Debate continues over 'The Real Lincoln'

Editor's Note: WorldNetDaily talk-radio host Geoff Metcalf recently interviewed Dr. Thomas DiLorenzo, author of "The Real Lincoln." In his book, as in the interview published April 14, DiLorenzo claims the 16th president was far more concerned with economic centralization than the abolishment of slavery. The interview elicited strong responses from readers, about half of whom disagreed with the author's assertions. Among them was Dr. Richard Ferrier, president of the Declaration Foundation. According to Ferrier and scholars at the foundation, the evidence DiLorenzo uses to back his claims actually proves the author wrong. Ferrier, who calls DiLorenzo's scholarship "sloppy," explains the quandary in his interview with Metcalf.

Metcalf's daily streaming radio show can be heard on TalkNetDaily weekdays from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Eastern time.

A: Falsehood, basically. Falsehood in details, sloppiness of scholarship and a fundamentally wrong-headed view of the role of Lincoln and the Declaration of Independence, and American history and our political philosophy.

Q: One of the key items DiLorenzo focused on was his suggestion that the debate between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton was won for Hamilton by Lincoln. Was he wrong?

A: Yes, I think he's wrong. I think Jefferson and Hamilton fundamentally agreed, and Jefferson is the one DiLorenzo will pick as being on his side – that the American Union began not with the Constitution but with the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson said so in a letter to the board of governors.

A: What that means is that we are a people with a limited but sovereign federal government under the rule of law whose spirit is given in the Declaration of Independence. I think on that point Hamilton and Jefferson agree, and they both disagree with Calhoun and Jefferson Davis and the people who started the rebellion of 1860-61. He's just wrong on that, but he's wrong on more gross and obvious matters.

Q: What I am specifically concerned with is what you claim are his factual errors.

A: Suppose I said to you, "Jesus said, 'I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones where I will store all my grains and all my goods, and I will say to my soul, soul you have ample goods laid up for many years. Take your ease and eat, drink and be merry.'" Is that true?

A: He did. It's in a parable. He has somebody else say it. Jesus tells the story about the rich man, and those are the words of the rich man. So in a way, it's true that Jesus said that; he said it in quotation marks. He didn't say it himself.

A: So listen to this from Tom DiLorenzo's book: "Lincoln even mocked the Jeffersonian dictum enshrined in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal. He admitted that it had become a genuine coin in the political currency of our generation but added, 'I am sorry to say that I have never seen two men of whom it is true. But I must admit that I never saw the Siamese twins and therefore will not dogmatically say that no man ever saw proof of this sage aphorism.'" That is supposedly from Lincoln. DiLorenzo goes on to add, "So with the possible exception of Siamese twins the idea of equality, according to Lincoln, was a sheer absurdity." This is in stark contrast to the seductive words of the Gettysburg Address 11 years later, in which he purported to rededicate the nation to the notion that all men are created equal.

Q: There is a footnote in DiLorenzo's book regarding that quotation, citing the first Lincoln-Douglas debate.

A: Yes, and when I was researching the book, I dutifully followed up the footnote and read the passage. Rather, I didn't find the passage because it isn't there. It is nowhere in the first debate. It is nowhere in any of the debates. Where it is is in an 1852 eulogy of Henry Clay, and Lincoln is quoting a Virginia clergyman with whom he disagrees. In other words, it's a lie. Lincoln never said those words in his own voice. It is not only a lie, but it is either an incompetent or malicious inference that Lincoln contradicts himself in the Gettysburg Address when he declares his solemn faith in the American creed that "all men are created equal."

Q: DiLorenzo quotes Lincoln from the Lincoln-Douglas debates, saying, "I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between white and black races, and I have never said anything to the contrary." Did Lincoln ever say that?

A: He did say that. But DiLorenzo has the citation wrong there, too. It is from a speech Lincoln gave in Peoria in 1854. Lincoln, who was a lawyer and was careful with his words, did not say "I do not believe in that equality. I do not think it is a good thing." He said, "I have no purpose to introduce it." Those are the words of a careful lawyerly politician who knows perfectly well how much good you can accomplish in your time and how much (if you espouse it) will ruin your career and keep you from accomplishing the good you can accomplish. So yes, it's perfectly true that Lincoln said, "I have no purpose," meaning, "I don't at the moment intend to bring about such equality." And if he had said anything else in Illinois in the 1850s, he couldn't have been elected to dogcatcher.

