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convention to wrest the presidential nomination from the radical William
Seward. Those were, after all, the supreme days of a young and maturing
American capitalism. In the spring of 1860 the Republican platform
would formulate a great program ·for railroads, banks, tariffs, homesteads,
and for the uncompromising maintenance of the Union. And throughout
the campaign year the political contest would only serve to reinforce in the
sensitive Northern spokesmen a new consciousness of their own strength
and a critical awareness of their historic position. A Carl Schurz, in Set·
tembrini-like organ-tones, would plead,
"This
is
the nineteenth century
...
the grand march of progressive humanity ... every steam whistle, every
puffing locomotive is sounding the shriek of liberty!" A Zachariah Chand–
ler, with the brutal impatience of a millionaire midwest merchant, would
shout, "You have the power now! But the day is not far distant when the
measure you mete to us today will be meted to you again.'' And a Seward,
with supreme confidence, would preach, "We are building a new and great
empire. . . .'' In this historic stand of American capitalist society, the
Abraham Lincoln of Cooper Union (or of the White House) played a
fortuitous role. As a Hamlet who could neither control nor even under–
stand events, he is certainly one of the most fascinating personalities in
world history. As a leader in the second American revolution, he was
nothing more (or less) than a political mediocrity.
Eighty years later, from the very same Cooper Union rostrum, T. V.
Smith (Chicago professor of politics and a practicing New Dealer from
Illinois) delivered the first annual Abraham Lincoln lecture. Strangely
enough, this too is not a particularly distinguished performance: a safe
and soft-spoken address almost Lincolnesque in its studied dullness and its
inability to convey the note of contemporary excitement. Today, in the
second historic stand of American capitalist society, Abraham Lincoln has
become the organizing genius and tutelary saint of "democratic victory."
Smith, in what should almost be reckoned as a serious heresy, fails some–
how to invoke "Father Abraham" for anything more significant than the
solution of the so-called "corporate problem." Of the War and Hitler's
world-revolutionary threat to the Log-Cabin, there is nothing. Of America's
new pioneering crusade (now that Carl Sandburg, Robert Sherwood, and
Raymond Massey have been mobilized) to make the world safe for Abra–
ham Lincoln, not a phrase. This, certainly, is not the Mr. Smith who went
to Washington.
Neither of the Cooper Union addresses, it must be said, has any real
importance. What is, of course, of importance, and of decisive historical
importance, are those "eighty years" between crises, organized with refer–
ence to the developing meaning of the Lincoln symbol. And what this body
of Lincoln literature required was an historical study of the origins of the
myth of "Father Abraham,'' and a functional analysis of its role in the
culture of American politics and leadership from Grant and the politicos
through the revolt of the Populists and Wilsonians to Rotary Club dinners
and 1940. Such a project could lay bare the mechanics of this amazing
