The Unreal Lincoln: Loyola College Professor Flunks Out

The Carolina Journal ^ | May 7, 2002 | Erik Root

[Michael2001]

The Truth hurts

[mdittmar]

"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right--a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit." That's LINCOLN speaking!...in a more truthful moment of his pathetic life.

One minor detail,if your going to rise up,you may want to win.

[x]

I agree with you that the founders probably wanted a government that was more decentralized than what we have today. Looking at how long it took to develop government on the scale we have now suggests that it took a long time to overcome objections and resistances.

But the Founders not only had experience with the oppressive centralization of the British crown. They'd also had to cope with the very inefficient and chaotic decentralization of the Articles of Confederation. While a Sam Adams or Patrick Henry clung to the state above all else, Washington, Hamilton, Adams, Madison and others did work to create a more effective national government.

And given a less centralized political order than we have today, I still can't imagine George Washington agreeing that a state had a right to pick and choose which laws it would obey and which it would violate. I suspect that for Washington, the question didn't even come up, the assumption being that federal and state governments had their legitimate spheres of activity and the expectation being that each would stick to its own sphere, with the states granting the federal government its right to legislate on those matters outlined in the Constitution. In 1787, they apparently didn't forsee the kinds of conflicts that would develop.

We can talk about what the founders might have said had they come back at various points in our history. The technological and social change would have made their heads spin. Were they to come back today, they would be shocked and appalled by the growth of government and the decline of liberties. Governments are involved in matters that no one would have expected them ever to have a hand in. And the rise of democracy would also appall them. But I'm not so sure that Washington or Adams or Hamilton or the later Madison would make so many objections to the decline of the absolute idea of "state sovereignty." The fact that the country had been able to survive and overcome the jealousies of the various states might well seem to them to be a great achievement, though learning about the Civil War would be a bitter blow to them.

Similarly, I'm not at all convinced that had they seen 1860 the Founders would have cheered on the Confederates. Those who would tear up all their work so shortsightedly would appall Washington and Hamilton. Jefferson, the vain intellectual, would probably have been flattered by the Confederates' references to himself, but the mature founders who had seen how hard it was to establish our federal system would not have condoned breaking it for such trivial reasons. And I'm not so sure that the Founders would have believed that their work had been destroyed had they returned for the centennials of the Declaration and the Constitution. Deploring the Civil War and the intrusion of force into our politics, they would have seen the nation face its second century stronger, more confident and with the federal system and limits on centralized power intact.

But what if the Founders had returned to Virginia or Alabama circa 1950? They would see democracy in check and states asserting their independence against the federal government. But what would they have thought about segregation? Rockwellites dismiss segregation and slavery as things that would "naturally" have been overcome, ignoring all the appeal of these institutions to some and all the struggle required to get rid of them. Jaffa may be wrong about some things, but he does take these questions seriously, and is trying to mediate between the Founders' worldview and our own moral universe. If there is no continuity between the two, if they accepted what we can only reject, then a rift is opened up in our history that can be very destructive of our institutions.

It does seem that having created checks on the federal government and securing basic liberties against it, amendment of the constitution to protect those rights against encroachment by the states was not wholly out of place. The Bill of Rights itself was such a revision of or addition to the original scheme, and the inclusion of an amendment process in the Constitution itself implies that such revisions would be necessary over time.

[x]

Lind's is only one view of American history and not one that others will easily share. Richard Brookhiser writes about Lind's book in National Review:

... Hamilton's Republic is a hostile gloss on Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s The Age of Jackson: Schlesinger tried to trace the New Deal to Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. Michael Lind wants to trace the Great Society to Henry Clay.

...

Does all of this run as smoothly as Lind thinks into modern liberalism -- even a liberalism purged, as Lind would like it to be, of pacifism and multiculturalism? Clearly something changed between the "general welfare" clause of the Constitution and the welfare state. Roughly speaking, Lind's earlier heroes wanted to help employers; FDR wanted to help the unemployed; LBJ wanted to help the unemployable. Alexander Hamilton, who supported taxing the poor to make them work, and who liked factories because they exploited the labor of women and children (sentiments not quoted here) would be puzzled by the progeny Lind has fathered on him.