Q: DiLorenzo includes the Lincoln letter to Horace Greeley in 1862. Is that accurate?

Q: Hold on, here's the quote: "My paramount objective in this struggle is to save the Union; it is not to either save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it." What's the rest of it?

A: He continues, "I say nothing about my well-known desire that all men everywhere should be free." In other words, he's speaking as a public man with respect to his constitutional duty, which is to preserve the Union. Now it should be said that Lincoln thought the Union wasn't just a legal entity or a practical entity but an entity like a human being – a body and a soul. And the soul of that entity was the truths that are expressed in the Declaration, including the truth that all men are created equal.

I was a vice chair of the Proposition 209 [California's anti-discrimination law] campaign and a friend of Glynn Custred. This principle of human equality and treating people according to skin color or race is more than dear to me. I have labored in the vineyards for it. Lincoln thought the American Union was not just a matter of laws and conventions and agreements, but it was a kind of spiritual compact. He drew that from the Declaration that, itself, goes back to our Protestant colonial forebearers who believed from Scripture and reason that all men are created equal. So when Lincoln wanted to save the Union – and told Greeley that in a letter – Lincoln is thinking, "I will save the Union, whose heart and soul are the truths that are spoken of in the Declaration." In fact, if it was unwise in the short term to issue an Emancipation Proclamation, he would hold it off. When it was the right time to do it, he would do it.

Q: I asked Dr. DiLorenzo if, in his opinion, Lincoln was a dictator. He said that even some of the most pro-Lincoln historians had called him a dictator. Do you consider Lincoln a dictator?

A: No, I don't. That is a vexed question. By the way, it's a good question for both sides of the Civil War. One of the unhappy things about DiLorenzo's scholarship is that he pays no attention to broad historical context and doesn't look for example at the actions of Jeff Davis and the Confederate government. He finds fault with Lincoln for the suspension of habeas corpus, for various measures taken to suppress sedition in the states under control of the Union, and pays no attention …

Q: I didn't realize so many American citizens were thrown in the slammer just for disagreeing with him.

A: They weren't thrown in the slammer for disagreeing with him. They were thrown in the slammer for encouraging sedition and desertion. There is a long and complex scholarship on this, and you won't get much of it or a balance of it from the book. There was suppression of newspaper editors in Richmond, declaration of martial law in numerous areas of the Confederacy. The Confederacy instituted conscription in advance of the Union. Tom is a libertarian, and he thinks economic issues dominate everything. He thinks personal liberty is the absolute trump card in every argument. He's entitled to think that, but he applies that to Lincoln and the Union without a glance at the corresponding actions in the Confederacy.

Both parts of the American republic in that unhappy war did similar things, and they both did them with respect to sustaining the integrity and security of the Confederacy or the Union. Lincoln is consistently modifying the actions of his subordinates in the direction of liberty and leniency. He has hotheads he has to keep under his control – notably Ambrose Burnside and Ben Butler, who are responsible for unwise actions. And down the line, Lincoln reverses those actions in the direction of liberty. He did that because he conceived of the war and of his sustaining of the Union as a defense of fundamental human rights as expressed in the Declaration.

Q: I was intrigued by Tom's book, because I don't have a dog in this fight. My litmus test is the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Q: Fine, we'll make it the troika. Several of the things Lincoln did were specifically designed to abrogate, eviscerate and destroy the very document to which he swore an oath. To say, "Well, gosh, the other guys were doing it too," is not an adequate defense.

A: That is fair enough. In a way, you almost want to look at what Davis and company said. Davis and company argued like Hamilton, and so did Lincoln. That is to say both men, Lincoln and Davis, saw their fundamental duty to support the integrity and security of the republic to which they saw themselves belonging. Of course, Lincoln never saw the Confederacy as a republic; he thought it was an insurrection. They looked at the sections of both the Confederate and U.S. Constitutions, in which the executive is given fairly broad powers with respect to seeing that the laws are upheld and that the public peace is maintained. They both made appeals of that sort. You can hammer out the details ad nasuem.

