Setting the Record Straight: Lincoln's Wisdom on the Politics of Race

A minor scholar, an economist by the name of Thomas DiLorenzo, has been on an anti-Lincoln Jihad throughout the year 2002. His book, "The Real Lincoln," has led otherwise sound writers, like Paul Craig Roberts, to declare the Great Emancipator, "worse than [ the Cambodian mastermind of genocide] Pol Pot." Since Dr. Keyes and the Declaration Foundation take Lincoln to be a model of Declarationist Statesmanship, it behooves us to deal with the calumnies of Professor DiLorenzo, and we have done so throughout the year.

Today, I'd like to excerpt a section from our book, "America's Declaration Principles in Thought and Action," dealing with the charge made by DiLorenzo and many before him, mostly leftists, but also libertarians, that Lincoln showed himself a racist in the famous "Peoria Speech" of 1854. It is found in Chapter 8 of our book, which may be purchased online at www.declaration.net

As we read the Peoria speech today, one element jars our sensibilities: Lincoln does not take a stand for full political and social equality of the races. Some of the abolitionists of his day, especially the Quakers and other religious abolitionists, did. The 1854 laws of Maine set up in almost all respects what we would recognize today as equal civil rights, including jury duty and voting rights. But Maine was almost alone. Illinois' laws did not allow blacks to vote or serve on juries, and Illinois was typical of the free states.

In Peoria, Lincoln said this: "Let it not be said that I am contending for the establishment of political and social equality between the whites and blacks. I have already said the contrary." Was this statesmanlike too, or was it either weak or unwise, or even unjust?

We think Lincoln's position in the Peoria speech can be vindicated, and that it can be reconciled with his support for expanded civil rights towards the end of the Civil War, if two things are kept in mind. First, as Lincoln himself said in 1859, "In this country, public opinion is everything." Second, that the knowledge of the statesman is prudence, or practical wisdom, which consists in knowing how to move towards moral goals by practicable steps, not in "the immoderate pursuit of moral perfection" which, in political life, "will more often lead to misery and terror than to justice and happiness," as Thomas G. West puts it in his book on the founding.

To take the first point first, is it not self-evident that in a republic, where the citizens are governed by their consent, their opinion will be the court of last resort, the final arbiter of all disputes? That does not mean that those opinions will never change, or that it will not be the duty of a good man and especially of a statesman to mold them for the better. But a public man will ignore them at his peril. Lincoln turns this weapon back on Douglas in the Peoria speech, when he tells him that he will never be able to suppress the voice of the people crying out that slavery is unjust: "...the great mass of mankind...consider slavery a great moral wrong; and their feeling against it, is not evanescent, but eternal. It lies at the very foundation of their sense of justice; and it cannot be trifled with-It is a great and durable element of popular action, and I think, no statesman can safely disregard it."

Sir Francis Bacon wrote long ago that, "Nature, to be mastered, must be obeyed." The saying is equally true of the nature of the physical body and of the body politic. Public opinion, the soul of the political body, was ailing in the days after the Nebraska Bill, and Douglas was prescribing as medicine what Lincoln thought poison. That the patient should also take up a regimen of vigorous exercise after his recovery was not and should not have been the first thing on the doctor's list.

Lincoln never said that political equality between the races was wrong; the most complete expression of his early views on the matter came in the 1858 debates with Douglas, and he clothed them entirely in the language of feeling: "...[I said years ago[1] that] my own feelings would not admit a social and political equality between the black and white races, and that even if my own feelings would admit of it, I still knew that the public sentiment of the country would not, and that such a thing was an utter impossibility, or substantially that." And again, in the same debate, "I agree with Judge Douglas that he [the Negro] is not my equal in many respects, certainly not in color- perhaps not in intellectual and moral endowments; but in the right to eat the bread without the leave of any body else which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every other man."

It must be remembered that the young Lincoln had said in 1838 that our passions, our feelings, were to be the enemy of our freedom in the future, and that reason, "cold sober reason," would be the friend of the principles of the Declaration. Only one feeling, an almost religious reverence for the founding ideals, would buttress that reason. It should also be pointed out that Lincoln said that he knew only that the feelings of his fellow citizens would not admit of equality. He was certain that there was an inequality of "color." He did not say that he was certain of the infinitely more important inequality of "intellectual and moral endowments." These he said, might be unequal... "perhaps."

