Herndon's Lincoln (The Knox College Lincoln Studies Center)

It is ironic that the Republican party was originally formed as the liberal party, the party of big government and bleeding heart policy, and that back in those days it was the Democrats themselves who stood for conservatism, and who were anti-Washington, pro states rights, and so much else that is associated with a conservative, mostly white right-wing version of "Republicanism" nowadays. It makes you wonder why today's republicans like to claim the liberal Lincoln as their own? Guilt maybe? Today's Democrats are more like the republicans of 1860 pretty much, just as todays Republicans are the direct descendants of the old conservative Democrats of Lincoln's time. The liberal, 'Radical Republican' party began in the 1850s at the end of the old Whig Party, while the original Southern conservative Democrats began about one hundred years earlier. This helps explains why it is today's Republicans who are known as the "Grand Old Party". For so long they had been known as Democrats. The two parties switched political positions over the years, as politicians are known to do. But it sure seems that they try to obscure this fact in the public schools these days. Or are they just too dumb to know it? Republicans of today like to pretend that conservatives actually did once support a man like Lincoln, as if to make it appear that there was once a time when their conservative interests were not born out of self interests and greed; there was once a time when their interests were more altruistic, like Lincoln.The fact of the matter is that, if you are a conservative today and your Great Great Grandfather was conservative 150 years ago, you are likely a Republican, but he was very likely a registered Democrat Because strangely, after over a century, America's two major political parties gradually reversed identities, like the magnetic poles of Planet Earth switching direction.When the Republican Party was formed in 1856, it was fiercely liberal, opposing the expansion of slavery, calling for more spending on public education, seeking more open immigration and the like. Compassionate Abraham Lincoln suited this new party's progressive agenda. Why, there are political cartoons from the days of Lincoln's administration depicting him as a week-kneed grandmotherly figure being hit upon for relief by every minority and underdog in the country, they all are lining up behind him and he is granting their every request; old Abe, the original bleeding heart sucker! This was the message of these cartoons, and the conservative artist knew many people would see him this way also. (I have seen some modern political cartoons depicting President Obama in a very similar manner).But in that era, Democrats were conservatives, partly dominated by the slave-holding South. Those old-style Democrats generally opposed any government action to create jobs or help underdogs.Through the latter half of the 19th century, the pattern of Republicans as liberals, Democrats as conservatives, generally held true. In 1888, the GOP elected President Benjamin Harrison (1833-1901) on a liberal platform seeking more social services.Then in 1896, a reversal began when Democrats nominated populist firebrand William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925), "the Great Commoner.""He was the first liberal to win the Democratic Party presidential nomination," political scholar Rich Rubino wrote. "This represented a radical departure from the conservative roots of the Democratic Party."Meanwhile, this progressive Republican party began shifting to a more conservative platform. Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) - a vice president who took the top office after William McKinley was assassinated in 1901 - was a Republican liberal who supported a "Square Deal" for working families. He broke up monopolistic trusts of rich corporations. He championed pure food and drugs. He created national parks and forests for the enjoyment of everyone. He won the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize for helping end war between Russia and Japan.After leaving office, Roosevelt felt that his successor, William Howard Taft (1857-1930), was leading America too far to the right. So T.R. challenged Taft for the Republican nomination in 1912, and lost. In rebellion, Roosevelt gathered his liberal delegates and formed the 'Progressive Party', with a bold platform bordering on socialism.The new-formed party called for universal medical care under a National Health Service. It sought government pensions for retirees, plus compensation for the jobless and disabled. It demanded an eight-hour workday and a minimum wage for women. It sought a constitutional amendment to allow a federal income tax. It supported voting by women, more freedom for workers to organize and strike, inheritance tax on rich estates, worker's compensation for on-the-job injuries, and many other left-wing goals.The Progressive platform attacked big-money influence in politics, vowing "to destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics."Roosevelt was a fiery orator and writer, saying: "I believe that there should be a very much heavier progressive tax on very large incomes, a tax which should increase in a very marked fashion for the gigantic