For whatever reason, I have never noticed that the anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg was on July 1-3. So yesterday was the 150th anniversary. It was the turning point of the Civil War.
The Gettysburg Address was not delivered until four months later, but in it Lincoln built on the fact that the battle was over on July 4. The South wanted to argue from the Constitution that it could have slaves and even leave the Union as states if it wanted. Lincoln pushed back to the more fundamental principles of the Declaration of Independence. "All men are created equal" and the Union was for "for the people," meaning all the people, not just the ones in power.
As one article put it, prior to the Civil War, we were "these United States." After the Civil War, we were "the United States." The Civil War sealed us as a nation. Now we cannot be divided. No state could ever secede now and would be foolhardy even to think of it given the advantages of being connected with the broader nation.
The spirit of Gettysburg is a far more noble spirit to commemorate than the spirit of independence. It is the spirit of coming together rather than the spirit of breaking apart. Lincoln reached into the Declaration of Independence and seized the principle that slaves were equal to any other human being in value. It is a sign of the Constitution's imperfection that it had not fully played out this insight.
Rights are not absolute. They are tempered by the rights of others. Living together in society always involves the surrender of some rights in order to receive the greater benefit of living together in a just society. I agree not to kill you and in turn receive an assurance that you will not kill me. Talk of state's rights has almost always been the ignoble attempt to escape these principles of Gettysburg.
Lincoln's assassination was far more horrific than just the death of a great man. It allowed Andrew Johnson to muck up the next hundred years. The freed slaves were left to a freedom with no power to act on it, perhaps a worse state than before in many cases. Lincoln would not have let that happen, and Johnson is usually in the running for the worst president of US history. And yes, he was a state's rights kind of guy.
So let no celebration of Independence Day pretend that we are in the situation of the revolutionaries of 1776. We have representation. We as a whole are the ones making the decisions--through the people we elect--not some foreign power detached from us. Most of the complaints we make are when the majority vote differently than we want or when the justice system keeps us from using our freedoms to impinge on the freedoms of others.
The theory of the United States remains sound, even if it hits some rough spots from time to time in the implementation.
Showing posts with label Abraham Lincoln. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Abraham Lincoln. Show all posts
Thursday, July 04, 2013
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Lincoln, "Lure of Politics" 2
I'm in the third chapter of Team of Rivals about Lincoln and his cabinet team of Republican rivals.
Previous posts:
1. Lead up to election
2. Family background of Lincoln and rivals
3a. Lure of Politics for Edward Bates
Again, the third chapter talks about the entrance of the four men of the book into politics. This week I read the section of the chapter on William Seward. I also saw the movie Lincoln by Spielberg this past weekend. Seward's character in the movie was not as I imagined him, so I'll bracket that image as I continue reading in this book by Doris Kearns Goodwin.
Seward, if you remember, was the governor of New York for 2 terms (1838-42). He was a Whig, the precursor to the Republican party. It is quite interesting to me that so many of the values of the Republican party back then are more the values of the Democratic party right now. I resonate strongly with the values of the original Republican party and am one of the many lifetime Republicans who is quite alienated by the party's emphases right now.
For example, the Whigs/Republicans stood for things like
- unionism (versus excessive state's rights),
- internal improvements (roads, bridges, infrastructure--things that helped markets back then),
- anti-slavery (and thus pro-the rights of disempowered groups that today would translate into civil rights, immigration rights, and the pro-life movement as long as it takes seriously the lives of the women having the babies as well)
- better public schools
Seward seemed to wrestle significantly with balancing his political ambitions with his devotion to family. His wife did not travel with him to the state house in New York and their relationship seemed to falter as an ambiguous friend of Seward (Tracy) was at first smothered Seward himself and then got too friendly with his wife Francis.
Seward was a principled man. He was strongly against slavery and in fact hurt New York's trade with Virginia by refusing to turn over two freed slaves who had tried to smuggle a runaway slave out of Virginia. He did allow the runaway to be returned, following the Constitution.