Many causes, including prominently the religious conviction that all men are brothers, conspired to change public opinion in the United States towards the end of the Civil War. The Emancipation Proclamation, by altering the legal status of slaves and by encouraging them to flee their masters and seek refuge in the Union armies, had some effect. But the greatest source of the change was probably the testimony given in blood by the black soldiers who had served the Union. The number enlisted was reported by the President to Congress in January of 1864 to be over 100,000,[2] and Lincoln and many others thought that without their services, the war could not have been won. To a complaining Northern politician, James C. Conkling, who objected to fighting to "free negroes," Lincoln penned these memorable words: "...[when peace comes] it will then have been proved that, among free men, there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case, and pay the cost. And then, there will be some black men who can remember that, with silent tongue, and clenched teeth, and steady eye, and well poised bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this great consummation; while, I fear, there will be some white ones, unable to forget that, with malignant heart, and deceitful speech, they have strove to hinder it."

When a man will not fight to preserve his people and his principles, we call him a slave; when a slave does fight, we see in him a man. In antiquity, slaves who risked their lives to save their masters were often manumitted. They had proved their manhood. Lincoln wrote Conkling in the same letter, "If they stake their lives for us, they must be prompted by the strongest motive--even the promise of freedom. And the promise being made, must be kept."

It cannot, alas, be said that the promise was perfectly kept. It would take a century more after the abolition of slavery for a new exercise of Declaration statesmanship to establish political equality without regard to race in this country. But the start was made in the time of Lincoln's stewardship.

Let us be blunt; if Lincoln had taken the full position of equal social and political rights, he would not have been electable to any statewide office in Illinois, neither in 1854, when he was a candidate for U.S. Senate and nearly won the nomination, nor in 1858, when he and Douglas had their memorable debates. He would not have become president in 1860, nor would any member of his party who took such a stand. He accomplished the good that he could, always insisting on the fundamental principle that in the fullness of time would yield such results. To achieve this good, he had to rekindle a reverence for the Declaration. Let us look briefly at how he did that in the Peoria speech.

Word, words, words. "Mere words" men say, and yet it is by the power of words that we take common counsel and learn to govern ourselves. We are free because we are made in the image of the all-wise God, and we have a bit of His light in our minds, and by that bit we strive to live according to His laws, the "laws of nature, and of nature's God." Of Divine things, St. Paul writes, "But how are men to call upon him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear of him without a preacher?"

Lincoln preached in Peoria. He preached the political religion he had declared must be preached years ago in Springfield. Douglas and the doctrine of popular sovereignty were "giving up the OLD faith... " Human equality and popular sovereignty were "as opposite as God and mammon..." Three times he calls the proposition that all men are created equal, the "ancient faith." Of the Nebraska Bill he says, "It hath no relish of salvation in it." He calls the Founders, "our revolutionary fathers," and "the fathers of the republic," stirring memories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He compares slavery to the fateful disobedience of Adam. He says: "Our republican robe is soiled, and trailed in the dust. Let us re-purify it. Let us turn and wash it white, in the spirit, if not the blood, of the Revolution."

Lincoln was like a great preacher in more than his scriptural language and his vision that America was founded on the Declaration as a kind of covenant or original creed, the "ancient faith." He endeavored to emulate the charity of great preaching, too, as when he admitted that "the Southern people" were "just what we would be in their situation," and when he said that "I surely will not blame them..." He stressed that Thomas Jefferson, the 'father Abraham' of the American covenant was "a Virginian by birth...a slaveholder..." He opened his speech by announcing that he did not "propose to question the patriotism, or to assail the motives of any man, or class of men...He. added that he wished "to be no less than national in all the positions" he would take. When he had suggested that "...a gradual emancipation might be adopted..." He immediately added, "but for their tardiness in this I will not undertake to judge our brethren of the south." Thus, to political faith, he added political charity.

The climax of the speech actually occurs about three-fourths in; after that point Lincoln anticipates some of the points he expects Douglas to make in his final hour's response. The paragraph begins with "Our republican robe is soiled..." It ends with these words of salvation and hope, which we quote in full:

Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it, the practices, and policy, which harmonize with it. Let north and south--let all Americans--let all lovers of liberty everywhere--join in the great and good work. If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union; but we shall have so saved it, as to make and keep it, forever worthy of the saving. We shall have so saved it, that the succeeding millions of free happy people, the world over, shall rise up, and call us blessed, to the latest generations.

In the Lyceum speech, Lincoln had concluded by urging the statesmen of his day to take the materials supplied by reason and mold them into intelligence, morality, and reverence for the law. "Upon these let the proud fabric of freedom rest, as the rock of its basis; and as truly as has been said of the only greater institution, 'the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." At Peoria, he took his own advice, and became such a statesman.

[1]In fact, it was in the Peoria speech. The text there runs, "whether this [feeling against equality] accords with justice and sound judgement, is not the sole question, if indeed, it is any part of it. A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, can not be safely disregarded. We can not, then, make them equals."

