Abraham Lincoln and the Self-Made Myth

Abstract

The Lincoln legend has come to have a hold on the American imagination that defies comparison with anything else in political mythology. Here is a drama in which a great man shoulders the torment and moral burdens of a blundering and sinful people, suffers for them, and redeems them with hallowed Christian virtues—“malice toward none and charity for all”—and is destroyed at the pitch of his success. The worldly-wise John Hay, who knew him about as well as he permitted himself to be known, called him “the greatest character since Christ,” a comparison one cannot imagine being made of any other political figure of modern times.