Lincoln preferred to emancipate the slaves gradually by compensating their owners with federal funds. Lincoln also supported the idea of providing government aid to the freed slaves, enabling them to establish colonies abroad. Lincoln thought that in their own black nations, they would finally enjoy equal political and civil rights. Although Illinois voters elected Lincoln to the state legislature and to a term in the U. House of Representatives, he made little impression. Lincoln decided not to run for re-election to Congress after his term ended in He then started a prosperous law firm in Springfield, Illinois.
In , however, the explosive issue of expanding slavery into the Western territories drew him back into politics and ultimately to the presidency. In , U. Senator Stephen A. Douglas, an Illinois Democrat, led Congress in passing a law that would open the possibility of expanding slavery into this area. The Kansas-Nebraska Act left it up to the voters in the Kansas and Nebraska territories to decide the legal status of slavery. Douglas called this "popular sovereignty.
Those who joined the new political party included abolitionists and a much larger number of "Free-Soilers" who simply wanted to prevent the expansion of slavery into the Western territories. In , Illinois Republicans nominated Lincoln for a seat in the U. Senators were elected by state legislatures then, and Lincoln lost the contest in the Illinois state legislature.
But he was back in to challenge one of the most powerful political leaders in the nation, Stephen A. In that case, the majority of justices had further undermined the Missouri Compromise by ruling that a slave taken by his master into a free territory or state remained a slave. In his acceptance speech, Lincoln summarized his position on the expansion of slavery by quoting the words of Jesus: "A house divided against itself cannot stand" Matthew Lincoln argued that slavery in the United States would eventually have to end everywhere or become legal everywhere in order for the nation to survive:.
Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new—North as well as South. Lincoln then attacked his opponent, Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, the chief author of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Lincoln charged, "he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up" in Kansas and Nebraska.
Lincoln went on to debate Douglas on the "popular sovereignty" controversy. Although Lincoln lost his second attempt to win a Senate seat, his "House Divided" speech and debates with Douglas made Lincoln a national political figure. In February , Lincoln stunned a gathering of Eastern Republicans who were considering a number of candidates for president.
The strange looking "rail splitter" from the West delivered a carefully researched speech that demolished the arguments of the Southerners who claimed the expansion of slavery was constitutional.
A few months later, the Republicans made Lincoln their presidential nominee. Lincoln won the bitter presidential election of against three opponents, including Stephen A. Lincoln swept the electoral votes of the Northern states, but only won 39 percent of the popular vote. Even before his inauguration, a number of Southern states seceded from the Union. First, in a final attempt to avoid war, he tried to reassure Southerners that he had no desire to interfere with slavery where it already existed.
He even quoted a provision of the Constitution requiring that anyone who committed a crime and fled to another state "shall be delivered up. He warned that the Constitution required him to make sure "the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States.
Lincoln cautioned Southerners to think carefully about secession, which he said would only lead to anarchy or dictatorship. And the Civil War began. Some Union commanders and Congress itself tried a few times to free slaves in the early years of the Civil War, but Lincoln overrode these efforts.
He still held out for gradual compensated emancipation followed by the creation of colonies of freed slaves in Africa or other areas outside the United States.
A number of commentators have argued that Lincoln's language suggests that we have the founders for our fathers and the continent for our mother; they regard "brought forth on" as equivalent to begat or sired. But "to bring forth" is another common Biblical phrase that, from Genesis forward, refers to the female role of parturition, or in the case of plants, to the visible appearance of fruit. There are even verses that apply the obstetrical metaphor politically, describing the national destiny of Israel, as in Micah "Be in pain, and labour to bring forth, O daughter of Zion, like a woman in travail Lincoln's next two clauses mention two key ideas: liberty and equality, each of which is linked to the dominant metaphor of birth.
Casting back before the advent moment in to the moment of conception, Lincoln says the nation was "conceived in Liberty. How literally should this language of sexual congress be taken?
