Back to the history and board games of New York City! Last time, we’ve looked at the city’s humble beginnings all the way to the destruction wrought on the city by the Revolutionary War. Today, we’ll cover the first century of New York City as a city in the United States – how it established its primacy in the country, how it was at the same time very attractive and a horrible place to live in, and how it took shape as a modern metropolis. As always, board games will guide us.
American Capital
When Britain had recognized American independence in 1783, the young country gave itself a constitution – the Articles of Confederation. The United States were organized on strictly confederative principles. New York City became the capital. The advocates of broad independence for the states and minimal federal government, however, lost ground over the next few years as the United States struggled to deal with the post-war challenges, chiefly the states’ tremendous debt. Thus, over ferocious public debate, a new constitution was adopted in 1787, and according to it, a strong chief magistrate elected – George Washington, the first president, who was inaugurated in 1789 at City Hall, New York.
One of the fiercest proponents of a strong federal government was New Yorker Alexander Hamilton who became the nation’s first secretary of the treasury. In this role, Hamilton advocated for further government centralization, especially in regards to financial and economic affairs, based on his experience in the commercial hub New York. Hamilton succeeded in having the federal government take over the remaining states’ debts, but his opponents – chiefly rural southerners – demanded a price: The federal capital would move away from New York. Philadelphia would fill the role temporarily, before a new capital to be constructed in a southern swamp would be ready – the future Washington, D.C.
Even though New York City ceased to be America’s capital, it was still the prime center of American capital. In 1792, the New York Stock Exchange was founded. Its location – Wall Street – is synonymous with finance until today. The city’s booming harbor also attracted more and more commerce. By 1804, New York City had overtaken Philadelphia as the largest city in the United States at around 70,000 inhabitants. As growth did not slow down, the city’s leadership embarked on a scheme which must have seemed megalomaniac at the time: In 1811, they adopted a development plan which laid a regular grid of avenues and perpendicular streets over Manhattan Island, encompassing areas large enough to house a million people at the contemporary population density. That was the blueprint for modern New York City.
New York’s growth, however, was not pre-ordained. It relied chiefly on the city’s status the nation’s premier port. Yet as the United States grew westward, New York lay farther and farther away from many of the new towns and states. Goods could only flow to or from the Great Lakes or the Great Plains by arduous land journeys – or down the Mississippi. New Orleans, located at the mouth of the great stream, seemed poised to take over New York’s role as America’s port. That’s when the governor of New York state, DeWitt Clinton, proposed an ambitious engineering scheme: Nature might not have connected New York City with the great inland waterways of America. But men could. The 350-mile Erie Canal, completed in 1825, connected the Hudson River with Lake Erie and thus allowed uninterrupted ship transport from New York all the way to the western frontier states.
Packet Row (Åse Berg/Henrik Berg, White Goblin Games) is set in the bustling port of New York in the 1840s. Players need to find the right combination of trade goods (so, supply), contracts (demand), and ships to grow rich as merchants. Money alone will not be enough for victory: The game embodies the ethos of the magnates of the 19th century, which held that wealth came with responsibility for the community. Thus, the money earned in Packet Row needs to be spent on projects which benefit the city (say, the university) for victory points.
When the Erie Canal was completed in 1825, 89% of New Yorkers had been born in the United States. By 1860 that number had fallen to less than half. Let’s take a look at this great social and political transformation.
Immigration, Death, and Politics
New York’s status as America’s port made it incredibly attractive for immigrants: Its booming trade hungered for willing workers, and even if immigrants had different dreams – say, farming on the wide prairie – they would probably arrive by ship in New York. In the mid-19th century, an astounding 70% of all European immigrants to the United States entered the country through New York. The absolute numbers are even more breath-taking: In the decade after the Great Famine, a million Irish alone arrived in New York, along with German, English, and Scottish immigrants.
Despite this massive population influx, New York City had only around 800,000 inhabitants by 1860. That was partly because many immigrants moved on further inland, but also because of the astonishing mortality: For example, during the year 1856, 4% of all adults and 20% of all children in New York City died. The cramped living quarters in which most immigrants found themselves and the inadequate medical infrastructure made New York a fertile breeding ground for all kinds of epidemics, while the high cost of living forced the immigrants into long working hours at often dangerous jobs.
