The political pro who became the GOAT
Lincoln scholar Matthew Pinsker recently told the Guardian newspaper that the 16th president was, “arguably,” the “greatest democratic politician in the history of the world,” and “all of us would appreciate having a few more Lincolns in politics today.”
Amen to that, brother Pinsker, who teaches Lincoln and other historical topics at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., and is the author, most recently, of “Boss Lincoln,” an inquiry into the great man’s politics, both prior to and during the Civil War.
Presumably, most Americans are familiar with Lincoln’s politics writ large: He hated slavery and loved democracy. To see slavery ended and American democracy preserved and extended, he willingly waged a bloody, four-year long Civil War, destructive of hundreds of thousands of young lives and economically ruinous to the loser of the war, the South.
According to Pinsker, Abraham Lincoln the politician roamed far and wide across the political landscape. He was particularly adept at party management and party building. He was the sort of public figure Americans presumably dislike most: a professional, life-long pol.
The historian Allan Nevins recounts the encounter between New York politico Thurlow Weed and the brother of Mexican War general Zachary Taylor. Joseph Taylor told Weed that old Zach had certain prejudices: he admired Henry Clay, hated Andrew Jackson, and was so partial to American manufacturing that he refused to wear suits and shoes cobbled together overseas.
Why, those aren’t prejudices, Weed replied, those are principles that will assure Taylor’s election to the White House, which is exactly what happened in 1848, with an able assist from the then young congressman and ardent Whig, Lincoln.
As Pinsker details, by embracing Taylor, Lincoln discarded Whig founder Clay, whom he considered unelectable. Lincoln explained to an associate that the “nomination of Old Rough” would produce an “overwhelming glorious triumph” at the polls.
Some fellow Whigs were appalled by the abandonment of the principled Clay for Taylor. Not Lincoln, who noted with approval the broad coalition assembled on Taylor’s behalf, including anti-slavery Democrats, anti-immigrant (Know Nothing) Protestants in addition to jobbers, Barnburners, locofocos, “a cynical combination of men,” in Pinsker’s wording.
Lincoln reveled in party affairs. In 1840, he said, “Our intention is to organize the whole state” of Illinois, “so that every Whig can be brought to the polls….”
At Mary Lincoln’s urging, the family made a vacation stop at Niagara Falls in 1848, but only at the tail end of an arduous political speaking tour by her husband.
At one point, congressman Lincoln left his wife and children in a sweltering Washington, D.C., boarding room while he sat in a stuffy Capitol office signing thousands of political messages to campaign operatives across the country.
By the time he reached the White House in 1861, Lincoln was a practiced political chieftain. As the Civil War progressed, he put these skills at the service of two overarching principles – freedom for the slaves and the preservation of the Union.
According to Pinsker’s Lincoln, America was defined by hard-fought partisan elections.
Always historically relevant, Lincoln’s influence is on display today in the attempt by the Trump administration to end birthright citizenship for the children of parents in the country illegally. Wrote Pinsker on Substack, “Abraham Lincoln did more than support birthright citizenship. His administration was the one that helped start the process of enshrining the doctrine into the modern Constitution.”
In 1862, Attorney General Edward Bates issued a 32-page opinion on the subject, an answer to the court’s 1857 Dred Scott decision, which barred Black citizenship. Bates took the contrary view.
Thanks to legal scholar Amanda Frost, Pinsker imparts that one of two attorneys who argued before the court in 1897 on behalf of the citizenship of Wong Kim Ark, an American-born son of Chinese immigrant parents, was Hubley Ashton, who had been Bates’ assistant in the Lincoln administration.
Ashton and his partner, attorney Maxwell Evarts, won the case for Ark. The court voted 6-2 in favor of birthright citizenship.
Is it possible that thoughts of Lincoln crossed Trump’s mind when he visited the court on Wednesday to hear arguments in the case his administration tripped off? Highly unlikely? For sure.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.