Of course, "to conceive" can denote either a physical or a mental phenomenon: becoming pregnant or taking a notion into the mind. Before the nation could be brought forth into practical realization, it had to be thought of or imagined. Whence arose the concept? According to Lincoln, it originated "in Liberty.
The result is that "Liberty" and "God" are, in effect, the only capitalized words, since none of the sentence-starting words would normally be capitalized. Why does Lincoln incarnate liberty in this way and what does it mean to be "conceived in Liberty"?
Whenever the interpretation of Lincoln is at issue, the Bible is a good starting place. Psalms speaks of being conceived in sin: "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.
In Luke , the angel tells Mary, "And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son," and in Matthew , the angel assures Joseph that "that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. According to Lincoln's redaction, the new nation was conceived not in sin or sorrow but in liberty, although given the use that humans make of their liberty, there might not be much difference between the terms.
Beneath the beautiful thought that the nation was conceived in the pure womb of liberty there lurks the afterthought evoked by the distant resonance of Psalm 51's conceived in sin. That psalm, known as the Miserere, is the most famous of the seven penitential psalms. In it, a contrite King David prays for a clean heart and a renewed spirit after his unjust taking of Bathsheba, the wife of the humble Uriah.
The list of 41 generations the "begats" is interrupted only twice, once to interject that "David the king begat Solomon of her that had been the wife of Urias" and then to mention that 14 generations later the Israelites were "carried away to Babylon. William Faulkner, in Absalom, Absalom! In his very frank letter to his dearest friend, Joshua Speed, Lincoln uses a variant of "conceived in sin" when he declares that the Kansas-Nebraska Act "was conceived in violence, passed in violence, is maintained in violence, and is being executed in violence.
John Channing Briggs, in his wonderful book, Lincoln's Speeches Reconsidered , stresses the obscurity of Lincoln's phrasing: "Certainly, if one presses the metaphor to its sensible limit, the nation had parentage; but the manner and precise timing of its conception Leon Kass, in his admirable speech, " The Gettysburg Address and Lincoln's Reinterpretation of the American Founding ," tries once again to plumb the mysteries of the nation's generation.
He develops three scenarios. Perhaps Lincoln means to suggest that, just as a child might be conceived in love, the nation was conceived in liberty. Liberty, or maybe love of liberty, was the seminal passion that eventually produced the nation. Or perhaps "conceived in Liberty" indicates that the idea of a new nation was freely formed and chosen.
While the Declaration itself insists on the force of "necessity," Lincoln instead highlights the operation of free will; the nation was conceived in an act of liberty. One final possibility is that Lincoln means to refer further back, even centuries back, into the colonial period. Alexis de Tocqueville, for instance, argues that the spirit of liberty was present from the first in the English colonies.
He explains how the aristocratic liberty of the mother country assumed a new more democratic form in the New World. If so, then British liberty was the womb the Latin is matrix within which the new nation gestated.
These three speculations are not, in fact, incompatible with one another: A love of liberty, long present among the colonists, did flare up in one decisive, freely chosen act, transforming British subjects into founders. The organic, "gentle" character of Lincoln's account of the nation's origins suggests a further concern. Perhaps Lincoln did not want to come anywhere near words like "revolution" or "independence" while in the midst of putting down "a gigantic Rebellion.
The secessionists were in no way comparable to the American revolutionaries. Lincoln didn't have time in this speech to explain the theoretical difference, as he did at length in other speeches, especially his First Inaugural. Instead, he found euphemisms for the American Revolution like "brought forth" and "conceived in Liberty.
Given that he was resisting those who wanted a further separation, it was not the time to praise the dissolution of political bands. After liberty, the other feature of the founding that is highlighted is equality. Lincoln says the nation is "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. As in the moment of christening or baptism, the infant nation is placed on a certain path.
