There are some figures that are such a permeating part of the collected consciousness that writing about them in a different light is a risky venture since readers have already established an opinion and preconceived archetype of the images. Figures like The Buddha, Jesus, George Washington, Hitler, and Abraham Lincoln all fit characters whom everyone who has engaged with the world or gone to school is familiar with. As such writing about them in a different way, or writing about a little known fact about the figure is risky writing business. Louis P. Masur in his article for the New York Times, “Lincoln Tells a Story” engages in this risking writing business by offering a more human side of Lincoln, the folksy side that is often lost on text books and biographies about him. Masur decides to depart from the traditional narrative of Lincoln and goes to secondary sources and personal journals of people recording Lincoln to give a more human side of him. The risks Masur takes in his writing, certainly justify the end result of readers getting to know a side of Lincoln they likely had not previously been acquainted with.
The primary characteristic of Lincoln that Masur attempts to convey was how important stories, or as they were called at the time “yarns” were in the life of the president. It was not just an enjoyable pastime for him or a way to connect with people, but Masur argues that Lincoln’s story telling helped him get through the unique horrors of being president of a country that was torn down the middle due to the Civil War that happened shortly after he was elected when the South seceded from the union. Masur writes that “The president’s storytelling and joke-making served multiple purposes” (Masur, 1). Masure assigns one of these reasons as the preservation of the president’s sanity. He quotes a contemporary of Lincoln; Hugh McCulloch who said that storytelling was a way to preserve his self enough to preserve the union. McCulloch wrote that storytelling “became part of his nature and he gave free rein to it, even when the fate of the nation seemed to be trembling in the balance. Story-telling was to him a safety-valve, and that he indulged in it, not only for the pleasure it afforded him, but for a temporary relief from oppressing cares” (Masur, 1).
Lincoln used stories in presidential debates, he used them to get rid of people from his office, and it is difficult to know exactly what stories were his, what stories he picked up from others, and which stories are incorrectly attributed to him. Some people, political rivals among others, did not appreciate the president’s predilection for storytelling. Masur writes that “not everyone was charmed.” Some thought that the president’s lightness was below the dignity of the office. Masur quotes the attorney general at the time who said that the president “does not act or talk or feel like the ruler of a great empire in a great crisis.” Masur continues writing that what troubled the attorney general was that he wanted “principles not parables” Implicit to Masur’s point is that stories, parables, fables, jokes, quips, tales, yarns—whatever one calls them, were exactly what a divided nation needed at the time. Just like many different religious sects can read the same passage of the Bible and come to a divided conclusion as to what exactly it means, stories can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Very often, the listener will interpret it in a way that reflects their own values. At a time of a torn nation where different values were being put on trial and there was great disagreement on the issues, the most dramatic being slavery, perhaps the president was taking the wisest path in telling parables instead of laying down concrete, inflexible principles.
What Dana did not comprehend Masur writes that Lincoln’s friends understood, that there was a deep need both for the president to tell these stories and a positive transformation that his stories bestowed on their audience. Lincoln also, Masur points out, told jokes, some of which by today’s standards would be considered extremely racist and unbecoming of a president. But it is important to keep in mind that everyone in a product of their time, and Lincoln, even though he changed a great many things and took steps after the war to outlaw slavery, he was also human and a product of his environment where the same standards of racism that are held today were not in wide practice.
Masur, deciding to write about some lesser-known facts about a well-known figure and then to publish that for a general audience took risks that he managed through the treatment of the subject. His focus remained on one particular aspect of the president’s character and his interpretations in the article are his own, but his conclusions are backed by both contemporary Lincoln scholars and contemporaries of Lincoln. The result is an article that hits the mark it intends to.
Work Cited:
"Lincoln Tells a Story." Opinionator Lincoln Tells a Story Comments. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Oct. 2013. <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/27/lincoln-tells-a-story/?_r=1>.
