TDR 25: Dinesh D'Souza: Lincoln's Statesmanship

By Dinesh D'Souza | Monday, January 9, 2006

Most Americans—including most historians—regard Abraham Lincoln as the nation's greatest president. But in recent years powerful movements have gathered, both on the political right and left, to condemn Lincoln as a flawed and even wicked man.

For both camps, the debunking of Lincoln usually begins with an expose of the "Lincoln myth." This myth is well described in William Lee Miller's recent book Lincoln's Virtues. How odd it is, Miller writes, that an "unschooled" politician "from the raw frontier villages of Illinois and Indiana" could become such a great president. "He was the myth made real," Miller writes, "rising from an actual Kentucky cabin made of actual Kentucky logs all the way to the actual White House."

Lincoln's critics have done us all a service by showing that the actual author of the myth is Abraham Lincoln himself! It is Lincoln who, over the years, carefully crafted the public image of himself as Log Cabin Lincoln, Honest Abe, and the rest of it. Asked to describe his early life, Lincoln answered with reference to Thomas Gray's poem Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard: "the short and simple annals of the poor." Lincoln disclaimed great aspirations for himself, noting that if people did not vote for him, he would return to obscurity, being used to disappointments.

These pieties are inconsistent with what Lincoln's law partner, William Herndon, said about him: "His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest." Admittedly in the ancient world ambition was often viewed as a great vice. In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Brutus gives as his reason for joining the conspiracy against Caesar his fear that Caesar had grown too ambitious. But as Madison notes in The Federalist, the American system was consciously designed to attract ambitious men. Such ambition was presumed natural to a politician and favorable to democracy as long as it sought personal distinction by promoting the public good through constitutional means.

What unites the right-wing and left-wing attacks on Lincoln, of course, is that they deny that Lincoln respected the law and that he was concerned with the welfare of all. The right-wing school—made up largely of Southerners and some libertarians—holds that Lincoln was a self-serving tyrant who rode roughshod over civil liberties such as the right to habeas corpus. Lincoln is also accused of greatly expanding the size of the federal government; some libertarian scholars even charge (and this is not intended as a compliment) that Lincoln was the true founder of the welfare state. Lincoln's right-wing critics say that despite his show of public humility, he was a megalomaniacal man who was willing to destroy half the country to serve his Caesarian ambitions. In an influential essay, the late Mel Bradford excoriated Lincoln as a moral fanatic who, determined to enforce his Manichean vision of good and evil on the country as a whole, ended up corrupting American politics and thus left a "lasting and terrible impact on the nation's destiny."

Although Bradford viewed Lincoln as a kind of manic abolitionist, many in the neo-Confederate camp deny that the slavery issue was central to the Civil War. Rather, they insist, the war was driven primarily by economic motives. Essentially the industrial North wanted to destroy the economic base of the South. Charles Adams, in a recent book When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession, contends that the causes leading up to the Civil War were primarily economic; indeed, they had virtually nothing to do with slavery!

This neo-Confederate attempt to rewrite history has been going on for more than a century. Alexander Stephens, the former vice president of the Confederacy, published a two-volume history of the Civil War between 1868 and 1870 in which he hardly mentioned slavery, insisting that the war was an attempt to preserve constitutional government from the tyranny of the majority. But this is not what Stephens said in the great debates leading up to the war. In his Cornerstone speech, delivered in March 1861, right when the South was in the process of seceding, Stephens said that the American Revolution had been based on a premise that was "fundamentally wrong." What was that premise? "The assumption of the equality of the races." Stephens insisted that, by contrast, "Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea. Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man. Slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great and moral truth."

This speech is conspicuously absent from neo-Confederate revisionist history. And so are the countless affirmations of black inferiority and the "positive good" of slavery—from Senator John C. Calhoun's attacks on the Declaration of Independence to Senator James H. Hammond's insistence that "the rock of Gibraltar does not stand so firm on its basis as our slave system." It is true, of course, that many whites that fought on the Southern side in the Civil War did not own slaves. But, as Calhoun himself pointed out in one of his speeches, they too derived an important benefit from slavery. "With us the two great divisions of society are not the rich and the poor, but white and black; and all the former, the poor as well as the rich, belong to the upper class, and are respected and treated as equals." Calhoun's point is that the South had conferred on all whites a kind of aristocracy of birth, so that even the most wretched and degenerate white man was determined in advance to be better and more socially elevated than the most intelligent and capable black man. That's why the poor whites fought—to protect that privilege.

