The Battles that Made Abraham Lincoln
Page 74
That gave Lincoln another respite until the bloodbath of Grant’s Overland Campaign in the spring of 1864. All that summer, Northern war-weariness almost sank Lincoln’s reelection hopes, and only at the last minute did Sherman and Sheridan win victories that lifted Lincoln into another term. He was still not popular, however, and controversy plagued every month of his presidency until his assassination in April 1865. It was only after his death that he became “popular.”
Q: Do you think readers will be surprised by what they discover in your book? If so, what do you think will surprise them the most?
LT: If they’re anything like the people who have read it so far, they will be very surprised. Lincoln is not a figure you associate with loathing. Perhaps most surprising, to me at least, was the intensity of racism in the North and the Northern hostility toward the Emancipation Proclamation, which almost led to the secession of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, caused a large part of the army to desert, and culminated in the New York Draft Riots, which were the second-largest insurgency in American history, after the Civil War itself.
Q: There are hundreds of Lincoln books out there. What makes yours different?
LT: I continue to be amazed that nobody has written this book before. Every book about Lincoln makes occasional mention of opposition to this or that policy, but there has never been a full treatment of the length and breadth of that opposition, which was so vehement, so relentless, and so ubiquitous—coming from all sides, Republican as well as Democrat. My book goes directly against the grain of mainstream Lincoln literature, which almost invariably takes a reverential tone, and leaves out the rabid ravings of the opinion-makers of the time. This conventional treatment has left the false impression that Lincoln governed from strength, when the more interesting truth is that he accomplished so much in the teeth of violent dissent. To me, this adversity is a large part of what makes Lincoln great.
Q: That dovetails nicely to my final question: What do you think of Lincoln?
LT: I am in awe of the man. He is one of the few true originals. As a writer, I notice especially his writing. Every time he wrote anything, even the merest note to a clerk, he put a stamp on it that is recognizably his. There is an agile strength and a love of logic and clarity in his writing, wedded to the rhythms of the King James Bible, that is beautiful. There is greatness in it.
But even more importantly, his political acumen—so at odds with his awkward appearance, as many men testified—was a thing to wonder at. That a man who called himself “an accidental instrument,” with very little prestige or popularity, could overmaster the centripetal force of an entire nation of thirty million people and pull it back together again, and at the same time achieve emancipation, which most of the nation, even the North, was against, is a miracle of politics, politics in its very best sense.
Q: Thank you for your time, Mr. Tagg.
LT: You are welcome, thank you.
I was born in Lincoln, Illinois. After living in the Land of Lincoln for eight years, my family moved to Dallas, Texas, where, as a high school senior, I won the city-wide high school extemporaneous writing contest in 1969. (It was easy. The prompt was “Describe a concert,” and just the week before I had seen Jimi Hendrix for the first time—just after “Are You Experienced” came out. Security was lax in the 1960s, and after the show I jumped onstage and walked back to Jimi’s dressing room, where I talked to Mitch Mitchell, his drummer.)
I attended the University of North Texas, graduating cum laude in Philosophy in two years and was awarded a teaching assistantship at the University of Texas. After one semester of graduate school I knew academia was not for me. I was more a musician—a bass player, singer, and songwriter.
I moved to California in 1978 with the band Uncle Rainbow to record under the aegis of Michael Hossack, one of the Doobie Brothers. In 1985, Brent Bourgeois and my band Bourgeois Tagg, was signed to Island Records. We recorded two albums and had two hits—“Mutual Surrender” and “I Don’t Mind at All.” We toured with Robert Palmer, Heart, Belinda Carlisle, and others.
After Bourgeois Tagg broke up in 1989 during the making of our third album, I played as a bass player and singer with Todd Rundgren and Hall and Oates. (My audition gig with Hall & Oates was in front of a million people at the Great Meadow in Central Park on the 20th Anniversary of Earth Day.) During the 1990s I was signed as a staff songwriter by Warner Chappell Music. My songs were recorded by Eddie Money, Kim Carnes, Cliff Richard, and others. I released two solo albums—“With a Skeleton Crew” and “Rover”—in Europe and America.
By the mid-90s I had a family, and the road had lost much of its allure. I became an English and drama teacher and Lead Teacher of the Arts Academy at Hiram Johnson High School in Sacramento, California. While I taught I began writing in my spare time. My first book, The Generals of Gettysburg, was published in 1998 by Savas Publishing, and the paper edition appeared a couple years later by Da Capo. It is still in print today. Right now I am finishing a book about generalship and the Battle of Shiloh.
Lincoln has long held a fascination for me, and I found the spectacular animosity against Lincoln irresistible as a subject.