Lincoln: Tyrant, Hypocrite or Consumate Statesman? (Dinesh defends our 2d Greatest Prez)

thehistorynet. ^ | Feb 12, 05 | D'Souza

[churchillbuff]

The key to understanding Lincoln's philosophy of statesmanship is that he always sought the meeting point between what was right in theory and what could be achieved in practice. By Dinesh D'Souza

Most Americans -- including most historians -- regard Abraham Lincoln as the nation's greatest president. But in recent years powerful movements have gathered, both on the political right and the left, to condemn Lincoln as a flawed and even wicked man.

For both camps, the debunking of Lincoln usually begins with an exposé of the "Lincoln myth," which is well described in William Lee Miller's 2002 book Lincoln's Virtues: An Ethical Biography. How odd it is, Miller writes, that an "unschooled" politician "from the raw frontier villages of Illinois and Indiana" could become such a great president. "He was the myth made real," Miller writes, "rising from an actual Kentucky cabin made of actual Kentucky logs all the way to the actual White House."

Lincoln's critics have done us all a service by showing that the actual author of the myth is Abraham Lincoln himself. It was Lincoln who, over the years, carefully crafted the public image of himself as Log Cabin Lincoln, Honest Abe and the rest of it. Asked to describe his early life, Lincoln answered, "the short and simple annals of the poor," referring to Thomas Gray's poem "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard." Lincoln disclaimed great aspirations for himself, noting that if people did not vote for him, he would return to obscurity, for he was, after all, used to disappointments.

These pieties, however, are inconsistent with what Lincoln's law partner, William Herndon, said about him: "His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest." Admittedly in the ancient world ambition was often viewed as a great vice. In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Brutus submits his reason for joining the conspiracy against Caesar: his fear that Caesar had grown too ambitious. But as founding father and future president James Madison noted in The Federalist, the American system was consciously designed to attract ambitious men. Such ambition was presumed natural to a politician and favorable to democracy as long as it sought personal distinction by promoting the public good through constitutional means.

What unites the right-wing and left-wing attacks on Lincoln, of course, is that they deny that Lincoln respected the law and that he was concerned with the welfare of all. The right-wing school -- made up largely of Southerners and some libertarians -- holds that Lincoln was a self-serving tyrant who rode roughshod over civil liberties, such as the right to habeas corpus. Lincoln is also accused of greatly expanding the size of the federal government. Some libertarians even charge -- and this is not intended as a compliment -- that Lincoln was the true founder of the welfare state. His right-wing critics say that despite his show of humility, Lincoln was a megalomaniacal man who was willing to destroy half the country to serve his Caesarian ambitions. In an influential essay, the late Melvin E. Bradford, an outspoken conservative, excoriated Lincoln as a moral fanatic who, determined to enforce his Manichaean vision -- one that sees a cosmic struggle between good and evil -- on the country as a whole, ended up corrupting American politics and thus left a "lasting and terrible impact on the nation's destiny."

Although Bradford viewed Lincoln as a kind of manic abolitionist, many in the right-wing camp deny that the slavery issue was central to the Civil War. Rather, they insist, the war was driven primarily by economic motives. Essentially, the industrial North wanted to destroy the economic base of the South. Historian Charles Adams, in When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession, published in 2000, contends that the causes leading up to the Civil War had virtually nothing to do with slavery.

This approach to rewriting history has been going on for more than a century. Alexander Stephens, former vice president of the Confederacy, published a two-volume history of the Civil War between 1868 and 1870 in which he hardly mentioned slavery, insisting that the war was an attempt to preserve constitutional government from the tyranny of the majority. But this is not what Stephens said in the great debates leading up to the war. In his "Cornerstone" speech, delivered in Savannah, Ga., on March 21, 1861, at the same time that the South was in the process of seceding, Stephens said that the American Revolution had been based on a premise that was "fundamentally wrong." That premise was, as Stephens defined it, "the assumption of equality of the races." Stephens insisted that instead: "Our new [Confederate] government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea. Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man. Slavery -- subordination to the superior race -- is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great and moral truth."

