Swipe Left on the Great Emancipator
A hatchet face. —Mary Boykin Chesnut
Homely.—William Herndon, his law partner
[He looked] as if he had been split, and made up of several pieces. —Nathaniel Hawthorne.
They say the past is a foreign country but superficial fixations are truly timeless.
Someone on Twitter—I keep forgetting not to go there—pointed out the obvious: Abraham Lincoln looked...unusual. That he wouldn’t pass unnoticed today.
But that observation isn’t new. It’s exactly what people said about him at the time. And what he said about himself.
When accused of being “two-faced,” he shot back: “If I had another face, do you think I would wear this one?”
Reporters wrote about Lincoln like he was a visual affront. Coverage of his nomination focused less on policy than on how “grotesque” he looked. Even friendly profiles took pains to describe his “remarkably plain” face, his stooped posture, his ungovernable limbs. “Prairie-bred” was the polite euphemism. “Ugly” was the consensus.
But here’s the thing: he won. Twice. So did Donald Trump. Charisma isn’t symmetry. Presence isn’t prettiness. I don’t really care about getting a beer with the president any more than I care that you’d swipe left on ‘the Great Emancipator.
They mocked his face, his grief, his family. He stayed. He held. They killed him. Still, he towers.
See you soonish! In the meantime, you can find me on Instagram and, on occasion, Bluesky and Twitter. My books are at Bookshop, Amazon, and your local bookstore or library. If you’d like me to sign or personalize my books, purchase copies from Oblong Books.
You've created a new meme: Punk Lincoln!!!
I wonder what the television age would have made of Lincoln. It would have been fascinating. Imagine a tv debate between him and Cool Cal !