Although Lincoln quotes accurately from the Declaration, he puts his own gloss on it, famously introducing some key changes. The Declaration speaks of equality as a truth held to be "self-evident" by the American people. They knew that this self-evident truth was unfortunately not evident to everyone the world over, but they expected that, in time, the scales would fall from the eyes of others temporarily blinded by false teachings, such as that about the divine right of kings.
A self-evident truth is an axiom. An axiom doesn't require proof and, in fact, it can't be proved. You just see it or you don't. According to the Declaration, human equality is like that; it is axiomatic. This is the essential truth of the human condition. This foundational truth is not invalidated by the harsh fact that most human beings, in most times and places, have lived under political orders that violate their natural rights, slavery being the most dramatic instance.
According to the Declaration, despotic regimes and unjust institutions are illegitimate. It follows that people may exercise their right of revolution in order to establish new governments founded upon the consent of the governed and respectful of the individuals' pre-existing natural rights.
Although there are plenty of places where Lincoln uses the orthodox language of "axiom" or "self-evident" to describe the primary, capital "T" truths of the Declaration, his most famous formulation, here in the Gettysburg Address, calls human equality a "proposition. A proposition, unlike an axiom, requires a proof. That's why one must be "dedicated" to it. It's a theorem that must be demonstrated in practice. That Lincoln was well aware of the distinction between axioms and propositions is evident from a letter he wrote to H.
Pierce in , where he says:. One would start with great confidence that he could convince any sane child that the simpler propositions of Euclid are true; but, nevertheless, he would fail, utterly, with one who should deny the definitions and axioms.
The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society. What might explain Lincoln's shift from one Euclidean term to the other? It's not that Lincoln suddenly doubts the truth of human equality. It's rather that he wants to highlight the needfulness of translating an abstract truth into concrete political form.
As early as the Lyceum Address, Lincoln described the founders as experimental scientists or mathematicians drawn to an unproven proposition. The current crisis, however, was more severe. At the time of the founding, there was general agreement that all were created equal, even if there was no political ability on the part of the very weak federal government to do much about the domestic institution of slavery in the states.
Nonetheless, all then understood that slavery was an evil; even those who argued that slavery was necessary and there were many of those at least called it "a necessary evil. Led by John C. Calhoun, Southerners had taken to openly repudiating the truths of the Declaration, calling equality a "self-evident lie" and slavery a "positive good. In the s, as the crisis of the "house divided" escalated, Lincoln argued that the crisis had arisen because a substantial portion of the American people had lost sight of the truth on which their own rights depended.
We see here, perhaps, that the language of mathematics is not perfectly suited to or congruent with politics, since political truths depend on being held in the heart as true. Thus, the Gettysburg Address superimposes religious language dedicate, consecrate, hallow on its Euclidean substrate. In his opening paragraph, in 30 words, Lincoln has performed an act of remembrance. His description of "our fathers" is meant to make his audience reverential.
But, at the same time, the generative imagery conveys the message that each successive cohort of Americans is essential to the maturation or completion of the founding.
The necessary proof is ongoing. It's up to us to live out the timeless truth to which the nation has been pledged. With this single sentence, Lincoln formed the nation's self-understanding, a self-understanding that unites filial piety with progress. Action here and now is mandated by fidelity to the past. Lincoln's political stance manages to combine liberal elements with profoundly conservative elements. The gloss he puts on the Declaration of Independence thus leads directly to the next paragraph and its opening word: "Now.
He doesn't want the audience to stray outside the bounds of the idea he so carefully shaped there. What is at stake is the survival of that new nation that sought to combine liberty and equality.
And more than that: At stake is the very possibility of political life based on such premises. Lincoln enlarges the stakes beyond national survival. But no human power can subdue this rebellion without the use of emancipation policy, and every other policy calculated to weaken the moral and physical forces of the rebellion.
Freedom has given us two hundred thousand men raised on Southern soil. It will give us more yet. Just so much it has subtracted from the enemy, and instead of alienating the South, there are now evidences of a fraternal feeling growing up between our men and the rank and file of the rebel soldiers.
