Laughter, Lore and Language of the Lincoln Presidency

Next Friday being Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, it seems appropriate to recall some of the Great Emancipator’s wit and style.

Bill Clinton is refreshing in his candor and simplicity, but for sheer wit he is no match for Old Abe, nor has any other President ever been.

Lincoln was so inclined to tell jokes to illuminate a predicament that many of his enemies hated him for it. No President was ever more vilified. He was called an ape, a baboon, a clown, a traitor, a tyrant, a monster, an idiot, a eunuch, a bigot, a demagogue, a lunatic, a despot, a blunderer, a charlatan and a bully. The press was much more malignant in those days than it is today.

Lincoln’s own favorite story was about two Quaker ladies arguing over whether Lincoln or Jefferson Davis would prevail. One said Davis would win because “Jefferson is a praying man.” “And so is Abraham a praying man,” said the other. “Yes,” said the first, “but the Lord will think Abraham is joking.”

Perhaps the most famous Lincoln story concerns a temperance group’s demand that Lincoln fire Gen. U.S. Grant because Grant drank too much. To which Lincoln is said to have responded: “I wish some of you would tell me the brand of whiskey Grant drinks. I would like to send a barrel of it to some of my other generals.”

Lincoln denied making the remark but said it was a good story, and traced it back to George II’s answer when told that Gen. Wolfe was mad: “I wish he’d bite some of the others.”

I am indebted for much Lincoln lore to Ralph Richardson, former member of the Board of Education, who taught an honors seminar for many years at UCLA, and now occasionally lectures on Lincoln. Richardson holds that no other President, even Thomas Jefferson, had Lincoln’s way with words.

Richardson tells a story, perhaps apocryphal, that I hadn’t heard. Walking in the woods one day, Lincoln met a young woman and said, “You are a very beautiful lady.” In turn, she said, “You are the ugliest man I’ve ever seen.” To which Lincoln replied, “That may be so, but you could have lied, as I did.”

Another version is that Lincoln replied that he couldn’t help being ugly, to which the young woman said, “You might stay at home where you wouldn’t be seen.”

Richardson says Lincoln’s mastery was the result of a lifelong love of language and words. As an example of Lincoln’s powerful simplicity, he quotes from a letter Lincoln wrote to a shiftless step-brother who wanted to sell his inherited land and move to Missouri.

He wrote: “I think such a notion is utterly foolish. What can you do in Missouri better than here? Is the land any richer? Can you there, any more than here, raise corn and wheat without work? Will anybody there, any more than here, do your work for you? If you intend to go to work, there is no better place than where you are. If you do not intend to go to work, you cannot get along anywhere.”

Lincoln often used that blunt style to prod his lagging generals. When Gen. McClellan declined to pursue the enemy, Lincoln wrote: “Dear General: If you do not want to use the army I would like to borrow it for a few days.” Irritated by Lincoln’s demand for detailed reports from the front, McClellan wired Lincoln: “We have just captured six cows. What shall we do with them?” Lincoln wired back: “Milk them.”

Some argue that Lincoln was not against slavery before the war; that he only wanted to preserve the union. Richardson quotes a letter written to a friend six years before the war: “You ask where I now stand . . . I am not a Know Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? Can one who abhors the oppression of Negroes be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it, ‘all men are created equal, except Negroes.’ When the Know Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal except Negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.’ ”

Richardson quotes “the moment of grandeur” that was the Gettysburg Address, noting that there were no camcorders in Lincoln’s day to preserve for us the way he looked and sounded as he dedicated the battlefield cemetery in those few words of matchless eloquence, ending with “that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the Earth.”

Another story reflects the power and responsibility of the presidency. To a question before his cabinet, Lincoln voted “aye” and his six cabinet members voted “nay.” The President then pronounced the result:

“Nays, six. Ayes, one. The ayes have it.”

Now there was a President.