WEBVTT NOTE Rethinking Lincoln 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.500 I first came under Professor Wilson's influence and tutelage about eight years ago at the University of South Carolina. 2 00:00:07.500 --> 00:00:12.500 As I was sitting there, it became obvious to me that he had certainly rubbed off on me. 3 00:00:12.500 --> 00:00:17.000 And I think you'll find the same thing to be true. 4 00:00:17.000 --> 00:00:27.500 In the nearly 130 years since his extraordinary death, Abraham Lincoln has been transfigured into an unassailable icon of the American Union. 5 00:00:27.500 --> 00:00:35.500 widely unpopular in his own day, and like any politician, the object of caricature, scorn and ridicule, 6 00:00:35.500 --> 00:00:40.500 his reputation as a savior of the Union has since been secured. 7 00:00:40.500 --> 00:00:45.500 He is now enshrined in his own marble temple, surrounded by his sacred texts, 8 00:00:45.500 --> 00:00:53.500 and gazing serenely past the Washington Monument toward the imperial capital dome erected during his presidency. 9 00:00:53.500 --> 00:01:06.500 Befitting his place among the gods, his mortal deeds have become redemptive works of national righteousness. To doubt their wisdom or prudence or legacy is to entertain heresy. 10 00:01:06.500 --> 00:01:16.500 Lincoln's means of saving the Union have been locked away, removed from scrutiny as the relics of a national saint and martyr. 11 00:01:16.500 --> 00:01:22.380 As the late Mel Bradford observed, Lincoln has been placed beyond the reach of ordinary 12 00:01:22.380 --> 00:01:28.820 historical inquiry and assessment. In the popular mind, I should add perhaps even more 13 00:01:28.820 --> 00:01:34.060 so in the academic and political mind, to question Lincoln's method of preserving an 14 00:01:34.060 --> 00:01:41.640 American Union is to doubt the value of salvaging the Union at all, or worse, to hold some perverse 15 00:01:41.640 --> 00:01:45.640 The first wish that the United States had collapsed into anarchy in 1861 16 00:01:45.640 --> 00:01:49.640 were even to harbor a secret regret that slavery ever ended. 17 00:01:49.640 --> 00:01:53.640 Despite his enduring presence in the American pantheon, 18 00:01:53.640 --> 00:01:57.640 the immortality of his words carved in stone, 19 00:01:57.640 --> 00:02:01.640 and the consuming fire of his principles, 20 00:02:01.640 --> 00:02:05.640 his behavior as chief magistrate must be open to examination. 21 00:02:05.640 --> 00:02:09.640 Now I recognize, now I don't have to say this, 22 00:02:09.640 --> 00:02:17.640 I don't have to say this in this group I have come to see so far today, but I recognize that to tamper with his reputation may seem reckless. 23 00:02:17.640 --> 00:02:26.640 A thoughtless or even malicious attempt to destroy one of the few remaining sacred symbols in a cynical and iconoclastic age. 24 00:02:26.640 --> 00:02:34.640 But my primary concern is with his ideas and conduct. I leave his character and motivations to others. 25 00:02:34.640 --> 00:02:40.920 I seek only to re-think Lincoln's cost to the character of our Union, to the integrity 26 00:02:40.920 --> 00:02:46.000 of the Presidency as an institution, and to the nation's subsequent domestic and foreign 27 00:02:46.000 --> 00:02:48.000 policy. 28 00:02:48.000 --> 00:02:54.200 In his inaugural address in 1861, a speech which he wrapped carefully in the prescriptions 29 00:02:54.200 --> 00:03:01.240 of the Constitution, amid promises of goodwill and prudential restraint and warnings of perpetual 30 00:03:01.240 --> 00:03:08.240 and the Federal Union and Firm Resolve, Lincoln inserted a rather odd word of comfort to the distressed self. 31 00:03:08.240 --> 00:03:12.240 He offered this ironic reassurance, quote, 32 00:03:12.240 --> 00:03:19.240 While the people retain their virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, 33 00:03:19.240 --> 00:03:25.240 can very seriously injure the government in the short space of four years. 