Political magnanimity can be as effective as it's attractive

Imagine that you’re lost in a dark wood at night. You come into a clearing in which there are a pink Elephant, an honest politician and Boris Johnson. Who should you ask for directions?

The answer is, of course, Boris Johnson. He may be an inveterate liar, but the other two are figments of the imagination.

My favourite politician of all time, and any country, is ‘Honest Abe’, Abraham Lincoln.

He was mostly pretty honest, though that didn’t stop him resorting to downright skulduggery where he deemed it necessary. Have you seen the film Lincoln? If not, you should make a point of watching it.

Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens
thundering in the House of Representatives

At one point, Thaddeus Stevens, played with tremendous verve by Tommy Lee Jones, talks about the campaign to pass the thirteenth amendment, the one that bans slavery, as the means to ensure that “the Constitution's first and only mention of slavery is its absolute prohibition”.

He later describes it as “the greatest measure of the nineteenth century, passed by corruption, aided and abetted by the purest man in America”.

That pretty well sums things up: Lincoln, the purest man in America, got the amendment passed by bribery, pressure, bullying, basically any tactics necessary. But it was perhaps his finest achievement.

Dishonesty, it seems, is sometimes highly effective.

“Honest Abe” may not have been any more honest than he needed to be. What he certainly was, on the other hand, was generous. Or perhaps the right word is magnanimous. And, interestingly, it served him well that he had that rare quality.

In 1854, he stood for the US Senate. At the time, Senators weren’t elected by popular vote but by the legislatures of the individual states. Lincoln seemed well-placed in his home state of Illinois and, indeed, on the second ballot he received 47 votes out of the 51 he needed to win. His Democratic opponent had 48 and five votes went to an anti-slavery Democrat named Lyman Trumbull, whose campaign manager was a certain Norman Judd.

Seven ballots later, Lincoln realised he would never get Trumbull’s votes. The only way to stop a mainstream Democrat victory was for him to throw his 47 to the man who had five, eccentric though that might seem. He decided to do just that, and Trumbull was elected.

It’s sometimes hard to remember just how obscure Lincoln was before he became President. In 1854, his only role in national politics had been a single term in the House of Representatives. Most of the time, he was a ‘prairie lawyer’, ‘riding circuit’ around Illinois. This meant travelling with a judge and a pack of lawyers to deliver justice in all the little towns of an as yet lightly populated state.

He was good at the work, and popular, but this kind of work was never going to win him any kind of national stature.

It came as a welcome surprise to be invited, soon after the Trumbull debacle, to join a team of lawyers in a major patent infringement case, the so-called ‘reaper case’. The trial was slated to be held in Chicago, so the defence team wanted a local, Illinois lawyer to join them and Lincoln was chosen.

That was a break for him. The other side was led by a former Attorney General, a man against whom it would be a real challenge to measure himself.

Then the trial was transferred to Cincinnati, Ohio. Which meant that the team could call on the man they’d wanted to use in the first place, a successful lawyer called Edwin Stanton. No one, however, told Lincoln he’d been dropped. He kept working on the case and built up a powerful brief to deliver in court.

When he showed up in Cincinnati, however, Edwin Stanton asked one of the other lawyers, “why did you bring that damned long-armed ape here?” They never spent an evening with him, although he stayed for the whole of the trial, watching the arguments in court. Stanton didn’t even look at the papers Lincoln had prepared.

At the end of the trial, when asked what he was going to do next, Lincoln said he was heading home “to study law”. He explained that he was fine for ‘rough-and-tumble’ cases:

… but these college-trained men are coming West. They have all the advantages of a life-long training in the law… Soon they will be in Illinois… and when they appear I will be ready.

He received a cheque for his part in the case but sent it back on the basis that he’d made no contribution. However, his fee had been agreed in advance, so the cheque was returned to him. This time he cashed it.

Abraham Lincoln, outstanding President

These stories only receive their full meaning when we look at their sequels.

In 1860, Lincoln ran for the presidency. The decision to hold the Republican Party nominating convention in Chicago, on Lincoln’s home turf, was key to his success, as was the excellent organisation of the campaign on the ground. In both of these, a vital role was played by – Norman Judd. The man for whose candidate, Lyman Trumbull, Lincoln had made way in 1854.

Then, in 1862, Lincoln was looking for a new Secretary of War for his Cabinet. Numerous candidates were proposed, but the one he chose was – Edwin Stanton. The man who’d referred to him seven years earlier as a “long-armed ape”.

Stanton was excellent in the role. He was also by Lincoln’s bed as the murdered President died.

Some claim Stanton said, “now he belongs to angels.” Fairly trite, in my view.

Others claim his words were “now he belongs to the ages”.

The latter is my preferred version. It seems to do justice to an outstanding statesman. A man made all the greater for his magnanimity, an even more precious quality than honesty.

And, in Lincoln’s case, a highly effective one.