'Honest Abe' Was Still a Politician

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The Debate's the Thing

As Senate leader and the most prominent politician in America, Douglas—dubbed "the little giant" for his 5-foot-4 height—had waded into the Kansas issue with the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 and its prescription of "popular sovereignty" for the fate of slavery in Western territories. Lincoln and his razor-sharp legal mind quickly went to work exposing the logically faulty underpinnings in the theory that each state could decide the question for itself by enacting, or declining to do so, rules on how to police slavery. Despite his ridicule of what he and others dubbed "squatters' sovereignty," Lincoln was far from a hard-core abolitionist. That made him a potentially electable moderate, especially in the Western U.S., where abolition sentiment was not pervasive—a fact not lost on Republican Party elders pondering future leaders.

Among his many other gifts, Lincoln was also a tactical politician. In the U.S. Senate race of 1858, for example, Douglas began his campaign aiming to travel the state via private train car. Lincoln decided to essentially tag along and rebut his Democrat opponent's comments. "Speaking at the same place the next day after Douglas is the very thing," Lincoln told his inner circle, likely delighted by the ploy. Douglas backers were furious, and even some of Lincoln's closest allies saw risk in the stunt, prompting him to suggest in a personal letter to Douglas that they meet for seven debates over seven weeks in late summer. In that forum, across the state from Freeport to Cairo, popular sovereignty was given a thorough deliberation before what became a national audience for the Lincoln-Douglas Debates.

In the 1860 race, when Lincoln and Douglas faced off for the Presidency, the stakes were immense: Lincoln was persona non grata in the South for his views on slavery, and a split among Democrats meant that Northern and Southern party members each ran their own candidate. Lincoln, who swept the North, didn't even appear on the ballot in most Southern states. Before the election it was clear a Lincoln victory would mean the start of state secession, and to most people that made war likely. The President-elect knew as well as anyone what the stakes were for the nation. When he left Illinois for his inauguration, Lincoln offered supporters solemn words: "I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington."

A Voracious Reader of Newspapers

One of the more enduring political myths "Honest Old Abe" employed on the hustings was the image of the youthful laborer splitting rails for the railroads. Lincoln's accompanying nickname, "the Rail-Splitter," evoked all manner of imagery useful for the campaign: a rough-hewn youth, hardworking laborer, hardy frontiersman. The onetime soldier and accomplished wrestler certainly knew how to use his hands. But the Rail-Splitter image far outstretched the reality, Morris tells us. "I began to think I could smell a very large mouse, and this whole thing was a cunningly devised thing of knowing ones, to make Mr. Lincoln President," Lincoln's law partner, William Herndon says. It was a myth Lincoln himself found amusing, but one he also did nothing to quash.

Lincoln as a youth was regularly labeled "lazy" by relatives, a bookish, introspective lad far more interested in academic pursuits than manual labor. Later he became a voracious reader of newspapers from around the country. Lincoln was also known to quote aloud items that struck him, regularly irritating Herndon, who preferred philosophy and more scholarly works. In response, Morris recounts, Lincoln likened his mind to an old jackknife: "It opens slowly and its points travel through a greater distance of space than your little knife: it moves slower than your little knife, but it can do more execution." Spoken like a true politician.

Bachman is deputy news director for BusinessWeek.com.