THE APPROPRIATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN BY RONALD REAGAN AND CONSERVATIVE NOTIONS OF LINCOLN'S LEGACY, 1980-1989 A thesis submitted To Kent State University in partial Fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts by Joseph W. Stewart May, 2017 © Copyright All rights reserved Except for previously published materials Thesis written by Joseph William Stewart B.S., Ohio University, 2015 M.A., Kent State University, 2017 Approved by , Advisor Dr. Leonne Hudson , Chair, Department of History Dr. Brian M. Hayashi ____________________________, Dean, College of Arts & Sciences Dr. James L. Blank TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................................... iii LIST OF TABLES ......................................................................................................................... iv CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................................1 Questions of Reagan's Speechwriters and Intent ...............................................................11 II PIOUS LINCOLN: THE APPROPRIATION OF LINCOLN BY REAGAN ON RELIGION AND CONSERVATIVE NOTIONS OF LINCOLN'S LEGACY ................15 III NATURAL RIGHTS AND AN IMPERIAL LINCOLN: THE "THEFT" OF LINCOLN BY REAGAN ON COLD WAR ISSUES .....................................................31 IV REAGAN'S MANY MISCELLANEOUS APPROPRIATIONS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN ..........................................................................................................................57 Section 1 - Reconnecting the Republican Party to Lincoln ...............................................57 Section 2 - Reagan's Appropriation of Lincoln When Speaking to Minority Groups ...... 62 Section 3 - Reagan and Comedic uses of Lincoln ............................................................65 V CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................68 VI EPILOGUE ........................................................................................................................71 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..........................................................................................................................74 iii LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Appearance of "Lincoln" in Presidential Rhetoric ............................................................ 2 2. Appearance of "Lincoln" in Ronald Reagan's Rhetoric .....................................................6 3. References to the Founding Fathers in Presidential Rhetoric ............................................9 iv CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Yet, there is more left to us of Lincoln than the ceremony, the monument, or even the memory of his greatness as a leader and a man. There are words, words he spoke and that speak in our time or to any time, words from the mind that sought wisdom and the heart that loved justice.1 -Ronald Reagan (February 12, 1981) There are many great quotations from famous politicians that claim to know who Abraham Lincoln was or what was most important about him. But a quote from Ronald Reagan is perhaps the most appropriate when describing the specter of Lincoln, especially in American politics, because Reagan appropriated him in his public rhetoric more than any president before him. Reagan's quote at the Lincoln Memorial in 1981 that, "what is left to us of Lincoln is more than his words or his monuments...it is his words, words he spoke and that speak in our time or to any time..." became something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Throughout his presidency, Reagan ensured that Lincoln's words "spoke" to the 1980s by attaching Lincoln's utterances and legacy to his contemporary agenda, both at-home and abroad. No figure in American history is more written about than Abraham Lincoln, and in seeking additional outlets 1 Ronald Reagan, "Remarks at a Wreath-Laying Ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial" Feb 12, 1981. Accessed November 13, 2016. In The American Presidency Project digital archives. Edited by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=43387. All quantitative data in Table1 is taken from these online archives. Data set in Table 1 represents the total number of speeches that have one or more references to Abraham Lincoln, out of the cumulative total of each president’s public speeches found in the American Presidency Project archives as of Jan 1, 2017. Data excludes all references to "Lincoln" that do not refer specifically to the 16th president's person or rhetoric. i.e. Lincoln Memorial, Lincoln Music Hall, Lincoln Township, etc. Data excludes speeches that use Lincoln's rhetoric without attribution. 