This speech is conspicuously absent from the right's revisionist history. And so are the countless affirmations of black inferiority and the "positive good" of slavery -- from John C. Calhoun's attacks on the Declaration of Independence to South Carolina Senator James H. Hammond's insistence that "the rock of Gibraltar does not stand so firm on its basis as our slave system." It is true, of course, that many whites who fought on the Southern side in the Civil War did not own slaves. But, as Calhoun himself pointed out in one speech, they too derived an important benefit from slavery: "With us the two great divisions of society are not the rich and the poor, but white and black; and all the former, the poor as well as the rich, belong to the upper class, and are respected and treated as equals." Calhoun's point is that the South had conferred on all whites a kind of aristocracy of birth, so that even the most wretched and degenerate white man was determined in advance to be better and more socially elevated than the most intelligent and capable black man. That's why the poor whites fought -- to protect that privilege.

Contrary to Bradford's high-pitched accusations, Lincoln approached the issue of slavery with prudence and moderation. This is not to say that he waffled on the morality of slavery. "You think slavery is right, and ought to be extended," Lincoln wrote Stephens on the eve of the war, "while we think it is wrong, and ought to be restricted." As Lincoln clearly asserts, it was not his intention to get rid of slavery in the Southern states. Lincoln conceded that the American founders had agreed to tolerate slavery in the Southern states, and he confessed that he had no wish and no power to interfere with it there. The only issue -- and it was an issue on which Lincoln would not bend -- was whether the federal government could restrict slavery in the new territories. This was the issue of the presidential campaign of 1860; this was the issue that determined secession and war.

Lincoln argued that the South had no right to secede -- that the Southern states had entered the Union as the result of a permanent compact with the Northern states. That Union was based on the principle of majority rule, with constitutional rights carefully delineated for the minority. Lincoln insisted that since he had been legitimately elected, and since the power to regulate slavery in the territories was nowhere proscribed in the Constitution, Southern secession amounted to nothing more than one group's decision to leave the country because it did not like the results of a presidential election, and no constitutional democracy could function under such an absurd rule. Of course the Southerners objected that they should not be forced to live under a regime that they considered tyrannical, but Lincoln countered that any decision to dissolve the original compact could only occur with the consent of all the parties involved. Once again, it makes no sense to have such agreements when any group can unilaterally withdraw from them and go its own way.

The rest of the libertarian and right-wing case against Lincoln is equally without merit. Yes, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and arrested Southern sympathizers, but let us not forget that the nation was in a desperate war in which its very survival was at stake. Discussing habeas corpus, Lincoln insisted that it made no sense for him to protect this one constitutional right and allow the very Union established by the Constitution, the very framework for the protection of all rights, to be obliterated. Of course the federal government expanded during the Civil War, as it expanded during the Revolutionary War, and during World War II. Governments need to be strong to fight wars. The evidence for the right-wing insistence that Lincoln was the founder of the modern welfare state stems from the establishment, begun during his administration, of a pension program for Union veterans and support for their widows and orphans. Those were, however, programs aimed at a specific, albeit large, part of the population. The welfare state came to America in the 20th century. Franklin Roosevelt should be credited, or blamed, for that. He institutionalized it, and Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon expanded it.

The left-wing group of Lincoln critics, composed of liberal scholars and social activists, is harshly critical of Lincoln on the grounds that he was a racist who did not really care about ending slavery. Their indictment of Lincoln is that he did not oppose slavery outright, only the extension of it, that he opposed laws permitting intermarriage and even opposed social and political equality between the races. If the right-wingers disdain Lincoln for being too aggressively antislavery, the left-wingers scorn him for not being antislavery enough. Both groups, however, agree that Lincoln was a self-promoting hypocrite who said one thing while doing another.

