Abraham Lincoln is consistently ranked as one of our nation's "best" presidents in the eyes of scholars and historians. Polls of Americans will also reveal that he is one of our most beloved leaders.
In January 2009, Barack Obama insisted upon being sworn into office on Lincoln's bible and has tried through transfer fallacy (glory by association) to insinuate himself as a sort of modern day Lincoln or at least the fulfillment of Lincoln's promise in the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment that ended slavery in being the first African-American American President (although his father was Kenyan and he is not descended from slaves).
I think regardless of our political views, those of us with any intellect at all threw up in our mouths a little through such brazen plainsfolk demagoguery and logical fallacy... But I suppose it got the last president elected, so I suppose this is the bread and circuses necessity of any contender for the highest office in the land in 21st Century America, and a fact of life for us today...
It's interesting that the personage of Lincoln bears such an indelible mark on American history regardless. Some question counterfactually if Lincoln would be remembered in the way he is if he was not martyred in his assassination by John Wilkes Booth with his imortal words "Sic semper tyrannis!" (thus always to tyrants).
Traditional treatments of Lincoln following the Civil War well into the 20th Century often portrayed Lincoln as "The Great Emancipator," and treated the Civil War as the war to end slavery. A good deal of scholarship in the late 20th Century emerged with new interpretations that sort of de-elevated Lincoln from nearly a level of deity in the origin myth that had become our national pageant to the level of a consummate politician whose motivations were just as noble but also less so than most of our treatments in history texts or classrooms might have suggested. Permit me to explain.
He was definitely a moderate on the issue of slavery. The famous Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 between Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln for one of Illinois' two U.S. Senate seats underscore this point. My first exposure to this extremely valid revisionistic history on the basis of these debates comes in one of my history classes in college and references to a collection of essays titled, "Lincoln Reconsidered."
My first exposure to any suggestion that Lincoln was not the great emancipator he'd been painted to be in my grade school and junior high experiences and history text books were these juxtapositions of quotations from him in one of my college level history classes. The first was an excerpt from the August 21, 1858 debate at Ottawa, Illinois:
Or, again, this quote from the September 18, 1858 Charleston, IL Lincoln-Douglas debate:
Then it seems common fare for historians to obligatorily explain that the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863 (announced on September 22, 1862) did not free slaves in the Union border slave states that had not seceded (KY, MO, MD, DE; also, TN, WV, and 13 parishes of Louisianna and New Orleans were also exempted), and only freed them in Confederate States (areas not already under Union control). So, contary to conventional wisdom, it did not free the slaves, and only the 13th Amendment did so. It would seem then that abolishing slavery in Confederate states became an express war objective after the first of January in 1863 for two reasons: (a) the Union could cripple Confederate supply lines by offering freedom to the slaves that were critical to them, and (b) the Union could simultaneously add critical manpower and increase their already superior numerical advantage. Passage of the Emancipation Proclamation shows that Lincoln had the support of Congress in freeing the slaves of the rebels. Many white northerners were afraid that masses of freed slaves would invade the North and take their jobs; other feared violent slave rebellions in the south and murders of their former masters. Union soldier primary sources suggest a continuum that ran from celebration to outright outrage amongst Union soldiers who did not wish to fight alongside 'niggers' and were risking their lives to save the union, not to 'free niggers.'
In an August 1862 reply to an editorial penned by influential newspaper editor Horace Greeley of the influential New York Tribune on the topic of emancipation, Lincoln said:
On March 2, 1861, Congress (less the Southern Confederate states) passed with a 2/3 majority an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that read, "No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State."
In other words, it would have been amendment that could not have been repealed (legal scholars would question an amendment that limits the power to do the same in the future as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution) and that would permanently grandfather and protect slavery in the United States. The amendment was a last-ditch effort to prevent the outbreak of Civil War between the secession crisis of November of 1860 and the bombardment of Fort Sumpter by the Confederacy that began the Civil War in April of 1861.
President Lincoln supported this amendment as evidenced by the discovery of a letter to Florida Governor Madison S. Perry by the Lehigh County Historical Society of Allentown, PA. Lincoln sent this form letter in his own hand to the governors of every state, including southern states that had already seceded from the Union in order to avert war and preserve the Union.
And this returns me to my original point about the Civil War not being a war fought to end slavery, but being a war fought to preserve the Union. I really came to appreciate over this spring and summer Lincoln's precarious position--one I doubt any of us would have envied. We have to remember that the Civil War began less than a century after the founding of our country, and amongst the intelligentsia of the old world, the American democratic experiment was something of a farce and a joke. Our founding father Alexander Hamilton's words might illuminate some of this sentiment:
The Civil War for the Union was about protecting democracy, radical equality, and self government. Lincoln rightly feared that European powers, and particularly England would enter the war on the behalf of the Confederacy in order to finally squash the new nation in its infancy and serve a commeuppance on those upstart rebels who'd humiliated them with the French not a century earlier, and that is why Gettysburg is such an important battle as it delineates the turning point in the war and discourages England and other European powers from getting involved on the Confederacy's behalf to squash this democratic republican farce.
