Monday, February 11, 2008 11:08 PM CST
COLUMN: The bloody drift's bill was paid in the blood of Sphinx-like Lincoln
By HARRY REYNOLDS, Editorial page editor
hreynolds@jg-tc.com
The war came, tearing families asunder, ripping hearts and bodies and minds. It put men to rotting in slender graves. Many, gone unburied in the wake of battles, waited.
The war came and it took pride, dignity and hope. The war came and in the end, it claimed a complex, often haunted creature. The war as much as the bullet, killed Abraham Lincoln.
The bloody drift’s bill paid.
Lincoln’s mind flashed dark in Ford’s theater to the applause of a bullet — his body, hauled to and sprawled on a short bed, took longer. A worn-out, gaunt man long with death on his face.
Tad’s screams in Grover’s Theater, no greater nor sadder song.
Lincoln lay dead, his ship to a distant shore; Walt Whitman’s lilacs, in bloom mocking death.
The bullet brought myth and myth’s legions. Those who knew Lincoln, knew little of him. The treasure behind those compelling eyes, yet discovered.
They paraded him from Washington to Springfield. To the cadence of the wind, Gen. Joseph Hooker, led the commander in chief on the march to the cemetery outside Springfield.
In a fitful slumber, rudely interrupted in 1876 when machination foiled the presidential election and put Rutherford B. Hayes in the White House, they came for Lincoln, but were foiled by nerve..
A plot of ridiculous proportion, nearly equaling Edwin Booth’s consideration of kidnapping the powerful 6-foot-4 president. The man of wit and awkward grace would have found humor in this comedy.
He would have found humor and a “That reminds me of...” had he, like a hovering ghost, witnessed ensuing efforts of friends to hide his body. A shell game only ended when the mausoleum stood granite tall.
The final move mandated a final look. A workman cut a rectangle in the coffin, the assemblage gazed on the leathery face.
A boy arrived at the scene in time to take a look. He took it through his long life, dispensing the memory.
Down deep, the 16th president sleeps, framed by a metal cage, encased in concrete, there is little fear he’ll disappear. He’d slap his knees, stomp his feet at this joke, caught in the light transcending the sad mask.
As president, Lincoln found refuge in the telegraph office. There, seated on a stool, he would hone speeches, declarations, filing his musing in the drawer.
He would be there to receive dispatches from the battlefields of disasters and victories. Reports that wrought pain, or satisfaction. Sometimes, they were twins.
Lincoln had a strong man in his secretary of war, a singular man of high anxiety and emotion. A man of delicate health and iron will, Edwin M. Stanton could be cruel, and kind, in measure.
Stanton frequently quarreled with his boss, winning minor skirmishes. In the lidded, intelligent eyes, in the president’s tone, disagreement on major issues were settled.
It is doubtful, Stanton, blind to humor was aware of the pleasure Lincoln derived from the feared secretary of state’s tantrums. Still, Lincoln respected few men more.
More than once did Stanton throw a man in jail out of pique. He had no mercy when it came to military executions, willing to send a young man to his grave for sleeping on duty, or fleeing the field.
Lincoln saved many of the wretches; grasping for excuses, he put pen to stay. And yet, he could be cold-hearted, sending a slaver to the hangman.
A century, decades, years, months, days, minutes and seconds — Lincoln and the war receding. The real man got lost in the mist. He emerged as myth, a figure shrouded, a face unseen.
Widespread outrage greeted publication of a book by Lincoln’s Springfield law partner, Billy Herndon. Herndon was a man with weakness for drink and weakness for causes. As mayor of Springfield — and reformed alcoholic — he embraced temperance.
Herndon, author of a “Herndon’s Lincoln,” published in the 1880s, ushered in the great debate over Ann Rutledge. Herndon, gathering most of his information from friends, relatives and those versed in rumor — all much advanced in age — asserted Ruthledge was the great love of Lincoln’s life.
Rutledge died young. She haunted Lincoln until he died, Herndon hinted. The poet, historian, journalist Carl Sandburg, who wrote of the Civil War — and wrote well — took up Herndon’s baton.
Until recently, historians dismissed the Herndon and Sandburg accounts. Understandable. While the dispute is tipping toward Rutledge-Lincoln, the larger point may be the fact Herndon — though not a trained historian — contributed immeasurably.
Herndon, one of the first to separate myth from the man, died in poverty, a failed farmer, a drunk.
His legacy his book.
As mysterious as the Sphinx, Lincoln. The measure of the man will remain in his deeds. That’s all we can reasonably expect.
But, then a puzzle once solved is soon set aside. As long as Lincoln remains a puzzle we won’t forget him.
We still mourn Lincoln. It wasn’t fair — the bullet in Ford’s theater.
Sacrifice never is.
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kilroyscarnival wrote on Feb 18, 2008 3:35 PM:
Ann Carrigan
Jacksonville, Florida "