historyspeak

The Little Giant

2009-07-20T05:25:00.002-05:00

A few years ago I visited a little nondescrpt, somewhat rundown house on the main road running through Brandon, Vermont. It wasn't a house that meant anything special to most people, and it was only marked by a somewhat obscure sign. But it meant a great deal to me. It was where a great man was born--one of the greaest of the 19th century--my century. And if he hadn't been born we would never have had Abraham Lincoln.

I am more than gratified to learn that the house, where Stephen A. Douglas came into this world on April 23, 1813, had at long last been spruced up, given a visitor center, and dedicated to giving Douglas, the redoutable "Little Giant," his due. He was to become for a quarter of a century Lincoln's great rival in Illinois politics. From their dramatic rivalry the Union-dividing issue of slavery was defined and the greatest man of that century--one of the greatest of any century--was to emerge.

For most of that rivalry Douglas was the front-runner. He was the first to become a national figure, and a power in American politics--for a time the most powerful. His biggest drawback--he was wrong-headed about that great issue. He believed the problem of slavery should be resolved by the simple democratic principal of "popular sovereignty"--letting each territory decided for itself, by popular assent, whether or not to become a slave or free state when it entered the Union. Douglas did not care whether slavery was voted up or down as long as the people of the territory agreed about it. This was doubtless the right way to resolve most problems. But as Lincoln eloquently pointed out,slavery was different--a special case, a special evil, a moral wrong. It could not, must not, be dealt with in that fashion. It must be fought. And he fought it with all of his intelligence and eloqence.

In the end Lincoln's position--the great and true one, won out. And he rode it to the presidency. Although Douglas stood far above him in the national ken for most of the years of their rivalry, it was Lincoln who became the great one, and Douglas the also-ran. And the house on the main road in Brandon stood for years ignored and neglected--the fate of also-rans. But it was only because Lincoln emerged as Douglas's great rival that the nation come to know Lincoln at all--and to elect him president

The point is--if there had been no Douglas, the great foil for Lincoln's greater greatness, Lincoln would never have emerged from political obscurity.. The country owes the Little Giant at least a nod of lasting respect. Turning the little house where he was born into a commeration of his memory is fitting and long overdue.

The "Homosexual" Lincolln

2009-06-10T05:07:00.005-05:00

That other prominent modern-day Lincoln tear-down tactic--racist being the other--that smacks strongly of looking at the past through the wrong-ended lens of the present is the theory that he was also a closet homosexual.

This theory gets all mixed up with the shortage of beds in Lincoln's time. In our time if a man sleeps with a man he must therefore be a homosexual. If a woman sleeps with a woman she must be a lesbian. And that is the main buttress of this argument that Lincoln was a homosesexual. He spent endless nights, particularly in his earlier years, sleeping in the same bed with another man--or men. But in Lincoln's time it was a question of a shortage of beds. There was not an overabundance of racks in his day, particularly on the frontier. This was before he married Mary Todd, then he started sleeping with her instead, and they produced four children.

It was not unheard of for two opposing candidates running for Congress in Illinois in Lincoln's time to travel together, hammer and defame one another on the stump all day, and then sleep congenially in the same bed at night. When Lincoln first came to Springfield in 1837 Joshua Speed offered to share his bed and Lincoln dumped his saddlebags in the upstairs room and accepted. It beat going in debt or sleeping out in the village square.

This shortage of beds permeated society right up into Lincoln's presidential years. Gettysburg was so crowded with bodies when Lincoln went there to deliver his immortal Gettyburg Address in November 1863 that the main speaker of the day, Edward Everett, spent a restless night worrying tht he was going to have to share his bed with the governor of Pennsylvania, who was arriving late. Everett's daughter, Charlotte, come with her father to this great event, was forced to sleep with two other women in the same bed. (Five in a bed was not said to be uncommon that night in Gettysburg, which was mobbed.) The three-in-one weight worked out to be too heavy for Charlotte's bed. It collapsed in the night, pitching Charlotte and her two sleeping comanions out on the floor.

Ånother "evidence" trotted out that Lincon must have been a homosexual was his preference for the company of men throughout his lifetime. But looked at not through the lens of the present, but of the past in which he lived, and for the kind of man he was--from which such matters should be viewed--Lincoln just wasn't all that handy with the ladies. Besides he loved telling stories and most of his stories were not fit for mixed company. Cover your ears, ladies.