1 Table 1. Appearance of "Lincoln" in Presidential Rhetoric 2 Presidents & Years In Office % of Speeches Using "Lincoln" (R) Ronald Reagan: 1981-1990 146/2243 = 6.5% (D) Jimmy Carter: 1977-1981 17/985 = 1.7% (R) Gerald Ford: 1974-1977 33/962 = 3.4% (R) Richard Nixon: 1969-1974 25/873 = 2.8% (D) Lyndon B. Johnson: 1963-1969 93/1445 = 6.4% (D) John F. Kennedy: 1961-1963 21/711 = 2.9% (D) Dwight D. Eisenhower: 1953-1961 56/908 = 6.1% (D) Harry Truman: 1945-1953 32/917 = 3.5% (D) Franklin D. Roosevelt: 1933-1945 26/649 = 4% (R) Herbert Hoover: 1929-1933 11/408 = .027% of inquiry more recent scholarship is focusing less on Lincoln "the man," and instead examining Lincoln "the memory." Who Lincoln was and what he stood for has been in constant flux since his death, debated by scholars and non-scholars alike. Historians are increasingly interested in the memory of Lincoln, and especially how the memory and legacy of Abraham Lincoln have changed over time through appropriations or co-opting in American culture. Reagan is a good example of a politico who joined into those conversations over Lincoln's legacy, (perhaps unwittingly at times) by disseminating a particular version of Lincoln through his appropriations of him. Among the first scholars to focus specifically on the political appropriation of Lincoln was historian David Donald who famously states in his 1956 essay, Getting Right With Lincoln, that Lincoln is, "everybody's grandfather...by the 1948 election, everybody [both parties] claimed themselves...the heirs to Lincoln."3 Donald's essay was among the earliest academic attempts to address the growing legacy of Lincoln in American politics. According to Donald, Franklin D. 2 Ibid. 3 David H. Donald, "Getting Right With Lincoln" Atlantic, September 1956. Accessed February 6, 2017. https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/95nov/lincoln/lincrite.htm 2 Roosevelt claimed the Democratic Party to be the true heirs of Lincoln during the 1930s and connected his New Deal policies to Lincoln. Republicans, unwilling to "surrender the stove-pipe hat," pushed back, and a tug-of-war over Lincoln's legacy was born.4 Donald also was among the first historians to point to a reason for Lincoln's abundant appropriation in politics, calling his continuing vogue a product of his "essential ambiguity." Lincoln scholars often restate Donald's original premise over Lincoln's ambiguity when looking for reasons as to why Lincoln has become a political tool.5 Perhaps Richard Carwardine said it best, "Lincoln has always been a malleable and protean figure, one who is forever being redefined to meet the needs of those who invoke him."6 These "redefinitions" of Lincoln are what greatly influence his legacy and Americans' memory of him. Reagan is a quintessential example of a politician portraying himself and his policies as ''right with Lincoln,'' often redefining him and his utterances to do so. In defining "memory," I take from different theorists like Michael Shudson, who observed that memory is not individual, but "essentially social...located in rules, laws, standardized procedures, and records...books, holidays, statues, souvenirs."7 As well as Friedrich Hegel, who observed that history is both res gestae (things that happened) as well as historia rerum gestarum (the narration of things that happened.)8 German historian Amos Funkenstein notes that memory as a concept especially deals with the historia rerum gestarum, and notes, "all 4 Ibid. 5 David H. Donald, Lincoln Reconsidered: Essays on the Civil War, 3rd ed. (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 2001), 13. 6 Richard Carwardine and Jay Sexton, The Global Lincoln (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011), 11. 7 Kerwin L. Klein, From History To Theory (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011), 116- 117. 8 Ibid., 120. 3 remembering occurs within social contexts of environment and discourse."9 Taken in this manner, "memory" as a mode of historical discourse means to reveal a person or groups "historic consciousness."10 Opposing people and groups can have differing ideas about the significance of the events or characters in history, and few characters in history have a wider berth of interpretations over their legacy than Abraham Lincoln. During the 1980s, this played out in many different ways. I also take some definitions of memory from Merrill Peterson, who wrote perhaps the definitive work on Abraham Lincoln in American memory. In his book, Lincoln In American Memory (1994) Peterson shows how intricately tied Lincoln reinterpretations and appropriations are to current events. Who Lincoln was and what he stood for, what was most important about him, depended