Was Lincoln an Earlier Day Lyndon?

Some might think it was good timing to delay seeing the film "Lincoln" until the week of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. Actually, sheer inertia caused the geezer to wait so long. Once I dragged my body to the local theater and took in the show, the most surprising thing was I didn’t go sooner.

Did Honest Abe fib on occasion?

Another surprising thing was that the film drew large audiences during long runs.  The story line is not the kind of plot designed to lure hordes of paying customers by appealing to the baser human instincts, as Hollywood usually does. It was more of a serious history lesson than a light-weight entertainment.

For example, at one point Mr. Lincoln gave his cabinet a very basic and detailed lecture on the legal reasons the 13th Amendment to the Constitution needed to be passed by Congress, including the observation that his famous Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves in the southern states, may have been illegal. Usually, this sort of stuff would bore audiences into some serious nap time. I found it fascinating, and didn’t hear a single snore resonating in the theater.

In these days when the American public rates Congress just a notch or so above its fondness for root canals, there were striking similarities between the ways the film depicted Washington politicians and today’s perceptions of them. Descriptors such as “corrupt, deceitful, overly ambitions, and manipulative” might apply.

Lincoln certainly came across as a master manipulator, but he skillfully avoided the less complimentary labels by arranging for others to do the dirty work. In fact, the film showed him managing all sorts of unethical conduct without actually telling a blatant lie. “Honest Abe” at his best? It appeared that way even if the honesty was only skin deep at times.

Of course, we never can be sure about the historical accuracy of a Hollywood production. “Lincoln” shows President Lincoln cleverly and persistently overcoming dedicated opposition to ramrod passage of the 13^th Amendment through the Senate. Wikipedia, a fairly reliable source, says Mr. Lincoln “did nothing to help push through Congress the 13^th Amendment to the Constitution.”  One or the other is wrong.

Historically accurate or not, the film ultimately did a good job of re-posing an age-old philosophical question: Does the end justify the means?  In the end, Abraham Lincoln surely exerted a mighty influence on the abolition of slavery throughout the United States, no matter how he did it.

We are told that President Lyndon Johnson spent long hours in the 1960s on the phone twisting arms and making deals to gain passage of key civil rights legislation and “Great Society” social justice programs.  Might we assume some of his conduct could have been classified as “unethical”?

What do you think? Are questionable tactics OK if they help bring about great good?

Honest Abe's Madison Adventures

Abraham Lincoln seems to be popping up all over.

Steven Spielberg’s movie “Lincoln,” seven years in the making, is cleaning up at box offices in theaters across the land. Preparations are under way for a big 150^th anniversary celebration of The Great Emancipator’s Gettysburg Address, a bit of rhetoric we had to memorize in grade school. My local newspaper chimed in the other day with a full-page description of Abe’s 1856 visit to Kalamazoo, the only time he set foot in Michigan.

And the University of Wisconsin issued various news stories describing its relationship to the famous president.

UW band members ham it up with Abe

“Honest Abe” has been something special on the Madison campus since 1909, 100 years after Lincoln’s birth. To mark the anniversary, university officials unveiled a large statue on Bascom Hill of a sitting Lincoln. Today Abe still sits squarely in front of the old administration building atop the hill. Over the years, he has been subjected to numerous student pranks and the subject of several fanciful stories.

Many believe the UW statue is modeled on the more-famous seated Abe at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. Not so. It is a replica of a statue erected in Lincoln’s hometown of Hodgenville, KY. A Wisconsin alumnus bought the farm where Lincoln was born and commissioned creation of the original.

A frosty Abe got student help

Wisconsin students have done their best to make Lincoln feel at home in Madison. They’ve decorated him with various hats and costumes. During one especially cold winter, a pair of earmuffs helped Abe survive. Of course, the earmuffs were cardinal, one of the school's colors.

Politics on at least one occasion got into the decorating act.  Back in the 1950s infamous Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy placed the university among the institutions he accused of harboring communists (without citing any evidence). Someone gave Abe a coat of red paint, either in sympathy with or protest of the charges.

Wisconsin historians cite several connections to Lincoln and his political associates. Ripon is just 75 miles from Madison. The small city claims to be the birthplace of the Republican Party. It hosted an 1854 meeting of the group that founded the party.

The university, and many others, got a huge boost from the Morrill Land Grant College Act, which Lincoln approved. It allowed the school to buy a 195-acre “experimental farm” in 1866 for $28,000. That land now is the major part of the campus. The site of the university’s football field, Camp Randall, was a Union soldier training camp during the War Between the States. It also served for a time as a camp for Confederate prisoners.

A new grad courts Abe in front of the balcony made famous by a long line of fraternity Firemen.

Recent university stories emphasize two Bascom Hill statue traditions. New graduates believe they will fulfill career goals if they climb onto Lincoln’s lap and whisper their aspirations into his ear. Some think a little kiss on his cheek will help their cause. Alums and students alike visiting the hill believe good luck will be theirs if they rub Abe’s left foot.

Understandably, university accounts omit some of the racier myths involving the statue. In my day, students understood that Abe would leap to his feet if a female virgin walked in front of him. The coeds outwitted the perpetrators of that legend. During four years of regularly plodding up Bascom Hill I never saw a girl in front of Abe. They always were careful to walk behind him.

One fraternity (not mine) once or twice a year pulled off the most well-known initiation stunt on campus right behind the sitting Lincoln. From the group of would-be members the actives selected one “Fireman.” Around noon when crowds of students were on the hill, the brethren somehow sneaked the Fireman onto the Bascom Hall balcony directly behind the Lincoln statue. Wearing an appropriate red hard-hat, the Fireman pretended to crank a siren while he wailed siren-like sounds at the top of his voice.

The fraternity’s pledges were eager to earn the Fireman designation. Active members conferred the “honor” after measuring the length of the initiate’s . . . (you know what).

Abe is said to have grinned when the Fireman sounded his siren. Honestly, Abe, did you?