One of the more auspicious anniversaries in American politics will take place this November when we mark the 150th year since the election of probably the nation’s greatest president, Abraham Lincoln.
If you want to make the case for George Washington or Franklin D. Roosevelt as greatest president, you’ll be in the company of many a noted historian (if you want to make the case for Ronald Reagan, conversely, you’ll be in the company of many an AM radio personality). But the more I read and learn about Lincoln, the more I am convinced that the nation would not exist in its present form were it not for his stewardship during our most fragile chapter, the Civil War.
Lincoln was widely reviled during his presidency — sometimes from within his own Cabinet, which included all of his chief opponents for the 1860 presidential nomination. He was able, at times, to hear the nearby battles between North and South from the Capitol, and saw the dead and injured carried into town. He was frustrated — until the installation of Ulysses Grant as general-in-chief of the U.S. Army — by his military leaders’ seeming procrastination, and haunted by the human cost of the war.
And yet he maintained tremendous humanity and humility. He had great reserves of empathy and patience. He seemed to have been uninsultable, never allowing a slight or act of pettiness to elicit an in-kind response.
He was, in short, a remarkable man.
Hard to remember, now that Lincoln is an iconic pillar of history whose visage has been reproduced on Mt. Rushmore, U.S. currency and countless “Presidents’ Day Sales” circulars, but that first election was anything but a landslide. In fact, the Rail Splitter from Illinois didn’t even garner 40 percent of the popular vote. But with the Democratic Party split among several regional factions and three other candidates in the race (Southern Democrat John Breckinridge, Constitutional Union candidate John Bell and Democrat Stephen Douglas — with whom Lincoln parried in their now-famous debates two years earlier during the pair’s campaign for the U.S. Senate), Republican Lincoln carried enough electoral votes for victory.
Hard to remember, too, that had things gone as predicted 150 years and six months ago, we’d be celebrating this fall’s anniversary with hometown vigor here in western New York. Because the presumed Republican candidate in the spring of 1860 was William Seward of Auburn, Cayuga County.