Under these circumstances, it is no surprise that the immigrants turned to anyone who promised them a helping a hand. And as they were so many (and usually gained citizenship after two years of residence), courting them became a viable electoral strategy. Fernando Wood became the first New York mayor whose election had been largely achieved by his success with Irish-American and German-American voters. His recipe for success – mobilizing various immigrant communities – would be copied for decades by his successors in Tammany Hall, the local Democratic Party’s political machine which traded patronage for votes.
Tammany Hall (Doug Eckhart, Pandasaurus) is centered on this political strategy: The basic move which players take is to select one immigrant token (Irish, German, English, or – inspired by the later 19th century – Italian) and place it in one of the wards of New York. That gives the player both some influence with the respective immigrant community and some potential strength on the ground in that ward, come the next election. Whichever player wins most wards in an election round becomes mayor of New York and thus gets to dole out City Hall jobs to their allies.
Tammany’s success in the 1850s was based on organizing various disparate communities. The Civil War brought ruptures to this alliance: Mayor Wood called for New York City to secede from the Union and become a “free city” in order to maintain trade relations with the treasonous southern states. The majority of Tammany Democrats, however, were staunchly in favor of the Union, but less enthusiastic about the cause of abolitionism. Thus, many of the German immigrants (often veterans of the 1848/49 revolution) abandoned the party in favor of the Republicans, and the German-Irish voting bloc split (although it would remain firmly united in its opposition to the temperance movement).
The split caused a Republican-led fusion ticket to win the mayoral election of 1862. It would be a short break from Tammany rule, as the new mayor faced growing racial tensions: On July 13 1863, protests against the continued draft erupted in violence. For the next three days, a mob (mostly consisting of Irish-Americans from the Lower Manhattan slums) rampaged through the city, targeting Black neighborhoods. The Draft Riots would only be put down once regiments returning from Gettysburg reached the city. Many Black New Yorkers left the city afterward, so that they amounted to barely over one percent of New York City’s population in 1865.
Tammany rule was restored in the 1864 mayoral election… not that it mattered much who exactly the mayor was, as long as he was a loyal follower of the Tammany machine. The unbridled access to power allowed the Tammany leader William “Boss” Tweed to become one of the richest men in New York – and public money also lined the pockets of many public servants and private contractors (especially in the construction business). The most outrageous example of this corruption was the construction of the County Courthouse. Tweed himself bought a quarry to supply the marble for the project at egregious prices, and the subcontractors had a field day, too, billing amounts like $360,000 for one carpenter’s month of labor or $7,500 per individual thermometer. The Courthouse’s final cost ran up to $13 million – almost twice the price of the contemporary Alaska Purchase!
Tweed, however had cranked the levers one too many times. Even New York Democrats (at least those set aside by him) distanced themselves from him. A court found Tweed guilty of embezzlement and sentenced him to a year in prison. He escaped and made his way to Spain, but was discovered and extradited to the United States, where he would die in prison. Tammany would rule New York politics for almost another century due to the machine’s continued ability to organize new immigrants (Italians and Eastern European Jews in the late 19th and early 20th centuries), but the worst excesses of its corruption ended with Boss Tweed. Indeed, for a 20th century New Yorker, it would be almost impossible to imagine how political office could be mostly sought to enrich a few powerful individuals and their willing helpers.
The Dawn of the Modern Age
New York City in the mid-19th century was squalor and corruption, but it was also the place where the innovations of the modern metropolis first took shape. The explosive population growth and the crowded living conditions were countered with a massive park development – Central Park, until today New York’s finest place to breathe fresh air and surround yourself with the peace of grass and trees. Construction lasted from 1857 to 1876.
New technology also sprung from New York – literally and figuratively. When Thomas Edison looked for the first city in which to broadly distribute electricity, New York was the obvious choice. And the transformational impact of the railroad on America would not have been possible without the finance hub New York raising and directing the capital for the investments. So, all of you 18XX gamers, you can thank New York!
