Opinion | Abraham Lincoln’s Wiliest Trick Should Be a Lesson for Biden

The Democratic National Convention is over. Kamala Harris has accepted her party’s ringing nomination. President Biden has been relegated to the wings, a lame duck before his time. What role should he play between now and January?

An answer is offered by Abraham Lincoln. One hundred sixty years ago, the fate of the nation hung on a presidential election, as it does now, and Lincoln, like Mr. Biden, was a lame duck — or at least he assumed he was. His most trusted advisers (including Henry J. Raymond, the editor of The Times), told him that his rival, the Democratic candidate George B. McClellan, was going to win. The Union armies had suffered staggering fatalities and scored no recent major victory.

Democratic operatives had spread rumors that the Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, was ready to negotiate for a restoration of the Union. Lincoln knew that Davis would never back down, but the propaganda worked. Many Northern voters were deceived into thinking that Lincoln’s insistence on Black freedom was the only thing keeping the war alive.

In response, on Aug. 23, 1864, Lincoln drafted the “Blind Memorandum” — a document from which Mr. Biden might take his cue. The memo stated that if Lincoln lost the election, he would “cooperate with the president elect, as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration.” Then Lincoln distributed it to his cabinet secretaries with the text hidden (hence it was “blind”) and told them to sign it even though they could not read it.

He thus committed his administration to a bipartisan mission to preserve the Union regardless of the election’s outcome. It was a risky move but a noble one, which reflected Lincoln’s insistence that nation had to come before party.

Presidential transitions, Lincoln understood, were at least as important as presidential elections. He had known as much since 1861, when the transition to his presidency had put the nation on the verge of civil war.