The "Racist" Lincoln

2009-05-22T06:41:00.004-05:00

This is a tear-down, bring-down age we live in. And Abraham Lincoln has not been immune to attacks attempting to tarnish or destroy his standing as a great man and a great president. Two of the most recent ongoing attacks have painted him as a racist and as a homesexual. First, I will address the charge that he was a racist. The homosexuality will be the next in this march of the blogs.

The racist charge suffers from the same problem that much tear-down suffers from--viewing the past not through the prism of the past, but the prisim of the present. Historians call this "presentism" and it is an unhealthy disease. Those who accuse Lincoln of being a racist suffer from it.

Viewed in the context of the present, Lincoln could indeed be called a racist, indeed, a white supremecist. He said in his legendary debates with Stephen A. Douglas in 1858 that he believed the white man should always be superior to the black. But in that day virtually every white man, North and South, believed that--or said he did. Anybody who was running for public office had to believe it, or at least say he did, or he could never be elected.

But Lincoln had a very mild case of racism for his day--a trumped-up case. Douglas had the hard case--the one most whites sincerely had. Douglas believed the black man a hopelessly inferior being, born to be ruled by whites, with no rights to equality at all. Lincoln, boldly for his time, argued the case for the black man having been born equal to any white in the right to earn, own, keep, and eat his own bread. He fought boldly to keep slavery from spreading into the territories, looking to its eventual extinction everywhere. And in 1865, before his assassination, he saw passed the constitutional amendment freeing blacks from slavery everywhere, North and South. And that was the first step to eventual true black equality.

Lincoln was only as racist as he had to be in his time to get anything done. I don't believe he believed, for a minute, in the inferiority of the black man. I think the real Lincoln was reflected in something Frederick Douglass, the great ex-slave, orator, and most famous black man of Lincoln's time, said of him. After Douglass first met Lincoln in 1863, he said of him that Lincoln "was the first great man that I talked with in the United States freely, who in no single instance reminded me of the difference between himself and myself, of the difference of color...."

That, in my view is the definition of a thoroughgoing non-racist. And I believe that is what Lincoln was in his heart of hearts.

Writers

2009-05-07T05:48:00.004-05:00

If I didn't have a tin ear I would be playing a banjo all the time. But alas, when it comes to pitch, I am equipped as U. S. Grant was. We have none. He said he could recognize only two tunes--"Yankee Doodle" and everything else. I am a bit better off than that, but not by much. When I start singing in the car, Kathleen turns up the radio.

So I try to make my music with words. And when I write history I try to write an entirely factual narrative--as factual as the sources permit--but make it read like fiction. Don't ask me how that is done. I have no idea. It is with writing a good narrative as Somerset Maugham said it was with writing a novel. There are three basic rules to writing a novel, Maugham said. Only three. Unfortunately nobody knows what they are.

I know great writing when I read it. And my favorite three writers down the years have been Shakespeare, the greatest in the English language, Ambrose Bierce the maddeningly clever 19th century satirist, and Abraham Lincoln, whose picture we all carry around with us in our wallets and purses on our $5 bills. Shakespeare in my book of greats is the greatest who ever put quill to paper. I have no idea how he could be so greatly eloquent and poetic so all the time--in nearly every line of every play.

As for Bierce, how can anybody resist his Devil's Dictionary and its wild definitions? Who else would think to define alone as "being in bad company," or noise as "the chief product of civilization," or a clarinet as "an instrument of torture played by a person with cotton in his ears," or an accordian as "an instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin."
(Which reminds me of what Oscar Wilde said about bagpipes: "Thank God they don't smell.")

As for Lincoln, no president has ever written better than that self-taught hick from the sticks. I cry whenever I read, "We are not enemies but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angles of our nature."

Or these words by that great man who was himself touched by those better angels: "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan -- to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations."

And on and on. And to think those guys wrote it all themselves, without ghost writers, speech writers, or research assistants.