Finally, in 1886, New York City received its most iconic landmark: The people of France gifted the United States a large statue, symbolizing liberty, the chief value of the American Revolution. Once the Americans had succeeded at funding the pedestal for the statue – encouraged by campaigns of the New York newspapers – the Statue of Liberty was proudly displayed in New York harbor, welcoming newcomers and promising them a free life. In the words of Emma Lazarus, whose poem adorns the a plaque inside the pedestal of the statue:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
In the years after the Statue of Liberty was erected, New York shape-shifted… upwards. The age of the skyscraper began, and nowhere more so than in Manhattan. But that’s a story for next time!
For a concise introduction, especially focused on local politics, see Lankevich, George J.: New York City. A Short History, New York University Press, New York City, NY/London 1998.
If you want a treatment which is both more in-depth and more journalistic (and lavishly illustrated) and don’t mind its history practically ending around 1970, see the book version of the 17-hour PBS documentary from 1999: Burns, Ric/Sanders, James/Ades, Lisa: New York. An Illustrated History, Knopf, New York City, NY 2001.
Nine score and seven weeks ago, I have inaugurated a new irregular series on my blog assessing the merits of UK prime ministers (illustrated through the lens of a single board game each). The rating system seemed robust enough to apply it to other countries/leaders (at least if they are more or less democratic). Thus, we branched out to American presidents, German chancellors, and even a German president. Today’s subject is another US president – Abraham Lincoln, our first rated subject from the 19th century. And which game could be more appropriate for him than the first real political-military game of the American Civil War – For the People (Mark Herman, GMT Games)?
The Rating System
Some caveats ahead: The presidents will be rated by the knowledge of their time. If they or their contemporaries could not have known about the effects of something, I will not use my hindsight to mark it as a mistake of theirs. The assessment is focused on their conduct as president, but includes their life after holding the office (in which they will still be regarded in the public eye as (ex-)presidents).
Now, to the system itself: There are three policy field categories (foreign, domestic, and economic policy) and three more general ones (vision, pragmatism, integrity). A president can earn from one to five stars in each category (for a total sum of up to 30). In detail, the president is assessed as follows:
Foreign policy: Did the president increase US influence in the world and the security of Americans at home? Did the president wield US power responsibly and with positive results for the regions affected (the latter counting for a greater deal in times of US power being great)?
Domestic policy: Did the president increase the liberty of Americans to express themselves and to participate in the political process? Did the president promote domestic security and shape the framework for fair justice dealing with offenses?
Economic policy: Did the president facilitate the prosperity and economic security of Americans (including in the mid- and long-term)? Was the president’s economic policy based on mutual benefit of those involved or did it unduly burden one side?
Vision: Did the president have an idea of what the United States and the world (the latter counting for more in times of US influence being great) should look like beyond the immediate future? Did the president’s policies steer the United States (and, if applicable, the world) in this direction?
Pragmatism: Did the president succeed in seeing his policy through from inception to completion? How well did the president manage the support from Congress, society, the administration, the media (the latter counting for more in more recent years)?
Integrity: Did the president understand the office as a means to benefit himself, special interest groups, the entire country, or another community? Did the president respect the boundaries of the office?
Lincoln’s Life
Beginnings on the Frontier
Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, as the son of Kentucky frontier farmers. The family moved around often during his childhood – first to Indiana, then Illinois. Lincoln received little formal education. He worked on his father’s farm and as a hired laborer from his youth on. However, he loved reading and yearned to escape physical labor by self-improvement – thus, he jumped at the chance to work as a store clerk (and later, store owner), postmaster, and, finally, taught himself law from books and passed the bar to practice as a lawyer.
Lincoln ran for the Illinois state legislature in 1832 and was narrowly defeated – as he proudly noted later, it was his only defeat in a popular election. Two years later, he was successful. During his eight years in the state house, Lincoln focused on supporting the infrastructural development of the state – railroads, canals, and the state bank to finance these projects.