34 00:03:25.240 --> 00:03:30.240 His presidency posed no threat to the Old Republic as embodied in the Constitution, he promised. 35 00:03:30.240 --> 00:03:36.240 And surely, even if it did, the good people of the United States would see to it that he was kept in line. 36 00:03:36.240 --> 00:03:40.240 And in four years, they would have the opportunity to remove him from office. 37 00:03:40.240 --> 00:03:47.240 What injury could this humble rail splitter possibly inflict on the country in so short a time? 38 00:03:47.240 --> 00:03:57.240 Well, the tremendous physical injury of Lincoln's war against his own people in the cost of lives and property is well known, as Professor Wilson mentioned. 39 00:03:57.240 --> 00:04:03.240 More than 600,000 dead, perhaps 20 billion dollars in wealth destroyed. 40 00:04:03.240 --> 00:04:11.240 But beyond this immediate and visible cost reaches the legacy of Abraham Lincoln's reasoning and his conduct as president. 41 00:04:11.240 --> 00:04:17.240 His harm to the limited constitutional government of the Founder's design. 42 00:04:17.240 --> 00:04:24.120 I want to argue that in the course of saving the Union, he destroyed two confederacies, 43 00:04:24.120 --> 00:04:32.260 the one born in 1861 and the one born in 1787. Lincoln uprooted the Old Republic in part 44 00:04:32.260 --> 00:04:37.860 by substituting for the actual early history of the Union his own version of the American 45 00:04:37.860 --> 00:04:44.660 founding. Understanding Lincoln as historian is fundamental to understanding his behavior 46 00:04:44.660 --> 00:04:52.020 in the Crisis of 1861 and his Refounding of a Consolidated Union. 47 00:04:52.020 --> 00:04:57.320 Employing a selective and ultimately misleading version of the founding, Lincoln proposed 48 00:04:57.320 --> 00:05:02.780 in his first inaugural that the life of the Union dated from at least the moment the colonies 49 00:05:02.780 --> 00:05:10.240 had entered into association in 1774, and that it had been matured by both the Declaration 50 00:05:10.240 --> 00:05:18.000 of Independence and the Articles of Confederation, only to emerge more perfect in the Constitution. 51 00:05:18.000 --> 00:05:23.080 The pre-existing Union had in fact created the Constitution, and not the Constitution 52 00:05:23.080 --> 00:05:30.420 the Union. This sequence of events was vital to Lincoln's argument against this Union and 53 00:05:30.420 --> 00:05:35.600 to his subsequent prosecution of the war, for he used this peculiar reading of history 54 00:05:35.600 --> 00:05:41.340 to reject the legality of secession and to declare any action to secure independence 55 00:05:41.340 --> 00:05:47.380 to be insurrectionary and revolutionary, in his words. 56 00:05:47.380 --> 00:05:51.760 Lincoln reiterated and developed this point further in his address to a special session 57 00:05:51.760 --> 00:05:58.300 of Congress in July of 1861. At that time, he argued that the states retained only those 58 00:05:58.300 --> 00:06:04.420 powers reserved to them by the Constitution, as if the Constitution were the authority 59 00:06:04.420 --> 00:06:09.420 Granting the Power to the Several States, instead of the other way around. 60 00:06:09.420 --> 00:06:14.100 He repeated his conviction that the Union preceded even the war for independence and 61 00:06:14.100 --> 00:06:19.100 that therefore it was an organic, perpetual, indivisible whole. 62 00:06:19.100 --> 00:06:26.520 The states, he told Congress, have their status in the Union, and they have no other legal 63 00:06:26.520 --> 00:06:27.520 status. 64 00:06:27.520 --> 00:06:33.300 Furthermore, he continued, quote, the Union gave each of them whatever of independence 65 00:06:33.300 --> 00:06:40.020 and Liberty it has. The Union is older than any of the states and in fact it created them as states." 