But what about Lincoln? Contrary to Mel Bradford's high-pitched accusations, Lincoln approached the issue of slavery with prudence and moderation. This is not to say that he waffled on the morality of slavery. "You think slavery is right, and ought to be extended," Lincoln wrote Alexander Stephens on the eve of the war, "while we think it is wrong, and ought to be restricted." As Lincoln clearly asserts, it was not his intention to get rid of slavery from the Southern states. Lincoln conceded that the American founders had agreed to tolerate slavery in the Southern states, and he confessed that he had no wish, and no power, to interfere with it there. The only issue—and it was an issue on which Lincoln would not bend—was whether the federal government could restrict slavery in the new territories. This was the issue of the presidential campaign of 1860; this was the issue that determined secession and war.

But didn't the South have a right to secede? Lincoln's argument is that the Southern states entered the union as the result of a permanent compact with the northern states. The union was based on the principle of majority rule, with constitutional rights carefully delineated for the minority. Lincoln insisted that since he had been legitimately elected, and since the power to regulate slavery in the territories was nowhere proscribed in the Constitution, therefore the Southern decision to secede amounted to nothing more than the right of any group to leave the country when it did not like the results of a presidential election. No constitutional democracy could function under such an absurd rule. Of course the Southerners objected that they should not be forced to live under a regime that they considered tyrannical, but Lincoln countered that any decision to dissolve the original compact could only occur with the consent of all the parties involved. Once again, it makes no sense to have agreements when any group can unilaterally withdraw from them and go their own way.

The rest of the libertarian and neo-Confederate case against Lincoln is equally without merit. Yes, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and arrested Southern sympathizers, but let us not forget that the nation was in a desperate war in which its very survival was at stake. Discussing habeas corpus, Lincoln insisted that it made no sense for him to protect this one constitutional right and allow the very union established by the Constitution, indeed the very framework for the protection of all constitutional rights, to be obliterated. Of course the federal government expanded during the Civil War, as it expanded during the Revolutionary war, and during World War II. Governments need to be strong to fight wars. But where is the evidence for the neo-Confederate insistence that Lincoln was the real founder of the welfare state? The welfare state came to America in the twentieth century. The progressive movement laid the groundwork for it, Franklin Roosevelt established it, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon expanded it. These are the men who should be credited, or faulted, for the growth of the welfare state. It is both foolish and anachronistic to blame Big Government on Abraham Lincoln.

Now let us consider the left-wing attack on Lincoln. This group of critics, composed of liberal scholars and African American activists, is harshly critical of Lincoln on the grounds that he was a racist who didn't really care about ending slavery. The indictment against Lincoln is as follows: he didn't oppose slavery outright, only the extension of it; he said (in his letter to Horace Greeley) that if he could save the union without freeing a single slave he would do it; he opposed laws permitting intermarriage and even social and political equality between the races. If the neo-Confederates disdain Lincoln for being too aggressively anti-slavery, the left-wingers scorn him for not being anti-slavery enough. Both groups, however, agree that Lincoln was a self-promoting hypocrite who said one thing while doing another.

Some of Lincoln's defenders have sought to vindicate him from these attacks by contending that he was a "man of his time." This will not do, because there were several persons of that time, notably the Grimke sisters and Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, who forthrightly and unambiguously attacked slavery and called for immediate and complete abolition. In one of his speeches, Sumner said that while there are many issues on which political men can and should compromise, slavery is not such an issue. "This will not admit of compromise. To be wrong on this is to be wholly wrong. It is our duty to defend freedom, unreservedly, and careless of the consequences."

