At War with the Press

Book Review: Lincoln and the Power of the Press 

BY LOUIS P. MASUR
1/30/2017 • AMERICA'S CIVIL WAR MAGAZINE

Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion

 By Harold Holzer, Simon & Schuster 2014, $37.50

Abraham Lincoln understood the power of the press. From early in his career, he subscribed to multiple papers, courted editors and tracked reports of his remarks. Following the debates with Stephen Douglas in 1858, he gathered newspaper transcripts of his speeches and had them published. Lincoln so firmly grasped the influence of the press that he became a partner in a German-language paper in Springfield—and concealed his ownership.  Newspapers shaped public opinion and “he who moulds public sentiments,” Lincoln proclaimed, “goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions.”

That insight from 1858 serves as the epigraph for Harold Holzer’s sweeping work. It has been more than 60 years since anyone has written on this vast topic, and for good reason. A study of Lincoln and the press requires biographical expertise as well as knowledge of the history of journalism. Holzer, of course, is a prolific Lincoln scholar. But earlier in his career he also was a newspaper reporter and press secretary. In this book, he has drawn on a lifetime of experience and study to produce the definitive work on the subject.

Throughout the book, Holzer weaves together Lincoln’s story with an account of the careers of many prominent editors, perhaps none more important than Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune, James Gordon Bennett of the New York Herald and Henry J. Raymond of The New York Times. Greeley provoked and embarrassed the administration; Bennett once called Lincoln a “joke incarnated”; Raymond supported William Seward in 1860. Each editor was represented in a clippings file that Lincoln labeled “Villainous articles.” The story of Lincoln’s relationship with these men, and how it shaped the war effort, constitutes a central focus of the book.

In one well-known example from August 1862, Greeley excoriated the president in an editorial for not moving against slavery, and Lincoln responded publicly with a piece in the conservative National Intelligencer reassuring Americans that he would not interfere with slavery unless he had to, yet at that moment he had already prepared a draft of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. Holzer labels the episode an example par excellence of “Lincoln’s genius for synchronized press manipulation.”

Tempestuous Greeley could be kept in check; Democratic editors opposed to the war posed a more alarming threat. Administration efforts to censor the press included controlling telegraph lines, suppressing military news, shutting down presses and imprisoning newspapermen. Lincoln made few overt comments on the subject in the summer of 1861, as several editors were jailed, but his “silence, defection,  and disinformation,” Holzer notes, amounted to approval. Two years later, again using the device of a published letter, Lincoln defended as constitutional the measures his administration had taken to suppress the rebellion.

Through the lens of Lincoln and reportage, Holzer offers an important perspective on the war and has unearthed fresh material. An added pleasure of the volume is the numerous portraits and cartoons that are not simply illustrative but are made integral to the story he tells. Lincoln and the Power of the Press deserves a wide audience and a place on the list of essential Civil War books.

Unconscious Bias

Schools, teachers, teaching and consequently students seem to be the guinea  pigs for every social, cultural, psychological, pedagogical, psychiatric, and technological concept that can be conjured up and articulated. Many are presented as essential for student success, however, unverifiable, unproven, untried and with underlying nefarious purposes including monetary profit and political gain. Take the term "unconscious bias" currently being promulgated throughout our school systems--at least those systems subject to state direction. It appears that the term was coined to support accusations of what appear to be unfair selections and treatments based on race. I have read a few articles and study summaries on the subject and my thinking is that while all humans are most likely unconsciously bias about something, the common acceptance of the term as a 'thing' is silly and can and most certainly is dangerous. It is akin to the old psychiatrist joke, "Why did you hate your mother?" It is too easy to accuse someone or racial group of being unconsciously bias in making any decision or taking any action with which you disagree. Such an accusation is a pejorative judgment. It is dangerous because there is absolutely no way the accused can defend him, herself or themselves. Even attempts to deny the accusation set one up for verifying the "unconscious" aspect of the term. "Of course, he denied being biased because he is not aware that he is." Russell's Teapot comes to mind. And I wonder if once one is convinced that they were previously unconsciously biased in one direction, do they tend to overcompensate by being consciously, or more likely unconsciously,  biased in an opposite direction? Or something. And what if one is really not unconsciously biased, but is led to believe that they are? Are all unconscious biases bad? If so, how do we ferret them out? And how do we know when we have moved them all into the conscious realm? After all, we are not aware of them.