66 00:06:42.260 --> 00:06:46.820 We need hardly know that this interpretation found no sympathy among the succeeding states. 67 00:06:47.380 --> 00:06:52.980 Confederate President Jefferson Davis responded directly to Lincoln's version of the founding 68 00:06:52.980 --> 00:06:59.060 when he reminded the Confederate Congress that the Constitution of 1787 had been, quote, 69 00:06:59.060 --> 00:07:21.060 The Union was not over or above the states, it was among them. Any powers the federal government enjoyed were delegated, and now the succeeding sovereign states had simply withdrawn these delegated powers. 70 00:07:21.060 --> 00:07:38.060 In Lincoln's mind, the Union was not only perpetual, antecedent to the Constitution and the creator of the very states that now sought to leave, it was also a spiritual entity, the mystical expression of a people. 71 00:07:38.060 --> 00:07:48.060 In so arguing, Lincoln held to a progressive view of history, of history as the development and unfolding of a redemptive plan. 72 00:07:48.060 --> 00:08:11.060 He and his fellow Unionists transformed the old Federation from a practical association of states intended for their mutual defense, order and prosperity, into the embodiment of an ideal, into the vehicle of an abstract principle, a principle that was outside of human experience and beyond human capacity. 73 00:08:11.060 --> 00:08:16.780 In his Gettysburg Address, in which I want you to note that he significantly dated the 74 00:08:16.780 --> 00:08:23.820 founding from 1776, before the Constitution, in that address, Lincoln claimed that the 75 00:08:23.820 --> 00:08:29.920 American Union had emerged in the course of history to achieve a transcendent purpose. 76 00:08:29.920 --> 00:08:37.820 The nation was, quote, dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. As historian 77 00:08:37.820 --> 00:08:44.420 William Charles Royster notes, I recommend this book to you, called The Destructive War. 78 00:08:44.420 --> 00:08:48.960 To the Unionist mind, the single people had been made a nation by their dedication to 79 00:08:48.960 --> 00:08:55.900 an overpowering idea. The succeeding states betrayed the nation's mystical purpose. A 80 00:08:55.900 --> 00:09:02.900 divided Union could not fulfill its divinely appointed role in history. Lincoln's progressive 81 00:09:02.900 --> 00:09:07.820 Lincoln's view of history and his devotion to America's transcendent mission was evident 82 00:09:07.820 --> 00:09:14.340 throughout his political career. As a young lawyer in 1842, Lincoln prophesied that the 83 00:09:14.340 --> 00:09:19.660 irrepressible advance of freedom that had begun with the American Revolution would one 84 00:09:19.660 --> 00:09:28.820 day, quote, grow and expand into the universal liberty of mankind, end quote. Later in 1857, 85 00:09:28.820 --> 00:09:35.540 He contended that the Declaration of Independence, a veritable manifesto up to equality in his 86 00:09:35.540 --> 00:09:40.460 skillful hands, had, quote, contemplated the progressive improvement in the condition of 87 00:09:40.460 --> 00:09:43.860 man everywhere. 88 00:09:43.860 --> 00:09:48.540 After his elevation to the presidency on a visit to Independence Hall, he again proclaimed 89 00:09:48.540 --> 00:09:55.060 that the declaration was a universal document that promised relief for all the worlds oppressed 90 00:09:55.060 --> 00:09:58.500 and had thereby given, as he phrased it, 91 00:09:58.500 --> 00:10:00.980 hope to the world for all future time. 92 00:10:02.380 --> 00:10:05.420 Once again, in 1862, he warned that history 93 00:10:05.420 --> 00:10:07.260 had placed an inescapable burden 94 00:10:07.260 --> 00:10:09.140 on the people of the United States 95 00:10:09.140 --> 00:10:11.780 to preserve liberty, not just for themselves 96 00:10:11.780 --> 00:10:16.500 and their posterity, but also for a watching world. 