Rendering Unto Lincoln
“Now he belongs to the ages,” Edwin Stanton is supposed to have said, when he learned of President Lincoln’s death. In a trivial sense at least, Stanton was obviously correct. We have Lincoln’s face on the five-dollar bill—a bill that used to be worth more than a Happy Meal, before Lincoln’s disciples degraded the currency—and his grandiose monument in Washington, with a grotesque statue by the Transcendentalist sculptor-politician Daniel Chester French. We even used to celebrate Lincoln’s birthday as a federal holiday, but, now that there is no god but the 14th Amendment and Martin Luther King, Jr., is its prophet, poor Lincoln’s stock has sunk so low that he is lumped together with Millard Fillmore, U.S. Grant, Warren Harding, and Jimmy Carter—those paragons of American political life—in a generic Presidents Day, whose very name suggests that Americans are determined to forget their past. Why not an “American Patriotic Holidays Day” or a “World Religions Day”? I shudder to make this joke, knowing that this is a country where all bad jokes come true. (Did you catch the inauguration ceremony on television?)
In a deeper sense, though, the Lincoln years and their legacy represent the most significant revolution that the United States have undergone. We went from being a confederation of republics that minded their own business, and permitted farmers, merchants, and manufacturers to mind theirs, to a global empire run by stockjobbers, moneychangers, and Transcendentalist do-gooders, a Leviathan with wings that is forever busybodying at home and abroad. From a fairly homogeneous ethnic base—a British core with Northern European accretions—we have morphed into a multiethnic, multilingual, multicultural population in which no one, not even descendants of the oldest stock, knows or cares who he is. Leftists now rejoice that the White House will be presided over by someone whose middle name is Hussein and actually run by someone whose middle name is Israel. What a wicked country this was, when we had to be content with people named Washington, Adams, and Jefferson!
No sensible person can deny the reality of the transformation nor the fact that its first phase coincided with Lincoln’s administrations and those of his heirs and successors. James McPherson and other leftists exult in the revolution, while M.E. Bradford deplored it, but neither doubted that it happened. But how fair is it to blame Lincoln personally for what happened? Many of Lincoln’s cronies would have been puzzled by the allegation that the man they knew as a railroad lawyer and courthouse politician could have staged a revolution. Edwin Stanton, Lincoln’s dictatorial secretary of war who breathed the spirit of martial law against any and all opposition, might be imagined to have admired a President whose arbitrary ways and contempt for the Constitution gave him so much power, but Stanton’s early attitude toward Lincoln was little short of contempt, and, while he succeeded in overcoming—or at least concealing—his distaste, he and his boss were frequently at loggerheads. Like some other prominent players in Lincoln’s government (W.H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, and Charles Francis Adams, Sr.), Stanton probably did not think Lincoln was up to the job. Adams, leaving the country to take up his duties as ambassador to England, tried to interest the President in his sensitive mission but could not distract him from his absorption in “the distribution of offices.” Over a decade after Lincoln’s assassination, he still recalled the “moral, intellectual, and executive incompetency” displayed by Lincoln upon taking office.
In more recent years both Samuel Francis and David Donald (Lincoln’s most respectable apologist) have described an office-seeking money-grubbing politician who blundered his way into revolution. I am inclined to agree with them, though with this caveat: A man who pursues and attains an office for which he is unfit must bear the moral blame for the disasters that ensue.
If Lincoln’s primary fault was that mixture of ambition and incompetence that has characterized American politicians ever since, he was also a romantic who regarded himself as a Napoleonic character destined for greatness. Indulging in what David Donald calls “a rare moment of self-revelation,” Lincoln denigrated the petty politicians who would be content with a seat in Congress: “Such belong not to the family of the lion or the tribe of the eagle.” Routine honors would not satisfy “an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon”: “Towering genius disdains a beaten path. . . . It thirsts and burns for distinction; and if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves or enslaving free men.” Though we may question whether he did much to run up the former of these expenses, there can be no doubt about the latter.
Whatever conclusion one may come to about Lincoln’s personal responsibility for the revolution that has transformed America in the past century and a half, we can, at least, evaluate the influence of his rhetoric. As the late M.E. Bradford has shown, Lincoln, although a religious skeptic, cloaked his political agenda in a lofty religious language that tended to elevate politics above the mundane give and take of interests that found a nearly perfect expression in the Constitution. Setting aside that document, with its nice adjustment of checks and balances, its weighing of sectional and economic interests, its aspirations toward more perfect union muted by its respect for local peculiarities, Lincoln spoke of the Union with the mystical reverence that Christians reserve for the Holy Ghost. Before he came along, Yankee politicians like Daniel Webster had been purely pragmatic in overstating American unity: It was simply a canny means of advancing their own sectional interest, and thus, when they found themselves checked by opposition from the West and South, they were perfectly willing to compromise.
Lincoln and the other post-Christian Unionists, however, are a different story altogether. Invoking the Old Testament’s God of Battles, they sang “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah” as they sent 600,000 American soldiers and perhaps twice as many noncombatants (most of them black) to their graves. Some years ago, when I was debating Lincoln’s legacy, a graduate student asked if I did not think the war that freed the slaves was worth the cost. He was actually shocked that I did not think that hundreds of thousands of dead slaves would have agreed with him.
