“Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.”
One of the often quoted facts about the American Civil War is that more Americans died in it than died in all the other wars combined. The number of American Civil War dead is estimated at approximately 620,000 people. The President who presided over this carnage we regard as our greatest. Why do you think that is, dear reader? Isn’t it at least a little strange?Before you answer, let me suggest we take a moment to read Lincoln’s own thoughts on this carnage. In his second inaugural address, Lincoln spoke of man’s intentions and man’s relationship to God, in an attempt to puzzle out the meaning of so much terrible death. Referring to both sides of the war, Lincoln reflected:
“Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. ‘Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.’ If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’”
We do well to admire Abraham Lincoln as our finest president, not because he chose war, but because he recognized war as the worst fate a nation could have inflicted upon it.
Earlier in the address, Lincoln stated, “While [my first] inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war-seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.”
Lincoln acknowledged the urgent desire for diplomacy on both sides of the conflict, recognized the principle driving each side into battle, and stated the case honestly to the American people. He made no claim to either glory or righteousness, but simply stated the principles that required war to come. When it came to the principles of the other side, he said, “Let us judge not, that we be not judged.” Lincoln understood that before the intelligence that created humanity in the midst of our vast universe, human kind was in no position to grandstand. He spoke of God, but a God that remained a mystery.
Lincoln also appreciated that before the thousands of dead piling up under his command, he was in no position to speak of victory. Whatever happened as the nation found its way out of war, the American people had paid dearly and, as the leader of our nation, Lincoln understood it was his role to show us what it was we were paying for.
When the currency in use is the blood of the people, a nation does not “purchase” anything, but pays a moral debt instead, which it could neither escape nor fulfill with any other currency. This debt is the debt of the entire nation, not just that of the perpetrators. In preserving our union, Lincoln understood he committed himself to pay the consequences of our founding fathers’ decision to choose unity with a slave-holding Southern culture.
We do well to remember this President who we justly admire as our finest today while we continue to choose unity with a president who is our worst.
A brief comparison of the two is indeed enough to make us feel ill. We do well to feel ill under President George W. Bush.
In two paragraphs of Abraham Lincoln’s thought, we have identified 8 noteworthy qualities demonstrating Lincoln’s advanced humanity: (1) He appreciated the gravity of the death toll caused by war; (2) He was aware of both side’s commitment to diplomacy; (3) He made his decision to go to war based on a clear and just principle; (4) He communicated his reasoning honestly, eloquently, and effectively; (5) He avoided becoming self-righteous and judgmental toward his enemies; (6) He understood that God and the ways of God are a mystery to humanity; (7) He understood that war is an awful fate, not a means of victory; (8) He understood that human blood never purchases anything of value, but is spent either to incur or to repay a terrible moral debt.
Now let’s consider how advanced is the humanity of George W. Bush.
1. Death Toll: Whereas Lincoln was clearly pained by the war dead piling up, the U.S. government and military under Bush do not even bother to count Iraqi casualties and are dismissive of suggestions that they should. But the dead are piling up all the same.
Whereas 620,000 died in the American Civil War, last year Europe’s most prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journal, The Lancet, published a report that 654,965 had died in Iraq since the U.S. attacked and invaded it. A month ago, the public interest organization, Just Foreign Policy, published a report setting the number of war dead in Iraq at over a million. Today, the same organization reports the estimated number of people killed in Iraq since the U.S. invasion to be 1,060,494. Last week, the Los Angeles Times reported that ORB, a British polling agency that has conducted several polls in Iraq, estimated that there have been 1.2 million civilian casualties since the war began-that’s twice the amount that died in our American Civil War. What is the meaning of all these Iraqi lives lost? Bush does not count them or address them. Lincoln would.
2. Diplomacy: Whereas every effort at diplomacy was made to avoid the Civil War, we know that the efforts of the George W. Bush administration were focused on manufacturing false intelligence and propaganda instead. Instead of recognizing the diplomatic commitment on both sides of the dispute, Bush actively engineered false accusations against the Iraqis in order to instigate unprovoked warfare. Far from trying to avoid bloodshed, Bush chose a go-it-alone approach that demonized nations like France and Germany who hesitated to start a war.
