The Genius of Abraham Lincoln Grew From Tragedy
How Lincoln dealt with the loss of his children and the thousands that died during the Civil War
The Art of Becoming is about finding value in adversity and embracing discomfort. Each week, I share an idea on how to find fulfillment, a little joy, be more resilient, wiser, and hopefully, a better person.
Today, Abraham Lincoln teaches us how to grieve.
I hope you join me.
Death is our common denominator.
We are born, and from there, life diverges. Some are born into affluence, while others struggle with poverty from their first cry.
Our existence is a constant struggle to create and recreate ourselves, but most people get that wrong. They believe life is a journey of self-discovery. It isn't.
You are the author, maker, inventor, and designer of your life.
Many people play ring-around-the-rosie with being happy, depressed, loved, unloved, hated, antipathetic, wanting more, not having enough, and always searching for that thing or person that makes them feel secure and loved.
Our lives are different and yet similar. Everyone has dreams and fears. We hope, scheme, struggle, succeed, fail, and then try again. Throughout each failure, win, callous disregard, or intense love for each other, we hope or pray or beg whoever or whatever is listening for a better tomorrow.
Throughout our lives, death trails behind, waiting for you and me to slip up, to forget that it doggedly follows, counting each step we make until our last one.
While facing our mortality is difficult, the messiness of confronting the death of someone we love is, for some, a more bitter pill to swallow.
In the aftermath of loss, we sense, feel, or remember things held back and buried. We pray and hope they will never be unearthed in our lifetime. When the moment the stabbing pang of loss pierces our existence for the first time, or second, third, or one-hundredth, we wake up in a world without sense, color, sound, or vibration. Grief becomes all we know. It is the story we tell until words no longer make sense.
But how do we overcome grief in all its subtle and glaring shadows? I don't know if we can.
Like all struggles, it is something we must endure until time collects its due, and the bittersweet memory of our loss is not a framing of the last day or the collective moments that led to death but a kinder reflection of the whole life.
There is no right or wrong way to grieve—there is just grieving. Mourning is unlike doing a pushup, which requires strict form and regularity. You wake up, remember your loss, feel a pain bigger than you, and continue until the next day and the next. You hope that one day, the pain will be small enough to carry. That's it.
It helps to study the steps of those who traversed the minefields before us. A glimpse into someone who stood powerless and lived what Washington Irving meant when he wrote there is a sacredness to tears. They are messengers of overwhelming grief, deep contrition, and unspeakable love. Irving was right, but sometimes tears are a beacon for all three.
Perhaps no American President understood loss, overwhelming grief, and the pain from unspeakable love more than Abraham Lincoln. His life is a collective study of the subject.
Tragedy painted Lincoln's life from an early age. When he was nine years old, his mother died. Ten years later, his sister died in childbirth. His first love, Ann Rutledge, died from typhoid. Her death threw Lincoln into "the deepest gloom and melancholy." He said of her death, "My heart is buried in the grave with that dear girl." Today, we would call the gloom and melancholy he felt a nervous breakdown. Historians believe Lincoln lived with depression most of his life.
While the deaths of his mother, sister, and first love would make Abraham Lincoln a close associate of grief, it was the death of his children that made him reassess his place in the world.
He had four children: Robert, Edward (Eddie), William (Willie), and Thomas (Tad). Of the four, only Robert would live to become an adult. Tad passed six years after his father's assassination, and Eddie died when he was three years old.
Willie was born ten months after the death of his older brother, Eddie. Perhaps it was Eddie's death, or he was the most like his father of all the brothers, but Willie was Lincoln's favorite child. The young boy was thoughtful and had a philosophical side like his father’s.
As his father did, Willie embraced others and their pain. He wrote a poem eulogizing his father's friend, Edward Baker, who died at the Battle of Ball's Bluff in 1861.
Lincoln moved his family into the White House when he won the presidency. At first, life was normal for Willie. He went to school, made friends, and continued to be the fun-loving, mischievous little boy he always was.
In the early part of 1862, both Tad and Willie became sick with typhoid, probably caused by the contaminated water system in the White House. While Tad overcame the illness, Willie did not. He died on February 20, 1869.
We can almost see Abraham Lincoln as he entered the room where Willie's body lies. He stood at the foot of the bed, unable to move, his face chiseled in grief and transfixed on his son's still form. A man whose words consoled a nation as its children fought and died in a civil war was suddenly without any. At that moment, nothing made sense.
Mrs. Lincoln's chief designer and seamstress, Elizabeth Keckly, a former slave, cleaned and dressed Willie's body before the President arrived. Her observation of Lincoln showed a broken father shuttered by sorrow and chained to anguish.
"I assisted in washing him and dressing him, and then laid him on the bed, when Mr. Lincoln came in. I never saw a man so bowed down with grief. He came to the bed, lifted the cover from the face of his child, gazed at it long and earnestly, murmuring, "My poor boy, he was too good for this earth. God has called him home. I know that he is much better off in heaven, but then we loved him so. It is hard, hard to have him die!"
