Communication Lessons According to Lincoln

Doris Kearns Goodwin provided all Civil War lovers with a wonderful book entitled Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.  As the title implies, Lincoln’s cabinet consisted of men who were running for president or were political rivals to Lincoln leading up to the 1860 presidential election.  I just learned that this book will become a movie (directed by Spielberg himself!).

As a pastor and preacher, I am always interested in how leaders communicate.  For us, it’s always a work in progress.  In reading this work, Goodwin relays the account of the beginnings of Lincoln’s rivalry with Stephen Douglas.  At the time, the issue of slavery was bringing the Union to a tipping point.  Western expansion of the United States brought the issue of whether to allow slavery into these new areas.  The newly passed Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and allowed those new territories to decide for themselves if they would be slave or free—a doctrine known as popular sovereignty.  Stephen Douglas was the main proponent of this doctrine.  At the time, Lincoln was merely against westward expansion of slavery—a view that would increasing evolve into one who believed in emancipation.  Nevertheless, Lincoln, a young newcomer to Illinois political scene stood toe-to-toe with the veteran Douglas at the Illinois State Fair in 1854, soon after the passing of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. 

In just a few short pages, Goodwin paints the picture of Lincoln’s communication skills, giving lessons to all of us who communicate. 

1. Preparation:  “Before speaking out against the Nebraska Act, Lincoln spent many hours in the State Library, studying present and past congressional debates so that he could reach back into the stream of American history and tell a clear, reasoned, and compelling tale.  He would express no opinion on anything, Herndon observed, until he knew his subject ‘inside and outside, upside and downside.’  Lincoln told Joshua Seed, ‘I am slow to learn and slow to forget that which I have learned.  My mind is like a piece of steel, very hard to scratch any thing on it and almost impossible after you get it there to rub it out” (164).
2. Conviction: “’He began in a slow and hesitating manner,’ Horace White noted.  Yet minutes into his speech, ‘it was evident that he had mastered his subject, that he knew what he was going to say, and that he knew he was right’” (165). 
3. Connection to their history.  “While Douglas simply asserted his points as self-evident, Lincoln embedded his argument in a narrative history, transporting his listeners back to their roots as a people, to the founding of the nation—a story that still retained its power to arouse strong emotion and thoughtful attention” (165). “In order to make his argument, Lincoln decided to begin with nothing less that an account of our common history, the powerful narrative of how slavery grew with our country, how its growth and expansion had been carefully contained by the founding fathers, and how on this fall night in 1854 the great story they were being told—the story of the Union—had come to such an impasse that the exemplary meaning, indeed, the continued existence of the story hung in the balance” (166). 
4. Clarity.  “Many of his arguments were familiar to those who had followed the Senate debate and had read Chase’s ‘Appeal’; but the structure of the speech was so ‘clear and logical,’ the Illinois Daily Journal observed, the arrangement of the facts so ‘methodical,’ that the overall effect was strikingly original and ‘most effective’ (165). 
5. Ordinary language.  “Instead of the ornate language so familiar to men like Webster, Lincoln used irony and humor, laced with workaday, homespun images to build an eloquent tower of logic.  The proslavery argument that a vote for the Wilmot Proviso threatened the stability of the entire Union was reduced to absurdity by analogy—'because I may have refused to build an addition to my house, I thereby have decided to destroy the existing house!’  Such flashes of figurative language were always available to Lincoln to drive home a point, gracefully educating while entertaining—in a word, communicating an enormously complicated issue with wit, simplicity, and a massive power of moral persuasion” (166). 

Book Review: “Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln’s Legacy” by David O. Stewart

David O. Stewart, “Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln’s Legacy” (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009).  464 pages.  $27.00 Hardcover.  $11.99 Kindle.  
As a Civil War buff, I find myself increasingly drawn to the dynamics of the American South.  The 19th century brought about a crisis of mammoth proportions, splitting our country in two long before the firing on Fort Sumter in 1861.  Everything came to a head on slavery.  While some abhorred the institution, many were more concerned about the spread of it into the newly acquired western territories.  Compromise and after compromise was set in place, but the election of Lincoln tore the North from the South and began a series of Southern states seceding from the Union.  Lincoln was elected without carrying a single southern state.  In their mind, if the country could do this without them, then let them go and have their independence. 

