The National Joker

by Thompson, Todd Nathan;

  Lincoln’s homespun Whig forebear, Tennessee backwoodsman-turned-congressman David Crockett, recounted pulling a similar stunt against a political opponent who attempted to degrade him in the House of Representatives by mocking his rural roots, referring to him as the “gentleman from the cane.” To get his revenge, Crockett allegedly

  found in the dust a cambric ruffle of precisely the cut affected by Mr. M——l. This he pinned to his own coarse shirt. Choosing a dramatically propitious moment just after the House had attended informative remarks from Mr. M——1, he arose as though to express his own opinion on the matter. The cambric ruffle stood out on David’s rough shirt like a light on a locomotive. Suddenly the humor of the situation burst upon all the members at once. Without a word’s being uttered, the House burst into prolonged laughter. Mr. M——1 hesitated for a single embarrassed moment, then precipitately withdrew from the chamber amid a rising roar.14

  As Lincoln would do to Taylor, Crockett engaged in physical comedy to expose the pretentiousness of his opponent’s dress and bearing. Lincoln shared with Crockett this penchant for visual pillory and, in his early career anyway, a taste for retributative satire that ridiculed the aristocratic affectations of others while embracing a particularly homespun manner and political identity.

  This novel combination of politics and levity was as effective as it was crowd-pleasing; or, rather, it was effective because it was crowd-pleasing. John M. Scott, an Illinois attorney, Lincoln contemporary, and, eventually, chief justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, explained that in Lincoln’s 1840 campaign stumping, “much time was devoted to telling stories to illustrate some phase of his argument, but more often the telling of these stories was resorted to for the purpose of rendering his opponents ridiculous.” Such a style, Scott later recalled, was “much appreciated at that early day,” and Lincoln “had no equals in the state” at telling humorous anecdotes that put “the opposing party and its speakers in a most ludicrous position” and “gave him a most favorable hearing for the arguments he later made in support of the measures he was sustaining.” This was not, Scott admitted, a particularly “fair mode of treating an adversary,” but it was a “mode of attack greatly relished by popular assemblies” because “most people like to see their opponents discomfited by being the butt of a well told story.”15

  Of course, such shenanigans—physical and verbal—left Lincoln open to charges of cruelty and immaturity. The November 23, 1839, Illinois State Register, published in Springfield, warned Lincoln in a review of one of his speeches against continuing “a sort of assumed clownishness” in his political speech: “Mr. Lincoln will sometimes make his language correspond with this clownish manner, and he can thus frequently raise a loud laugh among his Whig hearers; but this entire game of buffoonery convinces the mind of no man, and is utterly lost on the majority of his audience.” The article went on to advise Lincoln “to correct this clownish fault before it grows upon him.”16 The charge here was not necessarily that Lincoln’s use of humor and satire—which he would continue to deploy voluminously during the ensuing 1840 presidential campaign—was unprofessional so much as that it was ineffective. Lincoln seemed to take this or similar advice to heart as he honed his political rhetoric over the next twenty years.

  He learned this lesson more fully after an incident in 1840 in which he impersonated and ridiculed Democrat Jesse B. Thomas so vindictively that Thomas was reduced to tears. According to Herndon, the “‘skinning’ of Thomas . . . was not soon forgotten either by his friends or enemies. I heard him afterwards say that the recollection of his conduct that evening filled him with the deepest chagrin. He felt that he had gone too far, and to rid his good-nature of a load, hunted up Thomas and made ample apology.”17 Thereafter, Lincoln did not omit satiric barbs so much as temper them with more nuanced self-satire that highlighted his character as a self-made man.

  “Splendidly successful charges”: Lincoln on Military Heroism

  During and after the U.S.-Mexico War, then–U.S. Representative Lincoln played politics by deflating notions of military heroism through sometimes raucous self-satire. For example, in a July 27, 1848, speech, Lincoln mocked his own war record as a captain in the Black Hawk War and then attacked that of U.S. Senator Lewis Cass, Democratic presidential nominee and hero of the War of 1812. Lincoln’s prefatory self-satire displayed to his auditors his self-effacing good humor and prevented the possibility of similar charges being levied against him. Lincoln’s tactic was to cast aspersions upon Cass’s military record by demeaning his own, thus bringing Cass down to his (self-satirized) level through the comparison.

