Before Abe Was Lincoln: Jonathan Earle on the Most Important Election in American History

“Seward had all the money and Seward had all the bullies. Lincoln didn’t have money or bullies, but by God, he had the people.” — Jonathan Earle   Yesterday, Kurt Andersen fictionalized a 21st-century broken America without an Abe Lincoln as savior. Today we talk about the man himself with Jonathan Earle [https://global.oup.com/academic/product/he-has-the-people-9780195341652], author of He Has the People [https://global.oup.com/academic/product/he-has-the-people-9780195341652], a new history of the 1860 election that made Lincoln president and probably saved the then young Republic.   Earle’s mission is to bring Lincoln down from Mount Rushmore. He tells the story of a flesh-and-blood politician, a six-foot-four autodidact who, in 1859, was barely known outside Illinois. What changed everything was John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry in October 1859. Lincoln recognized as much, spending the winter in the archives of the State Library of Illinois, then delivering a speech at Cooper Union that won over the New York media. Then onto the Republican convention in Chicago where the wily Lincoln ran rings around the establishment candidate William Henry Seward.   In 1860, Abe Lincoln became Lincoln. The rest is history. He Has the People [https://global.oup.com/academic/product/he-has-the-people-9780195341652] should be required reading for both obscure Republicans and Democrats planning to run for president in a fatally divided election. Earle suspects that 2028 might be as historic as 1860. Perhaps it will deliver another politician with the wit and wisdom to bring a broken America together. Somebody who, like Abe, has the people.   Five Takeaways   •       Before Abe Was Lincoln. Earle’s stated mission: take Lincoln off Mount Rushmore and out of the throne Daniel Chester French sculpted, and restore the flesh-and-blood politician — “among the canniest politicians our country has produced, maybe the planet.” The pre-marble Lincoln: born in an actual Kentucky log cabin, wholly self-taught (favorite book: Euclid), the first genuinely Western president, six-foot-four when most men stood five-eight, a storyteller who learned politics riding the Illinois judicial circuit — breaking bread and sharing mattresses with judges and rival counsel — his ambition, in his law partner’s famous phrase, a little engine that knew no rest. In 1859 he was barely known outside Illinois, a one-term ex-congressman regarded as vice-presidential material at best — the Jon Ossoff of his day, Earle suggests: making noise, not yet a name. Americans declare every election the most important in history; Earle’s answer is the book’s premise: hold on — it’s not 1860. •       The 9/11 Before the Election. For decades both parties buried slavery beneath compromises — 1820, 1850 — until a tiny, hated minority of abolitionists forced the question. Then John Brown and twenty-one followers seized the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry in October 1859, intending to arm the enslaved (a plan so improvised, Earle notes, that Brown didn’t bring lunch). The raid detonated inside a presidential campaign — as if 9/11 had preceded the 2000 election, or Pearl Harbor come before FDR’s 1940 reelection — and it scrambled the chessboard: after Brown, every Southerner saw a secret John Brown in every Northerner, every Northerner saw a Slave Power that had run all three branches since the founding, and compromise died. Earle’s verdict, unusual for a historian: the Civil War was inevitable after John Brown — the only question was who would be in charge when it came. •       Chicagoland. Lincoln’s self-introduction was the strangest in campaign history: a tour of Bleeding Kansas (“the Gaza of the day”), then a winter of archival research in the State Library of Illinois, proving