3. Principle: Whereas Lincoln says in his Second Inaugural Address that “All knew that this interest [slavery] was somehow the cause of the war,” Bush adamantly denied what everyone suspected and what has since been confirmed: the desire to steal oil was the cause of the Iraq war. Rather than communicate an honest and just principle, such as, “we must fight to preserve our union,” Bush relied on nationalistic, flag waving propaganda and the assertion of a completely false connections between Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction and al Qaeda. These fraudulent claims were merely a smokescreen for an unprincipled act of theft and physical domination.
4. Honesty and Eloquence: Rather than be judged on the true motives behind the Iraq invasion, Bush lied to the nation during the sacred tradition of the State of the Union address while standing at the podium within the people’s house of government. Then he had his Secretary of State, the face of American diplomacy, lie to the world in the United Nation’s Security Council. Just as there is a connection between Abraham Lincoln’s eloquence and his principled intelligence, so too is there a connection between Bush’s notoriously mangled grasp of the English language and the lack of principle or intellectual foundation in his character. When your humanity is advanced so also is your ability to communicate. One doesn’t come without the other. In Bush, it’s obvious we get neither.
5. Self-Righteous and Non-Judgmental: Whereas one can feel the weight of wartime atrocities upon every word in Lincoln’s speech, what we hear from George W. Bush is that the Iraqi nation he pulverized needs to step up the plate and show that it is committed to “freedom” and “democracy.” In addition to repeatedly referring to the enemy as “evil-doers” and refusing to acknowledge that he ever directly made any mistake in pursuing unprovoked war in Iraq, Bush now blithely blames the Iraqi people and the government he installed for delaying a U.S. exit.
6. God: Whereas Lincoln is introspective and accepting of the hardships that accompany his own fate, George Bush uses God as authority for his own political campaign and conduct of warfare. Whereas to Lincoln the will of God is a mystery, to George Bush, the will of God is as clear to him as his own mind (which may not be saying much). For example, while campaigning for office in 1999, Bush said, “I believe God wants me to be president.” When Bob Woodward asked him if he asked his father for advice regarding going to war with Iraq, Bush replied: “He is the wrong father to appeal to for advice. The wrong father to go to, to appeal to in terms of strength. There’s a higher Father that I appeal to.” And in July 2004, over a year into the Iraq War, Bush told one gathering of supporters, “I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn’t do my job.”
If God speaks through Bush, he does so like he spoke through the American Civil War. God is not offering guidance through the mouth of our infamously inarticulate president, but only offenses. As the Biblical passage invoked by Lincoln says, “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.”
7. Victory: We all remember the pictures of George W. Bush in his false fighter pilot outfit standing on the deck of the aircraft carrier with the huge banner reading, “Mission Accomplished.” Just last week, Bush argued that “the principle guiding my decisions on troop levels in Iraq is ‘return on success,’” Bush does not view war as the worst of all fates, but as a means to success. War is not the worst of all fates to Bush, because he never had to worry about serving in a war. The 1,000 more American lives that will be lost while he postures about success seem to be a distant reality to him. To the extent that he is aware of the almost 4,000 Americans already killed in Iraq, he has determinedly marginalized their fate by avoiding attending funerals for fallen soldiers and by preventing the press from photographing the flag draped coffins that come home from Iraq. More importantly, unlike Lincoln, Bush does not weigh the cost of war in terms of human lives lost on all sides. As noted above, Iraqi deaths are not counted by the United States. Whereas Lincoln was keenly aware of the tremendous losses suffered by the South, to Bush, the Iraqi deaths are not part of his calculations.
8. Moral Debt: Of course, the real, glaring difference between the American Civil War and the American invasion and occupation of Iraq is that, in the former, a real conflict existed that led to the war, whereas, in the latter, the war was instigated without cause. In the American Civil War the conflict was at heart over a deeply inhumane and immoral seed that had been allowed to take root and to flourish in the soil of our nation. Pulling up the brutal harvest of slavery would cost us great quantities of our blood. Lincoln came to see that this was America’s tragic fate.
