Posted on 02/18/2005 11:27:18 PM PST by 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.
Jefferson Davis certainly acted upon that principle of the tyrant in his dealings with Unionist East Tennessee. The majority of East Tennesseans wished to remain in the Union, voted twice to stay in the Union and regarded with doubt the election that finally rubber stamped the Tennessee secession engineered by the politicians and not the people. The people in my part of the world feared the slaveowners' tyranny coming from Richmond more than any tyranny that could come from Washington.
They didn't have a right to secede, which is why it's called the "Revolutionary War". They knew that their actions weren't legal and that they would have to fight.
Or maybe you think ALL tyrant rulers have the power to use military force to force governments on people who want independence.....
And what acts of tyranny were the southern states subject to?
"They didn't have a right to secede, which is why it's called the "Revolutionary War". They knew that their actions weren't legal and that they would have to fight."
Indeed. Which is why they wrote the Declaration of Secession, er, Independence, in which they said that the right to liberty comes NOT from governments (which will almost always try to deter people from freedom), but from God Almighty.
"And what acts of tyranny were the southern states subject to?"
As stated, when governments use FORCE to FORCE themselves upon those who wish indepedence, there is no clearer sign that tyranny is present. Such as King George, Lincoln, Chairman Mao, Krushchev, etc, etc.
Ironically, some years ago, you may remember that President Clinton visited Communist China. During his visit, Clinton asked what happened to the famous "student" in Tienamin (sp) Square who stood directly in the path of the tank, that was immortalized in news reels across the world. After responding that they were not sure what happened to the man, one of Mao's assistants told Clinton:
"We acted precisely as your President Lincoln."
Indeed.
It is no small irony that one of Lincoln's biggest fans was a man by the name of Karl Marx.
Bullshit China story aside, the question still remains, what tyranny were the southern states subject to? They had representation in Congress, a voice in national elections, the freedom to run their states pretty much the way that they wanted. It's not like the Founding Father's who had zero say in the government. On the contrary, the southern states had exercised a disproportionate level of influence on national policy since the adoption of the Constitution. The only 'tyranny' seems to be the 'tyranny' of the majority. I don't think that the Founding Father's had that in mind as justification for rebellion.
You are wrong about what Jefferson said.
Thomas Jefferson, in his First Inaugural Address, said, “If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union, or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left to combat it.” Fifteen years later, after the New England Federalists attempted to secede, Jefferson said, “If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation…to a continuance in the union…I have no hesitation in saying, ‘Let us separate.’”
At Virginia’s ratification convention, the delegates said, “The powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the People of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression.”
In Federalist Paper 39, James Madison, the father of the Constitution, clarified what “the people” meant when he said that the proposed Constitution would be subject to ratification by the people, “not as individuals composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively belong.” In a word, states were sovereign; the federal government was a creation, an agent, a servant of the states.
On the eve of the war, even unionist politicians saw secession as the right of states. Maryland Representative Jacob M. Kunkel said, “Any attempt to preserve the Union between the States of this Confederacy by force would be impractical, and destructive of republican liberty.” Just about every major Northern newspaper editorialized in favor of the South’s right to secede:
New York Tribune (February 5, 1860): “If tyranny and despotism justified the Revolution of 1776, then we do not see why it would not justify the secession of Five Millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861.”
What Jefferson said was, "The alternatives between which we are to choose [are fairly stated]: 1, licentious commerce and gambling speculations for a few, with eternal war for the many; or, 2, restricted commerce, peace and steady occupations for all. If any State in the Union will declare that it prefers separation with the first alternative to a continuance in union without it, I have no hesitation in saying 'let us separate.' I would rather the States should withdraw which are for unlimited commerce and war, and confederate with those alone which are for peace and agriculture. I know that every nation in Europe would join in sincere amity with the latter and hold the former at arm's length by jealousies, prohibitions, restrictions, vexations and war."
So are you suggesting that the south stood for unlimited commerce and war? And even at that, Jefferson is clearly talking about separation with the agreement of both parties, not unilateral separation by one.
In Federalist Paper 39, James Madison, the father of the Constitution...
While Madison may not have viewed the Constitution and a permanent agreement, without possibility of withdrawl, he is on record as opposing the kind of unilateral secession as practiced by the southern states. Secession should be with the agreement of both sides, not just one. As he pointed out, the idea that a state could secede at will is as ridiculous as the idea that a state could be turned out of the Union against its will.
