“Lincoln didn't campaign,” said Larry Mansch, a Missoula lawyer and educator who recently published “Abraham Lincoln, President-Elect.” “His managers considered him a country backwoodsman who looked funny. So they had other people campaign for him and let his speeches do the talking.”
Due to the different inauguration date at the time, Lincoln had four months between his election and his first day as the nation's 16th president. He spent much of that time on a railroad tour of the country. Mansch said Lincoln essentially campaigned in reverse, reaching out to the people who had already voted for him.
Before Lincoln took office, seven Southern states seceded from the Union, all but guaranteeing the Civil War. That conflict eventually consumed almost all of his attention.
“He was concerned with ending that war,” Mansch said. “We have none of his thoughts on unemployment or health care or foreign relations. He spent his time building consensus to get hundreds of thousands of young men to go fight. I think our presidents today, when they're at their best, are able to reach out and build that consensus. When they go it alone, that's when they run into trouble. Lincoln kept his mind on the ultimate issue of preserving the Union. That's why I admire him so much.”
Mansch dates his own fascination with Lincoln to his own birthday, Feb. 12, which happens to be Lincoln's as well. His classroom at St. Joseph Elementary School has a life-sized cutout of Lincoln in one corner, and photos of the president's birthplace and his presidential library on the walls. It's a fascination his students have learned to appreciate - and use.
“If we're about to have a test or something, we know we can get him off track by asking a Lincoln question,” said eighth-grade math student Paul Heffernan. “Somebody will say, ‘Was (Confederate Gen.) Robert E. Lee a traitor?' and he's off.”
Mansch retired after 20 years of practicing law in Missoula. Today, in addition to eighth-grade math, he teaches the history of law at Loyola Sacred Heart High School and a law class at the University of Montana School of Law. And he is a lieutenant colonel in the National Guard's Judge Advocate General service.
After publishing his book on Lincoln's pre-inauguration period in 2005, Mansch earned a fellowship from the Lincoln Presidential Library to research another book, this time looking at the man's early law career. He hopes that legal research will reveal how the country lawyer reached the national scene.
We do know the self-taught Illinois attorney handled everything, including four murders in one year and seven trips to the U.S. Supreme Court. Mansch found it somewhat ironic that Lincoln's political advisers didn't want him on the national campaign, considering much of his political fame came from his public debates with senatorial challenger Stephen Douglas.
“Those things would draw 20,000 or 30,000 people,” Mansch said. “It was literally like the Super Bowl of the day. They'd give 90-minute speeches and then turn around and make 30-minute rebuttals. That's a long time to talk.”
And then there was Lincoln's understanding of what he didn't know.
“We expect our presidents today to be experts on everything,” Mansch said. “When Lincoln was asked about some economic plank, his response was: ‘I'm going to look into it.' ”
As it happened, Lincoln had little time to look into those other things. Just five days after the end of the Civil War and a month after his inauguration for a second term, Lincoln was shot and killed by John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865.
“He would have been judged on everything else he did in his presidency if he hadn't been assassinated,” Mansch said. “He left lots of railroad questions behind, and lots of Native American questions. Reconstruction would have been a lot different if he had lived, and I think we would not have sunk so far and so quickly as we did. Intellectually, he was just a giant. He could see things and reason through things that other people couldn't. If he'd lived, I don't know if he would have made Mount Rushmore, but he'd have been in our Top 10.”
Reporter Rob Chaney can be reached at 523-5382 or at rchaney@missoulian.com
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