97 00:10:16.500 --> 00:10:18.140 In Lincoln's expansive vision, 98 00:10:18.140 --> 00:10:22.140 the Union side was compelled by the heavy hand of history 99 00:10:22.140 --> 00:10:24.260 to extend freedom's dominion 100 00:10:24.260 --> 00:10:30.900 and, for the sake of that mission, to preserve the immortal union, the last best hope of 101 00:10:30.900 --> 00:10:38.580 earth. By his selective use of the American past, his devotion to the nation as an abstract 102 00:10:38.580 --> 00:10:44.220 proposition and his expansive vision of America's role in the world, Lincoln undermined the 103 00:10:44.220 --> 00:10:50.500 old federated republic. He rewrote the history of the founding and then waged total war to 104 00:10:50.500 --> 00:10:56.100 to see his version of the past vindicated by success. 105 00:10:56.100 --> 00:11:02.060 But in the course of subjugating the insurrectionary and revolutionary combination in the South, 106 00:11:02.060 --> 00:11:08.060 and in creating a unitary nation, he also compromised the integrity of the presidency 107 00:11:08.060 --> 00:11:15.500 as a constitutional office, first by invading the powers of the other two branches and then 108 00:11:15.500 --> 00:11:21.000 and by assuming further powers nowhere mentioned in the Constitution. 109 00:11:21.000 --> 00:11:25.100 He may have claimed, and indeed he did, that in the midst of an unprecedented national 110 00:11:25.100 --> 00:11:29.280 crisis necessity knew no law. 111 00:11:29.280 --> 00:11:34.520 But the Constitution, in fact, recognized the possibility of emergencies and delegated 112 00:11:34.520 --> 00:11:39.600 necessary and appropriate powers to the President and to Congress. 113 00:11:39.600 --> 00:11:45.560 As the historian Clinton Rossiter wrote, quote, the Constitution looks to the maintenance 114 00:11:45.560 --> 00:11:52.560 of the pattern of regular government even in the most stringent of crises. 115 00:11:52.560 --> 00:11:55.720 But Lincoln acted alone. 116 00:11:55.720 --> 00:12:01.080 From the fall of Fort Sumter in April 1861 to the convening of a special session of Congress 117 00:12:01.080 --> 00:12:06.040 in July, President Lincoln ruled by decree. 118 00:12:06.040 --> 00:12:11.760 On his own initiative and authority, he commenced hostilities against the Confederacy. 119 00:12:11.760 --> 00:12:18.480 For 11 weeks, that spring and early summer, Lincoln exercised dictatorial power, combining 120 00:12:18.480 --> 00:12:24.460 within his own person the executive, legislative, and judicial powers of the national government 121 00:12:24.460 --> 00:12:26.360 in Washington. 122 00:12:26.360 --> 00:12:30.840 In his inaugural speech in March, he had announced that the Union had the right and the will 123 00:12:30.840 --> 00:12:33.000 to preserve itself. 124 00:12:33.000 --> 00:12:38.600 He promised to secure federal property in the seceding states, to collect all duties, and 125 00:12:38.600 --> 00:12:45.080 to deliver the mails. All steps short of invasion, but intended nevertheless to subjugate the 126 00:12:45.080 --> 00:12:52.080 sound. He assumed so-called war powers, a familiar feature of the modern presidency, 127 00:12:52.080 --> 00:13:01.920 but then really a novelty. He proceeded to wage war without a declaration from Congress. 128 00:13:01.920 --> 00:13:06.440 Upon the loss of Fort Sumter and Charleston Harbor, Lincoln issued a proclamation calling 129 00:13:06.440 --> 00:13:13.480 out a militia of 75,000 troops in order to suppress combinations and to enforce the laws, 130 00:13:13.480 --> 00:13:19.480 as he said, careful to use constitutional language and to frame the decree as an urgent 131 00:13:19.480 --> 00:13:26.480 measure against an insurrection. Jefferson Davis interpreted this very call for troops 132 00:13:26.480 --> 00:13:33.920 to be a declaration of war, noting also that it was manifestly unconstitutional, the exercise 133 00:13:33.920 --> 00:13:41.920 of an expressly legislative power. And President Davis had the facts on his side. The Constitution 134 