The malaise of Abraham Lincoln, Part Two

By Peter Fernandez

In 1839, young Abraham Lincoln was riding with large company from Christianburg to Springfield, Illinois, when they stopped beside a thicket of plum and cranapple trees to water the horses. Soon, the group leader was fixing to leave but couldn’t locate the tardy long rider. Finally, he was found cradling two hatchlings and hunting for their nest. Ignoring their disapproval after some men laughed at him, Lincoln replied, “I could   not have slept tonight if I had not given those two little birds to their mother.”

Mary Owens, a woman Lincoln once wooed, remembers that “In many things, he was sensitive almost to a fault.” The gentle Kentuckian’s observations of life were perceived through a poet’s passionate vision, not unlike his revered scribes, Shakespeare, E.A. Poe, Robert Burns, and Lord Byron.

According to Lincoln’s Melancholia, on which much of this essay is based, its author, Joshua Wolf Shenk, writes, “It signified an existential unrest, a gloomy or morbid state that lurked in the background of one’s life, but also a connection to insight and a drive for heroic action.” 

Lord Byron, a Lincoln contemporary, left the comforts of England to assist the Greeks in their war against the occupying Ottoman Turks. Risking life and fortune, he fought alongside the Greeks while donating 4,000 pounds (equivalent to over $500,000 today) to help rebuild the Hellenic navy. To be “Byronic,” an early literary archetype, is to be a dark and mysterious outcast, goth, arrogant, insightful, educated, but self-destructive. 

Byron, 36, would suffer an untimely death in 1824, just as his American admirer would decades later. The rail-splitting Kentuckian might have become one of America’s first  Byronic heroes if not for his utter lack of arrogance.  One can imagine the lanky teenager reading his favorite Byron poem, The Dream, by firelight.                                                              

Consistent with a depressive personality, Lincoln’s disposition could shift quickly from fearful to confident. “Because he felt deeper and thought harder than others,” continues Shenk, “Lincoln could be expected to alternate among states more quickly…to sadness, disquiet, perturbation, and gloom.”

It seemed uncharacteristic of our modest 16th President to proclaim before a compact gathering of cabinet members, “I am the President of the United States and am clothed in immense power, and I expect you to procure those votes.” The reluctant warlord’s “terrible swift sword” was unsheathed and brandished before his fellows in securing the 13th Amendment, ending slavery. Decades later, Arkansas Congressman James Alley, who was present at that occasion, testified to its authenticity. This archaic anecdote was reflected in Steven Spielberg’s 2012 film, Lincoln, but many critics believed it to be dramatic fiction.

People were impressed by Lincoln’s physical presence and strength. In his pre-presidential days, he stood tall before an unruly crowd at a political rally and, rolling up his sleeves, demanded that his colleague be allowed to speak. Putting up his dukes, he “vowed to whip anyone who tried to take him down.”

In 1992, his venerable wrestling skills earned him induction as an “Outstanding American” into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. A well-known story involves the 20-year-old new guy in town before a New Salem crowd defeating the challenger, a local gang leader, Jack Armstrong, in a wrestling match. “It’s not a mythology,” stated Ronald C. White, Lincoln expert and author of A. Lincoln: A Biography, referring to his prodigal strength and athletic competitions. 

Before a much greater crowd in Decatur, Illinois, Lincoln was applauded at the 1860 

state convention. The 51-year-old politician, nearing the nadir of his career, was on his way to the nomination of the Republican National Party. “The roof was literally cheered off the building,” somebody exclaimed. However, Abe didn’t seem triumphant or happy. One onlooker observed, “I then thought him one of the most diffident and worst plagued men I ever saw.” 

The crowds dispersed, “leaving behind cigar stubs and handbills and the smells of sweat and whiskey.” Discerning Lincoln sitting by himself at the end of the great hall, the lieutenant governor of Illinois, William J. Bross, approached the benevolent but brooding behemoth. The “Man of Constant Sorrow” looked up and said he “was not very well.”

Melancholia, as it was known in the 19th Century, was often looked upon as “unmanly.” Sadly, this fallacy is still believed by some. Shenk also noted, “…there was a sense that truly going off the deep end– being unable to work or function as happens in the disease of depression ran contrary to true masculinity.” Mood(s) in 19th Century America were fettered more to gender roles than today. 

As a twenty-something, Lincoln contemplated suicide and, later, in 1838, as a rising star in regional politics, Lincoln regarded his beloved land to be on a parallel precipice. In his Springfield, Illinois speech, The Perpetuation of our Political Institutions, he warned against the “mobocratic spirit” infesting the nation as the Confederacy opposed “the political religion of our nation,” the Constitution. Sound familiar?

Another Lincoln “Six Degrees of Separation” from Vermont is trivial and macabre. My American Cousin was the Tom Taylor comedy performed at Ford’s Theater on April 14th, 1865. The main character, a boorish relative who travels to England to claim a sizeable inheritance, is from Brattleboro, Vermont.

The author is a children’s book author and Vermont resident.