A: The one that is most plain and reasonable to think about, I think, is the suspension of habeas corpus. That is authorized in the United States Constitution. DiLorenzo and his friends niggle on a small point: that it's Article 1, Section 9, and not Article 2 under the executive power. But the whole first article is about the power of the United States government. Section 10 of Article 1 prohibits the states from doing a number of things. It is not restricted to the powers of Congress. The complaint, if I'm being obscure …

A: What I'm saying is this: The complaint is Lincoln suspended habeas corpus for the sake of the security of the national capitol. When the bulk of the active powers in Maryland were about to prevent him from being inaugurated, prevent the United States Congress from meeting, organizing military forces to oppose the national government and the like, Lincoln cited Article 1, Section 9. Namely, that habeas corpus could be suspended in the case of insurrection or rebellion in defense of the Constitution and laws that he was sworn to uphold.

The confederates suspended habeas corpus, too, and for the same reason. Namely, that they were concerned with security within the Confederacy. I think in their own lights, both men were right. If the Confederacy was a government and had real independence, it couldn't put up with insurrection in the Confederacy. And there was insurrection in the Confederacy.

Q: What about the repression of all those newspaper editors? The numbers vary; I've heard from 13,000 to a gazillion.

Q: No, but were the incarcerated people all preaching desertion and sedition, or were they merely critical of Lincoln and as a result got thrown in stony lonesome?

A: There were blockade runners. There was an extensive Confederate spy network. There were plans to disrupt public meetings in Ohio and Indiana. To look at that fairly, you have to look at the scholarship on it. There was an organized seditious campaign, especially in Ohio and Indiana. It was run in part by exiles from Canada in Canada, across the Great Lakes, with actual plans for violent acts and the encouragement of desertion from the United States armed forces. Among those people were newspaper editors. How would you have felt about that during the Vietnam War? What if there had been in Vancouver an organized pro-Viet Cong movement with financial arrangements to the North Vietnamese paying and organizing newspaper writers, agitators on the ground, and planning to disrupt American political meetings?

Q: I wouldn't tell or involve my government, but I'd take about four A-Teams and covertly visit and counsel the offenders with extreme prejudice.

A: Yes, but we didn't want to invade Canada. I feel kind of the same way. But that was the actual situation. When his generals went over the line on that and suppressed people who shouldn't have been suppressed, Lincoln was consistently on the side of clemency. It is an old and ugly grudge that is held against Lincoln and the Union for various reasons. I think partly regional sentimentality, partly racism sometimes and various other reasons make people state a one-sided case against a man who sustained the founding principles of this country.

Q: You are accusing DiLorenzo of sloppy and disingenuous scholarship. Can you give me an example?

A: In support of his thesis, he says, "In virtually every one of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Lincoln made it a point to champion this corrupt economic agenda …"

A: It's like chartering canal companies and banks and things. He gives a footnote to that, and it's to the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Go look in those debates; there is not a word about this economic agenda. Not a word! Let me read from the Oxford history of this period. It's called "Battle Cry of Freedom," written by Dr. James McPherson, and it is a very respectable book. It's sort of the standard work on the matter. He talks about the Lincoln-Douglas debates:

"Desiring to confront Douglas directly, Lincoln proposed a series of debates." The famous debates that school kids used to read back in the days when we actually taught them something about American history. "The stakes were higher than a senatorial election. Higher even than the looming presidential contest of 1860 … for the theme of the debates was nothing less than the future of slavery and the Union. Tariffs, banks, internal improvements, corruption and other staples of American politics received not a word in these debates."

A: Nothing. I teach this at my college. I must have read and re-read seven debates 20 times. Trust me, Geoff, there is not a word about tariffs in those debates. Nothing.

Q: There is no argument that the tariffs imposed by the North on the South were draconian. You wouldn't refute that, would you?

A: The tariff of 1857, which was the existing tariff at the time, had bipartisan support. The South Carolina delegation voted for it. It was the lowest tariff in 20 years. That's not to say there wasn't debate about tariffs.

Q: The tariffs went from about 15 percent to 40 percent. I'd call that a big hike.