Lincoln was not an original political mind, and his rhetoric is an echo of the French Jacobin who treated mass murder as the noblest part of statecraft. It is in the French Revolution and its aftershocks that ideology began to take the place of religion as the formative rhetoric of Europe and North America. It hardly matters whether that rhetoric is nationalist—the Jacobins, too, celebrated la patrie—or globalist, communist, fascist, or democratist. In an ideological regime the citizens are called upon to sacrifice their private interests and the interests of family and friends to some magnificent abstraction like “liberty, equality, and fraternity,” the “glorious Union,” the dictatorship of the proletariat, the Aryan race, or the fascist republic of Italy. To be fair to the Italian Fascists, they were, perhaps, the least dedicated and (if one overlooks their North African adventures) the least bloodthirsty of ideologues.
Like Lincoln, Robespierre and St.-Just, Lenin and Stalin, and Hitler and Mussolini were anything but Christian, and it is the rejection of Christianity that is the hallmark of modern ideology. Despite recent attempts—as futile as they are foolish—to blame the horrors of modern war on Christianity, the plain truth is that most of these horrors, from the French to the Russian Revolution, from Abraham Lincoln to Pol Pot, were perpetrated by post-Christians, non-Christians, and anti-Christians. This is not because a cross around the neck is some kind of magic talisman that cures the wearer of the Old Adam’s tendency to act like a rogue gorilla. Men have learned to behave with some restraint in both pre-Christian and Christian societies, but as Europeans and Americans gave up the Faith, they transferred Christian rhetoric about the Kingdom of God and the Millennium to the political sphere. That is where Robespierre and Marx, Lincoln and John Brown come in.
Here is one great difference between traditional commonwealths—whether republics, empires, or monarchies—and the modern ideological state. In ancient Athens or Rome, in medieval France or England, the ruling class interfered rather little in religion. Yes, as part of a program to gain their citizens’ loyalty, Pericles and Augustus instrumentalized traditional cults, and, yes, medieval emperors and kings, in attempting to unify their realms, struggled with popes over the investiture of bishops. But it was the rare ruler (a few theology-crazed Byzantines) who either innovated in theology or interfered in religious practices. During and after the Renaissance, kings and their apologists might speak of “the divine right of kings” and assume the power to make their country either Catholic or Protestant, but even John Knox’s Scotland is a very long way from that American ruling class that makes war on the religion we have inherited from our ancestors and insists that we worship the state and its “commander in chief.”
The hallmark of the Lincoln regime was not the war crimes perpetrated by Sherman, Grant, and Sheridan (among so many other gallant officers who made war on civilians) but Treasury Secretary Salmon Chase’s decision to impose paper money as legal tender and to print the words “in god we trust” on coins. What a world of hypocrisy and idolatry lies in that single act and that little phrase.
This was far from being the world’s first experiment in fiat money. The bankrupt states of the Union had tried to cheat themselves out of their debts by issuing banknotes and scrip, and the geniuses of the French National Assembly, even as they were beginning their revolt against civilization, issued large-denomination paper notes known as assignats. Initially, these notes were backed by parcels of land the assembly confiscated from the Church, but the temporary success of this experiment encouraged these noble dilettantes and small-town lawyers to repeat and broaden the project. The result was entirely predictable: inflation and financial chaos. Of course, our own financial geniuses know better, which is why the Fed has decided that part of the solution to our current crisis is to print lots and lots more money.
When Our Lord, on a famous occasion, was questioned whether Jews should pay taxes to the empire, He asked to see a coin. Pointing to the face on the coin, He told His mockers to “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” In those days, Caesar’s things were made of solid metal, and neither Jesus nor Tiberius would have confused the Roman Empire with the Kingdom of God. Salmon Chase should have known better—he seems to have been one of the few believers in Lincoln’s Cabinet—but, in recommending that “in god we trust” be put on the coin that would one day bear Lincoln’s image, he was actually telling us to worship the almighty dollar and the government that created that idol.
This article first appeared in the February 2009 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.
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Ever since this article appeared in the print edition, I've been curious to find a source for the statement that 1,200,000 civilians died in the war. Sources I have checked (including ones favorable to the Confederacy) have much lower figures, the most common being 55,000. (Still a terribly high number and not one to be poo-pooed, but the claimed number is 2,200% higher.) Many slaves had unpleasant memories of Sherman's destruction, but they don't seem to have remembered a holocaust (the only appropriate word if the figure is true) of such proportions.
It was certainly a very good and thought-provoking article, but I was surprised that such a figure was used without citation as though it were a known fact (as opposed to the 600,000 combatant deaths, which is a widely-agreed-upon number).
Mr. Fleming cites Lincoln's "revolution" as the fons et origo of everything bad that he wants to scold in today's America. Fine. One can't help but notice, though, that he omits from his litany of Lincolnian misdeed the fact that Mr. Lincoln's policies (whatever his motives may have been) resulted in the end of race slavery in America. That was also Lincoln's fault. I wonder how Mr. Fleming feels about that? My guess is that he would argue, like so many apologists for Confederate misdeed, that, well, after all, eventually Southerners would have gotten around to ending it anyway, so fighting it was just unnecessary. Where, I always want to ask the pro-Confederates, is the evidence that the South was developing any kind of significant anti-slavery mentality before the war? Oh well, I suppose it doesn't matter, at least if you aren't black, and don't have to think you might have had to put up with another generation or two (or three, or however many) of slavery until the South would have just done this on its own anyway . . .
