>WHO IS BEST REMEMBERED?
The 12th February marks a birthday shared by two of America’s more controversial figures:
Cotton Mather (12/2/1663 to 13/2/1728):
and Abraham Lincoln (12/2/1809 to 15/4/1865)
Mather came from a pretty well-heeled family, born in Boston Massachusetts, attended the Boston Latin School and graduated from Harvard at the age of 16. A great Puritan Minister and prolific writer. He was clearly well educated and believed in science. During a smallpox outbreak in Boston, he fought for inoculation against the disease with vigour and against strong opposition. There were many who considered the practice outrageous. He aligned himself with a Dr. Zabdiel Boylston to start a program of inoculation. Boylston and Mather’s inoculation crusade “raised and horrid Clamour” amongst the people of Boston. They were both “Objects of their Furies; their furious Obloquies and Invectives” So Mather recorded in his diaries. Not only laymen were against them, but there was medical opposition as well.
Despite this education and support of science, he was also a man who believed in witches and witchcraft and was a supporter of the notorious Salem Witch trials. He was apparently very zealous when it came to the execution of certain ‘witches’. There is an account of his behaviour during one such hanging of a Mr George Burroughs (Harvard Class of 1670):
Mr. Burroughs was carried in a cart with others, through the streets of Salem, to execution. When he was upon the ladder, he made a speech for the clearing of his innocency, with such solemn and serious as were to the admiration of all present. His prayer (which he concluded by expressions repeating the Lord’s Prayer) was so well worded, and uttered with such composedness as such fervency of spirit, as was very affecting, and drew tears from many, so that if seemed to some that the spectators would hinder the execution. The accusers said the black man stood and dictated to him. As soon as he was turned off, Mr. Cotton Mather, being mounted upon a horse, addressed himself to the people, partly to declare that he (Mr. Burroughs) was no ordained minister, partly to possess the people of his guilt, saying that the devil often had been transformed into the angel of light…When he [Mr. Burroughs] was cut down, he was dragged by a halter to a hole, or grave, between the rocks, about two feet deep; his shirt and breeches being pulled off, and an old pair of trousers of one executed put on his lower parts: he was so put in, together with Willard and Carrier, that one of his hands, and his chin, and a foot of one of them, was left uncovered
What can one make of that? Here was a man who had attended two of the most prestigious schools in the colonies, The Boston Latin and Harvard. Many of the founding fathers and signatories of the Declaration of Independence attended Boston Latin, including Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Robert Treat Paine, Benjamin Franklin, William Hooper to name but five. Other alumni include, believe it or not, the Spanish philosopher George Santayana, as well as Leonard Bernstien, composer and musician and Wade H. McCree, the first African American appointed to the US Court of Appeals, and the 36th Solicitor General of the United States under President Jimmy Carter. Yet Cotton Mather believed in witchcraft.
As to Abe Lincoln he was supposedly born in a log cabin in Illinois.
Lincoln’s formal education apparently consisted of around 18 months of classes from several itinerant teachers, but was mostly self educated, being an avid reader.
When he was 23, he and a partner bought, on credit, a small general store in New Salem, Illinois.
Sketch of a young Lincoln
New Salem could hardly have been anything like old Salem. In any event the business did not prosper and he was forced to declare bankruptcy, finally paying off the debt after 17 years. This is hardly an auspicious beginning for one of the most revered Presidents of the United States. But he was a man of his time. There was a fresh look at him on a recent Documentary on BBC4 Abraham Lincoln: Saint of Sinner. Well worth a look at if you can find it. Try iPlayer /BBC4 if it is still available to watch:
Despite his own prejudices he moved with the times and did eventually sign the Emancipation Proclamation 1863. He wrote and delivered one of the best dedications of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on the 19th November 1863. Now one of the most quoted addresses in history. Just 272 words and one of the best statements upholding the principles of freedom. Worth a read:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
A speech that could be made in any place where people are protesting for their democratic rights. Not bad for an uneducated boy from the backwoods of Illinois. Cotton Mather for all his privilege and education was nowhere near his class.
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