A: Yes, but that's two-and-a-half years later, in 1861. Democrat president James Buchanan signed that tariff, and it had bipartisan support. He called for its passage; he didn't just support it. In the '58 Senate contest and their seven famous debates, Douglas and Lincoln did not cross swords once over tariffs or the bank or internal improvements. I'm sorry to say this, Geoff, but what DiLorenzo says is a lie. These debates are available online. The books are widely published. Your readers should just go out and look. Also, the Declaration Foundation has a number of articles and a forum discussing this very matter of DiLorenzo's book and the legacy of Lincoln.

Q: DiLorenzo includes references to Frances Key Howard and Rep. Vallandigham. What can you tell us about them?

A: I don't know about the first one, but Clement Vallandigham was a Democrat from Ohio. When I mentioned Ambrose Burnside, Vallandigham was the congressman who gave speeches calling for the end of the war and for resistance to conscription …

A: That's right, but there was an income tax when he gave the speech that got him in trouble.

Q: My question is about congressional immunity. Unfortunately, Congress critters can get away with saying anything they want, as long as they say it in the well of Congress. How did Vallandigham end up getting his front door kicked in by federal soldiers?

A: He gave his speeches out in his home area in Ohio. The local general, Ambrose Burnside, thought it was treason and put him under arrest right away. When the facts came back to Lincoln, he thought it was unwise and possibly illegal, and he undid Burnside's action. What they offered him was a free pass through Confederate lines. And it's Vallandigham who wound up in Canada organizing seditious anti-Union, and sometimes violent, groups in the period of '63-'64, to undermine the national war effort. But Lincoln let him out. Lincoln turned the key. Burnside is the guy who did that, and Lincoln didn't think it was the right thing to do.

Q: What about the Morrill tariff bill, which bumped the tariff from 15 percent to 47 percent?

A: That bill would never have passed if the Southern states had not seceded. It passed in the Senate – before Lincoln was president, by the way – because 14 Southern senators were out of the Senate. They could have blocked it, but they walked out in advance.

When the neo-Rebels say the tariff was the cause of the war, they conveniently overlook the fact that South Carolina withdrew on December 20th of 1860 – not because of any tariff that had been passed or signed, but because Abraham Lincoln, who declared that slavery was a moral wrong, had been elected president of the United States. The Morrill tariff that you are referring to was not passed until three months after South Carolina and six other states went out.

Q: So if they blame secession on the tariff, they are being more than a little disingenuous.

[The 13th Amendment] was passed AFTER the war.

Actually, it was proposed by Lincoln in January 1863 when he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and it was passed by the House in April 1864 and the Senate in January 1865. It was ratified by 18 states before the end of February 1865 and by 2 more before Lee's surrendered at Appomattax, so that before the war was over more than 3/4 of the non-Confederate states had ratified it. Ratification by the Confederate states had of course to wait for reconstruction.

The Confederates had an evil agenda but they weren't stupid. They realized following the 1860 election that it was only a matter of time before the admission of new free Western states would result in the abolition of slavery. As the Mississippi secessionists put it:

"There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union..."

But with state sovereignty intact - each state could decide for itself to be rid of this reprehensible practice, now they have no choice.

So you want the states to be able to both control women's wombs and preserve the institution of slavery. Anytime now I'm sure you'll be breaking into a chorus of "Big Brother, Big Brother, long live Big Brother!"

If you were a resident of those towns, would you still maintain that the size of the city mattered?

A "town" is not a "city", and you claimed that Sherman "destroyed cities".

Well, if things were so bad down here - why did ANY [emancipated negroes] stay?

As I stated, they didn't have the money to move right after emancipation -- though they and their descendants certainly moved north later in great numbers.

Regarding the Underground Railroad - it ended in CANADA. The blacks certainly weren't in a rush to settle in Illinois and other northern states. No welcome mat waiting for them...

The Underground Railroad ended in Canada because that was the only place that negroes could escape from the grip of the long arm of the fugitive slave law. As I stated, northerners (particularly immigrant laborers cultivated by the Democrats) were understandibly nervous about a mass migration of refugees north. Nevertheless, and thanks in large part to Abraham Lincoln's leadership and the firming up of Republican control, the northern states had repealed most of the "black codes" by the end of the war.

I thought that ALL southerners were slaveholders.

No, but as I've stated, 1/3 of Southern white families were slaveholders and most of the rest were convinced by the slaveholders that dominated antebellum society that the perpetuation of slavery was in their best interests -- socially and economically.