Nothing could be more revealing of Lincoln's motivations and thoughts than his succinct, eloquent, and erudite remarks at the Gettysburg address...
In this context, I cannot help but appreciate and understand the bloodiest war in American history more than I ever have. What might this world look like today without it? Might England have entered on behalf of the South? Might we see Jefferson Davis as we see George Washington today? Robert E. Lee as we see Ulysses S. Grant? Might you or I be slaves forever to an unjust and brutal master as the U.S. Constitution might forever enshrine and protect slavery instead of the 13th Amendment?
I will say in defense of Lincoln that although he supported Liberian re-colonization of Africa with freed slaves, after the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation, he vigorously and personally lobbied for the passage of the 13th Amendment. As an historian, I do believe by the end of his life, where he might have questioned or at least only reluctantly admitted the possibility that blacks and whites were truly equal, he had finally come to understand the evils of slavery and vehemently and vociferously became the champion of America's slaves. And for that, he does deserve to be remembered as their champion. He ultimately gave his life for them indirectly although his direct objective was to preserve the Union and protect and preserve this radical experiment that we know as America today. I can't disparage him for either.
In January 2009, Barack Obama insisted upon being sworn into office on Lincoln's bible and has tried through transfer fallacy (glory by association) to insinuate himself as a sort of modern day Lincoln or at least the fulfillment of Lincoln's promise in the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment that ended slavery in being the first African-American American President (although his father was Kenyan and he is not descended from slaves).
I think regardless of our political views, those of us with any intellect at all threw up in our mouths a little through such brazen plainsfolk demagoguery and logical fallacy... But I suppose it got the last president elected, so I suppose this is the bread and circuses necessity of any contender for the highest office in the land in 21st Century America, and a fact of life for us today...
It's interesting that the personage of Lincoln bears such an indelible mark on American history regardless. Some question counterfactually if Lincoln would be remembered in the way he is if he was not martyred in his assassination by John Wilkes Booth with his imortal words "Sic semper tyrannis!" (thus always to tyrants).
Traditional treatments of Lincoln following the Civil War well into the 20th Century often portrayed Lincoln as "The Great Emancipator," and treated the Civil War as the war to end slavery. A good deal of scholarship in the late 20th Century emerged with new interpretations that sort of de-elevated Lincoln from nearly a level of deity in the origin myth that had become our national pageant to the level of a consummate politician whose motivations were just as noble but also less so than most of our treatments in history texts or classrooms might have suggested. Permit me to explain.
He was definitely a moderate on the issue of slavery. The famous Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 between Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln for one of Illinois' two U.S. Senate seats underscore this point. My first exposure to this extremely valid revisionistic history on the basis of these debates comes in one of my history classes in college and references to a collection of essays titled, "Lincoln Reconsidered."
My first exposure to any suggestion that Lincoln was not the great emancipator he'd been painted to be in my grade school and junior high experiences and history text books were these juxtapositions of quotations from him in one of my college level history classes. The first was an excerpt from the August 21, 1858 debate at Ottawa, Illinois:
"I agree with Judge Douglas he [the black man] is not my equal in many respects-certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man."
Or, again, this quote from the September 18, 1858 Charleston, IL Lincoln-Douglas debate:
"I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything. I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. My understanding is that I can just let her alone."This quote was contrasted against Lincoln's assertion that Jefferson's words in the Declaration of Independence applied to blacks ("We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable [sic] rights, amongst them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.") and his June 16, 1858 Springfield, IL "House Divided" Speech, in which he said, "I believe this government cannot endure permanently half Slave and half Free." It was also contextualized by his unequivocal remarks about expansion of slavery to the new territories in the same August 21, 1858 Ottawa, IL debate:
"This declared indifference, but, as I must think, covert real zeal for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world-enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites-causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty-criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest."So, this juxtaposition from the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 (after which the individual values debate format American high schoolers participate in across America annually derives its namesake) does a good job of starting to reveal the truth of the claim that Lincoln was not the abolitionist many Southerners and even his contender for the Illinois Senate seat sought to portray him to be and further illuminates that his views were truly moderate for his day. He disappointed slavers and abolitionists alike in his stance for compensated emancipation and his initial anti-expansionist approach (he thought his power to end slavery was limited by the Constitution so he sought the gradual extinction of slavery expected by our founding fathers by prohibiting expansion of slavery to new territories and supporting compensated emancipation [in which the federal government would compensate states monetarily for outlawing slavery in their state], which would hopefully make slavery less economical) which were seen as far too moderate by both sides. Both Douglas and Lincoln tried desperately to portray the other as an extremist on this issue in these debates, and they present a fascinating case study of the evolution of ideas in the minds of our greatest leaders and in the study of rhetoric and persuasion of public opinion. The timeless aphorism that you can't please everyone seems fitting here. The political genius of a moderate who understood well the issues of his day also comes into view more the more that we actually try to analyze Lincoln's true feelings and motivations.
