When Abraham Lincoln began his speech at the dedication of the Gettysburg cemetery in 1863 with those words redolent of the King James Bible, “four score and seven years ago,” he referred back to 1776, not 1787.
It was the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution, that animated Lincoln’s project to return mid-19th-century America to our “ancient faith.” For Lincoln, the path of salvation for a country torn by contention over slavery ran through the past: “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.”
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In the prelude to and during the Civil War — the 150th anniversary of which we mark this year — Lincoln clung to the Declaration as the fundamental statement of the nation’s purpose. The Declaration, according to Lincoln, easily could have enunciated the practical reasons for our split from Britain, and left it at that. No ringing philosophical statements, no invocation of “unalienable rights.”
But Thomas Jefferson’s handiwork was meant for the ages. Lincoln praised him for possessing the foresight “to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.”
Lincoln made precisely this use of the Declaration. Prior to the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, overturning the Missouri Compromise and allowing slavery into all the territories if the people wanted it, he referred to the Declaration in public only twice. In the ensuing crisis, it became a staple of his rhetoric.
Lincoln’s historic debates with Illinois senator Stephen Douglas, the author of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, were at bottom an argument about the Declaration. Under his doctrine of “popular sovereignty,” Douglas wanted to allow the extension of slavery in blatant disregard of the belief that “all men are created equal.”
Douglas denied that the Declaration had universal meaning. The Founders merely meant to say that as British subjects in North America we were equal to British subjects in Britain. What appeared to be a ringing statement of eternal truth was in reality a dubious assertion that all men are British.
Worse, Douglas and his ilk — Chief Justice Roger Taney and all the apologists for the slave power — also fell back on the argument that blacks weren’t men. If so, Lincoln wondered, why did the country permit half a million blacks their freedom? “How comes this vast amount of property to be running about without owners? We do not see free horses or free cattle running at large.”
The popular sovereignty of Douglas depended, ultimately, on believing the Declaration a lie. One of the reasons Lincoln said he hated slavery was “that it forces 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.”
This view threatened the foundation of freedom. “A free people cannot disagree, or agree to disagree, on the relative merits of freedom and despotism,” the great Lincoln scholar Harry Jaffa writes. “If the majority favors despotism, it is no longer a free people, whether the form of government has already changed or not.”
Lincoln lost the 1858 Senate election, of course, but he succeeded ultimately in vindicating the Declaration. It should remain today what Lincoln fought to establish it as: the timeless object for our national aspiration. “They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society,” Lincoln said of the Founders, “which should be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere.”
This article, like many written about Lincoln and the Civil War, is woefully ignorant of history.
"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." -Abraham Lincoln
My interpretation of Lincoln, for what it is worth, is this. His statement about preserving the Union was a product of his constitutional oath (which was perhaps held with greater seriousness than oaths are held today). Beyond that, he may have believed that if the Union was preserved the end of slavery could still be forseen; if not preserved, that slavery would endure indefinitely. I do not see the same contradiction as you between the quote you cite, and those cited by Mr. Lowry.
Rich,
I love the magazine and the website, but as long as I've been reading your fine publication NR has been consistently derelict in addressing Lincoln's contradictions concerning slavery, his singleminded drive to increase the size of government in his "American System" and his obstinate stance against the South's legitimate right to secede. Lincoln would feel right at home in today's democrat party.
Uhhh, I wouldn't go so far as to say the South had a "legitimate" right to secede. All the leaders of secession has previously taken an oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." What happened to that?
And Lincoln was not the statist you're saying he was. Fighting a war requires a huge increase in government power. That's just a fact of life. Lincoln himself said that government should only do things that people cannot do for themselves.
Furthermore, Lincoln favored a reconciliatory and forgiving attitude towards the South, while his fellow Republicans didn't even want to give the South congressional representation and wanted to treat it like a conquered province.
Lincoln's assassination was probably the largest single tragedy this nation has ever faced.
NRO should really notify people when others reply to their comments, instead of people having to search for their username and any references to it using ctrl f.
As to the founders' intent regarding secession, I will defer to Mr. Jefferson, the man whose handiwork Lincoln recognizes: "The future inhabitants of [both] the Atlantic and Mississippi states will be our sons. We think we see their happiness in their union, and we wish it. Events may prove otherwise; and if they see their interest in separating why should we take sides? God bless them both, and keep them in union if it be for their good, but separate them if it be better." – Thomas Jefferson
Lincoln never believed that blacks should be equal with whites. He voted time and again in his native Illionis for the laws denying the blacks citizenship rights.
As for Civil War as a consummation of the Declaration of independence this is a pure fairytale and phantasy narrated by Jaffa and similar Lincoln worshipers. Lincoln never believed that blacks could be equal with whites because he was, as many white Americans of the 19th century a white supremacist; he repeated this even in the famous debate with Douglass. He wanted actually to deport all the blacks either in Africa or in Panama. He said that all men were really created equal, but that did not mean that blacks can be equal with whites in America. On the contrary, they could have their natural rights only in their "native land".
"There is a finality about the Declaration of Independence that is restful.If all men are created equal that is final.If they are endowed with inalienable rights that is final. If governments derive their just power from the consent of the people that is final.No advance,no progress can be made beyond these propositions.If anyone wishes to deny their truths or their soundness the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward but backward toward the time when there was no equality,no rights of the individual,no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern but more ancient than those of the Revolutionary fathers."