My gggrandfather didn't own a single slave, he VOLUNTEERED.

I can understand why you wouldn't want to admit that he was fighting for an unworthy cause, but he was. I'm not saying there was anything wrong with him. The Confederate slaveholderocracy had a powerful propaganda machine behind them and as James McPherson argues, most Confederates on the front lines were probably thoroughly convinced that they were fighting for "freedom" and "self-determination" against "them damned yankees".

And there were many slaveowners that volunteered, ofter accompanied willingly by their slaves.

Slaves didn't "willingly" do anything. Being a slave necessarily means that you're subject to coercion, brain washing, whips, slave patrols, etc.

If most blacks understood that the union for fighting for their freedom, why didn't they join them en masse, or revolt?

They did when they got the chance, and they were begging to get in the war for the Union, even though they knew they may be executed by the Confederates if they were captured.

The draft riots occurred when Lincoln instituted the draft, white northerners revolted and sacked the city, killing blacks.

You are obviously relying on the half truths spread far and wide by the Confederate glorifiers. 2/3 of the NYC draft rioters were Irish immigrants and the rest were other poor ignorant laborers. In addition to attacking blacks, the mobs attacked Republican newspapers, Protestant churches and missions, the homes of Republicans and abolitionists, and any well off people they saw. NYC was run by a Democratic machine, even though the state as a whole went for Lincoln in '60 (but note that New Jersey went to Douglas). Democratic newspapers incited the riots. (See Battle Cry, pp 607-608.)

BTW, did the south ever revolt over conscription and kill blacks?

Opposition to the Confederate draft (which was instituted much earlier and relied on much heavier than in the Union) was suppressed in the South by declarations of martial law (which inlcuded a ban on the sale of liquor in Richmond), suspension of habeas corpus, theatening to shut down newspapers who didn't tow the party line, etc. Well connected people weaseled out of the draft using special exemptions for government officials, teachers, plantation overseers, etc. (See Battle Cry, pp. 429-447.)

Nathan Bedford Forrest's method of "recruiting" consisted of taking any able bodied young men between 18 and 45 he ran across in the South without even giving them time to tell their families where they were going. (See Foote, Vol. Three, page 112.)

Allow foreign terrorists, criminals and such egress - no.

Escaped slaves were considered criminals, so you are saying you would have opposed their immigration into a northern state had you been living there -- yet you criticize northerners for being concerned about mass migration of freed negroes north.

"There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union..."

The abolution would have increased Southern representation. But as it stood, you agree that the north failed to live up to it's Constitutional obligations, thus breaching their contract.

So you want the states to be able to both control women's wombs and preserve the institution of slavery.

When have I ever stated that I wanted slavery? I support a plain reading of the Constitution, including the 10th Amendment. I don't have to resort to convoluted arguments. And I abhor abortion - before some IDIOTS discovered some alleged "right of privacy" that had evaded the founders, many states had ended this reprehensible practice. Thanks to federalism, the states THINK they lost the right to stand up to the Fed. And 30 million dead later - we have our own holocaust.

A "town" is not a "city", and you claimed that Sherman "destroyed cities".

Atlanta GA was not a town.

As I stated, they didn't have the money to move right after emancipation -- though they and their descendants certainly moved north later in great numbers.

They could escape to Canada without money, but couldn't migrate north legally?

I wouldn't sacrifice myself for my neighbors' Lamborghini, but even so, slavery was legal. The north had made billions on it.

I can understand why you wouldn't want to admit that he was fighting for an unworthy cause, but he was.

He died in 1864, leaving a young wife and three children under the age of 5. Even if he had owned slaves, his cause was still honorable. The north broke the contract - that they had agreed to - not the south.

Slaves didn't "willingly" do anything. Being a slave necessarily means that you're subject to coercion, brain washing, whips, slave patrols, etc.

Wow. Read the "Slave Narratives" from the Federal Writers Project. Written long after the war, many ex-slaves expressed the love for their former masters, their families and their "home" - the South.

They did when they got the chance, and they were begging to get in the war for the Union, even though they knew they may be executed by the Confederates if they were captured.

So why did many flee the union army, or refuse to join once in the hands of the union soldiers?