The dominance of the Democratic Party in Illinois left little room for Whigs like Lincoln to be elected to national office. Lincoln thus waited until it was his turn in the Whig party candidate rotation to try for the US House of Representatives in 1846. Lincoln went to Washington where he attacked Democratic president James K. Polk’s war against Mexico. The Whig rotation meant that he could not run for re-election. Lincoln resumed his law practice and gloomily assumed his political career was over.
Lincoln vs. the Expansion of Slavery
The Mexican-American War ended in a resounding success for the United States – and in an expansion of slave-holding territory in the south which upended the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Instead of being bottled up in the south, slavery now seemed on the advance. The proponents of the “peculiar institution” saw their chance to export it to the territories, new states, and enforce their customs in the free states of the north as well. The possible expansion of slavery electrified its opponents as well, and the territories in the west – especially Kansas – soon became embroiled in a violent struggle over their status as slave-holding or free.
Lincoln was elected to the Illinois state legislature again in 1854, but declined to take his seat to stand for election to the US Senate (then elected by state legislatures). As he failed to obtain a majority, he struck a pact with anti-slavery Democrat Lyman Trumbull and had him elected on a cross-party coalition of Whigs and Trumbull’s small faction of anti-slavery Democrats. A political re-alignment was near.
When the new Republican Party formed, united in its opposition to slavery, Lincoln abandoned the sinking ship of the Whig Party. He stood again for election to the US Senate in 1858, this time against Democratic heavyweight Stephen A. Douglas who had made his fame as the evangelist of “popular sovereignty” – the position that the federal government should neither allow the expansion of slavery to the new states and territories nor ban it, and instead leave the decision to be decided in local referenda. Lincoln followed the immensely popular Douglas on his campaign trail and got him to stand in a series of debates against Lincoln. While Lincoln lost the Senate election once more, the debates elevated him to national standing as a moderate opponent of slavery with great intellectual and rhetorical capabilities.
Elected by the People
Lincoln’s moderate stance – he opposed the expansion of slavery, but did not call for its abolition in the slave states of the American South – was a liability in the new Republican Party if they just wanted to make a statement for their supporters. Yet when the dominant Democratic Party which had won six of the last eight presidential elections fractured over the question of slavery (Douglas’s platform of Popular Sovereignty gained a majority, but not the required two thirds of the delegates; the southern proponents of federal enforcement of slavery outside of the South bolted from the Democratic convention and nominated John C. Breckinridge as their own candidate), it became an asset – for the Republicans now played for victory. Lincoln was nominated as the Republican candidate, beating the party’s more radical heavyweights such as Governor Salmon P. Chase (Ohio) or Senator William H. Seward (New York). As the pro-slavery field fractured even further (John Bell ran as the candidate as the Constitutional Union Party which had the same views on slavery as the southern Democrats, but opposed their flirt with secession), the Republicans were suddenly the frontrunners. While Lincoln only won 40% of the popular vote in the election of November 6, 1860, he was ahead in all the populous free states of the north which gave him an easy victory in the electoral college (180 of 303 votes). John Bell had carried three states for 39 electoral votes with only 13% of the popular vote; Stephen Douglas only 12 electoral votes even though his 29% of the popular vote placed him second behind Lincoln. Yet he had been crushed in the north by Lincoln, and in the south by John Breckinridge who had only received 18% of the popular vote, but carried eleven slave-holding states in the south for 72 electoral votes.
Lincoln was only a moderate opponent of slavery, but that was still likely to mean that he would end the federal practice to enforce slavery in the new states and territories as well as the free states (as when fugitive slaves were returned from the free states to their erstwhile masters). That thought put southern slaveholders in a frenzy. South Carolina declared its secession from the United States on December 20, 1860. Six other states followed suit in the next weeks. The seven proclaimed a new country, the Confederate States of America, on February 4, 1861 – one month before Lincoln had even taken office.
Any attempts to save the Union before Lincoln’s accession failed. Lincoln himself made a conscious effort not to provoke the southerners, he was also fiercely aware that their position was that of a political minority, having just been soundly defeated by the electorate, and that he could not act “as if I repented for the crime of having been elected, and was anxious to apologize and beg forgiveness.” Constitutional Unionist Senator John C. Crittenden proposed to enshrine slavery in the US constitution to allay the fears of the slavers. These constitutional amendments could not gain a majority in Congress, as the Republicans were unwilling to use their electoral victory to enact their defeated opponent’s platform, and the southern Democrats were bent on secession.
