Lincoln’s story about himself, written in the third person, uses wit to interrogate the logic of deeply held assumptions. It is not a joke per se but takes the form of a joke, with the president’s redescription of the rebellion as its punch line. Even as he put into practice his Reconstruction policy of magnanimity by authorizing the prisoners’ release, he assailed them for having bought into an ideology that denied (and required others to assist in that denial) other human beings the opportunities for self-making of which Lincoln had taken such advantage. As Lincoln probably hoped, the piece was reprinted widely, as its brevity made it perfect filler for editorial pages.54 Such shrewdness shows that Lincoln knew both how to use his reputation as a joker to his own advantage and how to portray a particular type of wit—moral instead of vulgar, humanely invested in the war instead of laughing at it—to the American public.
Of course, Lincoln would use his line about men eating “their bread on the sweat of other men’s faces,” a keen reversal of Genesis 3:19, three months later, in his second inaugural address on March 4, 1865. In that speech Lincoln said, “It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged.”55 Lincoln’s reuse of a punch line from a widely distributed joke in a serious speech reveals how integral satire was to his political communication.
It also shows, once again, the astuteness of Lincoln’s image consciousness and press savvy. Lincoln understood the importance of the press from the beginning to the end of his political career: from his informal education with newspapers while he served as postmaster of New Salem, Illinois, to his service as an anonymous correspondent covering the Illinois legislature in which he served to the days when, as president, he would step outside the White House to ask pedestrians to send nearby newsboys to his front door. Lincoln’s law partner William H. Herndon and his writing partner Jesse W. Weik describe Lincoln as a “careful and patient reader of newspapers,” and another Lincoln scholar labels him as “what would be called today a newspaper junkie.” This experience with and love for newspapers led Lincoln to use them to achieve his political goals. But part of Lincoln’s press savvy inhered in his ability to repurpose humorous bits from the media, refigure them for satiric purposes, and recirculate them in the media, and, thus, participate in and benefit from the nineteenth century’s “culture of reprinting.”56 Lincoln’s rearticulations of his humorous borrowings changed their meaning in important ways, making the apolitical precisely but still comically political while educating the voting public and public servants alike through satiric indirection.
CHAPTER 2
“Little Big Man”: Modesty and Attack in Lincoln’s Writings and Speeches
[T]he use of degrading figures is a game at which they [Democrats] may not find themselves able to take all the winnings.
—Lincoln, speech in the U.S. House of Representatives, July 27, 1848
In the biographical sketch that he wrote (in the third person) about himself for the 1860 presidential campaign, Lincoln was quite candid about his lack of education. After a brief family genealogy, he detailed the physical labor that constituted much of his youth, writing that until “his twentythird [sic] year, he was almost constantly handling that most useful instrument [an ax]—less, of course, in plowing and harvesting seasons.” He then contrasted his laboring experience with his paucity of formal education.
A. now thinks that the agregate of all his schooling did not amount to one year. He was never inside of a college or Academy as a student; and never inside a college or accademy building till since he had a law-license. What he has in the way of education, he has picked up. After he was twentythree, and had separated from his father, he studied English grammar, imperfectly of course, but so as to speak and write as well as he now does. He studied and nearly mastered the Six-books of Euclid, since he was a member of Congress. He regrets his want of education, and does what he can to supply the want. In his tenth year he was kicked by a horse, and apparantly killed for a time.1
The comic juxtaposition here between his lack of education and being “kicked by a horse” is striking, especially considering that Lincoln took great care in preparing his written and spoken texts. Readers of this biography likely expected further Franklinian specifics on Lincoln’s self-education and his continuing efforts to “supply the want” but, instead, were jarred by the homey incongruity of a typical rural accident that left him “apparantly” killed for a time.