He got into problems with strong anti-catholics by trying to provide education for Irish and German catholic immigrants. This made him an enemy of the "nativists" and possibly lost him the Republican nomination won by Lincoln.
Horace Greeley wrote of his second election as governor that he would "henceforth be honored more for the three thousand votes he has lost, considering the causes, than for all he has received in his life" (84). Seward lost those votes for his stand against slavery and for providing education to all, even dirty, no good immigrants.
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Lincoln, "Lure of Politics" 1
I'm in the third chapter of Team of Rivals about Lincoln and his cabinet team of Republican rivals.
Previous posts:
1. Lead up to election
2. Family background of Lincoln and rivals
The third chapter talks about the entrance of the four men of the book into politics. In my attempt to die before finishing the book, I only got through the material on Edward Bates this week.
Not much to say about Bates except that he lived in Missouri through the days of the Missouri Compromise, whereby Missouri could come into the US as a slave state as long as Maine came in as a free state. It was a compromise worked out not least by Henry Clay of Kentucky in 1820.
Bates was in Missouri during the Dred Scott case, where Dred Scott sued for his freedom as a slave since he had lived in free states and would therefore by the law of those states have become free while living there. The Missouri Supreme Court disagreed. One of Bates' sisters was married to one of the judges who dissented with the judgment. When DS went to the Supreme Court and they denied Dred his freedom, it in effect ruled the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional and moved the country closer to war.
Bates was a moderate. His family had owned slaves and he sold them rather than freed them. He became well known in the national debate over an internal improvements bill vetoed by President James K. Polk. The Democrats opposed it and the Whigs favored it (interesting how the positions are now reversed, since the Whigs effectively became the Republicans. Obama's SOTU called for money to fix national infrastructure, a proposal that faces a dubious future in the Republican controlled House).
Bates did such a good job presiding over a national convention on the issue and spoke so well for moderation and compromise that it pushed him into the public eye as someone who should be part of the national conversation. Lincoln was also at the convention and distinguished himself in his rebuttals of Democratic arguments against internal improvements.
Seward is up next in the chapter. If you need a placeholder for him, he's the one that bought Alaska for the US from Russia, known as "Seward's folly" at the time.
Previous posts:
1. Lead up to election
2. Family background of Lincoln and rivals
The third chapter talks about the entrance of the four men of the book into politics. In my attempt to die before finishing the book, I only got through the material on Edward Bates this week.
Not much to say about Bates except that he lived in Missouri through the days of the Missouri Compromise, whereby Missouri could come into the US as a slave state as long as Maine came in as a free state. It was a compromise worked out not least by Henry Clay of Kentucky in 1820.
Bates was in Missouri during the Dred Scott case, where Dred Scott sued for his freedom as a slave since he had lived in free states and would therefore by the law of those states have become free while living there. The Missouri Supreme Court disagreed. One of Bates' sisters was married to one of the judges who dissented with the judgment. When DS went to the Supreme Court and they denied Dred his freedom, it in effect ruled the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional and moved the country closer to war.
Bates was a moderate. His family had owned slaves and he sold them rather than freed them. He became well known in the national debate over an internal improvements bill vetoed by President James K. Polk. The Democrats opposed it and the Whigs favored it (interesting how the positions are now reversed, since the Whigs effectively became the Republicans. Obama's SOTU called for money to fix national infrastructure, a proposal that faces a dubious future in the Republican controlled House).
Bates did such a good job presiding over a national convention on the issue and spoke so well for moderation and compromise that it pushed him into the public eye as someone who should be part of the national conversation. Lincoln was also at the convention and distinguished himself in his rebuttals of Democratic arguments against internal improvements.
Seward is up next in the chapter. If you need a placeholder for him, he's the one that bought Alaska for the US from Russia, known as "Seward's folly" at the time.