Great sobs choked his utterance. He buried his head in his hands, and his tall frame was convulsed with emotion. I stood at the foot of the bed, my eyes full of tears, looking at the man in silent, awe-stricken wonder. His grief unnerved him, and made him a weak, passive child. I did not dream that his rugged nature could be so moved. I shall never forget those solemn moments—genius and greatness weeping over love's idol lost. There is a grandeur as well as a simplicity about the picture that will never fade. With me it is immortal—I really believe that I shall carry it with me across the dark, mysterious river of death."
Four days after Willie's death, Lincoln and Mary Todd, his wife, buried their child. The second time they did that. For Mrs. Lincoln, it would not be her last.
Maria Popova wrote in her blog, The Marginalian, "A vital characteristic of a great spiritual, civic, or political leader is the ability — or is it the unrelenting willingness? — to transcend one's own experience, even at its most acute, and rise from the depths of personal pain in the service of another's welfare."
The consistent theme in Abraham Lincoln's life is rising above the depths of his pain to serve another's welfare. It should be ours as well.
What did Lincoln do after he held his dead son's body and said those last words? He went back to work. While hundreds of thousands grieved the loss of their husbands, sons, brothers, friends, uncles, and cousins during the Civil War, President Lincoln did not have the luxury of rest, to sit and grieve, to lose himself in memories and thoughts of what could or should have been.
The war continued while Lincoln grieved silently. Two weeks after Willie's death, the President recommended to Congress a program of compensated emancipation of slaves. Two days later, he relieved General George McClellan of his command. A few days later, he signed the Additional Articles of War prohibiting the return by military forces of escaped slaves.
Lincoln understood by intimate experience the only relief from the devastation of losing a loved one was time. A nation's fate rested on his decisions. He could not wait and do nothing. He understood his grief meant nothing compared to that of the American people.
Though most of his decisions were overwhelming and would change the course of history, some of his actions were small, personal, and bordered on the spiritual.
On December 23, 1862, he wrote to Fanny McCollough to console her regarding her father's death.
He begins by acknowledging the common denominator that everyone shares and how it is more challenging for some.
"In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares."
Lincoln offers the only consolation he can give—the truth—and how he dealt with loss.
"I am anxious to afford some alleviation of your present distress. Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You can not now realize that you will ever feel better. Is not this so? And yet it is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again. To know this, which is certainly true, will make you some less miserable now."
In a single sentence, he wrote about his experience with death. Lincoln was referring to more than Willie's death but also his mother, Eddie, Ann Rutledge, and the thousands of men who died at the Battle of Fredericksburg ten days earlier.
"I have had experience enough to know what I say; and you need only to believe it, to feel better at once."
No parent forgets the death of their children, just as no child forgets their parent's passing. He did not mean our memories would fade. Lincoln believed we would experience joy and comfort, a kind of peace, again, and our thoughts of them would change from anguish to bittersweet joy, but only if we allowed it.
After the loss at Fredericksburg, Lincoln probably reminded himself that things would eventually get better, the war would be over, and the country could move past the most terrible tragedies.
"The memory of your dear Father, instead of an agony, will yet be a sad sweet feeling in your heart, of a purer, and holier sort than you have known before."
There is a danger in listening to the siren song of our pain. We begin to believe no one has suffered like we have unless they lost a husband, wife, child, or friend or led men or women to war. We tell friends, family, and strangers you don't know what it means to grieve, to hurt, to feel a part of you that's missing, and never to be whole again.
The belief that no one understands is limiting but true at the same time.
I've heard these stories and many others over the years. They’re painful to hear. Imagine living with them.
My husband died from cancer. He suffered for months, and only cared for him.
My son hung himself in his bedroom.
I was the only one who survived in my platoon.
My mother died on my birthday, and she said I was the worst part of her life.
My husband killed himself and didn't say goodbye.
My daughter was murdered.
Pain. Suffering. Struggle. Grief. All sides of the same die rolled by life. I don't know if one kind of pain is worse than another.
Death hurts no matter who dies, but some deaths are worse than others.
Grief comes in muted shades of grey or the emptiness of black. Lincoln never ventures into the dark alleyways of why. There is never an answer. Perhaps it was his spiritual conviction that comforted him or in his years of searching, he realized he would never find an answer. Why, he discovered, is a matter of faith.
Lincoln did not compare his grief with Fanny's. It did not matter that he lost his mother when he was younger than when Fanny lost her father. Or that he lost two children and carried the weight of each man, woman, and child who died in the war. What mattered at that moment was Fanny.
We will never procure an answer to why we suffer loss of love or struggle to find it again. Instead, like Lincoln, we learn that we find our perfect relief in time.
In a pocket of days, months, years, or decades, our memories will shift from agony to a purer, holier sort, to the ones that celebrate each moment, even the last ones.
That’s when you’ll start healing and stop grieving, at least for a while.
Thanks for reading. I wish you joy.
Love to you and yours,
Michael
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Michael, whew.
Your words can make anybody reach for a large handkerchief. At times, we need that.