Growing Up With Lincoln

In grade school, I lived in Springfield, Illinois. When family or friends visited, we would invariably take them to see Lincoln sites, such as Lincoln’s home and his grave. If they stayed longer, we’d likely take them to New Salem, the restored 19th century village where Lincoln grew up.

As is true of most children, I grew up in a bubble, assuming that others shared my sense of reality. Every summer, a Lincoln play was staged at New Salem, the play ending in his assassination and, as I remember, the singing of the mournful “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” A lot of tears were shed by the audience as they responded to the portrayal of Lincoln as a Christ-like martyr.

My assumption that everyone loved Lincoln as we did has taken some hits over the years. The first came in a college history course where we were required to read a book titled Lincoln Reconsidered. The book suggested that Lincoln was a typical politician who offered the Emancipation Proclamation not out of any great love of slaves, but as a way of keeping European powers from intervening in the Civil War on behalf of the Confederacy. I remember feeling angry, then guilty as I read the book. It was like reading something heretical.

A second jolt came when in my early teaching career, when a colleague let me know that where he grew up in South Carolina, no one recognized Lincoln’s birthday on February 12. I’m sure my jaw dropped.

But perhaps the most significant perception correction about Lincoln came this past week when I watched a program on Lakota Sioux Indians and learned the significance of the number thirty-eight to that community. Thirty-eight is the number of Lakota Sioux who were executed en masse by hanging in 1863.

Their crime? The Sioux were corralled on a small reservation in Minnesota and by their treaty with the US government were to be supplied food. But with the Civil War raging, food supplies were reserved for Union soldiers, so the Sioux were starving. Sioux warriors revolted, fled the reservation, and attacked the pioneers who’d moved onto their ancestral lands. Hundreds were killed on both sides before the rebellion was quelled.

President Abraham Lincoln faced a problem. He had already decided that captured Confederate soldiers would not be executed even though they killed northern civilians and Union soldiers in battle. Lincoln’s motivation was likely not compassion, but rather the logic of war. He knew that if he ordered captured Confederate soldiers to be executed, the Confederacy would execute captured Union soldiers.

However, there was strong support for the Sioux involved in the revolt to be tried and executed. Sioux warriors had raped and murdered civilians and fought Army troops, but Lincoln knew that the same could be said of Confederate soldiers. How could Lincoln justify executing Sioux warriors and imprisoning Confederate warriors who committed similar acts?

Lincoln found or created a loophole. He declared that captured Confederate troops were soldiers of battle while the Sioux were war criminals. It is not surprising that to this day, Sioux people don’t accept that distinction. But upon that distinction, Lincoln ordered the execution of thirty-eight Sioux, the largest mass execution in American history.

It was not Lincoln’s finest hour, and I am not surprised that I never ran across this dark moment in his presidency in my study of Lincoln. I’m now left with the question, “Knowing about the Sioux thirty-eight, what am I to think about this hero of my youth?”

My political science major in college taught me that politics is the study of tradeoff, compromises, and murky decisions. There are no perfect leaders. Utopia is not the goal. To use St. Augustine’s distinction, the city of man can’t be confused with the city of God.

Yet, I have to balance this cynical view of politics with my passion for theological studies. It is not just the Sioux community that rejects Lincoln’s reasoning that resulted in executing Sioux warriors who refused to passively watch their people starve to death. All people who yearn for justice should reject Lincoln’s decision as well.

That is why we should never accept the cynical jibe, “What do you expect of politicians? They’re all dirty.” No politician is perfect, but we have a right to ask that politicians seek to be just, fair, and yes, better, not worse, for having the honor of serving “we, the people.”