Was Lincoln in this context offering a joking excuse for stupidity or undermining the myth of the self-made man that was so central to the success of his campaign? Elsewhere in the biography, Lincoln highlighted his several failures, including his time running a dry-goods store, which “winked out.” “Of course,” Lincoln said of himself and his partner, “they did nothing but get deeper and deeper in debt.” Such self-depictions led one historian to label Lincoln “a busted storekeeper and out-of-office Whig.”2 Whether or not Lincoln would agree with this assessment, his campaign autobiography exemplifies the self-deprecating humor that pervaded his thought, speech, and writing.
Such self-mockery was not merely harmless modesty; rather, throughout his career, Lincoln carved out for himself a position of seemingly innocuous powerlessness from which to launch satiric critiques of his opponents and their policies. From this ostensibly demeaned position, Lincoln could attack his opponents’ strengths, such as their claims to greatness, heroism, and experience, which he portrayed as antithetical to his own and the American populace’s. This is an example of what theorist Michel de Certeau has labeled “tactics,” modes and moments of resistance to entrenched professionalism and power.3 Lincoln’s tactics leveraged a consciously performed satiric modesty. His consistent rhetorical alignments of himself with the common and powerless and his renderings of opponents as professionals or “great” men opened up a space for satiric political critique, which Lincoln then delivered through parodic ridicule.
Thomas Ford, governor of Illinois from 1842 to 1846, coined the term “little big man” to describe local politicians who saw themselves as superior to their constituents as well as their opponents. “[A]lmost every neighborhood,” he claimed in his 1854 History of Illinois,
has some one richer than the rest, who puts on airs of importance, and manifests such a want of sympathy with his fellows, as to disgust his humbler neighbors; amongst whom there are those who, full of ill-nature, look upon such pretensions with envious resentment. These little big men, on both sides, of the neighborhood sort . . . think they are devoted to a cause, when they only hate an opponent; and the more thoroughly they hate, the more thoroughly are they partisans. Here originates the hostility between democracy and aristocracy, as it is said to exist in this country.
Robert Bray, in his discussion of Lincoln’s early-career use of satire and invective, borrows the term “little big man” to characterize Lincoln’s rhetorical tactics as an “underdog strategy.” Bray notes that Lincoln positioned “himself in a putatively invidious position with respect to an opponent” and then employed “verbal prowess as the social and political equalizer, cutting the other down to . . . ‘little big man’ size.”4 Also important is Lincoln’s strategic use of self-satire to set up such comparisons, thereby identifying himself with the “common man” and challenging demagogic notions of “greatness” as embodied in politicians. In his speeches, writings, and self-presentation, Lincoln defended himself from criticism by criticizing himself, strategically occupying the ground of ridicule before his opponents could, thereby defining the terms and range of such criticisms.
It was as a verbal satirist that Lincoln most fully forged his distinct brand of political discourse with its novel combination of humility and invective. Apparently, Lincoln’s dual predilections for public speaking and satire developed early and concurrently. One of Lincoln’s boyhood acquaintances recollected Lincoln’s skill at burlesque sermons and speeches: “The bo
ys took turns mounting a stump or box, taking a text—not necessarily from the Bible—, and holding forth so long as the crowd would permit. A man had to be good to last long and most of then [sic] did not last. Lincoln was the favorite ‘preacher!’ His audience declared he was better than the real preacher. Lincoln often spoke on political topics too, but these talks were often burlesques of political speeches he had heard.” As this remembrance shows, Lincoln early associated political and satiric discourse. Biographers William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik describe him as an “unequalled” mimic; using his uncanny impersonation skills, Lincoln from his early days used mockery to undercut others’ pretensions.5 As he developed his political and oratorical skills, this association would pay political dividends.