00:13:41.920 --> 00:13:48.000 lists among the powers of Congress the authority, quote, to provide for calling forth the militia 135 00:13:48.000 --> 00:13:53.040 to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions. 136 00:13:53.040 --> 00:13:59.760 Even though Lincoln repeatedly defined a secession as an insurrection and as an obstruction of 137 00:13:59.760 --> 00:14:06.120 law, the Constitution still stood in his way. 138 00:14:06.120 --> 00:14:10.640 Lincoln followed this decree four days later with a blockade of southern ports, which was 139 00:14:10.640 --> 00:14:16.520 then necessary to extend a week later to include Virginia and North Carolina. Again, Lincoln 140 00:14:16.520 --> 00:14:22.920 justified his action as an attempt to enforce the laws and to collect the revenues. Reasoning 141 00:14:22.920 --> 00:14:28.920 According to his logic that the South was still in the Union, he appealed to Article 142 00:14:28.920 --> 00:14:34.240 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, which states that duties had to be uniform throughout the 143 00:14:34.240 --> 00:14:40.600 United States. No section of the Union could be exempt from the tariffs. The blockade was 144 00:14:40.600 --> 00:14:48.220 a visible and potent declaration of Federal sovereignty. It also happened to be an act 145 00:14:48.220 --> 00:14:54.500 of War. Within days, Lincoln issued another proclamation, this time calling for more than 146 00:14:54.500 --> 00:15:02.460 40,000 volunteers and substantially increasing the size of the Army and the Navy. Again, 147 00:15:02.460 --> 00:15:09.020 this was a usurpation of Congress's constitutional powers clearly stated under Article 1. Lincoln 148 00:15:09.020 --> 00:15:14.300 further infringed on constitutional prerogatives by permitting the military to suspend habeas 149 00:15:14.300 --> 00:15:19.460 of Habeus Corpus. To be sure, the Constitution allows for the suspension of the writ of Habeus 150 00:15:19.460 --> 00:15:26.340 Corpus in cases of rebellion or invasion for the sake of public safety, that is in Article 151 00:15:26.340 --> 00:15:31.900 1, Section 9. But this extraordinary power is grouped under the responsibilities of the 152 00:15:31.900 --> 00:15:38.540 legislative branch. And Lincoln even expanded the suspension despite the objections from 153 00:15:38.540 --> 00:15:43.300 from Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Toney. 154 00:15:43.300 --> 00:15:49.260 When Lincoln finally convened Congress on July 4th, 1861, after much intentional delay 155 00:15:49.260 --> 00:15:54.860 – he wanted to act alone, and he did – he reviewed his actions to date and sought formal 156 00:15:54.860 --> 00:16:00.100 legislative recognition for the executive decrees he had issued and the broad powers 157 00:16:00.100 --> 00:16:06.220 he had assumed, never acknowledging, however, that he needed such approval. 158 00:16:06.220 --> 00:16:10.900 He admitted that his proclamations calling out the militia, blockading the southern ports 159 00:16:10.900 --> 00:16:16.780 and increasing the armed forces had been of dubious legality. 160 00:16:16.780 --> 00:16:23.100 But like the Old Testament story of Aaron trying to explain the golden calf, this tribune 161 00:16:23.100 --> 00:16:28.420 of the people appealed to popular demand and public necessity. 162 00:16:28.420 --> 00:16:30.420 He had had no choice. 163 00:16:30.420 --> 00:16:34.420 He explained that he knew Congress would have approved of these measures anyway if it had 164 00:16:34.420 --> 00:16:38.060 had been in session, and that he had not ventured, quote, 165 00:16:38.060 --> 00:16:45.060 beyond the constitutional competency of Congress. 166 00:16:45.060 --> 00:16:48.360 He also finessed his suspension of habeas corpus 167 00:16:48.360 --> 00:16:53.060 by noting that it had been used very sparingly, his words, 168 00:16:53.060 --> 00:16:55.960 and claimed that, after all, the Constitution was really unclear 169 00:16:55.960 --> 00:17:00.060 as to who had the power to suspend the privilege. 