  By the way, Mr. Speaker, did you know I am a military hero? Yes sir; in the days of the Black Hawk war, I fought, bled, and came away. Speaking of Gen: Cass’ career, reminds me of my own. . . . It is quite certain I did not break my sword, for I had none to break; but I bent a musket pretty badly on one occasion. If Cass broke his sword, the idea is, he broke it in de[s]peration; I bent my musket by accident. If Gen: Cass went in advance of me in picking huckleberries [whortleberries], I guess I surpassed him in charges upon the wild onions. If he saw any live, fighting indians, it was more than I did; but I had a good many bloody struggles with the mosquetoes; and, although I never fainted from loss of blood, I can truly say I was often very hungry. Mr. Speaker, if I should ever conclude to doff whatever our democratic friends may suppose there is of black cockade federalism about me, and thereupon, they shall take me up as their candidate for the Presidency, I protest they shall not make fun of me, as they have of Gen: Cass, by attempting to write me into a military hero.18

  Lincoln here was responding to a Democratic campaign strategy that emphasized Cass’s 1812 war record in an attempt to counter Whig candidate General Zachary Taylor’s advantage as a more recent and more famous war hero. Cass’s biographer notes, “Veterans were trotted out at every crossroads to greet the ‘brave old volunteer’ and he was hailed as the ‘Father of the West.’” To respond, Lincoln, at the time an unknown first-term congressman, engaged in satiric leveling by portraying his own military exploits as silly, undignified, and useless and then making repeated comparisons between his experiences and those of Cass. Satiric leveling challenges presumed hierarchies of value through invidious comparisons between high and low, spiritual and material, serious and the ludicrous. Lincoln, in equating his own demeaned experiences to Cass’s alleged heroism, tainted Cass by mere insinuations of connections to Lincoln. He conflated high and low, hero and fool, noble officer and marauding hick. Just as important, Lincoln’s verbal satire exposed the rhetorical techniques used to “write” Cass “into a military hero”; in doing so, Lincoln called into question not just Cass’s heroism but any use of heroism for political ends, an admittedly tenuous approach in a year in which the Whigs nominated Taylor, especially since later in his speech, Lincoln went on to laud Taylor in glowing terms as “par excellence, the hero of the Mexican war.”19

  Lincoln’s joke that he would be taken up as a “candidate for the Presidency” echoed those of Crockett, who in his autobiographies consistently, and somewhat ludicrously, hinted at being coerced into accepting “the presidential chair.” Crockett’s autobiography reveals a similar penchant for self-mockery and for “telling good humoured stories” on the campaign trail.20 Lincoln’s joke also carries an unintentional irony, because when he was president, his critics did “make fun of” him by belittling his abilities as commander in chief through reference to his service in the Black Hawk War. For example, in the satiric campaign biography The Only Authentic Life of Abraham Lincoln (1864), the anonymous writer shifts from grandiloquent to deflating language to describe Lincoln’s service: “The ghastly battle-field now saw his towering form stalk, gloomy, magnificent and tremendous, through the thick vapors of the cannon’s mouth. At least such would have been the case, had it not been for the Indians who resolutely refused to come near Abraham’s regiment.” This joke, however, does not go nearly as far as Lincoln’s own descriptio
n of his experiences in his speech against Cass. The pamphlet The Lincoln Catechism, Wherein the Eccentricities and Beauties of Despotism Are Fully Set Forth: A Guide to the Presidential Election of 1864 (1864) told a similar joke but in the question-and-answer format of a catechism, thus structuring Lincoln barbs with question as setup and answer as punch line.

  VII.

  Was Mr. Lincoln ever distinguished as a military officer?

  He was—In the Black Hawk war.

  VIII.

  What high military position did he hold in that war?

  He was a cook.

  IX.

  Was he distinguished for anything except for his genius as a cook?