It's also great fun to watch Mr. Fleming denounce the war crimes of the Northern soldiers whom he so despises. Well, that is of course a game that can be played by many. How about that gallant Southern defender of states' rights Nathan Bedford Forrest, under whose command disarmed and defenseless black prisoners of war were massacred by equally gallant Southern defenders of liberty and states rights? Does Mr. Fleming also feel moral revulsion at that, or only the sins of Lincoln's legions? How about the terrorism of Quantrill and the other Southern defenders of the peculiar institution who assaulted Northern towns and farms? I guess those weren't so bad, though, to Mr. Fleming and other neo-Confederates, since they were done for a good cause. Right? Not like those nasty Northern farmboys under Sherman, who were simply evil plunderers.
And it is always interesting to note the rhetorical elegance with which the Flemings and Buchanans who are so passionate about the right to secede carefully avoid talking much about the actual matter which prompted the Southerners to leave - a threat to their "right" to own black people. One seems so much more principled, loftier, I guess, when sagely lamenting the damage that mean old Mr. Lincoln did to "states' rights", rather than when referring to the kind of morally messy right that was actually at issue. And Mr. Fleming looks not just silly, but actually deranged in his understanding of history, when he lists Lincoln along with Hitler, Stalin, et al. The ways in which such a comparison is entirely and utterly ahistorical are simply too numerous to mention, but the fact that he makes it suggests that maybe Mr. Fleming slept through his Western Civ courses. Lincoln was undoubtedly flawed - unlike the morally upright Christian slaveholders who ran the South, I hasten to add - but it takes a grossly deformed historical imagination to place him with the leaders of the last century's totalitarian mass movements.
It is always interesting to observe the effect of candor on the brainwashed ideologues mass-produced by American education. My article specifically does not attribute to Lincoln everything that has come since except in so far as his incompetence and ignorance contributed to the unrolling of events. The article has little or nothing to do either with secession or with the South. But I suppose I should have written out a thesis statement in big block letters: WE LIVE IN THE WORLD THAT LINCOLN MADE.
And, as anyone knows who has read my work, I do not at all support any universal right of secession and have, in fact, argued strongly against a number of secession movements. As for western civ classes, which I was unfortunate enough to have to teach early on in my career as, God help anyone who does not sleep through such propaganda. But what is the point of dealing with someone who thinks that the Ohioan Quantrill is a Southerner or that the Missouri conflict was about slavery or who equates a war deliberately waged against civilians with the so-called Ft. Pillow massacre in which some of Forrest's men refused to give quarter to soldiers whom they believed responsible for the rape and murder of their loved ones.
In this article, which is obviously too long for an American university grad to read, I made a simple point: If McPherson and other leftists are right about the Lincoln revolution, then those who oppose that revolution should have some qualms about Lincoln. But why try to educate the ineducable" If this saltine cracker will read my piece on Lilly Allen, he will see his reflection in the mirror held up by Miss Allen.
My bad. Sometimes it's kind of hard to tell candor from spleen. It must still be noted, however, that this "candid" article would benefit from greater circumspection in drawing supposedly historical connections with regard to Lincoln and his politics. It would also benefit from more scrupulous attention to fact. As the other poster already noted, your figures do call for some support. Is there really evidence, for example, that most of the war's civilian dead were blacks? Compiling accurate civilian casualty statistics is notoriously difficult, and it is even more so when one is dealing with a population like that of the South's slaves, when scrupulous attention to record-keeping was not particularly common. This, obviously, is not a major point, but it is an example of a cavalier approach to historical argument that some might think they find in this article.
Mr Kabala, I think Shelby Foote is one of the sources for the figure, which I believe he put at 1,180,000, but I dont know where to look for a citation or where Foote got those figures.
In writing what is, after all, an essay on politics rather than an article on history, I relied on notes I had taken over the years. I did do some more checking on the figure for civilian dead and discussed it with historians. Since certainty is impossible, I deliberately said perhaps as many as to indicate a rough estimate. Older figures only included white people--funny, isn't it. As I understand it, most of the civilian deaths were due more to neglect,. malnutrition, etc., though there were certainly incidents in which Northern troops were observed to be killing blacks. The collection of this sort of data is always difficult. Take the case of rapes committed by Union troops. Earlier estimates were extremely low. This is partly due to the fact that black women simply did not count, though they were the most common victims. On the other hand, this was not something that most Southern white women were willing to talk about. One incident that has been studied is the sacking of Athens, Alabama, by troops under the command of the Cossack "John Basil" (rather Ivan Vasiliev) Turchin. Again, I should say to friend and foe alike, my object was not to write an historical article on the war but to explore the consequences of the Lincolnian revolution.
What is both amusing and depressing is the realization that there are so-called conservatives in America, men who even profess history at institutions of what we laughingly call higher education, who cannot read a piece of prose with understanding, cannot follow a logical argument, and, faced with contradictions in their prefab ideology, can only respond with Whitman's "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself." I had hoped that the election of Barry Obama would provide an opportunity for self-described conservatives to sort through the liberal assumptions that lie at the bottom of their ideology. Once again, I have violated Mencken's Law by underestimating the American's capacity for self-deception. What has happened to the American mind is all too clear from the collapse of the American language. We have reached the point where ghetto basketball slang (my bad), popularized in the film Clueless and on Buffie (so I am told) is introduced into a serious conversation. Perhaps it is time to abandon English and go back to Latin. As the poet said in the 17th century, "Poets who lasting marble seek/Must carve in Latin or in Greek." Yes, this is a joke, though someone at the Wall Street Journal, when I quoted Waller's lines, interpreted it as a serious call for the restoration of Latin as the only language of learning and literature.