Lincoln fought to save the Union and soon realized the political and practical need of freeing the slaves.  This galvanized the North, bringing Lincoln back for a second term in 1864—and all but sealing the fate of the short-lived Confederate States of America.  In Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, he ends with a paragraph laced with healing and reunion:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Ten days later, the assassin’s bullet from the gun of John Wilkes Booth took the country on a different turn.  Enter Andrew Johnson.

Andrew Johnson, who stayed with the Union and served from 1862-1865 as the War Governor of Tennessee was picked by Lincoln from a Southern state in order to work toward reunion.  As I blogged about at my preaching blog, Johnson’s first speech in Washington as the Vice President was inauspicious and disgraceful. 

David O. Stewart’s book, as the title shows, is about the events that led up to the first trial of a sitting American president (impeachment).  Johnson was a stubborn man who held grudges and clearly favored a states rights’ philosophy of government, which he believed Southern governments should be restored without interference from the federal government.  A racist, believing that the United States should be run by a “white man’s government,” he did not move forward with prosecution of the murder and horrors committed against the four million now-free blacks in the South.  The Ku Klux Klan began to take over whole counties, making no freed black or Unionist safe.  Whenever the federal generals who oversaw the various sectors of the South to make sure the governments established were loyal to the Union, Johnson resisted them.
As the book will show, Johnson’s greatest political foe (and the greatest American hero at the time) was a man by the name of Ulysses S Grant, the winning general in the Civil War!  Johnson felt grant was a rube, Grant distrusted Johnson and loathed his policies in the South.

This book shows one of the great low points in American history, some say even lower than the Civil War itself.  You will learn about Radical Republicans like Thaddeus Stevens, U.S. Representative from Pennsylvania, who not only sought the freedom of blacks, but sought to give them the right to vote—unlike most in the North and South who did not believe that blacks in that time were equal to whites, even those who sought their freedom. 

You’ll learn about War Secretary Edwin Stanton, a holdover from the Lincoln Administration whom Johnson detested and sought to replace, violating the Constitution’s Tenure of Office Act—thus bringing a showdown of Stanton barricading himself in the War Secretary’s office for weeks. 

Stewart does a masterful job of showing diligent research as well as bringing a novel-style of writing that moves the story along.  It shows so much of what goes on behind the scenes and the disturbing on-goings, compromises, bribes, and politics that come into play in the workings of our government.  A great read.  Highly recommended!

Watch David O. Stewart discuss briefly his book.

Bruce Kuklick, who teaches American history at the University of Pennsylvania, gives a great review in the Washington Post (2009).

How the Civil War Still Impacts American Life

James I. Robertson, Jr, history professor at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA, has an interesting lecture (yes, it’s an interesting history lecture) on how the Civil War still impacts our lives in ways that we often take for granted.  Originally aired on the Research Channel, this lasts almost 26 minutes, but it’s well worth your time.  Enjoy!

Book Review: “Christ in the Camp: The True Story of the Great Revival During the War Between the States” by J. William Jones

In a visit to Washington and Lee University, I had the pleasure of visiting the Robert E. Lee Chapel and Museum.  In their bookstore, I happened upon the book Christ in the Camp: The True Story of the Great Revival During the War Between the States by J. William Jones (Sprinkle Publications).  Jones was a chaplain in the Army of Northern Virginia, led by Confederate General Robert E. Lee.  In this, Jones seeks to show the world (as the subtitle shows) the movement of revival in the Confederate armies through the arduous work of the Confederate army chaplains with their preaching and tract distribution.

