Pursuing Justice

I found it intersting to look closely at Lincoln's speeches/letters. In our small group discussion of the Second Inaugural it was mentioned that Lincoln seems "exhausted" and in the large group the term "melancholy" was used. It made me think of Lincoln's battles with depression. There is a very good Atlantic magazine article that I have used with my AP students by Joshua Wolf Shenk entitled "Lincoln's Great Depression". It can be found on the site (theatlantic.com). It contains a fascinating account of Lincoln before the Cooper's Union speech. It also is good for students to hear about someone battling through serious emotional torment to achieve great things. The first time I used it in class the discussion went on for the entire period and I knew some of the students speaking dealt with depression themselves.

Jay Barry

Arlington HS

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Jay Barry
High School History
Arlington

I agree, as I told you earlier today, with two of the points you raised about Lincoln's depression as it was depicted in the Shenk article.  First, Shenk spoke of Lincoln's depressions, and his youthful contemplations of suicide, as formative experiences. To wit, Lincoln learned that he could survive the worst that life could offer. He needed such perspective to maintain his leadership of the country during the darkest days of the Civil War. After the crushing Union defeat at Fredericksburg in the fall of 1862, he sadly observed that "If there is a worse place than Hell, I am in it." And yet he did not despair and continued to engineer the turnaround of Union fortunes that was to occur in 1863.  His survival of depression, according to Shenk, also taught him a free-will fatalism. By this I mean that he knew that he could work toward the right ends, but that ultimately he could not control all eventualities.  Events were in the end the manifestations of God's providence that worked through human agency by means of the "right as God has given us to see the right." Second, I think it is is very healing and empowering for young people who often confront their first real life disasters in high school to gain the perspective that Shenk's portrayal of Lincoln offers, that we can not only survive seemingly world-ending crises, but also learn enduring and transformative lessons from them. You are doing some inspired and inspiring teaching.

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Geoff Tegnell
7th Grade Social Studies, Curriculum Coordinator, Adjunct Professor

Hi Jay!

You bring up such a valid point!  My group yesterday also discussed the tone in his Gettysburg Address vs. Second Inaugural.  Understandably, the Gettysburg Address has power effervescence, given the timing of the speech.  Additionally, the length of the speech was also interesting.  Lincoln’s prior reputation of writing long deliberate speeches really didn’t prevail with this address.  We also talked about the rumor that he may have written it on a train ride, but revisited his word choice and decided that this was probably a myth. His words are methodical and send a clear message.  His Second Inaugural did have a sort of deflated tone for the majority of the speech.  Our group wrestled with whether his depression had anything to do with this.  At one point he almost claims that it’s out of his hands and into God’s. As stated, “Yet, if God wills that it continue…”  However, in true Lincoln fashion, the last paragraph is that of hope and determination.  For example, “…to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” 

 

 

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Julie Ngoc Duong McManuis
Wilson Middle School
US History & English

I'm glad the group is addressing the role of emotions in Lincoln's thinking and writing. We are always attracted to discussing Lincoln, I think, in part because he gives us a forum to discuss emotions openly as powerful forces that play a role in any political, moral or intellectual change. We are right to point to the role they play in good teaching, as in good politics, especially as our students are grappling with their own heavily intensified lives.

I love the notion in the comments above that Lincoln saw himself as a kind of independent fatalist. He always seems to adopt this particular tone. His letter to George Robinson reveals a man who, like Hamlet, has grown unrecoverably disturbed by the future he sees:

"there is no peaceful extinction of slavery in prospect for us...On the question of liberty, as a principle, we are not what we have been...now when we have grown fat, and have lost all dread of being slaves ourselves, we have become so greedy to be masters."

The reader senses Lincoln's struggle to accept that his political efforts have failed, and that the final outcome of the slavery question will not be his to see. Reaching almost back to Milton in his hellish description of America's fate, he relays his despair in stark, religiously loaded terms:

"So far as peaceful, voluntary emancipation is concerned, the condition of the negro slave in America...is now as fixed, and hopeless of change for the better, as that of the lost souls of the finally impenitent."

Here Lincoln plays futurist. He mourns the loss of a goal he seems to have expected to acheive, and resigns himself to powerlessness. He strikes this tone again in the "Meditation on the Divine Will," when he forces himself to confront his helplessness before God, which we might also read as his acknowledgement of his own lack of control over events:

"He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began."

Lincoln, a man famed for his physical strength, seems to become unmanned. Many of our students identify with this sense of helplessness. Tapping into this bond of feeling with Lincoln can open up a classroom discussion to the articulation of emotion, a tricky but, I'd argue, necessary part of the teaching process.

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Chris Miller
English and Journalism Teacher
Winchester High School