Lincoln and the Myths of History, Part II

Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.

--Karl Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)

In “Abraham Lincoln and the Self-Made Myth,” historian Richard Hofstadter raises important questions about the myths that Lincoln and those around him—as well as those who opposed him—told themselves to justify their actions. This essay also raises an interesting point about the role of the historian (and history, for that matter), in peeling away the layers of the myths that we frequently tell ourselves.

1. Lincoln as Politician—In our culture today, to call someone a “politician” is akin to using a strong epitaph; the word is used to impugn someone’s reputation. For Lincoln, however, it was a badge of honor, and a position he sought only seven months into his residency in New Salem. Lincoln remained a politician most of his adult life, except for his “years in the wilderness,” between 1848 and 1854, when he held no office for ran a campaign.

2. Lincoln the Partisan—Lincoln was not only a politician, but he was a partisan politician. He held political views in large part because they were popular with voters that he was courting. Lincoln was largely what we would today call a “realist.” This was particularly true on the issue of slavery. Privately, Lincoln supported the ending of slavery, calling it “evil.” Publicly, and politically, he opposed its extension—and, significantly, not its abolition—into those areas of the country where it was not already present.

3. Lincoln and the Rule of Law—Lincoln the lawyer supported the rule of law; that is to say, he supported laws even when he found them personally reprehensible. The most significant instance of this was his view on the Fugitive Slave Law, which Lincoln again privately found distasteful, particularly because it offered no safeguards for free blacks in the north, but which he refused to speak out on as long as it remained the law of the land.

Lincoln also held onto myths from his earlier life about the ability of the “common man” to rise above his station in life by the dint of his own abilities and hard work. This is an enduring myth, one that many Americans still believe in (and which helps to explain in part the belief that starting a small business is a key to economic prosperity).

1. Lincoln and the Labor Theory of Value—Lincoln argued for the economic position most associated with Karl Marx—the Labor Theory of Value; that is, a commodity only gained value from the labor used to produce it, and the right to regain that value belonged first and foremost to the worker whose labor gave that commodity its value. This was not as radical an idea as it has become to be seen after the rise of Marxism, and was in fact held by a good many people before the turn of the century.

a. This theory retained currency in the 19th century because in many regions in the United States, and particularly in the Northwest where Lincoln spent much of his life, workers were not yet separated from the tools of their trade, and still largely controlled their output and the sale of the goods that they produced—their labor had not year become “alienated,” to use another Marxist term.

b. Lincoln argued that the role of government was to ensure that the “common man” was provided a fair opportunity to rise to his appropriate station, according to his abilities. Lincoln failed to realize that the economic changes the country was going through—particularly industrialization, a development that was sped along as the need to produce war material became greater.

2. The Value of “Free Labor”—free labor during this time period was, by definition, the labor of white men. Most advocates of this “free labor” ideology believed that free labor would be undermined if it had to compete against slave labor, which was by definition that labor done by African Americans. Therefore, many proponents of free labor not only opposed the extension of slavery, but the settlement of African Americans in those areas that supported free labor.

a. The “Black Codes” of the Old Northwest”—several of the states created from the Northwest Territory quickly passed laws after becoming states that prohibited African Americans from permanently settling in there. These laws quickly became ignored, and African Americans settled throughout the territories in small numbers.

b. Several of these states also passed laws that prevented free blacks from voting in elections, and restricted other citizenship rights.

Lincoln during his adult life sought to “make his mark” in the world, and this, it has been argued, drove his ambition; it can also be argued that Lincoln succeeded in this ambition beyond his wildest dreams