Not a Hero? Faulting Lincoln Again

The New York Times over the weekend carried an irritating column that dealt with the extreme difficulties faced by and suffering of escaping slaves during the Civil War. The writer–one Jim Downs, associate professor of history at Connecticut College–wrote:

Emancipation did, of course, free the slaves in the Confederacy. But Lincoln can no longer be portrayed as the hero in this story. Despite his efforts to end slavery, his emancipation policies failed to consider the human cost of liberation.

Let me get this straight: The man who walked the tightrope of holding together a fractious and fractured Union and, at a strategic point in the war, used his executive power to symbolically and eventually in reality free millions of slaves can no longer be viewed a hero for the effort because he hadn’t in all his spare time developed a plan to care for and transition freed slaves?

War is messy, and the Civil War took a course unplanned by anyone, as Lincoln confessed in his second inaugural:

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause (i.e., slavery) of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding.

I’m sorry to conclude that the professor is practicing weak 21st century “Monday Morning Quarterbacking” of activities a century and half earlier. In the 1860s, it wasn’t at all clear how things would turn out: Would the South succeed in establishing a separate country? Would slavery be affected at all?

During the war, it took the Herculean effort of the Sanitation Commission–a non-governmental body– to promote basic sanitation in the Union army, and that was among and for soldiers–a group the nation valued and wanted to protect. A similar or larger effort would have been required to create a plan for escaping slavery, but there was no similar organization or societal support for such a plan.

In short, to imagine Lincoln being able to create any effort to plan for and care for the unexpected waves of freed slaves under the circumstances in which he lived, is expecting him to be omniscient and omnipotent. If that’s the measure of a hero, you’re right, Professor, Lincoln falls short.

But by my measure of heroism among the un-omniscient and un-omnipotent of humankind, I think Lincoln did pretty well: for the country (North and South), for African-Americans in days that were incredibly difficult for African-Americans, for soldiers (white and black), for citizens (unfortunately a right available only to whites at the time) and for families (white and black).

Lincoln not a hero? That would have been a surprise to the many freed slaves who greeted and respectfully surrounded their president savior as he visited Richmond after its surrender and for the many who suffered in transition during the war.

Lincoln, like all of us, was human and not perfect, but perfection is not a requirement for heroes. I regret the extreme suffering of slaves before and during the war, as did Lincoln, and I’m delighted to announce that I’m keeping him on the pedestal labeled hero.