I have been interested in the Lincoln as cunning manipulator vs. Lincoln as bumbling incompetent debate recently. It seems that many of Lincoln's biggest supporters and his biggest detractors lean toward the cunning characterization.
Lincoln might have been broadly ignorant, but his rhetoric strikes me as quite clever. He clearly spoke out of both sides of his mouth, but the fact that to this day both Lincoln supporters and detractors find things in his words to praise or condemn is telling.
Perhaps Lincoln was a cunning rhetorician but an incompetent administrator. Makes you wonder if some of the comparisons with our current President are more accurate than we know. Notice when Obama's stimulus bill was running into trouble, what did he do? He went back out on the stump.
I would like to see someone address Richard Weaver's high praise for Lincoln's rhetoric, which he regarded as eminently conservative. Dr. Fleming, would you mind addressing Weaver's position? Thank you.
It has been so many years since I looked at what Weaver had to say that all I remember is how wrong I thought he was. In general, I do not think much of 20th century rhetorical studies: they try to make a theory out of a very practical discipline. As a student of classical rhetoric, I find most of Lincoln's oratory gaudy and deceptive and not worthy to be set beside even the old windbag Daniel Webster. Even the language of the Gettysburg address is meaningless. What is the difference, exactly, between government of the people and government by the people? My old friend Russell Kirk was persuaded by Weaver, but Weaver's friend M.E. Bradford was not, and some of Bradford's best writing is on the way in which the deist or atheist Lincoln prostituted biblical and religious language for the mundane give and take of politics. I see how it resonates in the already degraded American character of the time--though many educated people thought very ill of his oratory-and once accepted, Lincoln's dishonest rhetoric has continued to infect and degrade the American mind and character. English is a poetical and powerful language that tends to be not very precise. Masters of English prose, like Johnson, Gibbon, and Addison, draw upon its power but keep it precise. Lincoln's millenarian rhetoric is even worse than the worst Southern rodomontade of the day, and that was bad enough.
PS Dr Red poses a problem I have not solved to my own satisfaction. Like Obama, he had little practical experience of running anything, and he was extremely ill read and ill educated for a politician of his day. He did have a ready wit and a very coarse sense of humor that offended ladies and their husbands. He says that once at a political rally his mind wandered and he thought of a joke--obviously coarse--and when he burst out in guffaws, people thought he was mad. I think he was a canny peasant, a familiar type, who knows how to get what he wants by telling people what they want to hear. He may well have believed the twaddle he spouted--he had a way of hypnotizing others which he may have learned from hypnotizing himself. I pity the man for his self-deception but I pity more the people today who cling to his legacy.
The CSA also issued paper money (there is no other way to finance either a modern war or a modern economy without fiat currency). By the way, just who was the executive who managed to win a victory in war against a formidable opponent whom most outside observers (e.g., the European powers) thought would be victorious? It couldn't have been that Lincoln fellow, could it? Of course, one is free to criticize Lincoln (or anyone else) but to dismiss him as an incompetent is off the mark. Jefferson Davis would be a better target for such criticism ( and was such a target by Southerners until the US government locked him up for a few years and made a martyr of him).
BTW, Harding without the scandals was a pretty good President policy wise. An office that has had few that were even "pretty good."
Is this the same Osbree who won't respond to questions about his claim that Lincoln spent his free time studying the Federalist in the Library of Congress. It must be, since no one else could be obtuse as to think that the Confederacy stood a real chance, without foreign support, of winning the war. President Davis knew how serious the matter was and did his best to alert the Southern political leadership as to what they were facing. To compare the disciplined soldier and man of honor, who served his country bravely in war, with the unlettered shyster lawyer who was a member of the Illinois militia that made fools of themselves in the Black Hawk War, is insulting to the intelligence and principles of any decent person, northern or southern, who visits this site.
Thank you, Dr. Fleming, for your remarks.
Mr. Van Oosbree,
I believe that the Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens accused Jefferson Davis of violating states' rights in the conduct of the war. The charge of centralization was leveled against both the Union and the Confederacy. I believe that supports your argument that a number of the practices Lincoln is excoriated for were perpetrated by both sides. I have read (please correct me if I am mistaken) that Jefferson Davis also ordered conscription and the suspension of habeas corpus. If Lincoln is a tyrant for enacting such policies, as some suggest, it would seem that Davis would be as well.
"Salmon Chase should have known better—he seems to have been one of the few believers in Lincoln’s Cabinet—but, in putting “in god we trust” on the coin that would one day bear Lincoln’s image"
Actually, he didn't. He put it on the 2-cent coin, which was only minted a few short years (because no one liked it, and it never got used). The penny remained god-free until 1909.
Mr. Van Oosbree: I think it's time you gave up. I agree with some (not all) of your opinions on the rights and wrongs of the war, but Dr. Fleming and Dr. Wilson have arrived at their opinions after decades of careful study, and I doubt they would ever change their views radically based solely on a short blog comment. It would be better to read the site and appreciate their many wise insights, while retaining the right to quietly disagree on certain issues, then to always try to provoke an argument.