Careless of the consequences. Here we have that recognizable thing, the voice of Lincoln's contemporary liberal critics who, whether they know it or not, are the philosophical descendants of Sumner. One cannot understand Lincoln without understanding why he agreed with Sumner's goals while consistently opposing the strategy of the abolitionists. The abolitionists, Lincoln saw, were not primarily concerned with restricting or ending slavery. They were most concerned with self-righteous moral display. They wanted to be in the right and—as Sumner himself says—damn the consequences! In Lincoln's view, abolition was a noble sentiment, but abolitionist tactics, such as burning the Constitution and advocating violence, actually promoted the cause of slavery.

Let us answer the liberal critics by showing them why Lincoln's understanding of slavery, and his strategy for defeating it, were superior to that of Sumner and his modern-day followers. Lincoln knew that the statesman, unlike the moralist, cannot be content with making the case against slavery. He must find a way to implement his principles to the degree that circumstances permit. The key to understanding Lincoln is that he always found the meeting point between what was right in theory and what could be achieved in practice. He always sought the common denominator between what was good to do, and what the people would go along with. In a democratic society, this is the only legitimate way of advancing a moral agenda.

Consider the consummate skill with which Lincoln deflected the prejudices of his supporters without yielding to them. During the debates with Stephen Douglas in the race for the Illinois Senate, Douglas repeatedly accused Lincoln of believing that blacks and whites were intellectually equal, of endorsing full political rights for blacks, and of supporting "amalgamation" or intermarriage between the races. If these charges could be sustained, if widespread numbers of people believed them to be true, then Lincoln's career was over. Even in the free state of Illinois—as throughout the North—there was widespread opposition to full political and social equality for blacks.

So how did Lincoln handle this difficult situation? He used a series of artfully conditional responses. "Certainly the Negro is not our equal in color—perhaps not in many other respects; still, in the right to put into his mouth the bread that his own hands have earned, he is the equal of every other man. In pointing out that more has been given to you, you cannot be justified in taking away the little which has been given to him. If God gave him but little, that little let him enjoy." Notice how little Lincoln concedes to prevailing prejudice. Lincoln never acknowledges black inferiority; he merely concedes the possibility. And the thrust of his argument is that even if blacks are inferior, this is no warrant for taking away their rights.

Or again, facing the charge of racial amalgamation, Lincoln says, "I protest against that counterfeit logic which concludes that because I do not want a black woman for a slave, I must necessarily want her for a wife." Lincoln is not saying that he wants, or does not want, a black woman for his wife. He is neither supporting nor opposing racial intermarriage. He is simply saying that from his anti-slavery position it does not follow that he endorses racial amalgamation. Elsewhere Lincoln turned anti-black prejudices against Douglas by saying that slavery was the institution that had produced the greatest racial intermixing and the largest number of mulattoes.

Lincoln was exercising the same prudent statesmanship when he wrote his famous letter to Horace Greeley. Here is what Lincoln said, "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union. 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." Lincoln wrote this letter on August 22, 1862, a year and a half after the Civil War broke out, when the South was gaining momentum and the outcome was far from certain. From the time of secession, Lincoln was desperately eager to prevent border-states like Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri from seceding. These states had slavery, and Lincoln knew that if the issue of the war was cast as an issue over slavery, his chances of keeping the border-states in the union were slim. And if all the border-states seceded, Lincoln was convinced that the cause of the union would be gravely imperiled.

Moreover, Lincoln was acutely aware that many people in the North were vehemently anti-black and saw themselves as fighting to save their country, rather than to free slaves. Lincoln framed the case against the Confederacy in terms of saving the union in order to maintain his coalition—a coalition whose victory was essential anti-slavery cause. Ultimately it was because of Lincoln that slavery came to an end. This is why the neo-Confederates can never forgive him.

In my view, Lincoln was the true "philosophical statesman," one who was truly good and truly wise. Standing in front of his critics, Lincoln is a colossus, and all of the Lilliputian arrows hurled at him bounce harmlessly to the ground. It is hard to put any other president—not even Washington—in the same category as Lincoln. He is simply the greatest practitioner of democratic statesmanship that America and the world have yet produced.

TDR 25: Dinesh D'Souza: Lincoln's Statesmanship

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