Trying to Get Right with Lincoln

Historian David Donald once wrote a delightful essay called "Getting Right with Lincoln." It told, among other things, how Presidents in trouble over the last hundred years discovered a remarkable kinship to our greatest President.

Herbert Hoover, for instance, in 1932 journeyed to Springfield, Ill. As if it were the dark days of 1864, Hoover borrowed Lincoln's words for the war and declared that victory over the Depression was just a matter of fighting it out on "this line" --if it took all summer. Franklin Roosevelt suggested that Lincoln was a father of the New Deal. Lyndon Johnson ran into Lincoln's sympathetic ghost stalking the White House every time L.B.J.'s popularity dropped in the Gallup poll.

Richard Nixon has raised "getting right with Lincoln" to new heights. Last week he went down to the Memorial on Lincoln's Birthday and drew the Lincoln mantle round his shoulders. "It is quite clear," said Nixon, "that no President in history has been more vilified or was more vilified during the time he was President than Lincoln ... Lincoln had that great strength of character never to display [hurt], always to stand tall and strong and firm no matter how harsh or unfair the criticism might be."

In case somebody did not get the point that Nixon was casting a Lincolnesque shadow, there has been a flurry of speeches and articles by Administration figures giving the impression more vividly.

In a speech before a "Support Our President" rally in Los Angeles, Commerce Secretary Frederick B. Dent ran down the vile names that Lincoln was called, pointed out how Nixon's enemies were abusing him, then said, "But all they do is shame America ... through it all, our President stands steadfast." Writing in the New York Times, Franklin R. Gannon, a presidential aide, drew even finer lines. "Even the casual reader wary of undue comparisons will be struck by some of the pertinent and poignant political similarities between Mr. Lincoln's presidency and President Nixon's current troubles." Then Gannon declared that Nixon, by his "resolute conduct so far," had already earned some of the words of praise given to Lincoln.

It is an ancient and honorable right of politicians to "raid the closet and steal the stovepipe hat," as Professor Donald puts it. But as he so often does in his moments of emotional oratory, Nixon seems to have gone beyond the bounds of fact and good taste. A sample of Lincoln scholars was appalled. "I'm outraged," said Donald. "I don't see a hell of a lot of parallel myself," said Historian Bruce Catton.

To start with, there is no solid measure that Lincoln was the most vilified President in our history. Richard Current, professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, thinks that Harry Truman might hold that prize. Some of the harshest material now printed about Lincoln came from private letters and obscure speeches before tiny radical audiences. Much of this had almost no public circulation at the time, although there were many widely read assaults on Lincoln from his moderate critics.

To the extent that anybody can measure public sentiment in those days, it appears that Lincoln had a majority of the Union with him during most of his presidency. The Republicans carried Congress in 1862, and Lincoln was re-elected by a solid majority in 1864.

More important, unlike the situation with Nixon, the general attacks on Lincoln were rarely if ever on his character. They were attacks on his policy and his decisions. "There were never any accusations that Lincoln was personally crooked or bad," says Catton. "And remember, the country was in a civil war. The Archangel Gabriel couldn't have avoided criticism in that time."

"Lincoln's critics did not accuse him of dishonesty or malfeasance," says Current. "Nobody asked, 'Would you buy a used horse from this man?' " "Nobody accused Lincoln of personal involvement in corruption," insists Donald, now teaching at Harvard. "The Nixon comparison is weak and erroneous. It is one thing to say that a man is foolish or misguided and another to say a man is breaking the law for his own use."

Nixon was right about one thing, though. The fellow who would object least to lending his stovepipe hat to a President would be A. Lincoln. Wherever he is, Lincoln is probably telling a funny story about all the new White House friends he has collected in the last hundred years or so.

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