Conversely, though, Dr. Fleming should know that many commenters here are earnestly seeking the truth and that not every request for clarification or more information is motivated by hostility. I don't think any regular commenters here, not even Mr. Van Oosbree, are true "trolls." Those who would fit that description usually wander out after a few failed attempts to provoke.
Submitted on 2009/02/13 at 1:54pm
A correction from "Bob" that somehow does not get through:
“Salmon Chase should have known better—he seems to have been one of the few believers in
Lincoln’s Cabinet—but, in putting “in god we trust” on the coin that would one day bear Lincoln’s image”
"Actually, he didn’t. He put it on the 2-cent coin, which was only minted a few short years (because no one liked it, and it never got used). The penny remained god-free until 1909.
"Salmon Chase should have known better—he seems to have been one of the few believers in Lincoln’s Cabinet—but, in putting “in god we trust” on the coin that would one day bear Lincoln’s image" Actually, he didn't. He put it on the 2-cent coin, which was only minted a few short years (because no one liked it, and it never got used). The penny remained god-free until 1909."
I was hoping someone would bring this up. In the original version of the piece I had erroneously attributed the In God We Trust to the 5 dollar bill, and an editor in correcting it introduced another error, though it did represent Chase's intention. According to the Treasury, Chase was responding to a Christian appeal and proposed two mottos for the coins, but found they had to be approved by Congress. He appears to have wanted a revised motto (In God We Trust) on the one cent coin but in the event the minted a two-center with it. Thanks--TJF
Thanks, Bob. The text has been amended. Anyone wishing to read more about the history of "In God we trust" may go to these two sites, although the first has somewhat vague language that could even mislead an editor:
http://www.treas.gov/education/fact-sheets/currency/in-god-we-trust.html
http://www.coinlibrary.com/info/ingodwetrust.html
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We have Lincoln’s face on the five-dollar bill—a bill that used to be worth more than a Happy Meal
His mug is also on the soon to be obsolete, and no longer copper, penny. Liberty! In God we trust.
"I believe that the Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens accused Jefferson Davis of violating states’ rights in the conduct of the war. The charge of centralization was leveled against both the Union and the Confederacy. I believe that supports your argument that a number of the practices Lincoln is excoriated for were perpetrated by both sides. I have read (please correct me if I am mistaken) that Jefferson Davis also ordered conscription and the suspension of habeas corpus. If Lincoln is a tyrant for enacting such policies, as some suggest, it would seem that Davis would be as we"
Much of that is true, although President Davis did not 'order' any thing such as in the manner of modern 'executive orders'. The Conscription Act was an act of Congress, as was the suspension of habeas corpus. Davis also made an order to issue letters of marquee and reprisal but suspended the order as it was illegal. He obtained an act of congress soon after and the letters of marquee were issued.
to TJF@ 13
To compare the disciplined soldier and man of honor, who served his country bravely in war, with the unlettered shyster lawyer who was a member of the Illinois militia that made fools of themselves in the Black Hawk War, is insulting to the intelligence and principles of any decent person, northern or southern, who visits this site.
Dr. Fleming, I have read and studied a fair amount about Jefferson Davis. Obviously he was not a perfect man or a perfect president. But he honored the Constitution, served his country, and was a sincere Christian.
His actions in his maturity were consistently guided by sound principles. His life up to the war was characterized by patriotic service and courage. He has often been regarded as the best Secretary of War in the nation's tragic history. His life after the war was a sustained suffering, for defeat by the means of mere brute might would not, could not force him to abandon and betray that which he knew to be right. I submit that such suffering endurance laid a greater personal demand upon him than the war itself and ought to be the subject of more scrutiny by historians.
I submit further that if America is to find any degree of healing from the stuff and nonsense resulting in large part from the unintended/unforeseen effects of Lincoln's acts and policies that holding up President Davis as a model would be far more restorative and beneficial to America and the American character than the Illinois "rail splitter." Thank you for your defense of this great and neglected American.
I visited his memorial at Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond last March. Sadly, I could not make it there to honor him on June 3rd, his 200th birthday (and my 61st––I also have the good fortune to be a Kentuckian.) Upon the four sides of his memorial I noted four inscriptions. One of the phrases is indelible in my mind: "a martyr to principle."
I think no more need be said when we compare this man of high character, sacrifice and honor to "honest" Abe.
"What is both amusing and depressing is the realization that there are so-called conservatives in America, men who even profess history at institutions of what we laughingly call higher education, who cannot read a piece of prose with understanding, cannot follow a logical argument, and, faced with contradictions in their prefab ideology, can only respond with Whitman's “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself.”"
There have recently been many conservative talk radio hosts and columnists glorifying Lincoln in an attempt to counter all of media stories claiming that Obama is his new incarnation. My only guess as to why this is is that Lincoln was a Republican and he has been given credit for ending slavery in America. One host, whose name will go unmentioned, had the author of a new book, "Vindicating Lincoln," on his show. As both the host and the author tried to portray Lincoln as the Embodiment of All That is Conservative, I couldn't help but notice the obvious cognitive dissonance between defending both Lincoln and the idea of a limited federal government. This seems to be an example of what happens when history is reduced to a morality play. Who would want to be on the side of evil?