But it was not part of America’s destiny to become inextricably mired in “shock and awe,” torture, and every kind of disgrace to humanity in Iraq. George Bush and his puppet masters chose this course for our nation by stealing the presidency, lying to us, deceiving us, abusing the power of his office and corrupting the integrity of our political process. Nor do the Iraqi’s have any share in this tragic war. There is no moral obligation that arises from suffering a tyrant. Yet the Iraqi’s have spilled twice as much blood as we spilled in our Civil War. What will come of all this blood?
When we compare our greatest president with our worst, we learn that the war that took more American lives than any other had a tragic meaning, but a meaning nonetheless. By contrast, this current war, which has cost twice the number of lives of an innocent nation, is completely meaningless. Faced with such a horrendous realization, we are forced to ask: In our position, what would Lincoln do? What lesson would Lincoln draw from our current condition and what path would he recommend?
If his Second Inaugural Address is any indication, Lincoln would look inside himself to understand his responsibility in this moment, an act which President George W. Bush seems to misunderstand. The rest of us, following Lincoln’s example, would then realize that if the Iraq war is without meaning because it is not repaying a moral debt for past inhumanity, then there can only be one other possible conclusion. Rather than repaying a deep and dark debt to humanity, we are incurring one. This is the choice we make in choosing unity with our President. If we do not want to have to pay this debt in blood a century from now, as earlier generations did in our Civil War, then we must cast our president out of office and hold him culpable for his war crimes.
This I believe is what Lincoln would do. He would do it to save our nation the terrible fate that befell him and the nation he loved. He would see that there is no principle in standing united with an incompetent, authoritarian and religiously delusional president. He would urge us to impeach him and then to try him for war crimes for the sake of our children’s humanity.
Hank Edson is an author, activist and attorney based in San Francisco. His blog, MP3–My Politics and Progressive Perspective, can be found at: http://hankedson.squarespace
If Lincoln was alive and president today.. he would still be assainated. His morals would have assured that. There appears to be no place for decency in modern American politics.
and like bush, lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the civil war.
lincoln literally and figuratively towers over bush, as do most (if not all) of our other presidents, but he was not perfect and used federal power in a horribly destructive way.
freeing the slaves was not his goal, preserving the union at all costs were. the emancipation proclamation was not even written until jan 1863 and it didn’t free one slave.
a very admirable thing he did, though, was hold federal elections during the civil war, but one half of the country could not vote.
i fear that we will not have federal elections in ‘08, i don’t know if the monsters in power will let that happen.
i hope, hope, hope i am wrong.
love
cindy
All of the pieces are inplace to PREVENT an election in ‘08. There is no way Bushco wiil allow the reigns of power to slip from their fingers.
Anytime now, there will be a loud bang, innocent Americans will die, Iran will be blamed, and the bombs will start to rain down on innocent women and children. The constitution will be suspended ‘for the duration of the emergency’, and Bush and Cheney will ride their own ‘Strangelove’ bomb to the ground as all those who have been speaking out against Bushco are rounded up.
Thanks for joining in Cindy! And I hope you know by now you have a WORLD of supporters behind what you are doing for our country!!! Sign me up to help the Sheehan for Congress campaign!
As for Lincoln, you bring up great points. What I love about the Second Inaugural Address is that, to my mind, he addresses all three of your points. First, he honestly acknowledges, his goal was to preserve the union, nothing else, and submits himself to be judged by this goal. Second, his entire tone projects the humility of someone who is aware of his own limitations, which suggests to me that, for example, he did not pretend he was beyond committing sins such as the suspension of habeas corpus, and that such sins gave him regret. His humility, to me, can only come from awareness of his own fallibility and an understanding that he had wronged. Third, he understands the position of slavery in regards to the war. It was not his goal to eradicate it, but he has come to appreciate that it was at bottom, the war’s fundamenatal cause, and also the source of a deep and terrible moral debt, which America was forced to repay in the blood of both sides.
Lincoln was not perfect, but perhaps they do call him Honest Abe for a reason. Another remarkable think about Abe is the folk lore about how he educated himself by candle light in his humble log cabin. Lincoln, that is, had the capacity to LEARN. He studied his humanity, advanced it, and gave voice to it. Our entire nation needs to do the same right now.
