Thomas Lincoln’s “Goodness of Fit” with His Son

I want to thank James Anderson and Charles Strozier for their fascinating dialogue on our 16^th president. Now to turn to the issue of Thomas Lincoln. He seems usually to be negatively presented, although there are historians who feel he has been unfairly denigrated. There are far more positive assessments of Abe’s two mothers. Certainly, this is how Abe felt. Clearly his father, Thomas, physically punished Abe (“slash” for reading instead of doing chores, said Abe’s cousin Dennis Hanks who lived with them), as well as using him for heavy work and “enslaving” him by hiring his son out to other farmers.

Psychologically and developmentally this had an impact on the future president, but where did it come from? Thomas Lincoln himself suffered from parental loss. At about eight years of age, he watched his own father being killed by an Indian, which perhaps contributed to some of his difficulties as a father. As a result of modern studies, today we know something about parental loss and its impact on the capacity to parent. Perhaps some of Thomas’ frustration and anger resulted from his son having a father when he did not—this amid all he did for his family to survive.

One might make the case that in those days, Thomas was a rather remarkable man. Land was what was valued on the frontier in his lifetime. Thomas’ moves reveal a very proactive, strong man trying to find the best land he could, moving further west into the wilderness, in the best of the pioneering tradition—often against remarkable odds. He is remembered as a pretty good carpenter, despite his failing eyesight, which was at least part of the reason why he relied on his son’s labor. Then he faced the problem of the death of Nancy Hanks, his young wife, leaving him alone with two young children. She died of the “milk-sickness,” caused by an animal eating the white snakeroot plant, which blocks an enzyme and kills humans who drink the animal’s milk. For six months Thomas left his children alone on the frontier with their young cousins, which had to be awful for them, while he courted another wife and

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mother, the widowed Sarah Bush Johnston, who had three children of her own. He may have been motivated by his own loneliness as well as an awareness that he was unable to properly care for his children alone. Perhaps finding a second mother for his children was partly out of some guilt for bringing his family to land that had the milk-sickness. His motivation was probably multi-determined. Thomas had to make these decisions without having a model of what it means to be a father. He found a remarkable woman, married her, and convinced her to come west, providing his children, including the young genius, with a terrific mother. Sarah Bush Johnston Lincoln must have seen something in Thomas! He moved away from the milk-sick land to better land.

Finally, it seems clear Thomas resented and depreciated Abe’s intellectual capacities, specifically his desire to learn, separate, and move ahead in a different way. Here I might suggest the notion in psychoanalytic child work of “goodness of fit”—the idea here is that neither the parent nor the child is either bad or good, but that they are very different, which can create real problems. One sees this especially with aspects of temperament; when one is very active and proactive, the other is much more laid-back and passive. Both have their attributes, but the differences are very great and cause difficulties.

In the case of Thomas and Abraham Lincoln, one can see the positive in each, but the “goodness of fit” is a real problem. The son is brilliant and motivated to learn and expand his mind, while the father is much more geared to a physically active style of survival. Furthermore, Thomas has no model of a father who can tolerate self-and-object differentiation and establish a sense of empathy for his son’s interests. In this sense, Thomas has a serious arrest in development, perhaps understandable given his own parental loss (which, again, was earlier than Abe’s and involved his own father, with probable impact on his own capacity to father).

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