170 00:17:00.060 --> 00:17:04.220 He made a compelling, pragmatic argument as well. 171 00:17:04.220 --> 00:17:08.840 Did he have been strupulous in observing the details of the Constitution while a rebellion 172 00:17:08.840 --> 00:17:16.680 destroyed the Union? Were he demanded, quote, all the laws but one to go unexecuted and 173 00:17:16.680 --> 00:17:23.420 the government itself to go to pieces, lest that one be violated? In a sense, he was asking 174 00:17:23.420 --> 00:17:30.500 if the Constitution had any real meaning apart from the Union. But it should also be considered, 175 00:17:30.500 --> 00:17:37.740 In Calhoun's sense, whether the Union had any meaning apart from the Constitution. 176 00:17:37.740 --> 00:17:42.980 For the moment, Lincoln had operated largely within the bounds of the Constitution. He 177 00:17:42.980 --> 00:17:49.180 had not exercised authority beyond the delegated powers of the Federal Government as a whole. 178 00:17:49.180 --> 00:17:53.940 But over the next four years, in his capacity as Commander-in-Chief, Lincoln exercised powers 179 00:17:53.940 --> 00:17:59.840 not delegated by the Constitution to any branch of government. Powers that can properly be 180 00:17:59.840 --> 00:18:08.540 called Dictatorial. The list of these, shall we say, irregularities is long. Lincoln imposed 181 00:18:08.540 --> 00:18:17.400 martial law and confiscated property, conscripted the railroads and telegraph lines, spent funds 182 00:18:17.400 --> 00:18:21.880 from the Treasury, a couple million dollars in fact, without the benefit of congressional 183 00:18:21.880 --> 00:18:30.280 Appropriation. He arranged for a $250 million loan on his own authority, imprisoned somewhere 184 00:18:30.280 --> 00:18:36.640 between 20,000 and 30,000 civilians without due process, arrested and even banished troublesome 185 00:18:36.640 --> 00:18:43.160 political foes, and he suppressed more than 300 newspapers and at times restrained speech 186 00:18:43.160 --> 00:18:49.480 and assembly. And this just touches the surface. Lincoln also by executive decree initiated 187 00:18:49.480 --> 00:18:55.800 Conscription and Instituted Rules of Warfare, again in direct violation of the delegated 188 00:18:55.800 --> 00:19:00.480 powers of the Constitution under Article 1, Section 8. 189 00:19:00.480 --> 00:19:06.800 Moreover, as Reconstruction began during the war, Lincoln outlined a detailed scheme for 190 00:19:06.800 --> 00:19:12.440 Reconstruction. He created provisional courts, invented the Office of Military Governor, 191 00:19:12.440 --> 00:19:19.440 an office you won't find in the Constitution, and he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. 192 00:19:19.480 --> 00:19:32.480 Now, whatever its merits as a war measure, the emancipation achieved by executive decree what had never been understood to be within the capacity of the central government in any of its branches. 193 00:19:32.480 --> 00:19:41.480 This act of immediate, uncompensated emancipation amounted to an extraordinary exercise of arbitrary executive power. 194 00:19:41.480 --> 00:19:44.480 Lincoln later acknowledged that it had, quote, 195 00:19:44.480 --> 00:19:50.480 no constitutional or legal justification except as a military measure. 196 00:19:50.480 --> 00:19:55.480 In defining the Union as an organic whole, in giving it a particular history, 197 00:19:55.480 --> 00:20:01.480 in reuniting the Union by force, and in expanding the powers of the presidency, 198 00:20:01.480 --> 00:20:07.480 Lincoln cleared the way for the triumph of national consolidation during and after the war. 199 00:20:07.480 --> 00:20:16.480 He ended meaningful state sovereignty and removed the states as an effective check on national power and potential tyranny. 