Lincoln's closest friends and political allies cooperated to cement his reputation as a plain-spoken democrat, friend of the common man, and humble yet dignified savior of the Union. One longtime friend said, "the amazing popularity he obtained was attributable to two things[.] He had been successful under the most trying circumstances and then he was most emphatically one of the People." [199] Such is the impression that has remained to the present day.