[2] By the end of the war, over 200,000 blacks had served in the Union armed forces, and 37,000 had died serving their country.

"Lincoln," Henry Grady said, "comprehended within himself all the strength, and gentleness, all the majesty and grace of the republic." He was indeed, the first American, "the sum of Puritan and Cavalier, in whose ardent nature were fused the virtues of both, and in whose great soul the faults of both were lost."
It is customary to post a barf alert before such.

And also before the words of Jefferson Davis, Alexander Stephens, John C. Breckinridge and General Joe Johnston?

"Once the three stood agreed on the terms, Sherman and Johnston signed it and Sherman called for copies to be made for their two governments. He then he spoke to the two Confederates of Lincoln's assassination. Johnston confided to Sherman his horror at the deed, fearing it would be blamed on the Confederates, and that Lincoln might have been their greatest ally in reconstruction." Stepping outside to their now mingled escorts, they found the news generally known, as Sherman introduced the two of them to his staff, and Breckinridge and Reagan discussed it with some of their followers. The postmaster said he hoped no connection between the murdered and their cause would be found, or it should go hard for them, while Breckinridge said Lincoln's death at this time and in this manner must precipitate great calamity for them. "Gentlemen," he told them, “the South has lost its best friend."

-"An Honorable Defeat" pp.166-67 by William C. Davis

"He [Davis] read the telegram [bringing news of Lincoln's death] and when it brought an exultant shout raised his hand to check the demonstration..."He had power over the Northern people," Davis wrote in his memoir of the war," and was without malignity to the southern people."...Alone of the southern apologists, [Alexander] Stephens held Lincoln in high regard. "The Union with him in sentiment," said the Georgian, "rose to the sublimnity of religious mysticism...in 1873 "Little Elick" Stephens, who again represented his Georgia district in Congress, praised Lincoln for his wisdom, kindness and generosity in a well-publicized speech seconding the acceptance of the gift of Francis B. Carpenter's famous painting of Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation."

-- "Lincoln in American Memory" pp.46-48 by Merrill B. Peterson

Presidential historian Clinton Rossiter once said "It is neither sacrilegious nor irreverent to refer to Lincoln as the martyred Christ of democracy's Passion Play."

Winston Churchill called Lincoln "the last protector of the prostrate south."

But you know better than all these men?

Walt

As I have suggested before, the perception of the powers of the three branches was different in 1861 than it is now.

Irrelevant. The evidence conclusively demonstrates that the reading of the constitution under its original intent by the men who framed it sought the suspension power to be the domain of the legislature. The Lincoln had no credible reason to act as he did.

No it's not irrelevant and as I indicated yesterday, the general understanding -- by both President Lincoln and the Supreme Court was that the rulings of the Supreme Court applied to particular cases.

Even your source says it:

Marbury [I think you mean John Marshall] termed it as the following: "The judicial power of the United States is extended to all cases arising under the constitution."

Walt

You are making an historical judgment on an historical person.

Yup, and I'm doing so by providing overwhelming historical evidence that the act of that historical person was unconstitutional.

That was never shown at the time, as the issue never came before the Supreme Court, and your interpretation is eclipsed by that of the present Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Eclipsed is a poor word. His opinion is like the sun to your 20 watt bulb.

Walt

That was never shown at the time

Yes it was. Taney quoted a large ammount of it in his widely circulated Ex Parte Merryman ruling.

as the issue never came before the Supreme Court

That was The Lincoln's obligation, and he failed to do so.

and your interpretation is eclipsed by that of the present Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

No, not really. He's asserted without evidence and on his own authority that the issue has never been decided. By comparison, the overwhelming bulk of historical records indicate that it was decided without issue from day one when the clause was inserted into the Constitution. Rehnquist can argue for his position all he wants as can you, but no ammount of argument will change the fact that Madison's records show it was indisputably intended for the legislature.

Nope. The issue could have been brought before the Supreme Court by any number of means.

Not really. The Supreme Court uses pretty strict guidelines to decide which cases it accepts. Among them, a party has to have standing in the case and has to have reason to appeal the lower court's ruling. In Merryman, the parties with standing and reason to appeal were The Lincoln, his administration, and the military. None of them did so.

What about Merryman himself? Was he willing to blow up bridges but not go before the Court?

Of course, as Mr. Lincoln noted, there was an "efficient corps of aiders and abettors" of treason loose in Maryland. Surely, the stopping of federal authorities from arresting people under suspension of the Writ would have helped Merryman's cause?

Lincoln oustwitted the traitors at every turn.