200 00:20:16.480 --> 00:20:27.480 The long and complicated debate over the nature of the Union, the long struggle between localism and consolidation was decided by force of arms. 201 00:20:27.480 --> 00:20:35.480 With the impediments of states' rights removed, the old Hamiltonian dream of an activist central government would be fulfilled. 202 00:20:35.480 --> 00:20:43.480 And this was to be a further enduring cost of Abraham Lincoln and his party to the American Republic. 203 00:20:43.480 --> 00:20:52.480 From his days as a Whig in the Illinois legislature in the 1830s, Lincoln was on record as an advocate of costly internal improvements. 204 00:20:52.480 --> 00:20:59.480 He was a loyal disciple of Whig party leader Henry Clay and his so-called American system, 205 00:20:59.480 --> 00:21:05.480 which advocated national banking, internal improvements, and protective tariffs. 206 00:21:05.480 --> 00:21:10.480 As president, he explained his vision of an America that would serve the needs of the people. 207 00:21:10.480 --> 00:21:18.480 In that address to Congress in July 1861, he proclaimed that the Union was fighting for the survival of, 208 00:21:18.480 --> 00:21:26.980 quote, that form and substance of government whose leading object is to elevate the condition 209 00:21:26.980 --> 00:21:34.460 of men and to extend equal opportunity. His vague vision of an energetic central government 210 00:21:34.460 --> 00:21:39.980 is clear in his later recommendation of ambitious internal improvements and of a national banking 211 00:21:39.980 --> 00:21:45.780 system complete with inflationary paper currency. Under the political and social opportunities 212 00:21:45.780 --> 00:22:07.780 The subsidies afforded by the war, the Republicans crafted, and Lincoln approved, a raft of nationalist legislation, among them the income tax, subsidies to railroads, the bureaucratic Department of Agriculture, and protective tariffs for American business that reached 48 percent. 213 00:22:07.780 --> 00:22:13.040 Southern agrarian Andrew Lytle aptly summarized Lincoln's consolidationist ambitions when 214 00:22:13.040 --> 00:22:20.900 he wrote, quote, Lincoln had always been a Hamiltonian, saw that Hamiltonian's principles 215 00:22:20.900 --> 00:22:28.360 finally triumphed. In an unsympathetic biography of Lincoln in 1931, the noted American poet 216 00:22:28.360 --> 00:22:34.700 Edgar Lee Masters recognized the president's Hamiltonian disposition and noted one further 217 00:22:34.700 --> 00:22:45.700 and the other cost of Abraham Lincoln to our Republic, one that has more to do with his legacy than with his conduct as president, although the precedent is clearly there. 218 00:22:45.700 --> 00:22:54.700 Masters observed that Lincoln's name has been used ever since his death as one of the words of magic. 219 00:22:54.700 --> 00:22:58.500 The incantatory power of his name has been used to, quote, 220 00:22:58.500 --> 00:23:02.340 perpetuate and strengthen the kind of nation he forged, 221 00:23:02.340 --> 00:23:05.340 a nation of monopoly and privilege, 222 00:23:05.340 --> 00:23:08.460 and of imperialist appetite. 223 00:23:08.460 --> 00:23:12.940 Masters charge that Lincoln at heart had been an imperialist. 224 00:23:12.940 --> 00:23:15.700 While fondly quoting the Declaration's sacred words 225 00:23:15.700 --> 00:23:18.740 about the equality of mankind, quote, 226 00:23:18.740 --> 00:23:21.580 Lincoln had ignored and trampled its principles 227 00:23:21.580 --> 00:23:23.740 that governments derived their just powers 228 00:23:23.740 --> 00:23:27.300 and the Consent of the Governed." 229 00:23:27.300 --> 00:23:33.340 The Gettysburg address would have been impossible, the irony of it too absurd if Lincoln had 230 00:23:33.340 --> 00:23:38.620 chosen to quote the embarrassing phrase about the consent of the governed rather than the 231 00:23:38.620 --> 00:23:41.380 honeyed words about equality. 