A Face for Any Age

2009-04-24T14:27:00.002-05:00

I was asked the other day, as I have been asked many times before, if Lincoln, given his looks and his antic, unpolitical body, could be elected president in this day and age. The common wisdom is, absolutely not, that this is the age of television when looking presidential on the tube, and everywhere else, is an essential element of electoral success. Ugly doesn't win votes, and Mr. Lincoln was said to be ugly--whatever that means.

He himself rather admitted to it. When Stephen Douglas at one point in their quarter decade political rivalry in Illinois accused him of being two-faced, Lincoln replied, "If I had another face, do you think I would wear this one?"

Wear it he did, since he had no other. And he was elected president in spite of it. Whether his looks helped or didn't was a wash. My general opinion, supported by absolutely no facts one way or the other, is that Mr. Lincoln was so bright, so sensitive, so informed, so tuned to the people and to the issues of the times, that no matter how he looked on the relentless tube, he would have made adjustments and probably done quite well. Nobody much thought he could be nominated, let alone elected, back then. But he was, and then four years later reelected. Nobody would think he could be elected today, but he likely could, given his political genius.

This whole thing about being ugly, as we all know, is in the eye of the beholder. I happen to think Lincoln was a very handsome man. And here I am pleased to recount the story of a lady in Lincoln's time who agreed with me.

She was the mother of a soldier, and her soldier-son had been sentenced to death or long imprisonment for a crime with extenuating circumstances. She was one of Congressman Thaddeus Stevens's constituents from Pennsylvania, and he brought her to Lincoln, a very busy man, to plea for his life. After a full hearing on the matter, Lincoln turned to Stevens and asked, "Mr. Stevens, do you think this is a case which will warrant my interference?"

"With my knowledge of the facts and the parties," Stevens replied, "I should have no hesitation in granting a pardon."

"Then," Lincoln said, "I will pardon him."

The mother, overwelmed, with feelings too deep to utter speech, walked in silence out of the White House with Stevens. Part way out she halted, turned to him, and exclaimed, "I knew it was a copperhead lie!" Copperheads were Democrats who vigorously advocated peace with the Confederacy, letting it go independent if necessary with slavery and everything else intact--anything to end the war. They were not exceedingly popular either with Republlicans or Democrats supporting a war to victory a reunited Union.

The mother's sudden statement puzzled Stevens."What do you refer to, Madam?" he asked.

"Why, they told me he was an ugly looking man," she said. "He is the handsomest man I ever saw in my life."

Then as now, beauty--or lack of it--is only skin deep.

Lincoln and Yogi

2009-04-03T15:06:00.002-05:00

Lincoln, as everybody knows, was two-faced, even though he told Stephen Douglas "If he had another face, do you think I would wear this one?" But he could have been a poster boy for the two faces of drama--comedy and tragedy. He was at the same time one of the most melancholy, sad-looking of men, and yet one of the most preeminent joke tellers of his time. And not all of his jokes were sanitized.

Breaking through his melancholy--perhaps because of it--would come rib-aching, funny stories. As he admitted, he told jokes, usually very pertinent and tailored to the occasion, in part simply to whistle away sadness in a very sad time in our history. But nobody told a better story or enjoyed it more than Lincoln. Nobody read the comic writers of the time, such as Petroleum V. Nasby, and enjoyed them more, often reading them aloud to the sober-sided Radicals of his party, who only wanted to hear of victories won and slavery undone.

I would loved to have been in Rochester, Illinois, the night of June 16, 1842, when ex-Democratic President Martin Van Buren was touring Illinois. Lincoln, an avid Whig, had campaigned mightily to defeat the "Little Magician" in the presidential election campaign of 1840. Van Buren had lost the election and two years later was touring Illinois. Lincoln's Democratic foes in the state didn't much cotton to his politics, but they prized his way with a story. So their welcoming committee persuaded him to come with them to help entertain Van Buren in Rochester, half a dozen miles from Springfield. Lincoln went, and deep into the night he swapped stories with Van Buren, until, it is said, the ex-president called a halt to ease his sides, aching from laughter.

Lincoln would probably have enjoyed the proliferation of comedy in today's world, both spoken and written. In that connection, when I think of Lincoln and laughter, I somehow think of Yogi Berra, the celebrated Hall of Fame baseball player who perhaps didn't intend what he said to be laugh-provoking. But he is famous for provoking it anyhow. And I do believe Lincoln would have resonated with Yogi.

