The Lincoln Trope

Mark Graber

Many American political and constitutional arguments have something close to the following structure. 1) The following political action/constitutional understanding is wise, benevolent, and prudent. 2) Abraham Lincoln must have favored that political action/constitutional understanding because Abraham Lincoln was a wise, benevolent, and prudent leader. 3) We ought to adopt that policy because Abraham Lincoln favored that policy. I take it that premise 1) does all the work in this argument and that 2) and 3) are just window dressing, accoutrements of American political rhetoric. Just as I teach my constitutional law students to cite BROWN in support of their arguments whenever possible and insist that their rivals are repeating whatever Taney did in DRED SCOTT, so strategic political actors in the United States will always invoke Abraham Lincoln in support of such claims as the president must have sole authority to control the war against terrorism, President Bush was wrong to invade Iraq, and the designated hitter rule is ruining baseball. Sometimes the social science/amateur historian in me says "big deal." As long as what we are really fighting about is premise 1) who really cares about ritual invocations of 2) and 3). Sometimes, I think we need better education. A good deal of Part III in the Dred Scott book details how, taking Abraham Lincoln too seriously as the politician who best articulated American constitutional aspirations, we fail to understand the antebellum constitutional order and our political regime in general. But let me play with a different problem, inspired by FEMA and Marty's post below.

Lincoln's administration had corruption and cronyism problems. In particular, the Secretary of War from 1861 to 1862, Simon Cameron, was both incompetent and on the take. Cameron's performance was hardly surprising. He was known as incompetent and corrupt. Lincoln appointed him as part of a bargain to obtain Pennsylvania votes in the 1860 Republican convention. Of course, because we all know Lincoln was a wise, benevolent, prudent, and honest leader, we never learn about or let slip from our consciousness the Cameron deal and all the other shenanigans that enabled Lincoln to wrest the nomination from William Seward at the 1860 convention (or insist that Lincoln knew nothing of them, but being "honest Abe" felt obligated to adhere to corrupt bargains made by others). Those who cannot avoid knowing about the 1860 Republican convention conclude that because Lincoln was a wise, benevolent, prudent, and honest leader, there is a wise, benevolent, prudent and honest justification of his behavior. Lincoln recognized that only he could defeat the Democrats in the 1860 election and so had to defeat the more radical Seward to prevent slavery from expanding. Personal ambition played little role in his decision to strike a corrupt bargain with Cameron. All morally decent, prudent politicians would do so. Or so the behavior of Lincoln and his supporters during the 1860 Republican convention is excused.

What reason exists for thinking this analysis sound? Given the popular fallout from the Lecompton fiasco, corruption in the Buchanan administration, and an economic recession in Pennsylvania, might a reasonable case be made that any prominent Republican would have won the 1860 election. Granted Lincoln was more moderate than Seward, but Seward was better known. Are we that confident that Lincoln was the stronger candidate to excuse his deal with Cameron. I suspect outside of, say 15 historians in the United States, no one who excuses Lincoln's behavior during the 1860 nomination convention really has a clue as to how Seward would have done, that the only reason they excuse Lincoln is their faith that Lincoln would never engage in such corrupt bargaining merely for personal ambition.

Recognizing that Lincoln probably did strike bargains merely for personal ambition might prove more instructive than excusing away all his suspicious acts. Seward and his political machine were never in danger of winning "Mr. Clean awards." Perhaps the lesson of 1860 is that all politicians, Lincoln, Seward, Bush, Clinton, whomever, make deals to gain office. That Lincoln made a number of deals demonstrates that we should not condemn politicians for making deals. Politics is the art of the possible even when practiced by politicians with good causes. Moreover, personal ambition in a politician is part of the job description. There is much truth to that. Still, not all deals are created equal. Just as we might criticize politicians for being unwilling to deal, we need standards for determining when a corrupt bargain has been made. The danger of the Lincoln myth is that the legitimacy of the Cameron bargain becomes axiomatic, so that any future bargain no worse than Cameron (or any future crony appointment no worse than Joshua Speed) is legitimate. Neither Abraham Lincoln nor George Bush should be judged by that standard. A great many persons died in the first years of the Civil War because of Cameron's corruption and incompetence. We will be in a better position to evaluate corruption and cronyism in the Bush Administration by recognizing that the Cameron deal was wrong and should not have been made.
Posted 7:55 AM by Mark Graber [link]