I strongly recommend Felicity Allen's biography of President Davis. It is a work of sound research and piety that has been trashed in a campaign of vilification by second-rate southern historians. Davis was not perhaps the ideal man to head a break-away government during a crisis, but he was one of the most estimable men in our history. The Republicans' attempt to murder him without trial after the war is a very large black mark. They wanted a show trial and condemnation, but their own legal counsel told them there were no charges on which to try him that would not stink in the nostrils of civilized people.
I second Dr. Fleming's recommendation of 'Jefferson Davis: Unconquerable Heart' by Felicity Allen. It has an honored place in my library.
Although I cannot remember it getting bad press. The 2 other biography of Davis I am aware of also paint him in a favorable light.
I heartily endorse Dr. Fleming on Felicity Allen's masterpiece. Should you want to go further, there is Hudson Strode's biography and the memoir by Varina Howell (Mrs. Jefferson) Davis. Other treatments are not entirely bad but less satisfactory. I challenge anyone to read our President's farewell to the Senate in 1861 and his first and second inaugural addreses, lay them beside Lincoln's duplicitous folderol, and not see who was the better man.
@ 22
One host, whose name will go unmentioned, had the author of a new book, “Vindicating Lincoln,” on his show. As both the host and the author tried to portray Lincoln as the Embodiment of All That is Conservative, I couldn’t help but notice the obvious cognitive dissonance between defending both Lincoln and the idea of a limited federal government. This seems to be an example of what happens when history is reduced to a morality play. Who would want to be on the side of evil?
The Neocons on the radio and TV seem to me profoundly blind to the many incoherences of their positions. Their Lincoln loving and simultaneous protestations of advocacy of limited Central government is a major example. Another is their perpetual hawkishness and jingoism. As they drone on and on about the war and patriotism they seem to completely forget about the idea of limited government and that "war is the health of the state."
Every time the state enters (a.k.a. "fabricates") a war, win or lose, its power and control grow.
In addition to this they attack men of truly consistent conservative values like Dr. Paul, not because of their fiscal policies so much as their position on the war. If Washington and Jefferson miraculously came back these phony conservatives would be shocked out of their combat boots to find them taking the side of Dr. Paul: follow peace, defend our borders. Of course, no such miracle need happen for such an epiphany. All that is needed is for them to actually read what our Founders wrote without the filter of their own presuppositions (liberals aren't the only ones whose reality is skewed by the hubris of presentism).
My cousin has been a fan of Rush for years. She asked me who convinced me to be a Libertarian. I told her, "Neocons posing as conservatives."
By the way, has anyone seen the 3 DVD set, Jefferson Davis, an American President? I think it's produced by Rosemount Pictures, Inc.
I note that U. of Missouri Press is having a sale until the end of March, and the sale does include Felicty Allen's biography of Jefferson Davis.
Mr Fleming,didn't the Republicans make an attempt to murder Davis during the war? Wasn't that the purpose for the Dahlgren raid?
As an amateur, I second Dr Wilson's post above. Back in the late 90's, I read Davis' farewell to the senate and his inaugural addresses, and compared them to Lincoln's Gettysburg address. There is no comparison. I didn't bother with Lincoln's other speeches since there didn't seem to be a point.
Great insights. If I understand the argument correctly, the civil war was due to the Northerners attempting to exploit the South through political means. When this failed, they succeeded in doing so with Lincoln as their foil by in effect abolishing the constituiton and this has led us to where we are now.
My questions are these:
How were the defeated Southerners made to accept the ideology of the North and why do they fight for the Union to this day in far away places?
Lincoln was misusing religion for imperial purposes and was able to imbue the North with the righteousness of the crusaders. Does this spirit lie dormant in American Christianity today and is turned on at will whenever desired or needed?
Linocln is compared here with Lenin, Mussolini etc., as a transformative leader. But isn't the before/after comparison a bit of a strech? What exactly would be the purpose of viewing Lincoln as a leftist?
#26. I don't think the neocons are blind to their inconsistencies. They just don't care and will say whatever is advantageous, especially useful among a population as ignorant as current Americans. To suggest that their inconsistencies are sincere is an unmerited presumption of honesty.
I'm going to try this one more time.Can anyone elaborate on Lincoln's genealogical background? What sort of cultural matrix did his lineage emerge from?
Also,is it true that the Vatican was the only European state to formally recognize the Confederacy?
Mr Bailey @30: It was the public schools, established in the South after the war with the intent of brainwashing young Southerners into being patriotic Americans and into being ashamed of their fathers so that they would never rebel again. Aside from the modern media and pop-'culture', I wonder if this had something to do with the fact that later generations of Southerners often have been ashamed of their accent.
@27: Thank you for telling us about the sale, Mr Chan. I've been meaning to get Felicity Allen's biography of Davis since it first came out.
They also have on sale 'Richard M. Weaver, 1910-1963: A Life of the Mind' by Fred Douglas Young. Does anyone recommend this book?
@30 'Lincoln was misusing religion for imperial purposes and was able to imbue the North with the righteousness of the crusaders.'
If you were referring to mediaeval crusaders, I think it would be more accurate to say that he and others were imbuing the North with what crazed abolitionists thought was the righteousness of the crusaders, but which in fact bore no real resemblance to the crusader zeal of the middle ages. Even so, I think you are right, it does lie dormant in American 'Christianity' today, but seems rather more pronounced in various degenerate secular movements.