Entering the White House, Lincoln found a mess. His predecessor James Buchanan, a pro-slavery Democrat, had done nothing to prevent secession or reign in the secessionists. Parts of his administration had even helped the secessionists before their terms in office ended. Lincoln himself dared not act to boldly to quash the secession as he (falsely) believed that the majority of southern whites supported the Union and would rise up against the secession. As that did not happen, the only committed Unionists in the South were representatives of federal institutions – most notably, the army. The secessionists seized army installations, where they could, and sieged them, where they couldn’t: The shots fired at Fort Sumter, a fort in the harbor of Charleston (South Carolina) which its commander refused to hand over to the secessionists, marked the beginning of armed insurrection to the United States – the American Civil War. Encouraged by the brazen action further south, four more states (including the all-important Virginia) joined the Confederacy.
Limited War to Save the Union
Lincoln now walked a dangerous tightrope. The secession could only be put down by military force, but he needed to apply it in a way which would not make the Union look the aggressor lest the slave states which were still in the Union (Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland) seceded as well. Lincoln managed these border states with a deft hand. In Missouri, the local unionists and the US forces overcame the secessionists. Lincoln left Kentucky deliberately alone until a Confederate invasion swayed the state in favor of the Union (and US forces defended it against the Confederacy). Maryland, the most crucial of the three for its position (it provided the only connection of Washington, D.C., to the rest of the Union), was put under tight control by the US military. Lincoln dispensed with the writ of Habeas Corpus to allow for a more effective control of secessionists there.
With the border states secured, the Union needed to put down the Confederacy. That proved to be a daunting task: While the Confederacy was far inferior in terms of manpower and industrial production, it only needed to hold out long enough for the war to become so unpopular in the North that the Union would seek a negotiated end to it. The Union, on the other hand, had to force the Confederacy into surrender by destroying its armies and taking its territory. This asymmetry is reflected in the victory conditions of For the People: The Union player can only win (the campaign game) by dragging Confederate Strategic Will all the way down from 100 to 0. The Confederate player, on the other hand, has other avenues of victory: Having more than twice the Strategic Will of the Union player will do, as will lowering Union Strategic Will under 50 in fall of 1864 – when Lincoln would be up for re-election.
Lincoln was thus on a timer. The Union needed to win decisively, and soon. Yet the first offensive toward the Confederate capital Richmond (Virginia) was repelled. Lincoln consequently approved a massive expansion of the army, the naval blockade of the south, and a multi-pronged approach into the Confederacy (not only in the east, but also through Kentucky and along the Mississippi River) – preparations for a long war.
Lincoln studiously avoided any infractions against slavery in the early phase of the war (and when his generals, such as 1856 Republican presidential candidate John C. Frémont, overstepped their authority in that regard, sacked them). Yet as no southern Unionist movement arose to challenge the Confederacy, Lincoln’s belief in the unionist leanings of the white Southerners dwindled. By 1862, he had grown convinced that the still undecided war had broken out to serve a larger purpose – the end of slavery. Thus, he slowly racked up anti-slavery measures. Slaves taken from Confederate owners were treated as contraband of war, not to be returned. Slavery was abolished in D.C. (with the former slaveowners compensated), and banned in the territories. And by late 1862, Lincoln had changed his views on the relationship between slavery and the Union altogether: He no longer thought that respecting slavery would convince the South to re-join the Union, but that attacking slavery would weaken the Confederacy internally and sap its external sources of support and would thus help to end the war and restore the Union.
Total War: Emancipation and Union
A more sweeping statement on slavery was thus necessary. With one military disappointment after another (excepting Ulysses S. Grant’s victories in the west), it would look like an act of desperation, though. Lincoln needed a success. The marginal Union victory in the battle of Antietam (which repelled a Confederate offensive on Union territory) on September 17, 1862, was as good as it would get – and so Lincoln proclaimed that the insurgent states had until January 1, 1863, to re-join the Union. Otherwise, all slaves living in states in rebellion would be freed. Of course, that had no immediate effects – after all, the thus emancipated slaves were in territories under Confederate control – but it forced the Confederacy to increase the effort to keep their slaves from running, and it effectively precluded the European powers Britain and France (pro-Confederate from the point of view of their economies and power politics, but strictly anti-slavery) to recognize the Confederacy.