Let my enemies prove to the country that the destruction of slavery is not necessary to a restoration of the Union. I will abide the issue. Clearly, President Lincoln was not about to forget the loyalty of black soldiers or the disloyalty of Confederate ones.
His voice was pleasant, his manner earnest and emphatic. As he warmed with his theme, his mind grew to the magnitude of his body. Historian Don E. And the Declaration of Independence, it might be added, did not immediately liberate a single colony from British rule. Jefferson Davis did not regard it as a mere scrap of paper, and neither did that most famous of former slaves, Frederick Douglass.
Historian James M. And as commander in chief of an army of one million men armed with the most advanced weapons in the world, he wielded a great deal of power. One is the extent to which it optimizes individual liberty of all kinds. The other is the extent to which its decision-making processes are controlled ultimately by the people; for freedom held at the will of others is too precarious to provide a full sense of being free.
More than that, he affirmed his adherence to the most critical and most fragile principle in the democratic process—namely, the requirement of minority submission to majority will. Lincoln was resolved to preserve the Union. But if, in addition, it should turn out that the Union arms had been rendered victorious through the help of the negro soldiers, called to the field by the promise of freedom contained in the proclamation, then the decree and its promise might rest secure in the certainty of legal execution and fulfillment.
Slavery was the cause. Disunion was the symptom. President Lincoln chose to administer emancipation as the treatment the Union required. Emancipation ultimately was the just penalty for rebellion and the reward for black military service in restoring the Union. Liberty was both a right conferred by the Declaration of Independence and an obligation of the Union incurred by the service of black soldiers.
By recruiting black soldiers and employing them in combat, the government secured a moral obligation to black Americans which President Lincoln clearly understood. But the contract was not just moral. It was practical. President Lincoln wrote Charles D.
Take from us, and give to the enemy, the hundred and thirty, forty, or fifty thousand colored persons now serving us as soldiers, seamen, and laborers, and we can not longer maintain the contest.
Black soldiers were literally fighting for their own freedom. Gone was any hope of an armistice or a negotiated peace so long as the Lincoln administration was in power. Fame is due Mr. Lincoln, not alone because he decreed emancipation, but because events so shaped themselves under his guidance as to render the conception practical and the decree successful. Among the agencies he employed none proved more admirable or more powerful than this two-edged sword of the final proclamation, blending sentiment with force, leaguing liberty with Union, filling the voting armies at home and the fighting armies in the field.
In the light of history we can see that by this edict Mr. Lincoln gave slavery its vital thrust, its mortal wound. It was the word of decision, the judgment without appeal, the sentence of doom. Historian LaWanda Cox wrote of Mr. More often, however, Lincoln was cautious, advancing one step at a time, and indirect, exerting influence behind the scenes.
He could give a directive without appearing to do so, or even while disavowing it as such. Seeking to persuade, he would fashion an argument to fit the listener. Some statements were disingenuous, evasive, or deliberately ambiguous. In a letter to Albert G. Hodges, for example, Mr. In telling this tale I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity. I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. God alone can claim it.
Whither it is tending seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God.
Lincoln may not have controlled events, but he did a pretty good job trying to steer them. Lincoln himself never claimed to be a liberator—but he did believe in liberation.
President Lincoln told Interior Department official T. The Lincoln of the White House years had deep convictions about the wrongness of slavery. But as Chief Magistrate he made a sharp distinction between his personal beliefs and his official actions. Whatever was constitutional he must support regardless of his private feelings.
If the states, under the rights reserved to them, persisted in clinging to practices that he regarded as outmoded, he had no right to interfere.
His job was to uphold the Constitution, not to impose his own standards of public morality. As a constitutionalist Lincoln was dedicated to the preservation of the Union. If Lincoln had a ruling passion, it was to show the world that a government based on the principles of liberty and equality was not a passing, short-lived experiment.
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