A long-winded advetorial for Lowry’s new book, IMO.
We might wish to re-read Lincoln's letter to Henry L. Pierce and Others:
Springfield, Ills, April 6, 1859
Messrs. Henry L. Pierce, & others.
Gentlemen
Your kind note inviting me to attend a Festival in Boston, on the 13th. Inst. in honor of the birth-day of Thomas Jefferson, was duly received. My engagements are such that I can not attend.
Bearing in mind that about seventy years ago, two great political parties were first formed in this country, that Thomas Jefferson was the head of one of them, and Boston the head-quarters of the other, it is both curious and interesting that those supposed to descend politically from the party opposed to Jefferson should now be celebrating his birthday in their own original seat of empire, while those claiming political descent from him have nearly ceased to breathe his name everywhere.
Remembering too, that the Jefferson party were formed upon its supposed superior devotion to the personal rights of men, holding the rights of property to be secondary only, and greatly inferior, and then assuming that the so-called democracy of to-day, are the Jefferson, and their opponents, the anti-Jefferson parties, it will be equally interesting to note how completely the two have changed hands as to the principle upon which they were originally supposed to be divided.
The democracy of to-day hold the liberty of one man to be absolutely nothing, when in conflict with another man's right of property. Republicans, on the contrary, are for both the man and the dollar; but in cases of conflict, the man before the dollar.
I remember once being much amused at seeing two partially intoxicated men engage in a fight with their great-coats on, which fight, after a long, and rather harmless contest, ended in each having fought himself out of his own coat, and into that of the other. If the two leading parties of this day are really identical with the two in the days of Jefferson and Adams, they have perfomed the same feat as the two drunken men.
But soberly, it is now no child's play to save the principles of Jefferson from total overthrow in this nation.
One would start with great confidence that he could convince any sane child that the simpler propositions of Euclid are true; but, nevertheless, he would fail, utterly, with one who should deny the definitions and axioms. The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society.
And yet they are denied and evaded, with no small show of success.
One dashingly calls them "glittering generalities"; another bluntly calls them "self evident lies"; and still others insidiously argue that they apply only to "superior races."
These expressions, differing in form, are identical in object and effect--the supplanting the principles of free government, and restoring those of classification, caste, and legitimacy. They would delight a convocation of crowned heads, plotting against the people. They are the van-guard--the miners, and sappers--of returning despotism.
We must repulse them, or they will subjugate us.
This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.
All honor to Jefferson--to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.
Your obedient Servant
A. Lincoln--
Source for this reproduction of the letter is
Now, lest we forget those "principles of Jefferson" praised by Lincoln, perhaps Jefferson's own words might serve as a reminder:
"I am not among those who fear the people. They...are our dependence for continued freedom. And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds...our people...must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they (the British) now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers....This example reads to us the salutary lesson that private fortunes are destroyed by public, as well as by private extravagance. And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from the principle in one instance, becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering. Then begins, indeed, the 'bellum omnium in omnia,' which some philosophers...have mistaken for the natural, instead of the abusive, state of man. And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression." - Thomas Jefferson"These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and the blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety." - Thomas Jefferson- Concluding sentence of First Inaugural Statement of Principles of Good Government
I’ve not generally been a fan of Mr. Lowry, but this piece accurately depicts the historical reality of our time and Lincoln’s time.
I was buying into some of it until the author says, “...“people-owning libertarians,” as one of my colleagues archly calls them — who apparently hate federal power more than they abhor slavery.”
I call total BS on this. I have no doubt you couldn’t find a handful of people who fit that description, but there is no doubt that the vast majority of those he is talking about in no way favor slavery. What a disgusting statement.
ping-a-ling
Good article. And surprisingly uncontroversial.
False argument. The Founders operated under the laws of logic and reason, and one cannot include everything in a document intended to LIMIT powers. Thus the used what was called the Rule of Exclusion, so everything not included was, by default, EXCLUDED.
• § 207. XIII. Another rule of interpretation deserves consideration in regard to the constitution. There are certain maxims, which have found their way, not only into judicial discussions, but into the business of common life, as founded in common sense, and common convenience. Thus, it is often said, that in an instrument a specification of particulars is an exclusion of generals; or the expression of one thing is the exclusion of another. Lord Bacon's remark, "that, as exception strengthens the force of a law in cases not excepted, so enumeration weakens it in cases not enumerated," has been perpetually referred to, as a fine illustration.