Lind is also unnecessarily harsh on Hamilton's great rival, Thomas Jefferson. Lind chides the third President for holding fanciful notions of minimal government, unrealistic attitudes on foreign policy, and crackpot views on race. These criticisms are just. But Jefferson and his supporters were also pioneers of the rhetoric of resentment and class hostility, assailing their enemies (Lind's heroes) as tools of bankers and secret monarchists. The same arguments, suitably updated, have served Democrats in the twentieth century (who are also Lind's heroes). It seems ungracious of Lind to disdain the man who furnished FDR with so many useful tropes.

Hamilton and Washington took steps to ensure that the country would survive its early years. Simply taking Hamilton for the Dark Side of the force obscures his very real contributions to the infant nation. The connections between Hamilton and politicians of the 20th Century are as much in Lind's mind as anywhere else. The manichean good vs. evil view of American history is overturned by the discovery of evil even on the good side and vice versa. Many a good citizen in the 1840s and 1850s, confronted with the Democrats' love of militarism, expansionism and slavery opted for the Whigs or Republicans as a libertarian alternative.

Lincoln had been a Whig and thus in some ways a decendant of Hamilton, but what's lost on Lind and Di Lorenzo is the different coloration these ideas had in New York Salons and on the Illinois frontier. What Lind takes for theft or deception is the inevitable and desirable cross-fertilization of political tendencies. The side of Lincoln that promoted opportunity for ordinary people gets left out of Di Lorenzo's skewed picture. As does a view of how planter elites systematically suppressed the liberties of those over whom they ruled.

[Cincinatus]

National bank, corporate welfare, tariffs, Federal supremacy. Jefferson opposed them all. Didn't you ever take any college level history?? Jefferson and Madison Vs Hamilton. Also, Jefferson and Madison Vs Patrick Henry.

As I recall, I asked you to defend Metcaff’s comment (to which I was responding and you volunteered to defend) regarding the “big bureaucracy” Hamilton established and then, what Jefferson did to reverse course as President. Creation of a National Bank?? What corporate welfare?? Tariffs were a part of every mercantile state of the 18th century and you cannot blame Hamilton for imposing them; the colonies had a tariff system in place 100 years before the creation of the federal government.

As long as you’re bring up history, may I ask why you think we had a constitutional convention in the first place? It was because the Articles of Confederation did not work in the one area most important to national security – our debt. Hamilton as Secretary inherited a huge problem – a massive war debt, not incurred by the government he served, but rather by 13 separate, bickering, individualistic governments. He foresaw that if we could not service this debt somehow, we were doomed as a nation (France and Spain already owned most of the American interior). Hamilton’s (brilliant) solution followed that of the Walpole ministry in England – he monetized the debt. Hamilton realized that America was rich in static capital assets (natural resources and agriculture) but poor in liquid capital. He used the national debt to create liquid capital by floating a variety of foreign loans, based on America’s natural wealth. He used your hated tariffs to service the existing debt until it could be refinanced at more attractive interest rates. Doing this, he did two things simultaneously: a) he serviced the debt and cleaned up the haphazard colonial monetary system, without defaulting on a single loan; and b) he stabilized our national security because he realized that without international credit, the USA had no national security. Oh, and yes, one more thing – he created (virtually single-handedly) the modern US national economy.

Hamilton has been vilified and misunderstood by both left-wing idiots and right-wing kooks for years. Without him, there would be no United States of America. Jefferson and his revolutionary rhetoric may have been the heart of the new nation; Hamilton was its brain.

Now, as to the “big central government” issue. Hamilton’s rap about being a “monarchist” is an old slander from the Jeffersonians. Hamilton believed in republican government, but like many of the Founders, distrusted the mob. He wanted a system in which the people ruled, but with constraints that prevented mobocracy. He thought that a permanent executive had value because that would keep the executive above party politics, which all men of the Enlightenment thought harmful (including Jefferson, although he played the game like a master – better than did Hamilton, in fact). Yes, Hamilton was an elitist. But he was a self-made elitist -- he was born poor and worked his way through law school (unlike Jefferson, BTW, who like the archetypical limousine liberal, was born with a silver spoon in his mouth). In no way can you blame Hamilton for the modern welfare state, the very concept of which would have astounded and disgusted him.