Wednesday, February 06, 2013
Lincoln, "Longing to Rise"
Only now finishing the second chapter of Team of Rivals. Wrote about the first chapter before. At this rate, I'll finish the book in 2015.
The second chapter talks about the backgrounds of the four key players in the book, Seward, Chase, Bates, and Lincoln. Seward grew up in New York to privilege. He left Union College to work in Georgia his senior year because his father cut off the purse strings. He came back to be valedictorian.
It was clear from this chapter that the 1800s were a century of intimate male attachments that weren't sexual. I remember the late Michael Vasey of Cranmer Hall at St. John's College saying that one of the costs of the sexualization of intimacy in the late twentieth century was the loss of intimate male relationships. Such things are inevitably interpreted sexually today.
Seward was used to coming first. He went into law. He didn't, however, have the knack at intonation in speaking. Of all the rivals, his was the picture perfect life, even though he wouldn't attain the presidency. His life had the least death. The most comfort. The most leisure.
Chase was such a tortured soul. His father made a risky business venture in the War of 1812, lost the family fortune. Then he died when Chase was only nine. He was parceled to a bishop uncle in Ohio who had little of nurture to him and plenty of harsh rigor.
Chase seemed to walk a tortured balance between not being good enough and being better than everyone else. He was far too serious. He didn't read novels. Went into law, nurtured by a man above his station (he would have gone for the Wirt's daughter but he wasn't socially worthy).
His first wife died after childbirth (they were still stupidly practicing blood letting back then, so frustrating). He feared she did not make it to heaven and he became legalistically religious thereafter, apparently. His second wife died of tuberculosis. His third died also and he stopped remarrying. He lost two daughters. The omnipresence of death in the 1800s really came through in this chapter.
Bates was born in Virginia. His father died when he was 11. Eventually, he ended up going west following his older brother Frederick, whom Jefferson appointed secretary of the new Missouri territory. Like the others, he became a lawyer. He moved his family to Missouri. This line was fun: "To cross the wilds of Illinois and Indiana, a guide was necessary" (46). :-)
Lincoln came from nothing. His father was illiterate and resented his interest in reading and telling stories he'd heard. His mother died of "milk sickness" when Lincoln was 9. His beloved older sister died in childbirth. She had taken care of him for months in Indiana when he was 12 while his father went back to Kentucky to bring back a new wife. At that time Indiana was "a wild region where the panther's scream, filled the night with fear and bears preyed on the swine" (48).
He was raised to be a man of melancholic temperament yet with a good sense of humor. I like him. He was completely self-taught. He read anything he could get his hands on.
He moved to New Salem, Illinois. An early love died possibly of typhoid. He went into a major funk. Although Lincoln believed in an omnipotent God, it's not clear he believed in heaven. The same is true of Seward.
Then Lincoln moved to Springfield. He became close friends with Joshua Speed, perhaps his closest friend for the rest of his life.
The second chapter talks about the backgrounds of the four key players in the book, Seward, Chase, Bates, and Lincoln. Seward grew up in New York to privilege. He left Union College to work in Georgia his senior year because his father cut off the purse strings. He came back to be valedictorian.
It was clear from this chapter that the 1800s were a century of intimate male attachments that weren't sexual. I remember the late Michael Vasey of Cranmer Hall at St. John's College saying that one of the costs of the sexualization of intimacy in the late twentieth century was the loss of intimate male relationships. Such things are inevitably interpreted sexually today.
Seward was used to coming first. He went into law. He didn't, however, have the knack at intonation in speaking. Of all the rivals, his was the picture perfect life, even though he wouldn't attain the presidency. His life had the least death. The most comfort. The most leisure.
Chase was such a tortured soul. His father made a risky business venture in the War of 1812, lost the family fortune. Then he died when Chase was only nine. He was parceled to a bishop uncle in Ohio who had little of nurture to him and plenty of harsh rigor.
