Abraham Lincoln on Our Founders

The new view of the United States, as seen in The New York Times’ “1619 Project,” is that United States history rests on slavery and white supremacy and that “[o]ur democracy’s founding ideas were false when they were written.”  I disagree.  I do not think our Founders were liars and hypocrites when they wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  I think they were in a position where they had to compromise with a terrible evil or give up their hopes for a new country built on a new set of principles.  What they did, therefore, was to compromise, but to do it in a way that kept those ideals alive for the future.

It is easy, looking back at people in history, to judge them on today’s principles.  What at the time were principled positions now look, to some, like racism, sexism, prejudice – and worse.  I’m not going to argue that point here, though I wonder how our views will look to people a hundred or more years from now.

But back to the Founders.¹  To explain what they did, I refer to their best interpreter: Abraham Lincoln.  In a speech in Chicago on July 10, 1858, a little more than a month before the first Lincoln-Douglas debate, Lincoln² responded to comments that then-Senator Stephen Douglas made about Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech.  In the House Divided speech, Lincoln said:

“‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’  I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.  I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided.”

Douglas asked, in effect, why not.  The Union had been that way since 1776.  Why couldn’t it continue?

Lincoln responded to Douglas in his Chicago speech.  In doing so, he explained what the Founders had done in the Declaration and the Constitution – and why the 1619 Project, et al, are wrong:

“I am not, in the first place, unaware that this Government endured eighty-two years, half slave and half free.  I know that.  I am tolerably well acquainted with the history of the country, and I know that it has endured eighty-two years, half slave and half free.  I believe – and that is what I meant to allude to there – I believe it has endured because, during all that time, until the introduction of the Nebraska Bill,³ the public mind did rest, all the time, in the belief that slavery was in course of ultimate extinction.  That was what gave us the rest that we had through that period of eighty-two years; at least, so I believe.  I have always hated slavery, I think as much as much as any Abolitionist.  I have been an Old Line Whig.  I have always hated it, but I have always been quiet about it until this new era of the introduction of the Nebraska Bill began.  I always believed that everybody was against it, and that it was in the course of ultimate extinction. (Pointing to Mr. [Orville H.] Browning, who stood near by.) Browning thought so; the great mass of the nation have rested in the belief that slavery was in course of ultimate extinction.  They had reason so to believe.

The adoption of the Constitution and its attendant history led the people to believe so; and that such was the belief of the framers of the Constitution itself.  Why did those old men, about the time of adoption of the Constitution, decree that Slavery should not go into the new Territory, where it had not already gone?⁴  Why declare that within twenty years the African Slave Trade, by which slaves are supplied, might be cut off by Congress?  Why were all these acts?  I might enumerate more of these acts – but enough.  What were they but a clear indication that the framers of the Constitution intended and expected the ultimate extinction of that institution.  And now, when I say, as I said in my speech that Judge Douglas⁵ has quoted from, when I say that I think the opponents of slavery will resist the farther spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest with the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction, I only mean to say, that they will place it where the founders of this Government originally placed it.”

The Founders couldn’t abolish slavery in the whole country in 1776 or 1789 (regardless of what some people think today).  But what they could do, as Lincoln so eloquently put it, was to put it in a place where the public would see “it [was] in the course of ultimate extinction.”  Which it was.  It took much longer than one would have liked, and the American people did not follow through, after the Civil War, on the promise of freedom for those who had been slaves.⁶  But the Founders put the promise there, as the goal for the American people to aspire to.  I believe they did that on purpose.  They realized they could not get there themselves.  But they set it as the principle for those following them to work toward and judge themselves by.  Lincoln understood that.  So should we.
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¹ With respect to my point in the second paragraph of this post, consider that it wasn’t all that long ago that the Founders were called “the Founding Fathers.”
² While I normally call people by their highest position or at least use “Mr.” or “Ms.”, it just feels right to call them “Lincoln” and “Douglas” in this post.
³ The Kansas-Nebraska Act, which was introduced by Senator Douglas, passed in 1854 and provided, in effect, that each territory could decide for itself whether or not to have slavery.  There were a lot of arguments and disputes about the law.  I will not go into them here.
⁴ Lincoln is referring here to the Northwest Ordinance, which was adopted by the Congress under the Articles of Confederation in 1787.  It was greatly influenced by Thomas Jefferson, and it prohibited slavery in the Northwest Territory.
⁵ Stephen Douglas was referred to as “Judge Douglas” because he had been a member of the Illinois Supreme Court.
⁶ Some tried.  See, inter alia, the Fourteenth Amendment, Reconstruction generally, the Civil Rights Act of 1875, and more.  Sadly, there weren’t enough people and support to get it done.

Comments

[Bob]

Great post!