Elsewhere, Cindy, I have written that you are a great teacher and model of what it means to advance our humanity. (See: http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/10/2007/2616). Thank you again, for all you are doing. Hopefully, we are all learning from you example.
love
hank
The sacred tradition of the SOTU? I think you’re fetishizing. It’s simply a constitutionally-mandated report that has, over the years, turned into once-yearly calisthenics for our lazy congressmen.
Reread Lincoln’s words then google a Bush speech.
We’ve come a long way as a species eh?
Another good argument for de-evolution.
There certainly is something to the idea that “What goes around comes around,” “What you sow is what you reap”.
To the extent that there is something to it, the U.S. is in deep caca. Some wise people have taught that there is a way off the “karmic wheel” but this society shows every sign of holding on tightly to it. Will it be subatomic energies harnessed by WMDs that finally loosen that grip, or can we just “let go” of “it”. There’s a lot to let go of… right now I look around me and see a $&#@load of “stuff” that distracts me from more important things. But there’s also an emotional crapload. I went to see “The Brave One” last night. Without spoiling it, suffice it to say that Jodi Foster’s character has a real hard time letting go of past trauma. The plot is very emotionally convincing (not to mention the great acting) and is a sort of metaphor for how our society deals with problems. It can’t find a way out of the trauma, and just perpetuates it.
No, Lincoln is not “perfect”, because there is no such thing. But I dare to say, he would help us out of this mess. Maybe he actually is doing that through articles and discussions like this.
The price of making and preserving the U.S. was always a devil’s bargain — it was to sanction a slave culture, even if it meant re-absorbing it under new forms, because the U.S. needed the land & the wealth produced by unpurchased labor.
The slaves were emancipated . . . and immediately placed into permanent economic slavery. Other laborers who could be gypped and cowed and imprisoned were brought in during & after the Civil War to make up for the difference.
We need to stop pretending that America was ever a bastion of anything but exploitation.
I enjoyed reading Edson’s comparison but ultimately one word would suffice to explain Bush and his lack of empathy for any of the events he has held the authority to set into motion: SOCIOPATH.
A few days ago (apologies, I can’t recall the poster’s name) the categorical listing of EGOPHRENIA came up to suggest the type of individual who projects all their own flaws onto whoever they are negatively interacting with.
IF Bush was not born into a rich, privileged family, chances are pretty good he’d have become a serial killer in his own right. The prestige of high office merely conceals the deed while rooms full of worshipful disciples/sycophants lay the PR on thick enough to fool the idiots and confuse those of limited intellectual capacity. Should these devices fail, there is always Fox “news” and/or 24/7 HATE R’US radio. The nation is acting the moral equivalent of an infant who refuses to have his pamper changed.
The idea that Bush and Cheney are impeached for thier actions is worth putting on the table. There is also the consideration of who would take thier place at the table? Bush and Cheney didn’t just happen, it has been going wrong for a long time and there is a large underbelly that feeds off the construction.
I find it amazing that this slobbering hero worship of Lincoln still persists.
While there is no question that Lincoln was an intelligent man, far above the likes of Bush, he was a ruthless warmonger and an oppressor of civil liberties. In fact, the neo-cons often laughably attempt comparisons between Bush and Lincoln–at least when they aren’t laughably comparing Bush to Winston Churchill or Ronald Reagan.
I don’t subscribe to the purely libertarian view of Lincoln, but, like John Adams, FDR, and others, Lincoln was a hero with feet of clay who had no problem trampling liberties and human rights during his presidential reign.
Once we get past the obvious fact that the slaves deserved emancipation, we should start to examine Lincoln and the War Between the States in more sober terms.
“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”
– U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864
(letter to Col. William F. Elkins)
Ref: The Lincoln Encyclopedia, Archer H. Shaw (Macmillan, 1950, NY)
Here’s Lincoln’s entire quote, tying corporations and war:
“We may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its end.
It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood. . . .
It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but
I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes
me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war,
corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places
will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong
its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth
is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.
I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety
of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war.
God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless.”