Some of Lincoln's defenders have sought to vindicate him from these attacks by contending that he was a "man of his time." This will not do, because there were several persons of that time, notably the social-reformer Grimké sisters, Angelina and Sarah, and Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, who forthrightly and unambiguously attacked slavery and called for immediate and complete abolition. In one of his speeches, Sumner said that while there are many issues on which political men can and should compromise, slavery is not such an issue: "This will not admit of compromise. To be wrong on this is to be wholly wrong. It is our duty to defend freedom, unreservedly, and careless of the consequences."

Lincoln's modern liberal critics are, whether they know it or not, the philosophical descendants of Sumner. One cannot understand Lincoln without understanding why he agreed with Sumner's goals while consistently opposing the strategy of the abolitionists. The abolitionists, Lincoln thought, approached the restricting or ending of slavery with self-righteous moral display. They wanted to be in the right and -- as Sumner himself says -- damn the consequences. In Lincoln's view, abolition was a noble sentiment, but abolitionist tactics, such as burning the Constitution and advocating violence, were not the way to reach their goal.

We can answer the liberal critics by showing them why Lincoln's understanding of slavery, and his strategy for defeating it, was superior to that of Sumner and his modern-day followers. Lincoln knew that the statesman, unlike the moralist, cannot be content with making the case against slavery. He must find a way to implement his principles to the degree that circumstances permit. The key to understanding Lincoln is that he always sought the meeting point between what was right in theory and what could be achieved in practice. He always sought the common denominator between what was good to do and what the people would go along with. In a democratic society this is the only legitimate way to advance a moral agenda.

Consider the consummate skill with which Lincoln deflected the prejudices of his supporters without yielding to them. In the Lincoln-Douglas debates during the race for the Illinois Senate, Stephen Douglas repeatedly accused Lincoln of believing that blacks and whites were intellectually equal, of endorsing full political rights for blacks, and of supporting "amalgamation" or intermarriage between the races. If these charges could be sustained, or if large numbers of people believed them to be true, then Lincoln's career was over. Even in the free state of Illinois -- as throughout the North -- there was widespread opposition to full political and social equality for blacks.

Lincoln handled this difficult situation by using a series of artfully conditional responses. "Certainly the Negro is not our equal in color -- perhaps not in many other respects; still, in the right to put into his mouth the bread that his own hands have earned, he is the equal of every other man. In pointing out that more has been given to you, you cannot be justified in taking away the little which has been given to him. If God gave him but little, that little let him enjoy." Notice that Lincoln only barely recognizes the prevailing prejudice. He never acknowledges black inferiority; he merely concedes the possibility. And the thrust of his argument is that even if blacks were inferior, that is not a warrant for taking away their rights.

Facing the charge of racial amalgamation, Lincoln said, "I protest against that counterfeit logic which concludes that because I do not want a black woman for a slave, I must necessarily want her for a wife." Lincoln is not saying that he wants, or does not want, a black woman for his wife. He is neither supporting nor opposing racial intermarriage. He is simply saying that from his antislavery position it does not follow that he endorses racial amalgamation. Elsewhere Lincoln turned antiblack prejudices against Douglas by saying that slavery was the institution that had produced the greatest racial intermixing and the largest number of mulattoes.

Lincoln was exercising the same prudent statesmanship when he wrote to New York newspaper publisher Horace Greeley asserting: "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that." The letter was written on August 22, 1862, almost a year and a half after the Civil War broke out, when the South was gaining momentum and the outcome was far from certain. From the time of secession, Lincoln was desperately eager to prevent border states such as Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky and Missouri from seceding. These states had slavery, and Lincoln knew that if the issue of the war was cast openly as the issue of slavery, his chances of keeping the border states in the Union were slim. And if all the border states seceded, Lincoln was convinced, and rightly so, that the cause of the Union was gravely imperiled.