Who could resist such Yogiisms as, "This guy has fouled up the position so bad, I don't think anybody will ever play it again," or "Nobody goes there anymore; it is too crowded," or "If they don't wanna to come to the ball park, how you gonna stop 'em," or "When you come to a fork in the road, take it," or "We're lost, but we're making good time," or "Always go to other people's funerals; otherwise they won't go to yours," or his classic "It is deja vu all over again."

Yogi has uttered a lot of wonderful things, even while saying "I really didn't say everything I said." Lincoln would not have been any more able to resist him than we are. The two of them together have might have caved in Van Buren's aching sides altogether.

Lincoln and Darwin

2009-03-20T12:03:00.003-05:00

Much is being made in this bicentennial year of Lincoln's birth of the stunnning coincidence that Charles Darwin was also born on the very same day, February 12, 1809. Nobody can possibly think of another world class coincidence like it, short of the surreal fact that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died on the same day in 1826--and on July 4, yet.

But Lincoln and Darwin--two of the preeminent giants of the 19th millenium, born on the same day in the same year--only hours apart! And what a chronological couple those two make! No two men have left such huge handprints on our world. Lincoln, by seeing the Union through the agony of civil war and disunion, saved the America that has became arguably the greatest and most powerful nation on the planet, and the beacon of republican and democratic government that nearly all nations strive to emulate. In succeeding, he also rooted out slavery in its last major entrenched stronghold in the world. Had he not succeeded, history would have been entirely different. He left us a legacy that has endured and survived the test of time.

And so did Darwin leave a huge world-changing legacy that has stood the test of time. He unlocked the secret of all life on earth with his study of the origin and evolution of species, including man. His core theory for a century and a half has stood the test of the most intense scrutiny in the history of science. And it has endured. One scientist has said "I am struck with the fact daily that the more information we accumlate, the more validation we find of Darwin's theory." Another has said, "I think this [today] is a new golden age of evolutionary science. But what we're really doing is fleshing out Darwin's idea in ever greater detail." Indeed, as yet another scientist has said, "Darwin didn't know 99 percent of what we know," but, "the 1 percent he did know was the most important part."

What these two giants left us, the important part they left us, whether they knew it would be so or not, is even more mind-boggling than the fact they were born on the same day. Life has its wonders.

The Stakes

2009-03-16T05:34:00.002-05:00

What Abraham Lincoln surely saw as the Union seemed to be dividing, splitting, and shattering under him, was unacceptable emasculation. At stake was not just whether slavery would live or die. It was not just whether republican government, "the last best hope of earth" would succeed or fail--as important as those two outcomes were. There was a host of very practical reasons he could not let the rebellion succeed, to not let this "government of the people, by the people, and for the people" perish from the earth.

He doubtless clearly saw that a divided Union, a separate nation in the South and a separate nation in the North, which was what the South was seeking--to save slavery and its political leverage-- would have given us not the single united nation that would become the greatest in the world by the next century. It would have given us instead two second rate operations with little separate leverage, power, and clout in a growing world. To let the Union divide would be to emasculate America, water down its power and influence across the board. To be a great nation the Union had to be a union, a single hegemony, a single powerful whole, unified economically and in every way across the board, not an entity split in two.

His America was not just a geographic whole, but an economic, cultural, and social whole, inextricably linked and interdependent in so many ways. We simply could not afford to balkanize and diminish the muscle of this young republic by splitting into two separate nations going their own way. It simply would not do. As divided nations, both would be worse off. It was a sad truth that the South either did not see in its resolve to save slavery and the Southern way of life, or did not want to see.

Lincoln saw it, and despite what it would cost in lives, had to do what he eventually succeeded in doing--holding the entire enterprise together. Because he succeeded America become indeed the greatest power on earth.

Basking in Borrowed Glory

2009-02-22T10:55:00.003-06:00

Nobody is profiting more in this bicentennial of Lincoln's birth than historians. An army of Lincoln scholars is turning out biographies or studies of the great man from every conceivable hypothesis. It seems as if a new book a day is coming out. Over the years I have contributed to the flood myself, with two books of my own, and another now in the works. There is no end to it. It has been said he is the most written about man in history this side of Jesus.