As to my second original question, the answer is “Nothing.” Jefferson did nothing to undo the Hamiltonian system of finance and central banking. He did nothing for a very good reason – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Yet another thing the anti-Federalists were wrong about. Not that Red Tom would ever admit it. Moreover, Jefferson’s dabbling in radical politics had serious, long term detrimental effects. He continued to support the French Revolution long after it degenerated into a bloodbath, not unlike current “intellectuals” like Noam Chomsky who supported the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge.

As for Lincoln, that’s a whole other discussion and I care not a whit about getting into it. I only care about Hamilton and his reputation. If people choose not to admire him, I really don’t care. But the crap said about him around here – not necessarily by you, but by many, is just garbage.

[Cincinatus]

You seem to find great value in Michael Lind's Hamilton's Republic. Lind is an apostate conservative who used Hamilton as the straw man advocate for his "Big Little Government" model of The Way Things Ought To Be. He makes this connection between Lincoln and Hamilton. Other Hamiltonians may, or may not, accept it (I don't).

BTW, in Lind's book, he also tries to connect FDR and LBJ to Hamiltonianism. Am I supposed to react to that? Why not connect him with Hitler, while you're at it?

[ned]

Good post. The "legitimizing" justification expressed in the Declaration of Independence included at least two important aspects which could not be claimed by the "seceding" politicians. First, by the 1860's, no competent political leader could have reasonably concluded that the institution of African slavery sprung from any timeless self-evident truths. And of course the people of the "seceding" states had rights of participation in the government of the United States that were not afforded to the American colonists by the British.

But apart from these moral considerations, I think that we too often underestimate the sheer political incompetence that was demonstrated by the southern politicians who were responsible for the management of these events. Any way that you look at it, I just don't see how their declarations of "secession" can be viewed as anything other than enormous and catastrophic miscalculations that simply could not have come from leaders exercising even moderately good judgment. Some of these guys had to be pretty thin.

[ned]

South Carolina Governor Francis Pickens

In November, 1860, Governor Perkins was elected Governor of South Carolina by a secret vote of the South Carolina Legislature. In his Inaugural Message to South Carolina, the new governor discussed the election of President Lincoln, the danger that Lincoln's election posed to the institution of slavery and the important role that slavery played in the preservation of civil order. "Any thing tending to change or weaken this government and the subordination between the races not only endangers the peace, but the very existence of our society itself."

In order to truly appreciate the following portion of this rookie governor's Inaugural Message, it's important to remember that it was given before the December, 1860 "Secession Convention" was to be held for the purpose of charting South Carolina's future destiny:

"There is one thing certain, and I think it due to the country to say so in advance, that South Carolina is resolved to assert her separate independence; and, as she acceded separately to the compact of union, so she will, most assuredly, secede separately and alone, be the consequences what they may. And I think it right to say, with no unkind feelings whatever, that, on this point, there can be no compromise, let it be offered from where it may. The issues are too grave and too momentous to admit of any counsel that looks to anything but direct and straightforward independence. In the present emergency, the firmest and most decided measures are the safest and wisest."

How could anyone possibly not conclude that this fella was in way over his head? No imagination! No creativity! No judgment! He's a brand new governor, and rather than carefully seeking out ways to expand his future options, he gratuitously paints himself into a corner. This is the kind of leadership that doomed several hundred thousand young men.

[Who is John Galt?]

Lind is an apostate conservative who used Hamilton as the straw man advocate for his "Big Little Government" model of The Way Things Ought To Be.

I note that you have offered no comment on Mr. Hamilton’s proposals at the Philadelphia convention (Post #77). Given his plan’s distinct resemblance to the British government, some might refer to Mr. Hamilton as “an apostate” revolutionary.

Others, I suspect, might not.

;>)

He makes this connection between Lincoln and Hamilton. Other Hamiltonians may, or may not, accept it (I don't).

It may be worth noting that Mr. Lincoln apparently held the constitutional opinions of Chancellor Joseph Kent in high regard, preferring them (as he noted in at least one speech) to those of Thomas Jefferson. Mr. Lincoln, while arguing for (Hamiltonian ;>) federal spending on internal improvements, declared that “[Chancellor Kent] was one of the ablest and most learned lawyers of his age, or of any age. It is no disparagement...to anyone who devotes much time to politics, to be placed far behind Chancellor Kent as a lawyer.” Was Mr. Kent, by any chance, another of Mr. Hamilton’s disciples?

