Cultural Expectations

Lincoln’s generation was incurably optimistic. Having never known national defeat, anything seemed possible to these Americans. Even in grinding poverty, the common assumption was that “tomorrow” life would get better and wealth would come sooner or later. Most Americans were more religious than devout. They made hard work into essentially an eleventh commandment. In their minds, shiftlessness was considered to be on a par with cowardice. Whatever increased wealth was thus automatically good.

Fair play was expected of every boy and man. Those who violated that code were expelled from society’s good graces. Since most frontier people were unable to read or write, the oral tradition was valued, and storytelling became almost a fine art. Women controlled both education and religion and thus dictated the standards of literature and art.

Paradoxically, Americans on the frontier venerated laws and honor and in general lived by Puritan standards. Purity and female virtue were venerated; chastity was a given. In their minds there was a crystal-clear demarcation between right and wrong. The Bible was universally read and was considered the basic storehouse of society’s allusions. Terms such as truth, justice, loyalty, reverence, virtue, and honor were not mere abstractions to them. They were the very fabric of day-to-day life.

This, in brief, was Abraham Lincoln’s world.

From Abraham Lincoln:  A Man of Faith and Courage  by Joe Wheeler.  © 2008.  Reprinted by permission of Howard Books, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.  Click here for a chance to win a free copy of Abraham Lincoln.