Moreover, Lincoln was acutely aware that many people in the North were vehemently antiblack and saw themselves as fighting to save their country rather than to free slaves. Lincoln framed the case against the Confederacy in terms of saving the Union in order to maintain his coalition -- a coalition whose victory was essential to the antislavery cause. And ultimately it was because of Lincoln that slavery came to an end. That is why the right wing can never forgive him.

In my view, Lincoln was the true "philosophical statesman," one who was truly good and truly wise. Standing in front of his critics, Lincoln is a colossus, and all of the Lilliputian arrows hurled at him bounce harmlessly to the ground. It is hard to put any other president -- not even George Washington -- in the same category as Abraham Lincoln. He is simply the greatest practitioner of democratic statesmanship that America and the world have yet produced.

[Arkinsaw]

But it looks like you're playing a slippery game.

I'm really not trying to play any game. My concerns would be allayed if the popular mind had a more holistic understanding of the whole event. Unfortunately, your average Joe doesn't have that understanding and generally wasn't provided it by our educational system. Those without that understanding will generally absorb the quick soundbite.

When a historian goes on a television show and makes the soundbite statement he generally means what you and I mean, knowing the complexity of the event. That is not necessarily the perception the general public gains from his words, not knowing that complexity.

In a normal environment that would not necessarily mean that much to me. But we are in an environment where activists are attempting to deepen the divide for modern political purposes, for fundraising, and for getting attention. We see this in efforts to alter the interpretation of battlefield parks that previously concentrated on the battle that took place there. We see it iin efforts to erase the Confederate battle flag even as a historical symbol at memorials or cemeteries and in a historical context. Even the Sons of Union Veterans decry this because they have an understanding of the complexities involved.

The offhand statements by historians regarding causation is not necessarily providing the public with the necessary information that they require to adequately judge what they are being told by activists who are trying to sway them to a modern political view. This has been true in regard to the NAACP for years and increasingly true for activists on the other side in recent years who have gotten caught up in the tit-for-tat. Historians should be aware that a one-liner can result in cardboard cutout history in the public mind.

Essentially, the game I am playing is to advocate a much more in depth presentation of the event in our educational system to arm the public with a better understanding of the complexities so that they can better judge the current "yes it is" - "no it isn't" argument.

I am also advocating that Southern partisans, of whom I am one, stop playing that game and stop digging through the historical record for factoids to fling. When the public has a real awareness of the complexities they are much less likely to be swayed by simplistic pronouncements about it by modern pot-stirrers. Fighting factoids with factoids is a loser's game and makes you just another pot-stirrer.

If you change the environment there can actually be rational discussion of how we mark the Civil War as a common cultural event and within its historical context without regard to modern political correctness or agendas. We can provide a full understanding of the tragedy of slavery without prohibiting the display of battle flags. Its not a zero-sum game here.

The guys who actually fought this war on both sides and shot at each other ended up with more common sense about it in their later years than we have 150 years later. Thats just crazy.


"Peace at the End of the Civil War", Capitol Rotunda, Washington, D.C.

[NMC EXP]

Thanks for the clarification.

[libertarianben]

I like stirring the pot sometimes. It's fun. It makes people have to answer why they believe something other than being sheep. This debate could go on forever with no side winning. I just wish we could end the North=good + righteous, South=evil + racist thing. We should really look at what happen at the war and not just accept what the government history tell us. Remember the winners of war write the history. I done debating and feel much better now.

[Bigun]

If you change the environment there can actually be rational discussion of how we mark the Civil War as a common cultural event and within its historical context without regard to modern political correctness or agendas. We can provide a full understanding of the tragedy of slavery without prohibiting the display of battle flags. Its not a zero-sum game here.

That seems a perfectly reasonable proposal to me.

[djreece]

Perhaps you need to reread my post. I did not say the South wanted to take over the North. (I really appreciate the insult to my intelligence.) I said that if we go down the road of "What Ifs" and the South had seceded, that given the history, proximity and economic realities, one outcome may have been that the countries would have unified again with the South in control, meaning slavery would have been written into the Constitution as it was in the Confederate constitution.