Then it seems common fare for historians to obligatorily explain that the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863 (announced on September 22, 1862) did not free slaves in the Union border slave states that had not seceded (KY, MO, MD, DE; also, TN, WV, and 13 parishes of Louisianna and New Orleans were also exempted), and only freed them in Confederate States (areas not already under Union control). So, contary to conventional wisdom, it did not free the slaves, and only the 13th Amendment did so. It would seem then that abolishing slavery in Confederate states became an express war objective after the first of January in 1863 for two reasons: (a) the Union could cripple Confederate supply lines by offering freedom to the slaves that were critical to them, and (b) the Union could simultaneously add critical manpower and increase their already superior numerical advantage. Passage of the Emancipation Proclamation shows that Lincoln had the support of Congress in freeing the slaves of the rebels. Many white northerners were afraid that masses of freed slaves would invade the North and take their jobs; other feared violent slave rebellions in the south and murders of their former masters. Union soldier primary sources suggest a continuum that ran from celebration to outright outrage amongst Union soldiers who did not wish to fight alongside 'niggers' and were risking their lives to save the union, not to 'free niggers.'
In an August 1862 reply to an editorial penned by influential newspaper editor Horace Greeley of the influential New York Tribune on the topic of emancipation, Lincoln said:
"I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be 'the Union as it was.' ... 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 save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views. I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free."Lastly, courtesy of Fritz Klein, who is a Lincoln impersonator, who visited Jackson, WY for a Teaching American History grant of which I'm a proud part, I learned about the Corwin Amendment, and Lincoln's advocacy of it.
On March 2, 1861, Congress (less the Southern Confederate states) passed with a 2/3 majority an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that read, "No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State."
In other words, it would have been amendment that could not have been repealed (legal scholars would question an amendment that limits the power to do the same in the future as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution) and that would permanently grandfather and protect slavery in the United States. The amendment was a last-ditch effort to prevent the outbreak of Civil War between the secession crisis of November of 1860 and the bombardment of Fort Sumpter by the Confederacy that began the Civil War in April of 1861.
President Lincoln supported this amendment as evidenced by the discovery of a letter to Florida Governor Madison S. Perry by the Lehigh County Historical Society of Allentown, PA. Lincoln sent this form letter in his own hand to the governors of every state, including southern states that had already seceded from the Union in order to avert war and preserve the Union.
And this returns me to my original point about the Civil War not being a war fought to end slavery, but being a war fought to preserve the Union. I really came to appreciate over this spring and summer Lincoln's precarious position--one I doubt any of us would have envied. We have to remember that the Civil War began less than a century after the founding of our country, and amongst the intelligentsia of the old world, the American democratic experiment was something of a farce and a joke. Our founding father Alexander Hamilton's words might illuminate some of this sentiment:
"All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are rich and well born; the other, the mass of the people. The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true in fact. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in the government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second; and as they cannot receive any advantage by change, they will therefore maintain good government."We cannot forget that in much of the rest of the world, there were two classes of people: royalty/aristocracy/gentry versus serfs/peasants/vassals. Elitists saw their relative position as being either ordained by God or determined through Social Darwinism, and thought the idea of radical equality preposterous. This great democratic experiment that no one really took seriously and about which everyone really expected failure had inspired the French Revolution which had failed miserably to the pleasure of the European elitist establishment. The failure of the American experiment in republican self government was necessarily doomed to failure and European elites saw the writing on the wall in the Civil War. Lincoln feared (and probably correctly) that European powers looked upon the American Civil War as the ultimate demise of democracy, which explains his near desperation to do anything (including enshrining slavery permanently and irrevocably into the American Constitution) to preserve the union in order to vindicate the radical ideas of our founding fathers in radical equality and self government.
The Civil War for the Union was about protecting democracy, radical equality, and self government. Lincoln rightly feared that European powers, and particularly England would enter the war on the behalf of the Confederacy in order to finally squash the new nation in its infancy and serve a commeuppance on those upstart rebels who'd humiliated them with the French not a century earlier, and that is why Gettysburg is such an important battle as it delineates the turning point in the war and discourages England and other European powers from getting involved on the Confederacy's behalf to squash this democratic republican farce.
Nothing could be more revealing of Lincoln's motivations and thoughts than his succinct, eloquent, and erudite remarks at the Gettysburg address...
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate...we can not consecrate...we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government: of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
In this context, I cannot help but appreciate and understand the bloodiest war in American history more than I ever have. What might this world look like today without it? Might England have entered on behalf of the South? Might we see Jefferson Davis as we see George Washington today? Robert E. Lee as we see Ulysses S. Grant? Might you or I be slaves forever to an unjust and brutal master as the U.S. Constitution might forever enshrine and protect slavery instead of the 13th Amendment?
I will say in defense of Lincoln that although he supported Liberian re-colonization of Africa with freed slaves, after the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation, he vigorously and personally lobbied for the passage of the 13th Amendment. As an historian, I do believe by the end of his life, where he might have questioned or at least only reluctantly admitted the possibility that blacks and whites were truly equal, he had finally come to understand the evils of slavery and vehemently and vociferously became the champion of America's slaves. And for that, he does deserve to be remembered as their champion. He ultimately gave his life for them indirectly although his direct objective was to preserve the Union and protect and preserve this radical experiment that we know as America today. I can't disparage him for either.
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