The Emancipation Proclamation is a crucial event in For the People as well (which sets the game apart from earlier Civil War games, which focused almost exclusively on the movement of armies and made at best cursory references to slavery). It is one of the very few mandatory events – if the conditions are met (a Union battle victory), it must be played for the event. While it lowers the Strategic Will of the Union (reflecting the unwillingness of many northerners to fight a war for the Black people of the South), it hurts the Confederacy much more – not only in terms of Strategic Will (a further penalty will be applied henceforth every round), but also by removing some military forces (which, presumably, either are kept back to guard plantations, or cannot be supplied anymore as the fleeing slaves shrink the southern economy).
Lincoln was also done with his earlier attempt at limited war in another respect: US forces in the crucial eastern theater had been commanded by General George B. McClellan since July 1861. McClellan had mishandled them at almost every opportunity, and even when he succeeded (such as Antietam), he squandered his advantage by failing to pursue. Even his political value to Lincoln – McClellan was a high-profile Democrat – could not save him now. Lincoln sacked him, continuing his search for a general who would act aggressively, deliver battle to the Confederacy, and victory to the Union – going in succession through Ambrose Burnside, Joe Hooker, and George G. Meade.
Sacking McClellan is something that a Union player at For the People might also want to do – while McClellan’s battle rating of 0-2 (offense/defense) is not too bad, his strategy rating of 3 means his forces can only be moved when spending a powerful 3-value card – bad for any US president who means to go on the offensive! Yet McClellan’s high political value (10) makes it painful for the player to relieve him of his command, as it will incur a steep Strategic Will penalty.
McClellan where loved to be most – in command of the Army of the Potomac, the Union’s main force on the eastern theater.
1863 would mark the turning point of the war. The Confederacy meant to undermine Union morale by another large-scale incursion into Union territory. On July 1, 1863, the Confederate and Union main armies clashed at Gettysburg. After three days of bloody battle, the Confederacy retreated. One day later, Grant took Vicksburg (Mississippi) and thus put the entire Mississippi River under Union control, cutting the Confederacy in half.
Yet the war remained unpopular in the North. Only two weeks after the victories of Gettysburg and Vicksburg, riots against the draft broke out in New York. Lincoln had the draft momentarily suspended and quietly resumed a month later.
With only one more year until the presidential election, time was running out for Lincoln. The Democratic Party of the North, always split between the supporters of the war to re-establish the Union and its opponents, adopted a pro-peace platform… and selected George McClellan, whose incompetence had done so much to prolong the war, as their candidate. Lincoln had no problem securing his nomination (his control of the Republican Party was by now complete) and left it to the convention to select his running mate. They opted for Andrew Johnson, a Democrat who supported the war.
If the Union did not win great victories in 1864, Lincoln’s chances for re-election were slim. Yet there were reasons to be optimistic: Lincoln had placed Grant in command of the eastern theater, whereas Grant’s former subordinate William T. Sherman now headed the forces in Tennessee, ready to invade Georgia. Grant slowly wore down the Confederate forces in Virginia which could not bear the attrition. In the meantime, Sherman had taken Atlanta – a psychologically invaluable success which shifted the electorate’s mood in Lincoln’s favor – and marched on Savannah. Lincoln was re-elected with 55% of the popular vote and 212 of 233 electoral votes.
Now the great tasks of restoring the Union and abolishing slavery had to be brought to conclusion. While Grant and Sherman kept advancing, Lincoln worked to turn emancipation from a wartime measure to a constitutional right: The 13th Amendment would end slavery in the United States. The amendment showed not only Lincoln’s acumen in dealing with Congress, but also how much the country had changed – Lincoln had lost the 1858 Senate election on a much more moderate position than what was now to become part of the US Constitution. In his second inaugural address, Lincoln interpreted the war as a punishment for the nation’s original sin of slavery, but expressed hope for the nation to move forward together.