The passage appears in a letter from Lincoln to (Col.) William F. Elkins, Nov. 21, 1864.
This is false:
“Whereas every effort at diplomacy was made to avoid the Civil War”
Lincoln never attempted diplomacy; his position was that secession was rebellion and the only possible response to rebels was to defeat them, and the only position permissible to rebels was to return to loyalty to the Union. The secessionists understood themselves to be acting on the principles laid down in the original revolution. They were on impeccable legal ground, since they had not been required to abolish slavery on entering the Union, and couldn’t be required to remain in a Union which intended to renege on the original pact.
The only good thing in the first revolution was that it demonstrated that there derived from the consent of the governed, not from bloodline or spiritual endowment from the skies. The actual structure is a tissue of self-deceptions & denials of the real nature of what was created following the success of the revolt.
It’s true that Lincoln did not have much time for diplomacy, but he is accurate in his 2nd Inaugural when he says that his first inaugural address was devoted to avoiding war. These are the closing words of his first inaugural:
“My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well, upon this whole subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time. If there be an object to hurry any of you, in hot haste, to a step which you would never take deliberately, that object will be frustrated by taking time; but no good object can be frustrated by it. Such of you as are now dissatisfied still have the old Constitution unimpaired, and, on the sensitive point, the laws of your own framing under it; while the new administration will have no immediate power, if it would, to change either. If it were admitted that you who are dissatisfied, hold the right side in the dispute, there still is no single good reason for precipitate action. Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him, who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust, in the best way, all our present difficulty.
In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to “preserve, protect, and defend it.”
I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
Also, this is how one website describes the crisis at Fort Sumpter a mere month later:
“President Lincoln advises South Carolina that he plans to send supplies to Fort Sumter in hopes of avoiding a confrontation, but South Carolina demands that the commander of the fort, Robert Anderson, surrender immediately.”
I also question whether the South was truly on impeccable legal ground. As implied, the Constitution is conditional on its satisfaction of the requirements laid down in the Declaration of Independence, which mandates that all men are created equal with unalienable rights which it is the duty of the government to protect. That the signers of the Constitution failed to live up to this mandate regarding slavery and that they agreed not to do anything about it for 50 years does not mean that there wasn’t a conflict of law in our social contract. Lincoln did not insist on resolving that conflict. The South insisted on it and the South wanted it resolved in favor of denying the equality with which we are all endowed by our creator. Elsewhere, Lincoln described the principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence as the apple of gold for which the Constitution was merely the frame to preserve and to present the apple to the world. He said, the frame was made for the apple, not the apple for the frame. Under this view, with which I agree, the South was in error in its understanding of our social contract law. But that’s just my opinion, well and Lincoln’s of course.
Excuse me, but war is almost always about money.
Keep in mind the writing by Lincoln was an inaugural address. Time to spin the war. And how does a politician justify 600,000 deaths? With ridiculous ideals like God, morality, and the Union.
The agricultural South wanted free trade with Europe and the industrializing North wanted trade barriers to protect their emerging industries. Slavery was a secondary issue that became a moral justification for the war. Both the South and North remained racist societies after the war and equality still does not exist. The blessed Union only mattered as a government structure to enforce economic schemes.
And like warmongers perpetuating the war crimes in Iraq, the elite of Lincoln’s time could stay home and make money rather than serve on the bloody battlefields.
The most frightening element of Lincoln’s address is the God factor. Like Bush he falls back on a fundamentalist interpretation of reality. He places the situation in God’s hands which let’s the warmongering capitalists of the hook.
“The Almighty has His own purposes.”
Lincoln was apparently capable of writing his own spin, but in the end he was just another politician selling war to the public.
Well actually in Lincoln’s time politics had not become a science as it is today.
And…
I don’t think we know what Lincoln would do because he didn’t finish his plan. I think he planned to repatriate slaves to thier homelands for one thing.
If anything though, he would have stayed home instead of going to the Ford Theater.
Lincoln, ___ saved the Union!
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So about now he would probably shit in his pants. I’m so damn mad every day now it’s not healthy.
Kem
You have to choose your issues carefully as there are more troubles than time to sort them all out.