@32
I cannot answer your first question on Lincoln's ancestors, however I can give you an answer on your second question.
No, the Papal States never formally recognized the Confederate States. Pope Pius IX wrote a letter (IIRC) to the Archdioceses of New Orleans and New York where he expressed concern for suffering on all side of the war. Davis read the letter and personally wrote a gracious letter to Pius IX, to which the Holy Father replied. In it, he addresses Davis as President of the Confederate States of America to which some have claimed amounted to a de-facto recognition. But since Pius did follow up with any diplomatic action, it is more likely he was merely recognizing the belligerence of the CSA as the UK and France had already done. While that is the first step to a full recognition, obviously we never got to take the next step. Pius IX believed the South being more friendly to Catholicism, would be more likely to have Catholicism spread than the north. President Davis himself had what would now be considered 'high church' views that were very close to Catholicism (he was educated in a Catholic school as a boy, and his children later went to a Catholic school in Canada).
Sempronius:
If I recall correctly, Lincoln's remote ancestor who bore the Lincoln surname was indeed a member of the Puritan/Yankee so-called "Great Migration," but most of his other forebears came to the American colonies via the South, and even the Lincoln branch ended up in Virginia, which is where his father Thomas was born. Some of Lincoln's enemies spread a rumor that he was part black on his mother's side, but I'm not aware that it has any foundation in fact.
I believe his family was Baptist in faith, which means, since Lincoln did not practice any faith as an adult, that he was probably never baptized. Make of that what you will.
Lincoln himself was born in Kentucky, as you probably know, but the family soon removed to Indiana. Supposedly this was in part because his father was one of those poor whites who disliked slavery not on moral or racial egalitarian grounds, but as a threat to poor white labor. Whether this is true or part of the later legend (as with the probably false claim that Lincoln was horrified by slavery on a trip to New Orleans), I don't know.
All this is rather superficial, of course. Others here could probably give meatier details on his background.
@30
The misuse of religion and religious sentiment and fervor by Lincoln was a no-brainer as a savvy means of achieving political solidarity and crusade-like fanatical devotion. As I understand it, by the time of the war the self-righteous, "holier than thou" posturing of the New England Puritans had long shed its religious dogmatism and morphed into the vagueness of Transcendentalism and beyond. The dogma was lost, but the fanatical self-righteousness and fervor to force their way on others remained. When such fanaticism and self-righteousness loses its transcendent and metaphysical substance it looks for something else as a worthy object of adoration and a cause for which to crusade. This spirit, loosed from the anchor of its Biblical and Christian roots, was tailor made for a man such as Lincoln, of whom the redoubtable Albert T. Bledsoe said, and I paraphrase, "His every waking hour was consumed with a desire for distinction." Bledsoe should have known, having served and worked with him at the Illinois bar for a decade.
My own sense is that in the later years of the war Lincoln became self-deluded and assumed a god-like self righteousness, as evinced by the frightening language of his second inaugural. What an irony! Thinking of the conniving, megalomaniacal skeptic Lincoln suffering delusions of being the very arm of God's glorious judgment on the South (while giving the exponentially more horrific abuses of northern industrialism a complete pass) is about as scary as it gets. I'm only glad he did not have nuclear capabilities at the time. If he had there is no doubt he would have robbed Truman of the "distinction" of being the first.
Anyway, this is my take on the matter, but I appeal to the many here who are wiser and better informed for needed correction.
Pope Pius also sent Jefferson Davis a symbolic crown of thorns.
In the realm of religious posturing during the war, mention must be made of Confederate Vice President Stephens' "Cornerstone Speech." In this speech, he stated that the principle of white supremacy was the cornerstone of the new Confederacy, a cornerstone previously rejected by the Founding Fathers. In the Bible, the image of the "stone the builder rejected, that has become the cornerstone" refers to Our Lord. Stephens used it of secular, legal recognition of white supremacy and black inferiority. That smacks of blasphemy to me.
"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; that 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 physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. . . . The architect, in the construction of buildings, lays the foundation with the proper material-the granite; then comes the brick or the marble. The substratum of our society is made of the material fitted by nature for it, and by experience we know that it is best, not only for the superior, but for the inferior race, that it should be so. It is, indeed, in conformity with the ordinance of the Creator. It is not for us to inquire into the wisdom of His ordinances, or to question them. For His own purposes, He has made one race to differ from another, as He has made "one star to differ from another star in glory." The great objects of humanity are best attained when there is conformity to His laws and decrees, in the formation of governments as well as in all things else. Our confederacy is founded upon principles in strict conformity with these laws. This stone which was rejected by the first builders "is become the chief of the corner"—the real "corner-stone"—in our new edifice."
Earlier in the speech, Mr. Stephens says of slavery that it was the immediate cause of secession: "The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution—African slavery as it exists amongst us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution."
Mind you, Stephens was speaking on March 21, 1861, prior to the war. This should be kept in mind whenever people debate the causes for which each side fought. When the Vice President of the Confederacy, at its very inception, proclaims that the entire basis of the new government and of its civilization rests upon the proposition that blacks are intrinsically, naturally inferior to whites, I think we should ponder that. I for one can see how the establishment of such a regime -- at least as it was conceived by its own Vice President -- might cry out to heaven for vengeance. In the light of such an intransigent attitude, I can understand the repugnance that motivated many Northerners to become abolitionists. Slavery is one thing; a whole theory of racial superiority such as Stephens proposes is another. Lincoln's own beliefs were far from correct, I know, but at the same time he did not refer to racial inequality in such messianic terms as "the cornerstone the builder rejected." At least, to the best of my knowledge he did not.