The Confederacy collapsed under Grant’s and Sherman’s campaigns. Confederate General in Chief of the Armies, Robert E. Lee, surrendered on April 9, 1865, with other commanders following suit. The Reconstruction of the South with the eventual goal of its re-admission to the Union and the integration of the former slaves into American society were now Lincoln’s chief tasks. Yet before he could begin to deal with the requirements of peace, he was murdered by the Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865.
The Rating
Foreign policy
Lincoln left foreign policy largely to Secretary of State William H. Seward, yet intervened where necessary (for example, when the seizure of British mail ship Trent which carried Confederate envoys threatened to spark a crisis or even British intervention, Lincoln calmed the storm by releasing the envoys). He successfully forestalled foreign recognitions of the Confederacy (except by fellow slave-state Brazil), let alone military intervention on behalf of the Confederacy.
Lincoln recognized slavery as the chief obstacle to liberty in the United States. First tentatively, then boldly did he abolish the practice, resulting in the freedom of four million people. While he has been attacked for his alleged infractions on individual freedoms (most notably the suspension of Habeas Corpus), Lincoln used these measures in moderation. That Lincoln never even considered postponing the 1864 election (which he full well knew could end both his presidency and his policies) because of the war is the strongest testament to Lincoln’s deep respect for the rule of law.
Lincoln regarded economic policy as the prerogative of Congress and did not interfere with it. His own economic policy was concerned with the organization and financing of the war effort, in which he was largely successful (even though it must be said that the economic basis of the Union was much stronger than that of the Confederacy).
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Vision
Lincoln’s vision of the United States was that of a country which was no longer “a house divided against itself.” While his own preference would have been to contain slavery and let it extinguish by itself in the South, the secession both enabled and required him to take firmer measures. Besides ending slavery, Lincoln laid the foundations during the Civil War for the United States to be a unified country, largely centrally administered, rather than a collection of individual states, and thus prepared the country’s 20th century predominance. Not least of all, Lincoln’s unmatched rhetorical prowess allowed him to interpret political events in memorable language which shapes American thinking until today.
Lincoln was a Washington outsider. Before his presidency, he had only spent two years in federal politics. Still, he quickly developed a productive working relationship with Congress and his cabinet – all the more remarkable as Lincoln’s Secretaries were not selected for their loyalty and subservience, but came from the heavyweights which had competed for the 1860 presidential nomination (including Secretary of the Treasure Chase and Secretary of State Seward). Lincoln’s legacy is remarkable as well: He established the nascent Republican Party as the dominant political force which would win twelve of the next 16 presidential elections.
Lincoln respected the boundaries of his office and did not attempt to extend his influence into areas which were thought to be Congress’s province. The goodwill he extended to people of the most diverse backgrounds and convictions is legendary. Lincoln placed himself at the service of the Union – a nation he came to understand as larger than before, including four million heretofore disenfranchised slaves.
Rating: 5 out of 5.
Overall
Abraham Lincoln faced challenges like no other American president. The secession and Civil War were both a struggle for survival of the United States against those who would not accept the democratic process and a moral crucible which would resolve the awkward question of slavery after 80 years of failed attempts to skirt it. Lincoln met these challenges head on and with resounding success. He jumps to the top of the ranking – and it’s not even close.
How would you rate Lincoln? Let me know in the comments!
Further Reading
For an accessible biography of Lincoln, see Gienapp, William E.: Abraham Lincoln and Civil War America. A Biography, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2002.
For a “biography of the mind” of Lincoln, situating him in the intellectual currents of his time, see Guelzo, Allen C.: Lincoln. A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2009.
For an overview of how Civil War games treat the causes of the war, slavery, and emancipation, see Wallace, Alfred: The War in Cardboard and Ink. Fifty Years of Civil War Board Games, in: Kreiser Jr., Lawrence A./Allred, Randal: The Civil War in Popular Culture. Memory and Meaning, University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 2014, pp. 175—89.
Anmelden