on who you were and what time period you were living. His study deals with Lincoln's place in American culture, politics, and academia and illustrates the pervasiveness of Lincoln in the American psyche. In his discussions of memory making, Peterson says: No strict correspondence exists between the conditions of any era and the objects of its memory. Memory-making requires effort: before any individual can be regarded as worth remembering, other individuals, like colleagues and family members, political and religious leaders, biographers and artists, editors and writers, must deem that person commemorable and must be able to persuade audiences to agree.11 Reagan was one of those political leaders who deemed Lincoln worth remembering, and his rhetoric disseminated certain beliefs about Lincoln. Famous linguist Mikhail Bahktin defines language as "not a system of abstract categories, but rather conceived as ideologically saturated, 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid., 137. 11 Merrill D. Peterson, Lincoln in American Memory (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1994), 297-298. 4 language as a world view, ensuring a maximum of mutual understanding of ideological life."12 This "ideological saturation" of language shines through in Reagan's appropriations of Lincoln, and Reagan's ideology is often what facilitated him using Lincoln in the manner that he did. Reagan had a hand in portraying and memorializing a certain version of Lincoln to his audiences by appropriating him in different ways. While some conservatives tried to affect the "historic consciousness," of their audiences by introducing arguments of a tyrannical and impious Abraham Lincoln, the period's leading conservative disseminated opposing viewpoints and perhaps affected Americans' memory of their sixteenth president. An in-depth examination of Reagan's rhetoric, focusing on Lincoln, reveals a copious amount of different appropriations. Out of the 2,243 Reagan speeches available in the American Presidency Project archives, Reagan appropriated Lincoln once or numerous times in 146 of them. This accounts for nearly 7 percent of those oral addresses. In fact, few times during his eight year presidency did Reagan go more than a month without using Lincoln in an address, only during 8 occasions in 8 years. (One of which being the 3 month period starting in March 1981. He spent that time recovering from the Hinckley assassination attempt.)13 Keep in mind that Reagan's speech records are more extensive than any other president in this study and that the 2,243 speeches include more nomination speeches, addresses to congress over bill signings and vetoes, presidential appointments and resignations, toasts at presidential luncheons, and addresses given to foreign heads of state than most other presidents. These speeches were often meant to address specific issues or people, and were sometimes very short. In all those instances, 12 Mikhail M. Bakhtin, "Unitary language" In The Routledge language and cultural theory reader. Edited by L. Burke, T. Crowley, and A. Girvin, (London, England: Routledge Press. 2000), 270. 13 Ibid. 5 Table 2. Appearance of "Lincoln" in Ronald Reagan's Rhetoric14 Reagan's Oral Addresses # Speeches with "Lincoln" Inaugural Addresses 1/2 Addresses to Congress (Non-Soto) 0/4 State Of The Union 3/7 Major To The Nation 5/38 Farewell Addresses 0/1 Saturday Radio Addresses 10/334 College Commencements 0/12 To The U.N. General Assembly 1/7 To Foreign Legislators 3/9 "Uncategorized Remarks" 111/1,559 Toasts 4/13 Bill Signings 2/62 Bill Vetoes 0/1 Presidents News Conferences 4/46 Election Debates 1/2 Regarding Executive Nominations 0/17 Regarding Executive Appointments 0/3 Regarding Resignations 0/6 Total # 146/2,243 of which there are hundreds, Reagan used Lincoln very rarely. Thus, the 7 percent is a very conservative number, and Reagan used Lincoln even more often in significant addresses meant for wider audiences.15 This study does not make use of all 146 uses of Lincoln by Reagan, but rather chooses those which best exemplify certain trends. Besides the sheer number of times Lincoln appears in his rhetoric, another reason for a study of Reagan that centers on Abraham Lincoln is that Lincoln is noticeably absent from so many great works on Reagan's rhetoric. Examinations of Reagan's rhetoric have been extended 14 The American Presidency Project digital archives. Edited by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, UC Santa Barbara. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ 15 The American Presidency Project digital archives. Edited by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, UC Santa Barbara. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ 6