;>)

BTW, in Lind's book, he also tries to connect FDR and LBJ to Hamiltonianism. Am I supposed to react to that?

If you choose to do so, perhaps you should “react” to Mr. Lind. Your argument would seem to be with him in that regard.

Why not connect him with Hitler, while you're at it?

Lincoln – or Hamilton?

;>)

[Who is John Galt?]

Hamilton and Washington took steps to ensure that the country would survive its early years.

Would you care to comment on Mr. Hamilton’s plan of government, presented at the constitutional convention? I’ve quoted an excerpt of John Taylor’s analysis in that regard, in Post #77. Would establishing a government modeled on that of the British, which had just been thrown off, have ensured "that the country would survive its early years?"

Lincoln had been a Whig and thus in some ways a decendant of Hamilton...

Congratulations.

...(A) view of how planter elites systematically suppressed the liberties of those over whom they ruled [gets left out of Di Lorenzo's skewed picture].

“Planter elites?” Are you referring to the same Mr. Washington who “took steps to ensure that the country would survive its early years?”

;>)

[Non-Sequitur]

I forget who it was but after secession one local wit described South Carolina as "Too small to be a country and too large to be an insane asylum."

[Who is John Galt?]

Secession was ILLEGITIMATE revolution. This is the case we must make. (And it's not too hard)

"ILLEGITIMATE?" "Revolution!" All you must do to prove your point is find a specific constitutional prohibition of secession. Barring that, the right of secession is reserved to the States under the terms of the Tenth Amendment. As one Professor of History at Harvard University recently noted:

"The proponents of secession had a strong constitutional argument, probably a stronger argument than the nationalists advanced."

If it's really "not too hard," have at it.

;>).

[Who is John Galt?]

I have seen the comment attributed to a certain "Judge Pettigru." Perhaps he was a member of Mr. Justice Marshall’s “subtle corps of sappers and miners”...

;>)

[ned]

I really think that the blame rests squarely on the shoulders of some of the politicians (a word that I don't use disparagingly) who were entrusted with leadership at the time. Statesmen like Governor Pickens were apparently totally oblivious to the warnings of other southern leaders with a bit more experience:

"Some of you laugh to scorn the idea of bloodshed as the result of secession, but let me tell you what is coming....Your fathers and husbands, your sons and brothers, will be herded at the point of the bayonet....You may after the sacrifice of countless millions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives, as a bare possibility, win Southern independence...but I doubt it. I tell you that, while I believe with you in the doctrine of state rights, the North is determined to preserve this Union. They are not a fiery, impulsive people as you are, for they live in colder climates. But when they begin to move in a given direction...they move with the steady momentum and perseverance of a mighty avalanche; and what I fear is, they will overwhelm the South." - Sam Houston (ex-President and Governor of Texas)

[ned]

Of course even the Texans didn't heed the warnings of Sam Houston. According to the following description of Texas "secession" politics, it was apparently a judge with no prior military experience, Chief Justice Oran Roberts, whose genius guided Texas down the road to "secession":

"In late January and early February 1861 a convention of the people of Texas met in Austin and voted to secede from the Union. Pressure to call a convention to consider secessionqv began in October 1860, when it became apparent that Abraham Lincoln would be elected to the presidency. The secession of South Carolina in mid-December intensified this pressure and led to the secession of five other states in the lower South. In Texas, however, only the governor could call the legislature into special session, and only the legislature could convene a convention. Governor Sam Houstonqv refused to act and hoped that with time, ardor for secession would cool. Realizing that Houston would not act, Oran M. Roberts, chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court, John S. Ford, and several other prominent Texans took the law into their own hands. Starting around December 3 they had printed in several Texas newspapers calls for the election on January 8, 1861, of delegates to a secession convention. The elections were to be supervised by the county judges of the state, and the convention was to meet on January 28. Once it was clear that a secession convention of some sort would meet, Houston convened the legislature in mid-January with the hope that it would declare the convention illegal. Instead, legislators validated the calling of a convention, turned over the House chambers to the convention, and adjourned. The election of delegates needed all the legitimacy the Texas legislature could give it, because what evidence still exists indicates that the election procedures did not even meet the minimal standards of the day. Delegates were often elected by voice votes at public meetings. Unionists were discouraged from attending such meetings or chose to ignore the process because they considered it illegal. As a result the delegates overwhelmingly favored secession. Delegates to the convention were in some ways a typical cross section of the free male population of the state. Their average age was about forty, and almost all had been born in slaveholding states. Though they were slightly wealthier than the average Texan, the great planters and merchants of the state did not dominate the convention. In two significant ways, however, the convention differed from the population as a whole. Lawyers made up 40 percent of the membership and slaveowners about 70 percent, although most owned fewer than fifty slaves.