incomes."While Roosevelt was campaigning in Milwaukee in 1912, a crazed assassin, John Schrank - who claimed that the ghost of William McKinley asked him to avenge McKinley's death by killing Roosevelt - shot the Progressive candidate in the chest. The bullet was partly deflected by Roosevelt's 50-page speech and his steel eyeglasses case, but wounded him nonetheless. Bleeding, he continued to orate unfazed.Later, when reporters asked if the wounding would deter his campaign, Roosevelt replied that he was "fit as a bull moose." Thereafter, his party was dubbed the 'Bull Moose Party'.Progressives won about one-fourth of the 1912 popular vote, and Democrat Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) attained the presidency. In 1916, Roosevelt declined the Progressive nomination, and the liberal party he created soon disintegrated.In a sense, Teddy Roosevelt was the last major Republican liberal. Ensuing decades saw the GOP grow steadily more conservative, and Democrats acquire the liberal mantle. When the Great Depression struck, the "New Deal" of Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945), Theodore's nephew-in-law, achieved landmark progressive reforms.In the 1960s, the "Great Society" of Democrat Lyndon Johnson (1908- 1973) vastly expanded the public safety net and gave legal equality to African-Americans - driving racist Dixie out of the Democratic Party, into the "GOP".Then Republican President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004) mobilized the "religious right" of white evangelicals for his party. Later, extreme white conservatives calling themselves "tea party" militants emerged in the "GOP".All this outlines America's political flipflop - how the liberal, Civil War era Republican Party gradually turned conservative, and how the conservative Democratic Party turned liberal. It was a fascinating transition. The delicate balance of power demands that it happens from time to time, and it will probably happen yet again. And I am not insisting that this is all 100% accurate, but it is the way that I see that it happened.

Abraham Lincoln said, "Billy, I've wondered why book-publishers and merchants don't have blank biographies on their shelves, always ready for an emergency; so that, if a man happens to die, his heirs or his friends, if they wish to perpetuate his memory, can purchase one already written, but with blanks. These blanks they can at their pleasure fill up with rosy sentences full of high-sounding praise. In most instances they commemorate a lie, and cheat posterity out of the truth. History is not history unless it is the truth."I realized several decades ago that there's no such thing as non-fiction, and in fact, no such thing as fiction, either. At best, you can report your impressions of the truth, not realizing that the red barn has white siding on the other side, and ignoring the white trim, the rusty iron hinges, and the fading. And when you write fiction, it tends to be characters the author knew, and recycled scenes from the author's memory.A prophet is without honor in his own country, but every man is a hero in his own autobiography, and since Herndon was Abe's law partner, this biography should be highly laudatory. Instead, it appears to present Lincoln's life, warts and all. We find that Abe was very lazy, that he spent long hours anywhere else rather than go home to his wife, that he allowed his kids to run wild, that he was a poor breadwinner, that he was a terrible manager....This book is engaging in a way few biographies are, and it's loaded with footnotes that back up what the author aays, although Volk couldn't be bothered to link the footnotes so that one could easily go back and forth. The events presented put a different light on history than what I learned in the fifth grade, so many centuries ago.I couldn't put this book down - and I started to resent that, for Kindle doesn't make it easy to read several books simultaneously. If I wanted to take a break from the mid-19th century, I would run the risk of forgetting to get back to this book.Lincoln suffered from melancholia - we call it depression today - and he was unable to do the little things necessary to sustain a good marriage. He wasn't an atheist, but he definitely wasn't a christian. I'm not sure I'd want to have him over to watch television, or to play Euchre; he just wasn't very social.And I'm not sure he was a very good politician. He wanted the government to spend money on all kinds of things without understanding te costs involved - and while James Buchanon deftly preserved the union through his dkillful statesmanship, Lincoln antagonized the South to such a degree that they didn't wait for him to inaugurated, but fired on Fort Sumner as soon as it was clear Lincoln was president-elect.Lincoln said that a nation that's half-slave and half-free cannot endure - but instead of simply buying all the slaves in the south to resolve the matter, he went on a much more expensive war that incurred deaths by the hundreds of thousands. And fighting the war didn't end the conflict; we're still a divided nation. a century and a half later.Because of that, this is an important book yet today - but don't read it because it's important. Read it instead because it's a very interesting portrait of an unusual character.