Take solace in knowing you are helping someone else simply by being who you are and being honest about how you feel.
One glaring distinction between Lincoln’s extra-constitutional activities, and FDR’s in illegally confining hundreds of thousands of Japanese-Americans during WWII, is that they both immediately went before Congress and received approval for their actions, unlike Bush who waited until his illegal surveillance program and the Padilla unlawful detention case had festered publicly for years and been struck down, whole or in part, by federal courts.
Another difference is that those previous presidents obviously had some knowledge of and respect for the history of the US and the world, something the Little King still hasn’t got a handle on.
Paul said:
“ I find it amazing that this slobbering hero worship of Lincoln still persists.”
Had to check a few factoids:
Lincoln’s first inaugural address in 1861 stated: “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”
At the outbreak of the civil war, Linclon took the position that slavery in the Union states of Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and Delaware was to be maintained.
A cute example of northern racism at the time was that “free” blacks in New York could not vote unless they had $250 dollars in property. This requirement did not apply to whites.
On promoting black suffrage in 1860 as a ballot issue, Fredrick Douglas said, “The black baby of Negro suffrage was thought too ugly to exhibit on so grand on occasion. The Negro was stowed away like some people put out of sight their deformed children when company comes.”
The mythological drivel of flag waving historians, mindless patriots, propaganda pundits and psychotic masters of war never seems to end.
Unfortunately, war and Presidents are rarely honorable.
Operation Iraqi Freedom has now set about a million Iraqis free by killing them.
Lincoln’s principle, which he neither aggrandized nor disguised, was to save the union. In his debates against Douglas before he was president, he clearly came out against slavery as evil and inhumane, although he did not go very far in defining equality broadly for people of all races, but limited his definition of it in terms of the equal dignity to basic things like the right to earn a living and feed and shelter oneself from the fruit of one’s own labor without having such earning taken away. He reiterates this theme in his second inaugural. But he was not for abolishing slavery because he wanted to avoid war. True, abolishing slavery aided the war effort and was directed toward keeping the union intact. Lincoln may have had limitations, but in the broad outlines, he was very consistent. He opposed slavery morally, but held it to be an inferior priority politically to both avoiding war and above all to keeping the union intact. If any chose to blame him for setting his priorities in this way, he accepted their condemnation as a fundamental difference of opinion.
From my armchair in the 21st century, I may wish the presidents of past generations came out boldly and uncompromisingly for abolition, but Lincoln’s principle in saving the union is not in itself unethical, but virtuous—to my mind. His moral condemnation of slavery was also virtuous. Lincoln said in his debate against Stephen Douglas, who proposed that any territory should be allowed to adopt slavery if it chose to, “[Douglas] is in my judgment … eradicating the light of reason and the love of liberty in this American people.” In seeking to avoid war, Lincoln was also virtuous. He didn’t start the war, he tried in the short time he had available to him to avoid it. He was not a war monger, but the last of several presidents who had been seeking to delay the inevitable.
JConrad says, “And how does a politician justify 600,000 deaths? With ridiculous ideals like God, morality, and the Union.” Lincoln did not “justify” the deaths, he expressed their toll as a consequence of joining in union with a slave economy for two and a half centuries. To say that it is “ridiculous” to draw a connection between the amount of death caused by an intractable conflict arising out of the Southern society’s total investment in a slave economy, I think, is itself ridiculous.
Indeed, the war was an expression of an economic conflict between the north and south but this fact and the fact that the north was also very racist, does not change the fact that the Southern economy was based on slavery. I think Lincoln’s assessment that we all knew at bottom the war was about slavery is absolutely correct. It is not that the conflict wasn’t expressed in self-interested, racist, economic agendas on both sides, but that despite all this, the war never would have occurred without the South’s refusal to ratify the Constitution if slavery were to be abolished or if abolition were even to be discussed for 50 years.