Some wag--I have in mind it was Mark Twain, but I may be wrong about that--defined a biography, in effect, as a book about a great figure written by a lesser figure. But we can't help ourselves. To some degree the biographers, in Lincoln's case, are being lionized this year about as much as their subject. It hasn't hurt this cottage industry that Barack Obama has made Lincoln the pardigm guiding his own presidency. A book mentioned by the President has nearly as much impact on sales as one mentioned by Oprah. He can send it through the best seller ceiling.

Lincoln writers this year are being turned to on a regular basis for opinions about the great man, on TV, in the newspapers--everywhere. We are having a busy time of it. Just the other day I received an e-mail from a newspaper journalist in Slovakia wanting to know if I thought our history would have been different if Lincoln's hadn't been president.

Just so you won't be left out, since you probably don't live in Pravda where his newspaper is, I will tell you what I said:

Yes, I answered. Our history would indeed be different. if Lincoln had
not won the election of 1860 and become President, we might not have
had--very likely would not have had--a president with his vision and
dogged determination to save the Union and Republican government--and
to somehow end slavery, which for so long had bitterly divided the
country. Any other Republican or Democrat on the scene would have
perhaps caved in and let the South go, with all kinds of ramifications
for a different future for the country. We had a whole series of
presidents from Andrew Jackson to Lincoln, who could not handle the
situation. Without a Lincoln, with his combination of humanity,
ability, steel, and vision, we might have had another Taylor or Pierce
or Buchanan. And everything would have been different.

We saw what happened in the country after Lincoln was assassinated. If
Lincoln had lived, Reconstruction would have been handled a good deal
differently and our history because of it might have been different.
Lincoln was a man wholly without any sense of vengeance in his heart
against the South, unlike many of the Radicals in his party. He would
have tried to bring the South back into the Union on the basis of true
brotherhood and equality for Southerners and Northerners, white and
black, alike. And I believe, unlike Andrew Johnson, he had the
political smarts and skill to pull it off. It would not have been
easy. The Radicals in Congress were out for blood and did not have the
humanity Liincoln had. But Lincoln was perhaps the most astute
politician in American history. He would have dealt with the Radicals
and the South in a very even-handed and effective way. He would not
have been impeached as Johnson was. It would have an entirely
different ballgame had Lincoln lived.

Returning to the Blog Wars

2009-02-16T15:58:00.000-06:00

Returning to the Blog Wars

After a year of absolute non-blogging, after I had set myself up to faithfully write one in connection with my website, I am re-resolved to get back to it and attempt to annoy you with one on a semi regular basis.

Writing a blog after writing on a book all day, takes steely endurance, an iron constitution and liking to hear yourself talk. But everybody these days, it seems likes to hear themselves talk, whether they have endurance and an iron constitution or not. If you aren’t writing a blog in these times you can’t claim to be living.

The world’s population has turned into a bunch of talkers. Words and opinions are flying at a mind-blowing rate from every direction of the compass. It is letters to the editor spinning entirely out of control, man on the street opinion gone rampant.

History, as far as I know, has never seen anything like it. And I am not so certain it is a good thing. It may be so much overkill that historians trying to write a history of our times will be unable to get their arms around it all. The age of cable and satellite TV and computers has turned loose worldwide overkill in just about every aspect of our lives. Any event in history now is covered ad nauseam. Nothing happens now that is not shown and re-shown, diagnosed and re-diagnosed, analyzed and re-analyzed, and talked about to death. And no longer are we content to be talked to, we need also to talk at. Blogs have become the perfect tool for all of us.

So I am rejoining the outcry. Ambrose Bierce, that sardonic genius of devilish definitions, defined noise as “the chief product of civilization.” So I intend again to add my own noise to the general noise, enhancing the chief product--so as to be in fashion. And with everybody else I intend to be positive in my opinions, which Bierce also defined, as “being wrong at the top of your voice.”

Op-edding

2007-12-06T08:56:00.000-06:00

This posting does double duty. It originated as an op-ed piece on Lincoln for the esteemed History News Network on the web. You can't escape it. In case you avoid it there (requested by HNN's editor, it was just submitted today), duck, for here it is again.