What I stated was that the "draft riots occurred when Lincoln instituted the draft, white northerners revolted and sacked the city, killing blacks". Do you refute that? You are obviously relying on the half truths spread far and wide by the Yankee glorifiers.

Opposition to the Confederate draft (which was instituted much earlier and relied on much heavier than in the Union) was suppressed in the South by declarations of martial law ...

But they didn't riot and kill blacks in protest like the North did. Once the northerners understood that the war had changed into a war to free the blacks, they deserted left and right, and rioted in protest.

Which point are you arguing? Freed blacks migrating north or slaves escaping? By their agreement - which was ratified by every northern state - escaped blacked were to be returned. But the Constitution nowhere prohibits the immigration of FREE blacks anywhere. The states did that own their own.

I think he thought they were not only constitutional, and lawful, but obligatory in order to accomplish his oath. Here is the whole letter:

A. G. Hodges, Esq Executive Mansion,
Frankfort, Ky. Washington, April 4, 1864.

My dear Sir: You ask me to put in writing the substance of what I verbally said the other day, in your presence, to Governor Bramlette and Senator Dixon. It was about as follows:

``I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I took that I would, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power. I understood, too, that in ordinary civil administration this oath even forbade me to practically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the moral question of slavery. I had publicly declared this many times, and in many ways. And I aver that, to this day, I have done no official act in mere deference to my abstract judgment and feeling on slavery.

I did understand however, that my oath to preserve the constitution to the best of my ability, imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensable means, that government---that nation---of which that constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to lose the nation, and yet preserve the constitution? By general law life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful, by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the constitution, through the preservation of the nation. Right or wrong, I assumed this ground, and now avow it. I could not feel that, to the best of my ability, I had even tried to preserve the constitution, if, to save slavery, or any minor matter, I should permit the wreck of government, country, and Constitution all together. When, early in the war, Gen. Fremont attempted military emancipation, I forbade it,because I did not then think it an indispensable necessity. When a little later, Gen. Cameron, then Secretary of War, suggested the arming of the blacks, I objected, because I did not yet think it an indispensable necessity. When, still later, Gen. Hunter attempted military emancipation, I again forbade it, because I did not yet think the indispensable necessity had come. When, in March, and May, and July 1862 I made earnest, and successive appeals to the border states to favor compensated emancipation, I believed the indispensable necessity for military emancipation, and arming the blacks would come, unless averted by that measure. They declined the proposition; and I was, in my best judgment, driven to the alternative of either surrendering the Union, and with it, the Constitution, or of laying strong hand upon the colored element. I chose the latter. In choosing it, I hoped for greater gain than loss; but of this, I was not entirely confident. More than a year of trial now shows no loss by it in our foreign relations, none in our home popular sentiment, none in our white military force,---no loss by it any how or any where. On the contrary, it shows a gain of quite a hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, seamen, and laborers. These are palpable facts, about which, as facts, there can be no cavilling. We have the men; and we could not have had them without the measure.

[``]And now let any Union man who complains of the measure, test himself by writing down in one line that he is for subduing the rebellion by force of arms; and in the next, that he is for taking these hundred and thirty thousand men from the Union side, and placing them where they would be but for the measure he condemns. If he can not face his case so stated, it is only because he can not face the truth.['']

I add a word which was not in the verbal conversation. In telling this tale I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity. I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years struggle the nation's condition is not what either party, or any man devised, or expected. God alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God. Yours truly

A. LINCOLN

Note: [1] ADfS, DLC-RTL. Albert G. Hodges, editor of the Frankfort, Kentucky, Commonwealth , and Archibald Dixon, former senator from Kentucky, 1852-1855, met with Lincoln on March 26 to discuss border state problems. Orville H. Browning's Diary under date of April 3, 1864, records the visit: ``The President told me that a few days before Govr Bramlett of Ky: Hon Archibald Dixon & Mr Hodges of the same state had called upon him in regard to the enlistment of slaves as soldiers in Ky, in reference to which there has been much dissatisfaction in that State, and that everything had been amicably adjusted between them, and that they had gone home satisfied. He said when they were discussing the matter he asked them to let him make a little speech to them, which he did and with which they were much pleased. That afterwards Mr Hodges came back to him, and asked him to give him a copy of his remarks to take with him to Ky. He told Mr Hodges that what he had said was not written, and that he had not then time to commit it to paper---but to go home and he would write him a letter in which he would give, as nearly as he could all that he had said to them orally. . . .'' See further, Lincoln to Hodges, April 22, infra .