The economic conflict between north and south arose out of this insistence on the use of a slave economy. The southern powers got unearned economic power and unequal political power out of slavery. This created not just a difference, but an antagonism between the north and south that goes far beyond their opposing interests regarding trade barriers. The South would be hurt by trade barriers, but it would be completely erased by the abolition of slavery. In as much as the trade conflict propelled the war, it was premised on an economic and political power that was morally indefensible and contrary to our expressed principles. This corrupt foundation insured the intransigence of both sides, one holding fast in its wrong, the other using the wrong as leverage. Even if the North’s use of the immorality of slavery was hypocritical, it does not change the fact that the South’s economy was immoral to a degree that the North’s was not. I don’t think that if the North allowed free trade to move forward that the Civil War would have been avoided. A major conflict was brewing over the future of slavery and was being acted out in “Bloody Kansas,” and the dispute over slavery in the new territories and maintaining an equilibrium between slave states and non-slave states. The question at bottom was whether slavery would survive, not whether tariffs would cut in on slavery’s profits.
Should Lincoln have appeased the South by guaranteeing slavery’s continued future in our nation and our new territories, as Douglas was prepared to do? Would he have had the support to do this if he chose? Is there anyone who would suggest we should have allowed slavery to continue for another century or more, so that our investment in it would only become more and more deep? How would you suggest that we end slavery? To blame Lincoln for the death toll of the war, I think is to close your eyes to the monumental ethical conflict manifest in the deepest of economic interests and historical roots in our nation. There was not going to be a bloodless way out of slavery and the nation was growing too fast not to resolve the ethical conflict that seriously impacted the nature of that growth. In connecting the war dead to the issue of slavery, Lincoln was not using God or morality to justify the death; he was expressing a grief-filled realization that all this death is what our folly had cost us. Sorry for drawing a moral lesson from slavery! There are times when drawing moral lessons from history is appropriate. Doing so does not automatically equate with politicizing “Christian” morals to gloss over one’s own misconduct. Also, blaming Lincoln for the racism that still exists is completely unfair. Yes, our society is extremely racist today. Would it be better if we still had slavery? Of course not.
Another point on the asserted “impeccable legal ground”: Dicterfreund says “since [the South] had not been required to abolish slavery on entering the Union, and couldn’t be required to remain in a Union which intended to renege on the original pact.” This is just an inaccurate understanding of Constitutional law. The Constitution allows its own amendment. The Constitution the South ratified (1) acknowledged that the people in the future could change the agreement all they wanted so long as they abided by the political process set forth therein for doing so, and (2) also acknowledged that slavery might be abolished in the future by specifically delaying that future possibility 50 years by prohibiting Congress from discussing the issue for that term. That term had expired long before the South started the Civil War.
Thus, the South agreed to a contract, the terms of which clearly expressed the willingness of all parties to abide by future changes. By entering into the social contract and be receiving the benefits of that contract, they agreed not to break its terms. The terms do allow the contract to be broken, but only when the government becomes “destructive of” the ends for which the government was formed: to protect humanity’s equal and inalienable right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Nothing Lincoln did and nothing the U.S. government did justified breaking the social contract, especially since everything Lincoln and the U.S. government did was legitimized through the democratic political process which the Constitution provided as the means by which the U.S. government protected the right of the South and of all states to self-determination—self-determination through participation in the political process.
And as I noted above: The Declaration of Independence defines the grounds on which a people may declare their independence. Nowhere in that definition does it say that a slave owning people may break the social contract in order to preserve its denial of the equality of human beings and its use of slavery as an economic engine!
Finally, I don’t think it’s “slobbering hero worship” to study Lincoln’s second inaugural address as an example of political wisdom in contemplating the terrible realities of war. Take a survey of our political literature and count the selections you find that match it. While as a harsh critic of the Bush administration and war generally, I sympathize with the anger, sophistication, and skepticism with which Lincoln’s reputation is viewed by some of the contributors above a century and a half later, still I think balance is required. How many of us really think we would have done better than Lincoln—especially if we had been raised in the culture of the United States that was the first half of the 19th century? A lot of great progressive intellects and a lot of his leading contemporaries shared the view that Lincoln was truly a great man and perhaps our finest president. I began my piece by wondering how this is possible when he presided over our most deadly war. I think it is more useful to try to find the basis that resolves this apparent contradiction than simply to dismiss one of the few resources of leadership we have in a time when our leadership is so bad.