Calvin Coolidge on the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence
It's taken DNA technology to recognize some of Jefferson's handiwork, long denied by his supporters. If the guy was so opposed to slavery, why did he keep slaves? To have sex with them, perhaps? Any mention of 'Jeffersonian' democracy should come with a footnote to this effect.
And one more thing. If these Founding Fathers were so keen on liberty for all, how come almost the first thing they did was invade Canada?
I'm surprised so few Lincoln haters showed up to castigate conservatives who love Lincoln as Yankee, Carpetbagging, RINO's. The same people who often abuse history to portray Lincoln as some racist extremist hold Jefferson in high esteem...how odd. The truth is, both men were well ahead of their time in their beliefs about human freedom--they should be compared to others of their own age, not from the 21st century. But I guess of you can believe without any support from primary documents that the South seceded because of high tariffs and big government you can believe anything.
Lincoln's words are so applicable today. Truly the Declaration is a standard to which we should go when judging whether or not to aid the Middle East Revolts. Those who would vote for tyranny don't deserve our support. Those who would move toward Declaration principles do.
the central problem here is that mr Lowry was parroting Jaffa's failrytale about Lincoln as a redeemer of natural rights and equality from the Declaration.
first, that "all men were created equal" DID NOT mean for Jefferson that blacks were equal to whites. Period.
Second. It did not mean the blacks were equal for Lincoln either. He thought they could have their natural rights in Liberia or Panama, but not in America. Period. You cannot deny the obvious historical facts.
As to why South seceded - can you tell me why Virgina and Kentucky seceded? They originally wanted to stay in the Union. And they seceded only after Lincoln invaded them. So, there was no uniform reason why various states seceded.
Finally, whatever reasons for secession, they did not have nothing with slavery. Lincoln promised to support the 13th amendment which would preserve slavery FOREVER. And this amendment would prohibit any future Congress from ever adopting the new amendment abolishing slavery! There is only one article of the Constitution with that kind of protection; the one guarantying the equal representation to the states in the Senate!
Did you mean to say slavery had nothing to do with secession? Because that couldn't be more wrong.
The South seceded because it wanted to expand slavery westward, and the North didn't want it too. Not content with popular sovereignty, the South wanted the Federal government to protect slavery in the territories, despite the wishes of the people living there (so much for states' rights.)
Lincoln agreed with most people at the time that abolishing slavery in states that it already existed was unconstitutional. He was, however, a stalwart advocate of limiting slavery to the places where it already existed, which wasn't good enough for the South.
You should read the Declarations of Secession. They don't mention tariffs or any such nonsense; it's all about slavery.
Dispersing slavery Westward was how Madison and Jefferson thought it would be quicker abolished. People in the 19th century were terrified of what happened in Haiti, and thought if the slaves were freed iN America, the mass killing of all whites will ensue, like it did in Haiti.
Lincoln represented the political forces that did not want blacks in their neighborhoods up North. As I mentioned, he voted time and again against black citizenship in Illinois. The way how slavery was abolished in the North was to expel most of the blacks or transform them into "apprentices for life". If slavery was to be dispersed around the country that would bring blacks back again. And that was the entire story.
The USA were the loose federation of sovereign states. If you read the ratification documents when the Constitution was adopted, most of them mention explicitly the right to secede. This right was not disputed by most people ante bellum. Lincoln was a first modern dictator who waged a total war on his own people in order to deny the same people right of self-government.
It's fine and all to hold varying opinions on different issues, morally and intellectually flawed as we might all be. But answer me this....Are you willing to go so far and say ALL of us would have been better off if the rebellious states had been victorious? You would be willing to live in that world?
It took DNA technology to confirm some of Mr. Jefferson's handiwork, long denied by his supporters. Any discussion of Jeffersonian democracy should include a footnote describing how this man not only kept slaves but also had sex with an enslaved young girl.
Here is the nub of Lincoln's glorious "opposition to westward expansion of slavery" (actually, it was "opposition to expansion of blacks, free or slve, to both North and West"). Commenting on Dread Scott decision in 1857 he said:
"separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation, but as an immediate separation is impossible, the next best thing is to keep them apart where they are not already together. If white and black people never get together in Kansas, they will never mix blood in Kansas."
"If Slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong." -Abraham Lincoln
Ever heard of the Lincoln-Douglass debates? Lincoln was against even popular sovereignty! And you forget that, although he did it for primarily strategic reasons, Lincoln DID end up freeing the slaves. He didn't have to, but he did.
The South started the so-called "War of Northern Aggression" by bombarding the flag of the United States at Fort Sumter. The North bended up over backwards to please the South, but enough was enough. The Constitution says that states may not enter into foreign alliances...like an alliance with the CSA!
"Douglas and many northern Democrats remained consistent through 1860 in their support for popular sovereignty. Southerners, on the other hand, saw the increasing strength of the anti-slavery movement in the North and by the late 1850s were no longer content simply to rely on preventing the Federal government from interfering in the territories. They now insisted on Federal intervention to protect slavery in the territories and prevent any decision on slavery until a territory prepared a constitution as part of an application for statehood. Northern Democrats and Stephen A. Douglas could not go that far with the South. The doughface, as an agent for sectional compromise, had outlived his usefulness." External Link
The South seceded over slavery. The North went to war not to end slavery, but to save the Union. Both extremes, one saying that the War was only about slavery, and the other saying that slavery wasn't a factor at all, are entirely incorrect.
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