One such example occurred in a January 11, 1837, speech at the legislature in which Lincoln attacked his opponent Usher F. Linder, politicians in general, and, in a self-aware manner, himself in a discussion of the state-bank issue. When banks suspended specie payments, Lincoln sought to defend the banking system against opponents, such as Linder, who represented growing suspicion of the Bank of Illinois and accused bank commissioners of breaking the law (indeed, the Bank of Illinois had made it extremely difficult for citizens to redeem notes, since those notes were redeemable only at the particular branch that had issued them).6 Lincoln characterized agitation for the creation of a committee to investigate state-bank practices as “exclusively the work of politicians; a set of men who have interests aside from the interests of the people, and who, to say the most of them, are, taken as a mass, at least one long step removed from honest men. I say this with the greater freedom because, being a politician myself, none can regard it as personal.” Bray correctly concludes, “Lincoln’s disarming inclusion of himself in the class forestalls the opposition’s cry of ‘you’re another,’ even as it effectively places the speaker above the tribe’s miserable venality and hypocrisy.” But Lincoln’s humorous self-inclusion also made him a “satirist-satirized” because he had become “self-conscious of his own activity” in admitting that “his own place as a judging and observing subject” was not above implication and, as a result, “reckon[ed] himself into” the satiric critique.7 In other words, it takes one to know one, as Lincoln’s admonition to politicians implies. In Lincoln’s case, his self-awareness humorously signaled his understanding of the complexity of issues at stake and, thus, sanctioned his satiric critique. This inclusion of himself in his satiric reproofs disarmed the audience, preemptively denying a counterattack by assuring his auditors that the critique was thorough, thoughtfully self-searching, and honest.
Lincoln deployed “modest satire” via Socratic irony, taking what Aristotle described as an eiron stance of (sometimes false) modesty in order to expose his political enemies as alazons, or braggarts.8 Lincoln employed this tactic time and time again in his pre-presidential orations. For example, in opposing Linder’s resolution “to institute an enquiry into the management of the affairs of the State Bank,” Lincoln feigned trepidation in his January 11, 1837, speech.
Before I proceed to the body of the subject, I will further remark, that it is not without a considerable degree of apprehension, that I venture to cross the track of the gentleman from Coles (Mr. Linder). Indeed, I do not believe I could muster a sufficiency of courage to come in contact with that gentleman, were it not for the fact, that he, some days since, most graciously condescended to assure us that he would never be found wasting ammunition on small game. On the same fortunate occasion, he further gave us to understand, that he regarded himself as being decidedly the superior of our common friend from Randolph (Mr. Shields); and feeling, as I really do, that I, to say the most of myself, am nothing more than the peer of our friend from Randolph, I shall regard the gentleman from Coles as decidedly my superior also, and consequently, in the course of what I shall have to say, whenever I shall have occasion to allude to that gentleman, I shall endeavor to adopt that kind of court language which I understand to be due to decided superiority.
Lincoln ironically demeaned himself, pretending to take solace in the fact that Linder would consider him small game and, in order to highlight Linder’s pretentiousness, went so far as to speak of and to Linder only in what a lowly fellow like Lincoln would assume to be “court language.” Indeed, Lincoln referred to Linder as “the gentleman from Coles” through the entirety of the speech. Halfway through, Linder appealed to the house, complaining about Lincoln’s tone, but then withdrew the appeal before the question was put, saying that “he preferred to let the gentleman go on; he thought he would break his own neck.” In his reply, Lincoln kept to his subject: “Another gracious condescension. I acknowledge it with gratitude.”9
Lincoln’s ultimate rhetorical goal in this speech was to undermine the notion of Linder’s superiority that Lincoln erected ironically at the outset: “In one faculty, at least, there can be no dispute of the gentleman’s superiority over me, and most other men; and that is, the faculty of entangling a subject, so that neither himself, or any other man, can find head or tail to it.”10 The superiority he had been describing, then, was suddenly not something to which anyone would aspire, being re-rendered as incompetence. In this way, Lincoln launched an ad hominem attack through the indirection of ironic praise and false modesty. Or, in terms of classical notions of irony, he played the eiron to demean himself so as to expose Linder as a braggartly alazon. In doing so, he tactically turned Linder’s advantages in prestige and experience against him.