"The only 'tyranny' seems to be the 'tyranny' of the majority. I don't think that the Founding Father's had that in mind as justification for rebellion."
Fear of tyranny of the majority is EXACTLY the reason for a Constitution. The Constitution exists EXPRESSLY for that purpose, and I think that is PRECISELY what they would see as a reason for fight for liberty.
Our form of government was designed as a Constitutional Republic. NOT a democracy, or even a republic. One of my favorite jokes is one which illustrates the difference:
A democracy is 3 sheep and 5 wolves voting on dinner.
A republic is sheep, who vote for wolves, who then get to vote on dinner.
A constitutional republic is sheep voting for wolves, but NO ONE gets to vote on dinner, and the sheep carry GUNS!!!
The Constitution is a document whereby the sovereign States delegate, or enumerate, a few (only about 2 dozen) very specific, very limited powers to the federal entity. The powers delegated to the federal entity in NO WAY make the federal government SUPERIOR to the states. This is the definitition of a FEDERAL government. The founding fathers more often than not called it a federal system, or a confederation, or simply, the Union--- much like the European Union of today. As you know, those European states rule their citizens completely according (hopefully) to the wishes of their citizenry, NOT according to the wishes of Europeans as a whole. The EU has a few, limited powers. This was EXACTLY what our Constitution does.
The 9th and 10th Amendments are necessary to make this system absolutely clear. The federal government can do NOTHING if those powers are not SPECIFICALLY GRANTED IT by the sovereign States. During Madison's presidency, he would not sign a bill to give a paltry (I think it was) $5,000 in disaster relief to (I think) Florida after a hurricane hit the state, because he said that this was not a power given the federal government by the Constitution.
Your understanding of the powers of the federal government are INVERTED from that of the framers, thanks to Lincolnite brainwashing. NOTE: power flows FROM THE (people of) the STATES to the FEDERAL ENTITY, NOT from the federal government to the people of the states. All those US flags flying above State flags we see are pure brainwashing, and clearly NOT what the founding fathers believed AT ALL.
It is NOT the federal government's job to rule us. That is the job of the States. The federal government can deliver the mail, maintain a navy (but not even a standing army), they can make treaties with foreign countries,and about 20 other, very specific items, ONLY! In fact, every time I hear that the Supreme Court has overturned some State law, it is a clear indication that the Supreme Court justices have either never read the Constitution, or are guilty of treason against the people.
Now, some people call this a "narrow interpretation" of the Constitution. However, the last time I checked, the Constitution was written in English, and I speak English, so I see no need for "interpretation" WHATSOEVER!! This is PRECISELY what the founding fathers wrote, it is PRECISELY what they said, and other than a few very frustrated Whigs like Haliton (and his later progenies like Lincoln), who wanted to establish a national bank (finally accomplished by Lincoln) and make the president a lifelong job (basically, a king).
'Narrow intepretation' might be a polite way of describing it. But the only way I can see how you might arrive at that interpretation is by ignoring vast amounts of the Constitution you claim to have an uncanny understanding of. You claim that the central government is in no way superior to the states. Yet it is the Congress that determines if a state will be admitted in the first place. The central government tells the states what form of government they will have. The central government that tells the states who they may deal with and how they may or may not conduct their affairs outside their own borders and in their dealings with the other states. You cringe and cry 'treason' at the idea of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning a state law and ignore the fact that same Constitution that defines 'treason' differently from you also makes it clear that it is the U.S. Constitution and the laws and treaties made under it that is the supreme law of the land, overriding state and local constitutions and laws when lose laws conflict with it. And do you honestly expect us to believe that the U.S. Army is unconstitutional?
The Constitution does not limit the central government to explicit powers only, the concept of implied powers has been accepted since the first Supreme Court. The idea of the states being sovereign is true to a point, they are sovereign within their own borders but powerless when their actions impact the interest of the other states or outside the borders of the United States. That is the concept that the founders had. A nation that speaks with one voice, not 50. And a nation that looks out for the interests of all the states, not one. We are one nation, not a loose conglomeration of 50.
Here's some REAL understanding of Lincoln:
Lincoln as anti-secession hero
http://www.thestandard.com.hk/stdn/std/China/GC14Ad04.html
They have even less REAL understanding of Lincoln than you do.
bookmarking this old, but excellent post!
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