  Yes—he often pretended to see Indians in the woods, where it was afterwards proved that none existed.

  X.

  Was he ever in any battle?

  No—he prudently skedaddled, and went home at the approach of the first engagement.21

  Of course, Lincoln was not a cook in the Black Hawk War but, rather, the elected captain of his volunteer company and is not known to have turned tail in battle.

  These authors, then, resorted to libel in their mockery of Lincoln, who had already mocked his own service in much the same manner as both satires. Lincoln himself consistently painted his military exploits in a decidedly unheroic and folly filled light. Even in his own 1860 campaign biography, Lincoln downplayed his military heroism. After noting of his election as captain of his company that “he has not since had any success in life which gave him so much satisfaction,” Lincoln described his service in particularly banal terms, disposing of it in a single sentence: “He went to the campaign, served near three months, met the ordinary hardships of such an expedition, but was in no battle.” He actually saw a bit more action than his 1860 campaign autobiography claims. After enlisting for a third term of service, he helped bury five men killed by Native American warriors.22 Even so, derogating symbols of heroism yielded distinct political dividends for Lincoln. In depicting himself as decidedly unheroic, he seemed to demean himself, but in light of his attack on heroism, he presented himself and the associated symbology of the nonmilitaristic, self-made man as reasonable alternative to the cult of military heroism.

  Lincoln’s willingness to mock himself allowed him to carve out rhetorical space from which to mock others. This is apparent in the speech against Cass, which Lincoln began by seeking to answer Georgia’s Alfred Iverson’s charges that “we [Whigs] have deserted all our principles, and taken shelter under Gen: Taylor’s military coat-tail.” Instead of defending Taylor as a politician, Lincoln ceded that military hero worship might not be the best political strategy and instead attacked Democrats for their own consistent recourse to it. “[C]an he,” Lincoln asked about Iverson, “remember no other military coat tail under which a certain other party have been sheltering for near a quarter of a century? Has he no acquaintance with the ample military coat tail of Gen: Jackson?” Lincoln adopted a harsher tone after claiming that the military “coat tail was used, not only for Gen: Jackson himself; but has been clung to, with the gripe [sic] of death, by every democratic candidate since.”

  Like a horde of hungry ticks you have stuck to the tail of the Hermitage lion to the end of his life; and you are still sticking to it, and drawing a loathsome sustenance from it, after he is dead. A fellow once advertised that he had made a discovery by which he could make a new man out of an old one, and have enough of the stuff left to make a little yellow dog. Just such a discovery has Gen: Jackson’s popularity been to you. You not only twice made President of him out of it, but you have had enough of the stuff left, to make Presidents of several comparatively small men since; and it is your chief reliance now to make still another.23

  Lincoln used Jackson’s august reputation to condemn subsequent Democratic presidents as “comparatively small men” and animalized them as “dogs.” Additionally, as he did throughout his political career, Lincoln here repurposed an apolitical joke for political satire.

  Lincoln proceeded to parody political biography, noting that in trying to tie a “military tail” to Cass, his supporters and his biographers were “like so many mischievous boys tying a dog to a bladder of beans. True, the material they have is very limited; but they drive at it, might and main.” Lincoln also used wordplay to refigure heroism as a descriptor of cowardice and graft. First, he joked that Cass “invaded Canada without resistance, and he outvaded it without pursuit,” rendering ridiculous military notions of invasion and retreat.24 He moved to the more serious matter of insinuating that General Cass has been guilty of defrauding the federal government. In 1838 Cass had been accused of misappropriating $63,000 of public money for personal use while serving as superintendent of Indian Affairs. Though he was exonerated after a congressional investigation, Whigs revived graft rumors in 1848, claiming that “if his loot was loaded into wagons, the train would reach from Detroit to Toledo.”25 Lincoln’s version of this accusation punned on military language, building up Cass as a “General of splendidly successful charges,” only to deflate him with an allegation: “charges, to be sure, not upon the public enemy, but upon the public Treasury.” Lincoln then trotted out facts and figures of Cass’s salary and expenses, claiming that he received pay for “doing service, and incurring expenses, at several different places, and in several different capacities in the same place, all at the same time.” Lincoln defended himself from the repercussions of his allegations by expressing mock reverence and awe.

