Michael Burlingame on Lincoln & Obama

Michael Burlingame, one of our leading Lincoln scholars, is the author of the new and much anticipated 2-volume biography of our 16th president. Here is what he has to say about Lincoln and Obama.


Going In, A Lot Like Lincoln
From Early Family Woes To Abundant Political Gifts, Some Striking Similarities

By MICHAEL BURLINGAME
January 18, 2009

Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama share much in common. Obama is the first black president of the United States; Lincoln was, according to Frederick Douglass, "emphatically the black man's president," the first chief executive "to show any respect for their rights as men." Obama and Lincoln are the only Illinois politicians elected president. Each served only a brief time in Congress before winning the presidency. Like Lincoln, Obama is an ambitious, disciplined, prudent and gifted political strategist. The eminent literary critic Edmund Wilson claimed that Lincoln was the only president who could have made his living as a writer. If Wilson had lived to see Obama elected president and had read Obama's "Dreams From My Father," he might have amended his pronouncement. Both men lost parents in early life. Lincoln's mother died when he was 9. Obama's father deserted the family when the boy was 2. Both men were estranged from their fathers. Both were uprooted as youngsters. The Lincoln family moved from Kentucky to Indiana when Abe was 7; Obama's family moved from Hawaii to Indonesia when Barack was 6. Like Lincoln, Obama enters the White House with two young children. Lincoln's sons, Willie and Tad, were 7 and 10. Obama's daughters are 7 and 10.

Both Lincoln and Obama assumed office in the midst of a great national crisis. Lincoln had to deal with secession; in the period between his election and inauguration, seven states in the Deep South pulled out of the Union. As he carefully prepared his inaugural address, he sought to be conciliatory enough to prevent the eight other slave states from seceding; while at the same time he sought to remain true to the Republican Party platform, which condemned slavery and pledged to keep it from spreading into the western territories. His inaugural managed to do both.

He then hoped that time would work its healing wonders, and that the seceded states would realize that they were too small to function as a successful independent nation and would return voluntarily to the Union. The day after his inauguration, however, that plan collapsed as Lincoln discovered that the federal garrison at Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor would soon run out of food. Either he must resupply the fort or abandon it — if he chose the latter course, he would implicitly recognize the legitimacy of the Confederacy. President Obama faces a similar challenge in dealing with today's economic crisis. He must remain true to his campaign pledges to provide a strong stimulus to the faltering economy, while at the same time enlisting the support of enough Republican senators to make passage of such a package possible. To be successful in solving that dilemma and the others that will arise, President Obama may well profit from Lincoln's example, for he has said that he enjoys reading about the 16th president. Perhaps the most important element of Lincoln's success was his remarkable psychological maturity and strength. Most politicians, like most people, allow power to go to their heads, but Lincoln did not. He kept his ego under control and refused to take criticism and disagreement personally. A vivid illustration of this quality is the paternal advice that Lincoln gave to a young Union officer who was squabbling with his superiors. A great fan of Shakespeare, Lincoln began by quoting from one of his favorite plays, "Hamlet": "The advice of a father to his son, 'Beware of entrance to a quarrel, but being in, bear it that the opposed may beware of thee,' is good, and yet not the best." Lincoln altered this counsel which Polonius offered to Laertes: "Quarrel not at all. No man resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention. Still less can he afford to take all the consequences, including the vitiating of his temper, and the loss of self-control. Yield larger things to which you can show no more than equal right; and yield lesser ones, though clearly your own. Better give your path to a dog, than be bitten by him in contesting for the right. Even killing the dog would not cure the bite." That is advice from which President Obama and the rest of us can profit. • Michael Burlingame is the Sadowski Professor of History emeritus at Connecticut College and has written 12 books about Abraham Lincoln including "Abraham Lincoln: A Life" published in two volumes in 2008.