I agree that the "War between the States" would be a more accurate term. I used the term "Civil War" because that is the most common term, not as a political statement. I don't devote my life to refighting the battles of 150 years ago.

As I said, for many decades those who opposed slavery thought it would die of its own accord. In additon, there is clear historical evidence that the abolitionist movement worked to awaken the public conscience in a new way in the decades leading to the "War between the States." A number of factors brought the issue to the point of no return, sparking the war.

[squirt-gun]

Re # 56 I am FAR from "Hillbilly" as you put it. I have a Masters in US and Texas History, and a bachelors in World History, so I am quite educated..

If you are educated as you proclaim, I think you will understand that I didn't accuse you personally of being a "hiilbilly"......Please re-read my post.... N'est Pas?

[NoControllingLegalAuthority]

Here is an interesting side note. There are thousands of Civil War reenactors who dedicate themselves to portraying those men of both sides who fought. It is interesting to note there are usually far more reenacting Confederates than Federals and often Confederate units are asked to change uniforms for the reenactments to balance the sides.

Apparently these modern Confederate reenactors are making a statement other than a longing for a return to slavery.

The centralized power of the federal government today is NOT what was agreed to by the original states. Today's overpowering federal government was brought to us by Abraham Lincoln.

[pawdoggie]

And to educate you just a little: "Sic Semper Tyrannis" (Thus be it ever to TYRANTS) is the state motto of Virginia.......... To educate you a little, I know the state motto of Virginia; neither you nor Booth (Maryland) are Virginians, so you weren't merely quoting your state's motto (and we all know how keen you are on your state and its rights). At first I thought you might just be clowning around with your "Lincoln is a tyrant who got what was coming to him" rant. Now I can see that you are serious.

I've travelled extensively in Europe, and I've met families there who lost members of their immediate family to American and Allied bombing. They don't hold a grudge like that you claim to hold against Lincoln for depredations he never personally visited upon your "relatives" a century and a half ago. What you try to use as justification for your attitude is an excuse, not an explanation. It is certainly unChristian (unless you are a "Christian Identity/Aryan Nation" type), and irrational. You need immediate professional counseling. You're right when you say that I don't know your parents, and shouldn't comment on how they raised you. I will say with conviction, however, that if (notice the conditional tense) your parents raised you to believe that Lincoln should have been killed in 1860 in order to preserve the old slave-holding South, then you were sired by Satan and hatched by Vulture.

[Rabble]

". And ultimately it was because of Lincoln that slavery came to an end. That is why the right wing can never forgive him."

This is a typical Liberal tactic, Playing the race card. You're saying that because Lincoln brought slavery to an end that anyone that Opposes him or his tactics are racist. Perhaps you are the actual racist here for stating such a falsehood!

[Rabble]

CorrectionThe comments in post# 109 are directed towards Disesh D'Souza, NOT Churchillbuff! Sorry for any misunderstanding.

[TexConfederate1861]

I know how this is going to sound, but try to understand this in the spirit it is meant: Most slaves were treated well, and rather than see thousands of Americans killing each other on the battlefield,rather than seeing the government of the states destroyed, and all of the heartache that came with it, rather than see racial divides and hatred, YES, I would rather slavery had continued for a longer period of time. I believe it would have ended within twenty years, because of changing economic conditions.

[TexConfederate1861]

Circumstances were different during the Revolution against England.....

[TexConfederate1861]

Well, I have to respectfully disagree. If it was YOUR property that was being lost, your way of life, your economic disaster, if YOU were a slaveowning Southerner, you might have felt differently about the situation.

The Confederate Constitution prohibited the importation of slaves, so I believe it would have died out. The war wasn't over slavery anyhow, as much as other factors.

[cyborg]

Well okay. I think we have to agree to disagree. I don't think you are understanding what I'm trying to say so forget it.