Lincoln had done something similar a year earlier on the campaign trail in reply to George Forquer, a respected, older lawyer of distinction and a Whig-turned-Democrat, who, it happens, had installed a lightning rod over his house, which was the nicest in town. Forquer replied to a speech of Lincoln, “This young man will have to be taken down” and, according to Lincoln’s friend Joshua Speed, proceeded to give a speech “in a style which, while it was able and fair, in his whole manner asserted and claimed superiority.” As Speed remembered it, Lincoln answered,
The gentleman commenced his speech by saying that this young man would have to be taken down, alluding to me; I am not so young in years as I am in the tricks and trades of a politician; but live long, or die young, I would rather die now, than, like the gentleman change my politics, and simultaneous with the change, receive an office worth three thousand dollars per year, and then have to erect a lightning-rod over my house, to protect a guilty conscience from an offended God.
As in his “skinning of Linder,” Lincoln, who had also lambasted Forquer as “King George” and “the royal George” to imply that he was aristocratically out of touch, complimented him as a “gentleman,” contrasted with Lincoln’s own youthful ambition seeking but having not yet earned “place and distinction.” Also like his rejoinder to Linder a year later, Lincoln decried and distanced himself from the “tricks and trades of politicians” before painting Forquer as just such an unscrupulous politician willing to sell his party allegiance for money. Lincoln ended with a punch line that refigured Forquer’s well-known status symbol—his lightning rod—as a desperate protective measure against comeuppance for political sins. According to Herndon, “the effect of this rejoinder was wonderful, and gave Forquer and his lightning rod a notoriety the extent of which no one envied him.”11
Lincoln engaged in the same tactic in 1840 through performance instead of speech. As James H. Matheny remembered the incident in 1866, Lincoln badly humiliated Democrat Colonel E. D. Taylor during the 1840 presidential campaign. Taylor, according to Herndon and Weik, “was a showy, bombastic man, with a weakness for fine clothes and other personal adornments. Frequently he was pitted against Lincoln, and indulged in many bitter flings at the lordly ways and aristocratic pretensions of the Whigs. He had a way of appealing to ‘his horny-handed neighbors,’ and resorted to many other artful tricks of a demagogue.” While Taylor was in the midst of dismissing all Whigs as aristocratic, Lincoln “felt develish” and “moved up to Taylor inch by inch—Linco
ln raised slightly up—Caught Dick Taylors vest corner—gave it a quick jerk—it unbuttoned and out fell Dick ruffle shirt like a pile of Entrails—Swung out to the wind—gold chains—gold watches with large seals hung heavily & massively down.” The colonel’s hypocrisy thus materially exposed, the entire crowd burst into “furious & uproarious laughter.”12 This performance satire functioned in much the same way as Lincoln’s dismantling of Linder by building him up. In visually demonstrating the disconnect between Taylor’s rhetoric and his personal attire and deportment, Lincoln undercut the grounds of Taylor’s self-righteousness and rebutted his accusations against Whigs, all without saying a single word. This incident also demonstrates Lincoln’s keen awareness of the power of symbols, an insight that would serve him well in his later political life.
Lincoln followed up his visual satire with a stark verbal comparison. He said, as Ninian W. Edwards, Illinois politician and husband to Mary Todd’s sister, recalled it,
whilst Col. Taylor had his stores over the country, and was riding in a fine carriage, wore his kid cloves [gloves] and had a gold headed cane, he was a poor boy hired on a flat boat at eight dollars a month, and had only one pair of breeches and they were of buckskin now said he if you know the nature of buckskin when wet and dried by the sun they would shrink and mine kept shrinking until they left for several inches my legs bare between the top of my Socks and the lower part of my breeches—and whilst I was growing taller they were becoming shorter: and so much tighter, that they left a blue streak around my leg which you can see to this day—If you call this aristocracy I plead guilty to the charge.13
Like in his “Rebecca” satire, Lincoln here turned the tables on Democratic accusations of Whigs as aristocrats. Starkly contrasting their backgrounds through clothing in a way that belittled Lincoln himself as a comic character with too-short breeches and stained legs, thus mocking the notion of “blue blood,” Lincoln again ingratiated himself with his audience by exploiting his opponent’s pretensions to superiority.
The National Joker Page 6