Lincoln’s Political Sabbatical

When his one term in Congress ended in 1849, Abraham Lincoln was at a dead end in politics. His record in Congress was unexceptional, indeed counterproductive. He was in trouble at home in Illinois for his opposition to the U.S.-Mexican War. And he had been ill treated in the patronage game by the new Whig president Zachary Taylor, whom he had labored vigorously to help elect.

No longer seeing a place for himself either in national or Illinois politics, he returned full time to his law practice and to traveling the Eighth Judicial Circuit, where he found some solace. He basically believed then that his career in politics was over. And it hurt. He was an ambitious man and this perceived failure to make an enduring mark grieved him.

In an outburst of despair, he told his law partner, Billy Herndon, “How hard—oh, how more than hard—it is to die and leave one’s country no better for the life of him that lived and died her child!”

His reading of the newspapers of the day didn’t ease his despair. The lethal issue of slavery was tearing at the unity of the Union.
“The world is dead to hope,” he told Herndon, “deaf to its own death struggle made known by a universal cry. What is to be done? Is nothing to be done? Who can do anything and how can it be done? Did you ever think on these things?”

What Lincoln did not know then was that something could be done and would be done--by him. There began, unknown to anybody-- unknown to him--five years in which he would be preparing himself for future greatness.

For those five years, practicing law, traveling the circuit, Lincoln read intently and thought deeply. John Stuart, a former law partner and fellow lawyer on the circuit, remembers how evenings after court Lincoln would strip off his coat and lie down on the bed and read and reflect and digest what he was reading. After supper he would slip into his nightshirt, light a candle, draw up a chair or table, and read late into the night.

Lincoln boned the issue of Union-threatening slavery in the territories. He read widely in the newspapers, driving Billy Herndon nearly out of his mind by insisting on reading them aloud in the law office, so as to ”catch the idea by two senses”—simultaneously hearing and seeing it. That way Lincoln told Herndon, “I remember it better, if I do not understand it better.”

Lincoln also read the works of great writers. He carried Shakespeare on the circuit with him. He loved and read Robert Burns and could quote the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe. He was reputedly introduced to the powerful writing of the poet Walt Whitman. And to hone his power of reasoning he mastered the six books of Euclid. He was, perhaps unconsciously, honing his eloquence and his reasoning to razor sharpness.

By the end of this five years of political eclipse Lincoln probably had a better grip on the divisive issue of slavery than any man in the country, including his long time great Democratic rival, Senator Stephen A. Douglas. As Lincoln languished in the political shadows, Douglas’s brilliant star had soared. It was generally conceded that the stumpy “Little Giant,” whom Lincoln had known so well in Illinois, and had crossed his political sword with so often in the past, was destined for the presidency.

Douglas had been the chief architect of the Compromise of 1850, which had put a temporary lid on the simmering controversy over slavery in the territories. Douglas believed that the answer, the cure-all, to slavery agitation in America was “popular sovereignty”--letting every territory decide for itself whether it would enter the Union a free state or a slave state. Douglas claimed not to care if slavery was voted up or voted down, as long as the decision accurately mirrored the will of the people of the territory.

Lincoln’s five years of reading and his lifetime of thinking slavery wrong, rebelled at this proposed solution to the problem. In his eyes Douglas’s “popular sovereignty” ignored the moral issue—the immorality of slavery--and therefore it was wrong, as slavery itself was wrong.

In 1854, to clear the way for the widespread implementation of his popular sovereignty solution in the territories, Douglas rammed through Congress—and strong armed President Franklin Pierce into signing--the Kansas-Nebraska Act. That act, which stirred outrage in the North, abolished the dividing line between North and South that had kept slavery from expanding into free territory since 1820. Under this new law, slavery would not continue to be contained in the South alone, but could expand into all the territories, North as well as South.

This, Lincoln believed, would never do. It must be vigorously resisted. When the law passed, all of Lincoln’s five years of silent preparation flowered. Armed by all the thinking and reading of those past five years, he stormed out of eclipse to meet Douglas and his popular sovereignty solution head on. He immediately became the Little Giant’s most eloquent, most devastatingly effective antagonist, and the weapon that all anti-Kansas-Nebraska men in Illinois, and eventually in the Union, would wield against him.