Chase seemed to walk a tortured balance between not being good enough and being better than everyone else. He was far too serious. He didn't read novels. Went into law, nurtured by a man above his station (he would have gone for the Wirt's daughter but he wasn't socially worthy).
His first wife died after childbirth (they were still stupidly practicing blood letting back then, so frustrating). He feared she did not make it to heaven and he became legalistically religious thereafter, apparently. His second wife died of tuberculosis. His third died also and he stopped remarrying. He lost two daughters. The omnipresence of death in the 1800s really came through in this chapter.
Bates was born in Virginia. His father died when he was 11. Eventually, he ended up going west following his older brother Frederick, whom Jefferson appointed secretary of the new Missouri territory. Like the others, he became a lawyer. He moved his family to Missouri. This line was fun: "To cross the wilds of Illinois and Indiana, a guide was necessary" (46). :-)
Lincoln came from nothing. His father was illiterate and resented his interest in reading and telling stories he'd heard. His mother died of "milk sickness" when Lincoln was 9. His beloved older sister died in childbirth. She had taken care of him for months in Indiana when he was 12 while his father went back to Kentucky to bring back a new wife. At that time Indiana was "a wild region where the panther's scream, filled the night with fear and bears preyed on the swine" (48).
He was raised to be a man of melancholic temperament yet with a good sense of humor. I like him. He was completely self-taught. He read anything he could get his hands on.
He moved to New Salem, Illinois. An early love died possibly of typhoid. He went into a major funk. Although Lincoln believed in an omnipotent God, it's not clear he believed in heaven. The same is true of Seward.
Then Lincoln moved to Springfield. He became close friends with Joshua Speed, perhaps his closest friend for the rest of his life.
Wednesday, January 02, 2013
Lincoln, Team of Rivals 1
One of my Christmas presents was Doris Kearns Goodwin's new book on Lincoln, Team of Rivals. It's about his presidency, with the new angle of showing how he interacted with his team--Seward, Chase, Bates, and others.
The first chapter is about the day of the Republican nomination: May 18, 1860. No one expected Lincoln to be the nomination. His strategy was to be everyone's second favorite, and then to hope that all the leads would cancel each other out. He also had the strategy of not being offensive to anyone.
It was a quite effective strategy and of course it worked. He was not nearly as famous as the other candidates. He had only one stint in the House of Representatives and had failed in the previous two elections for Senate. Most people from outside Illinois would have had someone else as their favorite.
So if Seward didn't become the Republican nominee on the first ballot, Lincoln had a shot. Seward, and Chase for that matter, were the more hard core abolitionist candidates. But Lincoln reflected the founding position of the Republican Party--that slavery should be confined to the south and not allowed going forward in the West. Lincoln, along with Bates, was thus the moderate in the Republican field.
_____
I like Lincoln, from his messy office to the fact that he consistently made others laugh despite a melancholic personality. I like his pragmatism. I imagine I would have taken the same position politically as a realist at the time.
The first chapter is about the day of the Republican nomination: May 18, 1860. No one expected Lincoln to be the nomination. His strategy was to be everyone's second favorite, and then to hope that all the leads would cancel each other out. He also had the strategy of not being offensive to anyone.
It was a quite effective strategy and of course it worked. He was not nearly as famous as the other candidates. He had only one stint in the House of Representatives and had failed in the previous two elections for Senate. Most people from outside Illinois would have had someone else as their favorite.
So if Seward didn't become the Republican nominee on the first ballot, Lincoln had a shot. Seward, and Chase for that matter, were the more hard core abolitionist candidates. But Lincoln reflected the founding position of the Republican Party--that slavery should be confined to the south and not allowed going forward in the West. Lincoln, along with Bates, was thus the moderate in the Republican field.
_____
I like Lincoln, from his messy office to the fact that he consistently made others laugh despite a melancholic personality. I like his pragmatism. I imagine I would have taken the same position politically as a realist at the time.
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