"I did read the entire letter. But my comprehension of the phrase "that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful" means that Lincoln understood them to be illegal for him to perform. Or why else express the sentiment that they "might" be legalized (ex post facto as well, still unconstitutional)."

I think you are stumbling over an archaic (i.e., precise!) use of "might." It is the past tense version of the following: "Measures, otherwise unconstitutional, MAY become lawful, by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the constitution, through the preservation of the nation." And I think the meaning of "may" in such a sentence ("might" in the past tense) means what "may" means when we tell children to use "may" instead of "can" -- as in "Can I have dessert?" being corrected to "May I have dessert." "May" here means something like "has the power of legitimacy, not of raw ability."

Obviously one can disagree with Lincoln's judgment, as he himself acknowledges in the immediately next sentence -- "Right or wrong, I assumed this ground, and now avow it." But I don't think that there is any suggestion in these sentences that he thinks what he did was unconstitutional or unlawful when he did it. Rather, he is saying that he believes that the circumstances he describes really do have the legitimate power to convert a presidential act from unconstitutional and unlawful (in other, perhaps normal, circumstances) to being genuinely constitutional and lawful at the time it is taken. Am I being clear?

The letter is talking about his action in the Emancipation Proclamation, no?

Primarily yes. He argues that it added "a hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, seamen, and laborers" to union forces, because he "believed the indispensable necessity for military emancipation, and arming the blacks would come, unless averted by that measure" [the Emancipation Proclamation]. He claimed that "often a limb must be amputated to save a life", alluding that emancipation of blacks was the event that allowed the north to continue the war. "We have the men; and we could not have had them without the measure" was his justification for his actions.

I do find it ludicrous that Lincoln opined that he "would, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution", and yet usurped non-executive powers - not limited to the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, the suspression of free speech and the free press - the 1^st Amendment, the raising and support of armies and navies, instituting a blockade, declaring war, the calling forth of the militia, borrowing money or otherwise commit the union to massive debts, violations of Amendments IV - illegal search and seizure, Amendment V - deprived of life, liberty and property, taking of private property without compensation, Amendment VI - denying speedy and fair trials with witnesses, and Amendments IX and X - uneneumerated rights held by the people and the states - not the federal governemnt. Which included the right to resume the powers of self government, as a condition of ratification by three states, and ratified by all states. Even further, he recognizes the right of what became West Virginia to secede from Virginia, yet refused to recognize the right of the states to do the same. The creation of a WV was a violation of Article IV.

Justice Davis, in ex parte Milligan, wrote that the "Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times and under all circumstances. No doctrine involving more pernicious consequences was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government."

That is, are you saying that Congress had power to emancipate in the states, and Lincoln pre-empted that power, hoping to have Congress approve later?

Lincoln obviously thought that Congress would sanction many of his actions - especially because he had given himself a 10 week head start ;o) But Congress had no power under the Constitution to emancipate - unless they compensated the owners.

Well, that's a lot of stuff. I am afraid I don't know what you are now saying about what Lincoln means in the letter.

I say he is arguing that actions normally beyond the particular determinations of the Constitution are constitutional when they are in fact necessary to preserve the Constitution and, more importantly, the Union which the Constitution itself is created to perfect. This would include, I presume, not just actions such as freeing slaves in rebellious areas -- normally a matter for the states -- but also taking steps that anticipate Congressional approval in absence of explicit votes, etc., because the executive -- whose principal job description is action to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution as a whole -- judges such actions necessary and anticipates such approval in due course. That's his argument as a whole, and in light of it he says certain things become actually constitutional even if they are not in conformity with details of the document. And by the way, his attitude of willingness to be judged wrong in this argument seems to me a crucial component of legitimacy as well. He says, in effect, I, the executive, judged such and such to be necessary in order to ensure survival of the Constitution, and therefore legitimate within the purpose of the document. If you judge differently (Congress) impeach me.

Do you read him differently, however you judge the truth of the argument?

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