232 00:23:41.380 --> 00:23:47.380 As masters continued, quote, Lincoln at Gettysburg could not celebrate such a philosophy, for 233 00:23:47.380 --> 00:24:00.380 So that with all the original, if not perverted, view of things, he knew that it was on this field where the right to set up a new government had received its first deadly blow." 234 00:24:00.380 --> 00:24:05.380 The right of self-government had indeed perished on the battlefield of Gettysburg. 235 00:24:05.380 --> 00:24:12.380 Lincoln had not fulfilled the promise of the American founding, as he claimed he had betrayed it. 236 00:24:12.380 --> 00:24:16.380 But conquest certainly did not end with the South. 237 00:24:16.380 --> 00:24:25.380 The precedent of conquest and of the denial of self-government, as Masters sensed, had corrupted the character of our republic. 238 00:24:25.380 --> 00:24:35.380 Indeed, Masters charged that Lincoln's imperialist spirit had been behind the United States conquest of the Philippines, the end of the 19th century. 239 00:24:35.380 --> 00:24:44.380 Let me quote at length here. He draws a direct connection between the spirit of the Republican Party in the 1860s and in the 1890s. 240 00:24:44.380 --> 00:25:14.380 The abolitionists, the Charles Sumners and the Thaddeus Stevenses, who had no conception of liberty and the conscious imperialists who had no regard for it, were historically triumphant when McKinley, who was a major in Lincoln's army, by a military order, took over the entire Philippine islands and its execution resulted in the slaughter of 3,000 Filipinos near the walls of Manila. End quote. 241 00:25:14.380 --> 00:25:19.220 Following Lincoln's lead, the imperialists of the 1890s launched America upon the ways 242 00:25:19.220 --> 00:25:28.660 of world adventure and conquest. More will be said, much has already been said about other 243 00:25:28.660 --> 00:25:33.420 of America's adventures, its subsequent adventures, especially in the Spanish-American War. But 244 00:25:33.420 --> 00:25:38.980 let me say only for now that Lincoln lived on as the conscious inspiration for Woodrow 245 00:25:38.980 --> 00:25:45.100 Roger Wilson and his Progressive Army as they waged their war for righteousness by intervening 246 00:25:45.100 --> 00:25:50.100 into domestic and foreign affairs, singing the stanzas of the battle hymn of the republic 247 00:25:50.100 --> 00:25:57.420 as they marched. And Robert Penn Warren reminds us that it was not the image of Washington 248 00:25:57.420 --> 00:26:02.900 or Jefferson that was used to rally the American people during the Second World War but that 249 00:26:02.900 --> 00:26:08.820 of the beatified Lincoln. Generations since the war between the states have suffered the 250 00:26:08.820 --> 00:26:15.780 costs of Lincoln's destruction of the more modest old republic, with its regard for localism 251 00:26:15.780 --> 00:26:23.320 and states' rights, its sense of limits, and its relative freedom from foreign entanglement. 252 00:26:23.320 --> 00:26:28.300 While the tragedy of the war certainly must be measured as it was experienced in the loss 253 00:26:28.300 --> 00:26:35.300 of homes and sons, in unfathomable heartache, humiliation and spiritual anguish, it must 254 00:26:35.300 --> 00:26:40.420 must also be measured in its consequences for true liberty. 255 00:26:40.420 --> 00:26:45.820 Lincoln often described his task as the effort to salvage for the world at large the American 256 00:26:45.820 --> 00:26:51.900 experiment in majoritarianism, opportunity and egalitarian democracy. 257 00:26:51.900 --> 00:26:59.120 But what of the other American experiment, the original experiment in localism, federalism 258 00:26:59.120 --> 00:27:05.280 and Self-Rule, the losing side of Lincoln's progressive history. 259 00:27:05.280 --> 00:27:11.320 Surely this was the tradition worth preserving, the tradition now being discovered elsewhere 260 00:27:11.320 --> 00:27:18.320 in the world, the tradition to be reclaimed for ourselves and our posterity.