Abraham Lincoln and the Self-Made Myth

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"Slavery," Fitzhugh predicted, "will everywhere be abolished, or everywhere be reinstituted."†

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But few have been able to point to such a sudden ascent from relative obscurity to high eminence; none has maintained so completely while scaling the heights the aspect of extreme simplicity; and none has combined with the attainment of success and power such122 an intense awareness of humanity and moral responsibility.†

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...1840—re-elected; 1838 and 1840—chosen by his party as its candidate for Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives, but not elected; 1840 and 1844—placed on Harrison and Clay electoral tickets "and spent much time and labor in both those canvasses"; 1846—elected to Congress; 1848—campaign workers for Zachary Taylor, speaking in Maryland and Massachusetts, and "canvassing quite fully his own district in Illinois, which was followed by a majority in the district of over 1500 for...†

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But its context is significant; the statement was neither a preface to an attack upon private property nor an argument for redistributing the world's goods—it'was part of a firm defense of the protective tariff!†

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For Lincoln the vital test of a democracy was economic—its ability to provide opportunities for social ascent to those born in its lower ranks.†

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Lincoln's connection with such a tribe could only spur his loyalty to the democratic ways in which he had been brought up; he never did "belong," and Mary Todd's attitude toward him as a social creature was always disdainful.†

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This realistic bit of statecraft provides no reason for disparaging Lincoln, certainly not by those who hold thatit was his legal and moral duty to defend the integrity of the Union by the most effective means at his command.†

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The supporters of this doctrine vote for Buchanan.†

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District slaveholders who wanted to emancipate their slaves were to be compensated from the federal Treasury.†

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Keenly aware of his role as the exemplar of the self-made man, he played the part with an intense and poignant consistency that give his performance the quality of a high art.

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Despite the gross note of calculation at the end (one rescues 432,000 human beings from slavery and it turns out to be a saving of expense), the proposal was a reasonable and statesmanlike one, and it is incredible that the intransigence of all but one of the states involved should have consigned it to defeat.

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His ambitions were directed toward public life; he had no legal aspirations, lucrative though his practice was.†

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Here is a drama in which a great man shoulders the torment and moral burdens of a blimdering and sinful people, suffers for them, and redeems them with hallowed Christian virtues—"malice toward none and charity for all"—and is destroyed at the pitch of his success.†

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Most of the white people of the Northwest, moreover, were in fact not only not abolitionists, but actually—and here is the core of the matter—Negrophobes.†

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Before Lincoln took office the issues upon which he was elected had become obsolete.†

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It expressly omitted the loyal slave states from its terms.†