Page 22 - Integrity Seminars - Special Report

Q. What were the editor's social and political views?

G.P. David Blight wrote that:
"[Caleb] Bingham remained a remarkable mixture of at least three elements. He held to a devout
Congregationalist faith and Puritan sensibility (believing in human depravity and the sovereignty of God,
and dressing in old eighteenth century style, with cocked hat and silver-buckled shoes). He was a staunch
Jeffersonian in a state where few existed (he never put any money in a bank, and seems to have embodied
Jefferson's egalitarian faith in the capacities of common folk). Finally, Bingham saw the early American
republic as a new political beginning for humankind, and his more than one million schoolbooks sold
across the land were designed to produce republican citizens" [Blight, p. xix].

"The Columbian Orator is much more than a collection of moralisms for America's youth. It was the
creation of a school reformer of decidedly antislavery sympathies, a man determined to democratize
education and instill in America's youth the immediate heritage of the American revolution [and] the
habits and structures of republicanism" [Blight, p. xviii] [emphasis added].

Q. Did Lincoln read any of Caleb Bingham's publications?
G.P. Yes, according to his childhood friend Dennis Hanks. See Michael Lind, What Lincoln Believed, p. 44 and
Robert Bray, Reading with Lincoln, p. 10.

David Blight's summary:
"With hardly any formal schooling, the 21-year-old Abraham Lincoln studied with relish the classical and

Enlightenment era oratory in The Columbian Orator during his first winter (1831-32) in New Salem on the
Illinois prairie" [p. xviii]

See also: "Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln: The Parallel Lives of Two Great Statesmen" by Wendy
Innes:
"Both Lincoln and Douglass came to be known as "self made men." They shared the same basic reading
skills and read voraciously, even using the same books as the core of their education, including the Bible,
The Columbian Orator, the many works of Shakespeare, Lord Byron, Robert Burns, and Aesop's Fables."

Q. What were Lincoln's early views on slavery?
G.P. One of the most enduring sources on this topic is Frederick Douglass's 1876 Oration in Memory of
Abraham Lincoln. Douglass's candid and forceful speech should be read in its entirety. He said, in part, that
Lincoln "had not been schooled in the ethics of slavery; his plain life had favored his love of truth"

The same could be said about Douglass himself. He could speak critically about Lincoln (as "preeminently the
white man's President") and yet provide a candid account of the unique challenges Lincoln faced:

I have said that President Lincoln was a white man, and shared the prejudices common to his countrymen
towards the colored race. Looking back to his times and to the condition of his country, we are compelled
to admit that this unfriendly feeling on his part may be safely set down as one element of his wonderful
success in organizing the loyal American people for the tremendous conflict before them, and bringing
them safely through that conflict. His great mission was to accomplish two things: first, to save his country
from dismemberment and ruin; and, second, to free his country from the great crime of slavery.

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