[Mulder]

Lincoln argued that the South had no right to secede

Well, Jefferson would disagree. Freedom of political association is an absolute Right that Free men and women possess.

My own contention is that Lincoln was a monster. The more I read of him, the more my opinion is confirmed.

[Mulder]

Became fantastic lawyer

Who whored himself out to the highest bidder, which was often the railroad companies. (He did offer to represent the state of Illinois in a case against the railroad companies, but only if they paid him the same amount the company would).

I don't know who was the greater, Washingtom (coming from wealth) or Lincoln (coming from essential poverty)

No-brainer. Washington. (Although he had his faults too). At least 600,000 Americans didn't die because of his foolishness.

America was so fortunate to have him.

600,000 dead Americans would probably disagree.

[TexConfederate1861]

OK...you seem to enjoy insulting me, so I will try to explain this one more time:

I am DEAD serious, when I state the following: If Lincoln had been shot in 1861, I believe the South & North would have worked out their differences, and slavery would have ended peacefully, though later on. I am dead serious of all I accuse Lincoln of in regards to being a tyrant.

Don't patronise me or insult my intelligence with your petty little Yankee ad hominem attacks. My parents taught me not to believe everything that is in history books, especially when those books were written by the winning side......I have an aunt who survived the bombing of Trieste by the British and let me tell you, she holds one hell of a grudge. I am very much a Christian, (mainstream), and have no desire for a "slaveholding" South, as you call it. I can love my country, and STILL deplore the acts of a tyrant. If you can't understand that, then it is indeed YOU that need help. And as for assasinations, our own Federal Government has been known to employ that remedy from time to time, so don't give me the hogwash about it being immoral. Open your eyes, and look at the truth. You won't find it in a textbook.

[Mulder]

So you still believe the civil war was about slavery?

Well, the victors *do* get to write history, so that is why Lincoln is worshipped, instead of the better man, Lee.

The real irony is that while all Americans applaud the "freeing of the slaves" after the Civil War; most Americans live in slavery today. A different form, but still slavery, similar to how Huxley put it:

“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude”.

[Mulder]

Lincoln would not have had to defend the Union and the Constituation against the attack.

The South didn't want to "take over" the Union. They simply wanted to be left alone.

But Lincoln himself regretted with blood-laced sweat that Thomas Jefferson didn't take care of the immoral slave issue at the start

Jefferson tried to, but failed unfortunately.

[yankhater]

Tex,

You're right in hinting how the slavery issue itself shouldn't wash away everything the United States government did in response to secession.

We could plausibly argue that slavery would have ended much sooner had the British won the War of American Independence. It would of had to have ended sooner or later if the Confederate States been victorious. Hard to say when. Most likely by the 1880's if you look at Brazil and Cuba doing same.

On the other hand would the slavery issue have eventually pitted the upper South versus the deep South? I could see that too. By the end of 1864-65 the Virginians and North Carolinian urban moderates had eliminated the fire-eating planters in government. The Deep South states resented the Richmond government and Virginia control of the Army/tactics.
So we could make the counter argument that secession would of had to stop somewhere.

Basically the way I've come to see it after many arguments in my day...

1) radical pro slavery and radical abolitionists created a political crisis in the mid 19th century
2) that crisis resolved around the issue of slavery
3) no one had the solution so secession became a crisis
4) the secession crisis caused the war
5) moderates both north and south had to make a hard choice
6) these moderates tended to be more loyal to their cause, more steadfast, and heroic than the radicals were
7) terrible tragedy that so many died
8) fascinating battles and tactics, great geniuses
9) slavery ended which had to happen, but some of the union's tactics resulted in longstanding hatred of blacks and resentment.
10) reconstruction was mishandled and caused more problems than the war itself.
11) although Lincoln was not perfect his assasination made things 100 x worse for the south, he would have been more lenient
12) let both yanks and rebs have their respective heroes and not refight the war.

YH