In the process, Jones gives extended sketches on the Christian generals who led the Confederate army, such as Robert E. Lee, Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, J.E.B. Stuart among others—men who provided great access and liberty and encouragement to these chaplains and their efforts.  Included also are stories of great valor of Christian men such as Richard Kirkland who, as a recently converted Confederate soldier, raised the white flag to take water out to the wounded Union and Confederate soldiers who lay on the battlefield and provided each with a drink of water.  The move brought a cease fire from both sides, and left Kirkland with the name “The Angel of Marye’s Heights” (you may read about him here). 

Some reading this may wonder how such a revival could have taken place amongst the Confederate armies, since the Confederacy was a slave-based economy.  Some may ask, “How could there be a move of the Spirit of God among a people who enslaved others based on their race?”  A number of factors could be at play.

1. The cultural standards of the day played too great a factor in how Christians viewed the world, and thus a revival was needed in order to open their eyes to this scourge.  It should cause all of us to evaluate the institutions and mindsets we take for granted as part of our culture, but should never be a part of someone who names the name of Christ. 
2. Not everyone in the Confederacy was for the institution of slavery, just as not everyone in the Union was for the abolition of slavery.  In the decades after the Civil War, we see that the predominate view of both North and South was that the black man was inferior to the white (see the campaign slogan of Gov. Horatio Seymour (D-NY) who ran against Ulysses S. Grant in 1868, who had the campaign slogan, “This is a White Man’s Country: Let the White Man Rule.”)  This was the reigning view of many, who worried about the policies of Reconstruction and the violence that occurred in the South during this time.  Lee and Jackson were against slavery (although Jackson did own five slaves whom he taught to read and write, something that was bordering on illegal in that time).

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, even though the author is clearly pro-Confederate and pro-Lost Cause—which may be off-putting to some.  This author does not deal with the problematic issue of slavery.  He sticks to the chaplain’s work of preaching and tract distribution and the fruits therein. 

Book Review: “Upon the Altar of the Nation” by Harry S. Stout

Numerous books address the central characters of the Civil War as well as the tactical maneuvers of the battles.  Books on Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and countless others along with the battles (Gettysburg, Antietam, Fredericksburg, etc.) abound—but few address the morality of the war itself.  Whereas Mark Noll deals with the war’s theological crises from various religious sects, Harry S. Stout’s “Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War” (Penguin Books, 2006, $18.00) deals with one particular theological issues: was the Civil War a just war? 

He goes through the entire history of the Civil War, both politically, militarily, morally, and religiously.  He examines the rhetoric from both sides who invoked God’s name as One who was favorable to their cause.  Victories were seen as God’s favor, losses were seen as disobedience to the divine cause to which God called them. 

Most interesting (at least in the mind of this reviewer) were the messages resounding from the pulpits.  At the beginning of the war, the spiritual and the political were distinctly separate (for the most part).  As the war went on, the cause of the Union and the Confederacy melded into one with the spiritual—and, as Stout contends (and rightly so), a new civil type of religion was born.  Patriotism and the spiritual were one.  To be a good Christian was to be a good American—and vice versa.

Stout asks throughout the book the question few asked during the war: is this a moral war?  When the War began, the “West Point Code” prevailed—leave citizens and their property be and only go after the opposing troops in the field.  As the war wore on, the citizenry were seen more as the enemy, enabling the troops and being fair game.  This is why William Tecumseh Sherman’s burning of Atlanta and the March from Atlanta to Savannah in 1864 completely changed how succeeding armies engaged in warfare.  The “West Point Code” gave way to total war.  Warfare went from defeating armies to demoralizing and breaking the will of the people. 

The Civil War is the defining moment in American history that established our identity.  It settled all the loose ends left by the Founding Fathers.  Some of the answers may have been satisfactory, others not so much.  But Stout rightly reminds us never to assume that just because it’s our cause, it’s a just one.  If one invokes God’s name believing their cause just, one must beware of projecting their passions and convictions upon God, believing He approves. 

I highly recommend this work.