As a way to build interest for the upcoming Bosque Book Fair,
we have been featuring teacher and staff members sharing passages from their
favorite books at morning meetings, and the campus has been emblazoned with
posters showing pictures of these adults with their chosen books. To the
surprise of no one in my family, I chose Eric Foner's The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. I have always been fascinated by Lincoln, and
the more I learn about our sixteenth president, the more intriguing I find
him. However, with everything that has
been written about Lincoln (I have heard that the only person who has been
written about more is Jesus), Foner's Pulitzer Prize-winning book about Lincoln
offers us a different way to look at him as we trace the change in his
attitudes about slavery in particular and African-Americans in general. In the process, Foner provides educators and parents
with meaningful lessons we can teach our children.
Many people have heard the
stories about Lincoln's first observation of the inherent cruelty of slavery
while on a flatboat from Louisville to St. Louis, the Oval Office meeting with
Frederick Douglass where Lincoln first became acquainted with an African-American on
a personal level, and his respect for the black soldiers in the Union army in
the war's waning days. While these anecdotes are poignant, they may in fact
exemplify some of the crucial lessons we can teach middle and high school
students about the relevance of Lincoln to their own lives.
One lesson
may be that in life, we often face choices between two compelling moral
alternatives rather than a good and a bad choice. While Lincoln knew that
slavery was wrong, he also firmly believed in the necessity of the still young
American republic as an example of democracy for people all over the world. On
the one hand, he said, "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is not wrong. I
cannot remember when I did not so think and feel," but he also plaintively
said in 1858, "If all earthly power given me, I should not know what to
do" when faced with the threat that abolition could cause the country to
be torn asunder. Even after Fort Sumter was attacked, he said in a letter to
editor Horace Greeley, "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave,
I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it;
and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do
that."
As the war continued, though,
he came to realize that ending slavery was a vital part of this conflict. In
his second inaugural, the often-described agnostic Lincoln portrayed the war as
the price imposed by an angry God on America for engaging in the sin of
enslaving its people. “Fondly
do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily
pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the
bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and
until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn
with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said,
‘The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’ " It is important for our
students to understand that just as our country's greatest leaders have been
torn between conflicting alternatives, so they will find themselves having to
decide between the equally good or similarly bad. Consequently, they should be
slow to judge themselves or others.
Perhaps a second lesson to
learn from Lincoln is a willingness to change one's mind when faced with new
information. In an era where politicians
are viewed as being wishy-washy or indecisive for changing their minds over the
course of their careers, our students can learn that a steadfast commitment to one's opinion in the face of
changing facts might actually reflect cowardice or a lack of intelligence
rather than a stiff backbone. We can use
Lincoln as an example of courage as he changes his mind during his presidency. The
same person who said in 1858, “I am not, nor ever have been
in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the
white and black races. I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or
jurors of Negroes, nor qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with
white people,” later proposed in 1865 what are known as the
Reconstruction Amendments - the 13th,
the 14th, and 15th - which transformed former slaves into voting
citizens.
On the final page of his
outstanding book, Foner explains what may be Lincoln's greatest gift and perhaps
the most valuable lesson we can impart to our students. Foner shows that Lincoln's most important
trait was his ability to grow while in office.
As Foner says, "Lincoln did not enter the White House expecting to
preside over the end of the destruction of slavery. A powerful combination of
events, as we have seen, propelled him down the road to emancipation and then
to a reconsideration of the place blacks would occupy in a post-slavery
America. Of course, the unprecedented
crisis in which, as one member of Congress put it, ‘the events of an entire century transpire in a year,’ made change the order of the day. Yet as the presidency of his successor
demonstrated, not all men placed in a similar situation possess the capacity
for growth, the essence of Lincoln’s greatness. ‘I think we have reason to thank God for Abraham Lincoln,’ the abolitionist Lydia Maria Child wrote one week before
his death. ‘With all his deficiencies, it
must be admitted that he has grown continuously; and considering how slavery
had weakened and perverted the moral sense of the whole county, it was great
good luck to have the people elect a man who was willing to grow.’ "
Many
schools have a sentence in their mission or philosophy statement that discusses
lifelong learning; typically we mean that we want our students to continue
studying, learning, and growing in their intellectual capabilities. While we should certainly hope that our
graduates always learn new information and acquire new skills, we should also
want them to learn that, as they digest more facts or become more analytical,
they may be challenged to question what they had always considered to be true.
Like Lincoln, they need to be firm in their convictions; but they must also
realize that, as Lincoln understood, growth requires stretching oneself in new
and different directions and maybe turning toward an unexpected path. Instead of criticizing our students for
changing their minds, we should applaud their open-mindedness, reaffirm their
bravery, and encourage them to grow in every way possible. Perhaps the most important skill we can teach
our young men and women is a willingness to be works-in-progress their whole
lives.