Lincoln dogged Douglas as he stumped for support of his new act in Illinois in 1854, speaking after Douglas spoke, refuting his pro-Kansas-Nebraska arguments on every possible platform. Newly joined to the newly formed Republican Party, Lincoln became the obvious choice to run against Douglas for his senate in Illinois in 1858. Together those two “giants” from Illinois waged the great debates over the slavery issue that immortalized them in American political history. Lincoln lost to Douglas in that campaign. But two years later, now an acknowledged political power in his own right, a man who could stand toe-to-toe to Douglas, it would be he, not Douglas, who would be elected president.

In his five years of political hibernation, when he believed himself dead in politics, Lincoln had, unwittingly perhaps, deeply prepared himself to play out his destiny—the man who had to do what had to be done.

The Gap Thing

2007-12-01T21:43:00.000-06:00

Luckily all of us today, living today, have more or less figured our times out. We have all been born into either this century or the last one, folded into modern times gradually, with a chance to gear up to what it is all about, acclimatize ourselves, and to exist in it.

But imagine how a 19th century person, or an 18th or 17th or 16th--or any other long past century you want to think of---would feel if suddenly jerked out of his or her time and plopped down in ours—in a horse and buggy in the middle of going home traffic on I-Something Or Other. Talk about terrifying.

And that would be just the start of traumatic disorientation. There are all of the other wonders of modern times waiting to flummox and amaze our time traveler—television with its hundreds of channels, computers, the world wide web, and all of the other unimaginables of the electronic age. I would think even something so commonplace as a refrigerator would give them chills in more ways than one. I imagine the likely emotion, until they were forced to stay and get used to it, would be, “how do I get the hell out of here?”

This would be true of any time traveler whipped from their century suddenly into some distant future one. But I doubt if the shock of change was ever as abrupt and disorienting as it would be now coming from any other past distant century suddenly into this one. The changes have just been so rapid, revolutionary, and astounding. And it is bound to get worse at the rate progress is progressing. The most far-fetched landscape of the most far-out science fiction depiction of the world or worlds of tomorrow may not be so far fetched as we now think they are.

Even though I have lived through much of the past century and into the early years of this one, I have a hard time adjusting to the speed of change. There are times I empathize with something Orlando said in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, that I am “not for the fashion of these times.”

Besides, there is the generational gap thing. It is a gap that is demonstrated no more vividly for me than in the comparative reflex action I have and somebody far younger than I has when confronted with the need for information. When I need to know something I don’t know—too often the case--my first impulse is to go to a library to get it. The first impulse of my many-years-junior is to get up on the internet and find it, while perhaps wondering what this “library” thing the old man is talking about has to do with information.

Oh, well, I can’t rightly feel superior about it all. The youngster will probably have the answer before I can get into the car and to the library. Such are the times we live in.

History & Herstory

2007-11-26T09:20:00.000-06:00

I have been on the road for a couple of weeks, hence the long hiatus between blog posts. Being on the road happens to you when you write a book. You have to leave home for one reason or another having to do with the baby you have just birthed. And out on the road I was thinking a good deal about history, the thing I allegedly write about.

Some time ago I figured out that there are basically two kinds of history—studies and stories. Studies are what serious historians with academic credentials tend to write—deep-thought stuff dripping with perspective and interpretation. Stories are what some of them also--and the rest of us--write, and they are called narratives. Narrative history also has perspective and interpretation folded in, but its main function is to tell a story. And believe me, history is, above everything else, a great story, a dramatic story. Put yourself down anywhere, anytime, in the past and something worth writiing about is going on. Somebody is doing something fascinating and probably doing it to somebody else.

Many great minds over the centuries have taken a turn at defining history. Henry Ford, the Model-T man, called history “bunk.” (He later said he didn’t say it quite that way, or that he had been misquoted – a distinct possibility.)

Voltaire, the great French philosopher and author, evidently thought seriously about history, for he called it “a pack of tricks we played upon the dead,” and “just fables that have been agreed upon.” He also called us historians “gossips who tease the dead.” A number of other thinkers have also called history gossip. “Merely gossip,” growled Oscar Wilde, the British iconoclastic playwright; “Broad-guage gossip,” grumped Ambrose Bierce, the equally iconoclastic and eccdentric American journalist-short story writer.