Justice Joseph Story on Rules of Constitutional Interpretation
Since the Founders did not see fit to include the subject of secession in the Constitution, it is therefore excluded from the authority of the federal government and, by the 10th Amendment, reserved to the States.
------
But slavery was the South’s prism for everything.
Another attempt at self deflection. The writer's reach exceeds his grasp when he bypasses the fact the Constitution is a LEGAL document, not a moral one. It's true that the South's main focus was slavery simply because, as an agrarian economy, it could not survive without it at the time.
The writer also disregards a huge section of history by failing to acknowledge facts, since the Appeals Court to the Supreme court set the precedent on the subject of slavery and the recovery of slaves in the court's Jack v. Martin decison in 1835.....long before Lincoln even showed up!
You can't convince me that as a lawyer Lincoln was ignorant of this case OR its legal meaning
I cannot refrain, in conclusion, from expressing my full belief, if the doctrine contended for by the plaintiff in error is to be regarded as the established law of the land, and consequently that all the states in the union are to be permitted to legislate upon this subject, requiring as many modes of proceeding in cases of this kind, as there are states, that it will in the end lead indirectly to the abolition of slavery, and that the most fearful consequences in regard to the permanency of our institutions will ensue. I regard this as but the entering wedge to other doctrines which are designed to extirpate slavery; and we may find when it is too late, that the patience of the south, however well founded upon principle, from repeated aggression will become exhausted. These considerations would have no influence with me if I could satisfy myself of the unconstitutionality of the law of congress; but I can never contribute in any manner, either directly or indirectly, to the abolition of slavery, however great an evil it may be, in violation of the constitution and laws of the country, and in violation of the solemn compact which was made by our forefathers at the adoption of the constitution, and which their posterity are bound to preserve inviolate. I am sustained in this view of the case by the whole current of authority, in all the states where the question has been decided. The whole doctrine was investigated in Massachusetts, in a case reported in Pickering, and presenting as strong a case as can be imagined. A slave belonging to a person in Virginia fled to the state of Massachusetts; he resided in that state five years, and in the meantime had accumulated a considerable property. It was nevertheless decided, upon solemn argument, that the law of the United States was constitutional; that the slave was not entitled to trial by jury, or by any other mode different from that prescribed by the law of congress; and he was accordingly taken back to Virginia. This was the unanimous opinion of the court. Mr. Justice Thatcher dissented, but not on the ground of the unconstitutionality of the law of congress.
Stories like this are usually filled with half truths and lies. There is no defense for jailing members of legislatures or suspending habeas corpses.
The Jeffersonianism the Neo-Cons are so fond of is not conservatism. American conservatism, from the very beginning, was always exemplified by the Federalist/Whig/Republican tradition: George Washington (whom even Pat Buchanan admitted favored the North over the slave-holding South but whom Neo-Cons always arrogantly and falsely claim for themselves), Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, John Marshall, John Jay, Fisher Ames, the Pinckneys, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and their successors. Even John C. Calhoun began his political career as a nationalist Whig before becoming (for all practical purposes) the founder of the modern Democrat party.
The Constitution vests all aspects of sovereignty in the federal government--not the states.
The Slavocrats prior to the Civil War conspired to force slavery into every state and territory of the Union, and during the War had a state socialist economy much less free than that of the Union.
"Palaeoconservatives" are civilizationist idolators who imply (if not outright avow) that all gods and all religions are the creations of the human mind, that all are equally valid, and that each people has the "duty" to be loyal to whatever tradition they happen to have inherited--rather than in an objective One True G-d and a One True Objective Truth.
A great many Neo-Con[federate]s are skull-measuring evolutionists who deny that all human beings everywhere are descended from one single human couple (Adam and Eve).
Both the contemporary federal government and the contemporary political culture of the American Black community are sheer, unadulterated monstrosities; but to read this back into the Civil War is to engage in lying. It's absolutely maddening to find the same people who insisted on importing thousands and thousands of Africans into the country as slaves now evincing a poisonous hostility to the very people their "sainted ancestors" both imported and insisted on holding onto even if it meant the destruction of their country.
G-d bless the Federalists, the Anti-Masons, the Whigs, and the Republican party!
PS: And though I don't enjoy doing so, I feel obligated in the name of honesty to admit that I accept the eternal validity of the Torah, including its position on, and regulations of, slavery.