  I have introduced Gen: Cass’ accounts here chiefly to show the wonderful physical capacities of the man. They show that he not only did the labor of several men at the same time; but that he often did it at several places, many hundreds of miles apart, at the same time. And at eating, too, his capacities are shown to be quite as wonderful. . . . Mr. Speaker, we have all heard of the animal standing in doubt between two stacks of hay, and starving to death. The like of that would never happen to Gen: Cass; place the stacks a thousand miles apart, he would stand stock still midway between them, and eat them both at once; and the green grass along the line would be apt to suffer some too at the same time. By all means, make him President, gentlemen. He will feed you bounteously,—if—if there is any left after he shall have helped himself.26

  This sarcastic account of the “wonderful physical capacities of the man” demeaned Cass through charges of graft (not to mention “fat” jokes) and mocked hero worship via a tongue-in-cheek performance of it. Throughout the speech, by fashioning his own symbols, Lincoln revealed the mechanics of how symbols of heroism are politically constructed. Comparative formulations, such as “I bent my musket pretty badly on one occasion . . . by accident,” “I guess I surpassed him in charges upon wild onions,” and “I had a good many struggles with the mosquetoes,” all undermined the mythmaking process by repopulating it with ludicrous content that smeared Lincoln, Cass by comparative association, and “heroism” as a valid political qualification.

  Lincoln defended this verbal abuse as a purely defensive tactic: “I repeat, I would not introduce this mode of discussion here; but I wish gentlemen on the other side to understand, that the use of degrading figures is a game at which they may not find themselves able to take all the winnings.”27 Of course, this was a game that Lincoln was very fond of playing, even as he averred that he was forced to play it. The comic effect of Lincoln’s physicality as he spoke rendered these concepts all the more ludicrous, based on accounts of Lincoln’s time in the House of Representatives. Other House members are said to have laughed “at the way he would stride down the aisles as he spoke, coat-tails flying.” “[T]he speech was pretty good,” Ohio Congressman William “Sausage” Sawyer commented, “but I hope he won’t charge mileage on his travels while delivering it.” Lincoln’s speech only added to his reputation as the House’s top wag whose witty stories won him friends throughout the Capitol.28

  This was not the sole instance of Lincoln’s rhetorical abuse of Cass that year. Throughout a speaking tour in
New England, Lincoln continued to pillory the Democratic presidential candidate. Lincoln described his tour thusly: “with hayseed in my hair I went to Massachusetts, the most cultured State in the Union, to take a few lessons in deportment.” As Lincoln learned eastern manners, New Englanders imbibed his western idiom. Whig leader Henry J. Gardner, who would later become governor of Massachusetts, remembered Lincoln’s “style and manner of speaking,” which “were novelties in the East,” on display in a speech in Worcester on September 12, 1848. According to Gardner, “his sarcasm of Cass, Van Buren and the Democratic party was inimitable, and whenever he attempted to stop, the shouts of ‘Go on! go on!’ were deafening.” Lincoln spoke three days later at a Boston Whig club, and the Boston Atlas gave a favorable review: “for sound reasoning, cogent argument and keen satire, we have seldom heard equalled.” In a newspaper account of Lincoln’s speech at Taunton, Massachusetts, that same month, Dr. William Gordon, while vehemently opposing the political content of Lincoln’s speech, stressed the comic effects that Lincoln achieved through his body and voice: “The speaker was far inferior as a reasoner to others who hold the same views, but then he was more unscrupulous, more facetious and with his sneers he mixed up a good deal of humor. His awkward gesticulations, the ludicrous management of his voice and the comical expression of his countenance, all conspired to make his hearers laugh at the mere anticipation of the joke before it appeared.”29 Despite the fact that these accounts disagreed on the quality of Lincoln’s logic, their emphasis on his delivery of crowd-pleasing humor highlights the importance of the parodic to Lincoln’s political performance.