Guy de Maupassant, another Frenchman, called history “that excitable and unreliable old lady.” Henry Steele Commager, the fine American historian, called it “a jangle of accidents, blunders, surprises, and absurdities.”

An anonymous source has tried to set us all straight on the subject by reminding us that “history is herstory, too.”

But of all the definitions of history that I have heard, I like best what Winston Churchill, a great everything, said about it: “History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days.”

Churchill’s words constitute my marching orders. What I try to do is what he said: stumble along the trail of the past with my flickering lamp, striving to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and to rekindle its passion--with my regrettably too pale gleams.

I also try to do what Frank Buck said: “Bring ‘em back alive.” Bring ‘em (all those great characters of the past) back to life--so I can meet ‘em again and introduce ‘em to you.

Have Pen, Will Sign

2007-11-05T08:49:00.000-06:00

When you write a book you lay yourself open to its handmaiden, book signings. In a dozen years of writing books I have suffered through, enjoyed, loved, hated, bounded through, stumbled through, signed and missigned books at any number and variety of bookstores in all parts of the country. I have signed anywhere from zero books to scores of them in one signing. I have signed them in Barnes and Nobles and Borders, and in the most unknown, struggling, and dusty bookstores in America. They are a trial and they are a joy. The joy is in the fact you meet a lot of nice bookstore people and on a good afternoon or evening actually sign a lot of books. The trial is when bookstore patrons stream past your desk, stare absently at you and your book, and nobody ever buys one.

In a big bookstore in Louisville one afternoon I signed upward of 45 books--a great day. The community relations person--what they call the always helpful bookstore employees who coordinate signings--thought so too.

"This has been a great signing," he said.

And I said, "What would you consider a really, really great signing," I asked.

"Well, he said, somewhat sheepishly, "recently we had Winona Judd in here with her book and 1,100 people showed up."

Jimmy Carter showed up In Dallas recently with his book of poetry and about 2,000 got in line. It makes me think that to get a really, really good turnout you need to be an ex-president, be famous or notorious, serve a term in prison before writing your book, be on TV regularly, or have Oprah endorse what you have written. It might also help if you wrote a bodice-ripper instead of a work of history.

At any rate, I have started doing signings for ONE MAN GREAT ENOUGH. The most successful one so far was at my high school reunion in Tucson, Arizona, two weekends ago. Since they knew me there somewhat and wondered how I ever managed to write a book, I sold out. I have had two other signings since, an evening in the Barnes & Noble on University Avenue in Fort Worth, Texas, where I didn't sell out but had a good time. They still have a pile of the books there, all pre-signed, if anybody is interested. And just this past weekend, November 3, I signed in the corner of a tent at the big Texas Book Festival. A few people managed to find us--I was signing with another Lincoln author, Orville Vernon Burton, who was there with his excellent book, THE AGE OF LINCOLN.

So it goes. In case anybody wants to know how I feel about it all, I say, "Have pen, will sign."

Getting Started

2007-10-26T12:23:00.000-05:00

The title of this blog--historyspeak--may be slightly misleading because it will not only be talk about the past, but talk about the present--anything that might come into my head about history or anything else that is out-of-date, current, or yet to come. But since I basically live in the 19th century--in the Civil War era--it is likely to be a thought or comment about something going on back then. I return to the 21st century on a regular basis only for sustenance, paying bills, and playing a set or two of tennis. My wife, Kathleen, is never sure on any given day exactly when or whether I will be back in time for dinner. It is always difficult to pry myself loose from my friends in the 19th century, since they are so interesting.

All of those friends back there are technically dead, but that is also misleadiing, for they are vividly alive to me. The reason--the only reason--I write history, is for the opportunity the make them live vividly for you as well. My goal is to try to write non-fiction and make it read like fiction. Don't ask me how that is done. Because I don't really know. As Somerset Maugham, the great Brirish novelist, reputedly said: "There are three basic rules to writing a novel--unfortunately nobody knows what they are."

At any rate, consider that whether we know what we are doing or not we are in this thing--past, present, or future--together. I will greatly appreciate visiting with you, in any or all three venues.