He saved Maryland for the Union and he saved the Union itself. That is what galls you.

But you hate the United States. Damn the United States to hell, right?

Walt

Yeah. Well, he is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. That's a bit heavier artillery than you have.

No, not really. My artillery includes Marshall and Taney, both of them chief justices. Two chief justices beats one.

But recall, that is not all I've presented. My artillery also includes a president and founding father, Thomas Jefferson. It includes Madison, in his record of the constitutional convention. It also includes constitutional convention delegate Robert Yates, in his anti-federalist article.

All things considered, my artillery trounces yours.

What about Merryman himself? Was he willing to blow up bridges but not go before the Court?

Merryman DID go to court. That is how Taney got his case in the first place. Merryman won that case and therefore had no reason to seek its overturn.

Not if they simply charged him with a crime, as would have been the legal process.

But you hate the United States. Damn the United States to hell, right?

No, not really. That does sound like something a person such as yourself would assert in light of your extreme and offensive "blame America first" views about September 11th.

”Davis did institute a draft, over a year before Lincoln did as a matter of fact.”

So you ARE suggesting “that one violation of the Constitution somehow justifies another.” How nice. I had expected better of you – God only knows why...

;>)

Whenever someone has the temerity to criticize Saint Jefferson of Davis you southron types always trot out Clinton. And other than the fact that both were hack southern politicians I don't get the connection.

"Southron types?" I'm from Minnesota - and (unlike most of the 'union-at-any-cost-types' here ;>) I've actually read the Constitution. As for your comments, you are entirely mistaken: “whenever someone has the temerity to” suggest that rule by the President’s ‘sense of morality’ somehow ‘trumps’ the rule of law, I “trot out Clinton” – and Mr. Lincoln. Funny how you ‘morality-is-more-important-than-law’ types always attempt to change the subject...

;>)

Madison was dead in 1860.

So was Mr. Washington – but you offer up quotes from Mr. Washington. So was every author of the Federalist Papers, but you nevertheless post out-of-context quotes from the Federalist Papers. And so was Mr. Chief Justice Marshall, but you (of course) quote certain carefully selected judicial opinions by that political appointee. But then, no one ever suggested that you were not a hypocrite – did they?

;>)

But there were enough "living, patriotic men" -- better than gold, as President Lincoln said, to preserve the Union -- it was never dissolved.

“Never dissolved?” My, oh my! You are once again completely ignoring the readily available historical documentation:

”The belligerent character of the Southern States was recognized by the United States... The Southerners should be treated as a conquered alien enemy and appropriated to the payment of the national debt. This can be done without violence to the established principles only on the theory that the Southern States were severed from the Union and were an independent government de facto, and an alien enemy to be dealt with according to the laws of war. Absurd to think of trying the leaders for treason. That would be acting under the Constitution...

"No reform can be effected in the Southern States if they have never left the Union... But by treating them as an outside, conquered people, they can be refused admission to the Union unless they voluntarily do what we demand.”

Congressman Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, quoted by New York World, September 11, 1865

Looks like the Northern politicians of the era recognized what you do not – the union was in fact “dissolved.”

;>)

All you have to dispute what those men accomplished is sophistry.
It's you who ignores the rule of law.

Actually, ‘all I have to dispute what those men accomplished’ is a written Constitution. (You ought to read it sometime!) Find a constitutional clause that prohibits secession (rather than reserving that right to the States, as the Tenth Amendment clearly does ;>), and you might have an argument. Until then, your arguments do not even amount to “sophistry” – you, my friend, are nothing but a bullsh!t artist...

;>)

And you seem to be saying that constitutional violations by Jefferson Davis were permissible.

LOL! By all means, please explain why you believe I "seem to be saying that constitutional violations" of any sort by government officials are "permissible." Please be specific. You appear to have confused me with your entertaining friend Walt!

Or perhaps you are simply engaging in that notorious liberal passtime - accusing your opponent of what you yourself have done. When caught in the act, those same liberals often revert to the 'two-wrongs-make-a-right-argument.' Tell us: will you now insist that the federal government could ignore the Constitution that created it, simply because the president of the Confederate States presumably violated that country's Constitution? Most of us (I'm not sure about #3Fan and some of your other compatriots ;>) are well aware that Mr. Davis' 'questionable' actions as President of the Confederacy occurred after the secession of the Southern States. But feel free to 'prove' secession unconstitutional on the basis of Jefferson Davis' acts as president, if that's the best you can do...

;>)

I had expected no less from you.

And if you continue to 'develop' your communications skills, you will soon be giving Walt a run for his money. Bravo!

;>)

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