"After opening with prayer on Monday afternoon, January 28, 1861, the delegates to the convention elected O. M. Roberts presiding officer. Roberts's words at that time demonstrate the conviction that the delegates were acting as the special representatives of the people: "All political power is inherent in the people. That power, I assert, you now represent." On January 29, John H. Whartonqv moved "that without determining now the manner in which this result should be effected, it is the deliberate sense of this Convention that the state of Texas should separately secede." Seconded by George M. Flournoy,qv the motion passed 152 to 6. In the next two days the convention delegates worked out a formal ordinance of secession which, unlike those of the other lower South states, called for a popular referendum to resolve the secession question. The idea of submitting the convention's action to a popular vote drew opposition, but a motion to delete that provision was defeated 145 to 29. Antebellum Texans held a referendum on joining the Union in 1845, and most insisted on holding another to ratify leaving the Union in 1861. Besides, Governor Houston and the legislature had asked for such a referendum, and a popular vote would end all doubt about the legality of secession. Just after 11:00 A.M. on February 1, with Governor Houston in attendance, the convention met to take a final vote on the ordinance of secession. It was a roll-call vote done in alphabetical order. When it was over, 166 had voted for secession and 8 against. The most outspoken of those voting against was James W. Throckmortonqv of Collin County, who was later a Confederate general and a Reconstructionqv-era governor of Texas.

"After voting for secession the convention formed a committee on public safety, sent seven delegates to Montgomery, Alabama, to participate in the establishment of the Confederate States of America, and adjourned on February 4 to await the popular vote. Before the popular vote, the convention's committee on public safety used the power given it by the convention to authorize the seizure of all federal property in Texas. That included the arsenal at San Antonio. The committee order forced the evacuation of the almost 3,000 federal troops in Texas. The seizure of the San Antonio arsenal, the evacuation of federal troops, and the sending of delegates to Montgomery made the secession referendum appear an insignificant afterthought. By a vote of 44,317 to 13,020, Texans ratified secession on February 23, 1861. The Secession Convention reassembled on March 5, declared Texas independent, took further steps to join it to the Confederacy, and reorganized the state's government. In doing this it declared that all current officeholders must swear a loyalty oath to the Confederacy. Sam Houston refused, saying that the actions of the convention after it adjourned in February were illegal. Convention delegates declared the office of governor vacant and instructed Lt. Gov. Edward Clark to assume the office of governor. On March 23 the convention adjourned for the last time, having taken Texas out of the Union, allied it with the Confederacy, and ended the political career of its most prominent citizen."

These geniuses weren't going to put up with any more advice from Sam Houston!

[Bob J]

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[ned]

I haven't been able to find any record of military service for South Carolina Governor Francis Pickens either.

[davidjquackenbush]

Well, historians are not political philosophers, and Harvard is . . .

Perhaps you can tell us whether and why you believe that a document signed by a bunch of dead white males can make any action legitimate.

If you wonder why I ask this question, and what it implies, add this question to it: what, fundamentally, legitimates revolution? Can a Constitution legitimate revolution?

[ned]

I wonder if when South Carolina Governor Pickens gave his Inaugural Message he was aware that just a couple of weeks earlier, Alexander Stephens had argued against the wisdom of "secession" before the Georgia state legislature.

"The greatest curse that can befall a free people, is civil war." - Alexander Stephens, November 14, 1860