Abraham Lincoln - Feb. 12, 1809

Potrait of the President as a Young Man

Today is Abraham Lincoln's birthday, and it's also mine, and due to this historical coincidence I've always been interested in his Presidency and his leadership. These days, people on all sides of the political spectrum throw around Lincoln's name and try to take his mantle as their own, from Barack Obama ("But the life of a tall, gangly, self-made Springfield lawyer tells us that a different future is possible. He tells us that there is power in words. He tells us that there is power in conviction. That beneath all the differences of race and region, faith and station, we are one people. He tells us that there is power in hope.") to Rudy Giuliani, who had the gall to compare Bush to Lincoln this weekend:

The former New York City mayor came to Bush's defense as he promoted his White House candidacy at a California Republican convention. Drawing parallels between Iraq and America's Civil War, Giuliani compared Bush's political troubles to Abraham Lincoln's. When the Civil War was unpopular, Giuliani said, Lincoln "kept his eye ahead."

"He was able to say, 'I know my people are frustrated, and I know my people are angry at me.' " But after weighing public opinion, Lincoln had "that ability that a leader has — a leader like George Bush, a leader like Ronald Reagan — to look into the future," Giuliani said.

Lincoln's name is now a shibboleth that Presidents and aspiring Presidents attach to themselves when they want to prove to the nation that they would make a great leader. There's very little historical accuracy in these attempts, and it's important to get a clear picture of who Lincoln was, why he became President, and what he stood for.

I'm not going to be able to do all that in one blog post. But it's important to rebut this Republican revised image of Lincoln as a warrior king who showed no mercy to his enemies and dismissed his critics. Riiiight, let's conveniently forget that Lincoln spoke out at great political cost against James Polk's Mexican War. Let's forget that Lincoln, a neophyte in matters of war upon reaching the White House, actually took the time to learn military history and made himself a top strategist. Let's forget that he brought many of his fiercest critics into his war cabinet.

And let's not forget that he was profoundly saddened by the need to pit brother against brother in a civil war. From the second inaugural (h/t Yglesias):

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.
One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

Abraham Lincoln's primary concern was ridding the nation of the terrible and untenable burden of slavery, which divided this house of America against itself. He was unafraid to show the difference between those who would perpetuate slavery and those who would stand against it. And he drew back on history for his seminal Cooper Union speech, investigating the views of the original Founders in logical fashion, showing that a majority of them opposed the introduction of slavery into Federal territories. But this was a rhetorical device. In the most important parts of the Cooper Union speech, he spoke against intolerance, from those Southerners who hated him more than any candidate before or since. And in these phrases, these paragraphs, I think you can plainly see the allusion to the present day. Lincoln was unafraid to call things what they were, and to present it as folly.

And now, if they would listen - as I suppose they will not - I would address a few words to the Southern people.

I would say to them: - You consider yourselves a reasonable and a just people; and I consider that in the general qualities of reason and justice you are not inferior to any other people. Still, when you speak of us Republicans, you do so only to denounce us a reptiles, or, at the best, as no better than outlaws. You will grant a hearing to pirates or murderers, but nothing like it to "Black Republicans." In all your contentions with one another, each of you deems an unconditional condemnation of "Black Republicanism" as the first thing to be attended to. Indeed, such condemnation of us seems to be an indispensable prerequisite - license, so to speak - among you to be admitted or permitted to speak at all. Now, can you, or not, be prevailed upon to pause and to consider whether this is quite just to us, or even to yourselves? Bring forward your charges and specifications, and then be patient long enough to hear us deny or justify [...]

When you make these declarations, you have a specific and well-understood allusion to an assumed Constitutional right of yours, to take slaves into the federal territories, and to hold them there as property. But no such right is specifically written in the Constitution. That instrument is literally silent about any such right. We, on the contrary, deny that such a right has any existence in the Constitution, even by implication.

Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events [...]

These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly - done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated - we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas' new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us [...]

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT.

Abraham Lincoln, by refusing to budge or be silenced, by speaking his truth and trusting in the rightness of his beliefs, actually saved American democracy, and those who today would subvert American democracy are misappropriating his legacy for their own nefarious ends.

As Lincoln came to the helm, the very concept of democratic government was in peril. At Gettysburg he spoke immortal words of a "high resolve" that "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." These words are seen by many as a rhetorical flourish, but there is a deeper truth to them than most suppose. As Francis Lieber – one of the handful of European ex-revolutionaries who gathered around Lincoln - noted, this planet possessed a sole democracy that merited the name, and that was the United States. True, Europe had its enlightened monarchies, and in Switzerland there was a colorable democracy – but only one significant nation stood for freedom and a genuine democratic franchise, and that was the United States. Moreover, the challenge raised by the South was a mortal one, not only to the Union, but also to its most fundamental values, starting with human dignity, namely recognizing the humanity of those whom the Constitution shamefully called 3/5 persons. Lincoln's success in upholding the Union reinvigorated the notion of democracy, and must be attached to its resurgence globally in the second half of the 19th century. Lincoln thus rekindled a torch that had faltered soon after the revolution.

In the last six years, the noble legacy of America's greatest president has been used shamefully by the advocates of the new politics of American Empire. These folks have no real affection for Lincoln. Following the Straussian program, they seek to recraft American history and the legacy of American leaders to fit their own agenda. Hence, they have crafted a vision of a dark new Lincoln, a man intoxicated by the power of his office, who swept aside civil liberties and took great liberties with the Constitution in the exercise of his war powers. In sum, they have captured, and sought to glamorize, what may be the darkest and most doubtful elements of an indisputably great man. In truth there are many unsettling things that were done with a sense of urgent necessity in the course of the Civil War; things which seem difficult to reconcile with the vision of the man from Springfield. But it's plain first that the necessity claimed was legitimate and second that Lincoln was not happy in doing these things, that he did not seek to craft some new imperial order. Moreover, the hallmark of Lincoln's contribution to this war effort was a vision of humanity and justice, a repudiation of cruelty, and a denunciation of the use of military necessity as a doctrinal justification for excesses (all of which repose in his General Order No. 100 of April 23, 1863, the seminal document of international humanitarian law).

It is an accident of history that America's greatest, most peace-loving President presided over its bloodiest war. He was placed into uncertain times and was forced into a lot of uncomfortable judgments. But he was committed in his belief to repair this nation and set it on the right path. Hemmed in by a group of intolerant foes who would destroy the Republic to keep slaves in their fields, Lincoln did not equivocate or back down. And he taught us all a valuable lesson that served the Democratic Party well in 2006 and will continue to do so if they heed it.