Abraham Lincoln, like Donald Trump, had his media enemies, too

When President Donald Trump recently referred to his battles with the press by saying that “Abraham Lincoln and many of our greatest presidents fought with the media,” he wasn't making fake news.

“No president ever cracked down on the press more than Abraham Lincoln did,” said Harold Holzer, author of “Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion,” winner of the 2015 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize for the finest scholarly work on Abraham Lincoln or the Civil War era. “Lincoln was far more aggressive against the press, but he also had an existential crisis facing the United States and its future. That's the fundamental difference.”

Holzer, the former chair of the Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation and a Lincoln scholar and author, discussed his book before a capacity crowd in October 2014 at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. The book details how the Lincoln administration shut down several newspapers during the Civil War, including one in Chicago, for printing what many at the time argued were treasonous statements. Holzer said this week that Lincoln's actions remain controversial to this day.

“Did he have the right to suspend freedom of the press and free speech when both of those freedoms are enshrined in the Bill of Rights? That remains an open question that scholars continue to debate, his decision to treat some Democratic newspapers and editors as traitors,” Holzer said. “He had to draw a line between dissent and treason, and he did it in a way favorable to his administration and the pursuit of quashing the rebellion.

“So cracking down on the press, which Lincoln did much more aggressively than Donald Trump is ... can possibly be justified. But we don't want to give Donald Trump any ideas about arresting the editors of newspapers or shutting down printing presses.”

On Friday, according to The Associated Press, news organizations including The New York Times and CNN were blocked from joining an informal, on-the-record White House press briefing.

Bypassing tradition

Holzer said the media was completely and openly partisan in Lincoln's day, with Democratic and Republican newspapers, and that “Lincoln followed the Republican press with the same intensity with which Donald Trump watches Fox News and Breitbart.” Holzer added that Lincoln was also a master at manipulating the media with leaked stories, courting the favor of certain editors, and releasing private letters to the press.

“Not that I like Donald Trump's tweets particularly, but his tweets are similarly revolutionary in that they bypass traditional media, and then traditional media is obliged to cover the tweets just like they had to cover Lincoln's public letters,” Holzer said. “You have to give both of these people credit where credit is due, and that is in mastering the art of communication.”

James Cornelius, curator of the Lincoln Collection at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, said Lincoln, just like Trump and every other U.S. president, sometimes felt he didn't get a fair deal from the media.

“He certainly felt that he was misquoted and his positions mischaracterized with some regularity,” Cornelius said. “The Chicago Times, a Democratic paper that was aligned very closely with Stephen Douglas, was guilty of that during the 1858 debates and after.

“I don't think you could say that Lincoln ever personally attacked a journalist, but there were people that he certainly didn't think very kindly of,” said Cornelius, who added that Lincoln realized he needed friends in the media.

“Lincoln understood the value of having a reporter or two or three on your side, in your camp, and giving them good stories once in a while that would be featured prominently in the paper, and thereby build friendship and trust,” Cornelius said.

He said Lincoln's relationship with his two hometown newspapers, the Springfield Journal and the Springfield Register, showed that he was equally capable of working with those who supported or opposed him.

“Lincoln always felt the Journal was the good newspaper, that they never mischaracterized his positions, but he remained on friendly terms with the Register, even though they were the pro-Douglas newspaper,” Cornelius said. “So the merged paper today does rightly have a claim to say that both papers were close to Lincoln.”

Greasing the skids 

Michael Burlingame, a history professor at the University of Illinois Springfield and author of the two-volume “Abraham Lincoln: A Life,” said that just like Trump, Lincoln was bothered by the negative coverage he received from the news media.

“Lincoln would get upset by it, and would say to his wife that it was very painful for him, and she would tell Lincoln that he was too thin-skinned,” Burlingame said. “But he wouldn't let that reaction affect his conduct toward the press, even though he was personally offended.”

Burlingame said Lincoln cultivated key newspaper editors to help “grease the skids” with positive editorials prior to important and potentially controversial actions by his administration. He also said Lincoln cleverly used his friends to get out the messages he wanted through the press.

“Lincoln had some of his personal aides act as journalists on the side, anonymously of course,” Burlingame said. “John Hay, who was Lincoln's assistant personal secretary, would write regular dispatches defending and explaining the administration's position that would go out to various newspapers. John G. Nicolay, his principal White House secretary, did the same thing, as did William Stoddard, who wrote regularly from the White House.”

To use a phrase from the Trump administration, Lincoln also had to deal with “fake news.”

“A New York Times reporter, Joseph Howard, was speculating in the stock market, and he put out a fake announcement from the White House saying that there was going to be a callup of hundreds of thousands of more troops, which would then affect the price of stocks and he would make a killing,” Burlingame said. “Howard also reported that Lincoln snuck into Washington in February 1861 for his inauguration wearing a Scottish cap and disguise, which was inaccurate to say the least.”

“Civil War newspapers in general were fairly circumspect. At the top of the column where the story appeared there would frequently be the statement, 'important if true,'” Burlingame said. “I think we ought to revive that tradition.”

But despite many apparent similarities between the Lincoln and Trump administrations and their relationships with the media, there is one major difference.

“It was Lincoln's job to keep the various factions united, and to do that he had to suppress his own ego and not express anger at the press, at least publicly,” Burlingame said. “I think that's a major difference between the president of the Civil War period and the president of today.”

Necessary tension

Clashes with the press are something every local, state or national chief executive should expect in a democracy, according to Charlie Wheeler, who was a Chicago Sun-Times reporter for 24 years and now directs UIS's public affairs reporting program, a master's level program that trains journalism students to cover government.

“I think there's always going to be tension between elected officials and the media, as well there should be,” Wheeler said. “The media's job is not to be parroting what a public official wants to say, or not to be a conduit for a public official's spin on things. Our job is to report to our audience the facts and get reasonable interpretation from multiple sources.”

“Besides just communicating what's going on in government, we also have the watchdog role of trying to identify things that aren't going well, either through chicanery, downright fraud, or just poor program design,” Wheeler added. “Part of what makes this idea of self-governance work is that citizens will be informed so they can make wise choices about who their leaders are going to be, what public policies will be most beneficial and most reflect their ideals. And it is the role of the media to provide them with that information.”

Wheeler said he's disturbed by the return of a phenomenon from Lincoln's day, media outlets like Fox News, Breitbart or the Illinois News Network that he feels present a biased interpretation of the news.

“If you only get one side of the story, your ability to perceive the entire issue is stunted,” Wheeler said. “I don't consider some of those outlets to be news media any more than I would consider Stephen Colbert or Jon Stewart as being legitimate news media. They are advocates.”

Wheeler also is troubled by the trend of labeling legitimate stories as “fake news.”

“To the extent that people don't accept what is verifiable facts and make up some alternate reality, and purport that the facts are fake news, that's bothersome,” Wheeler said. “Now you can say here's the facts and here's what I think about them, and that's fine. It makes for lively discussion.

“To me, fake news are the supermarket tabloids that say aliens were hiding out in the desert." 

To sum it up, Holzer said that when people compare themselves to Lincoln, it helps to keep things in perspective.

“Donald Trump says he inherited a mess, but you can argue, quite successfully, that Lincoln inherited a mess of seven seceded states, an alternative government, a region of the country seizing federal installations and arsenals, that's a mess,” Holzer said. “What we have today is not a mess.”

-- Contact David Blanchette through the metro desk: 788-1517.