Oh, I forgot the section of Stephens' speech where I leaves open the possibility that blacks are inferior because of the curse of Canaan: "Our system commits no such violation of nature’s laws. With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the negro. Subordination is his place. He, by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system."
Stephens is leaving open the possibility that the curse upon Canaan applies to blacks, which is a perversion of Scripture if there ever was one. This is not a defense of Lincoln. However, in evaluating the degree to which Lincoln's religious rhetoric is reprehensible, it is good to remember that he was not the only one abusing it. His faults in this department were not unique.
Excuse me, I meant not "where I leaves" but "where he leaves."
to 39-41
In the realm of religious posturing during the war, mention must be made of Confederate Vice President Stephens’ “Cornerstone Speech.”
Bonifacius,
There is no argument here that I can see and no point of disagreement.
Clearly, religion was used on both sides, as has been common in virtually every war in history. Both Abolitionists and advocates of slavery cited Scripture for justification. Both made strong points based upon Scripture, and the debate began long before 1860, as many contributors know much better than I.
Also, consider Stephens' speech expresses only his opinion with respect to causes, which was very different from President Davis' and almost diametrically opposed to General Lee and many others prominent in the struggle for Southern Independence.
In addition, Stephens' speech did not have the prominence of a Lincoln's Second Inaugural and other similar speeches. The fact that when the deep south seceded the new Confederacy had 7 slave states while the Federal union had 8 is, in and of itself, a kind of contraction to Stephens' version of things. The three slave states that later seceded did not do so due to slavery. They did so due to Lincoln's reaction to South Carolina's secession, which was clearly unconstitutional.
Last but not least, note the Confederate constitution permitted any state to end slavery at any time; something the Federal Constitution did not. Many facts and events mitigate and even contradict Stephens' version of things in his Cornerstone speech.
As for white superiority, that sentiment was common everywhere, as I'm sure you know, and Lincoln was no exception as evinced by his many speeches.
And on and on, ad nauseum.
But none of this has to do with the point of my post.
It was, specifically:
The crusade-like fanaticism and "holier-than-thou," self-righteous arrogance of the Puritan mind-set-turned-skeptic was like a glove waiting for a hand, the hand being "honest" Abe's political savvy and opportunism.
The South, in contrast, was much more religiously pluralistic. They had high Church Anglicans, baptists, Calvanists of all stripes and not a small number of Catholics, like my negligible self, and so forth.
Many forget and most don't even know that Puritanism and its spirit had a profound hold upon the psyche of New Englanders, to the point that Massachusetts had a state church as late as the 1830s. I don't think an official state church existed in any southern state. But whether it did or not, of greater significance is that Southern religion retained its dogmatic content and its Christian roots up to the war–––and it has endured to this very day. (We are not still ubiquitously referred to as the Bible Belt for nothing.)
This homespun, Bible-based orthodoxy, combined with the Southern penchant for common sense and the tendency to eschew fanciful abstractions give Christians of all stripes in the South, black and white, a common bond in daily social intercourse, even if they may disagree on the meaning of certain specifics. Southerner's, in fact, still commonly debate theological points in daily conversation, while Yankees have largely lost all believe in truth. The National Football League seems to be their only common bond to reality.
In contrast to the remarkable phenomenon of sustained Southern Orthodoxy, the North was already being corrupted by sundry forms of skepticism well before the war. Nature abhors a vacuum as it is said. And the loss of the dogmatic content for those who remained temperamentally self-righteous and smitten with a sense of superiority, the call of destiny and a missionary zeal could mean only one thing; the vacuum created by the loss of dogmatic content would not last long, and it didn't. It was quickly replaced by––well, to be blunt, what seems to me to be little more than a dull materialism.
When all these Post-Puritan "virtues" combined with Yankee banking and industrialism it became the perfect "spiritual" fodder which zealously fueled the birth of Lincoln's American Empire.
The Southern sensibility was not as lofty, transcendent, grandiose or remote, nor could it have ever been. Most Southerner's, even today, are saner than that. They are also too independent minded. They got it right and kept it right in respect to skepticism and faith: believe the Faith, doubt the politicians.
The great mass of individual Southrons were not defending state rights, or the foundational principles behind our Republic, slavery or even the Constitution. They were defending hearth and home, plain and simple. Their land had been invaded by foreigners.
To them, home was home, politics was politics and religion was religion. The Puritan sensibility, having lost its original substance while retaining its sense of superiority and missionary zeal, simply substituted temporal and political goals for the transcendent and spiritual one's the cankerworm of skepticism had eaten.
Such a tragic conflation, analogous to that of the modern Muslim's, finds its quintessential expression in the phrase, "As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free."
Southrons, making the proper distinctions, could not honestly make such an analogous piece of blasphemy.
The hijacking of religious rhetoric by Federal politicians continues to this day, and it's just as stomach tuning now as it was then--maybe more so, since so many of the posturing politicians don't know the Scripture at all.
Yankee politicians are the same today as then: their interest in religion is only to use it to advance themselves and their agenda. Otherwise, they could care less about it. Their poison has infected the whole nation and virtually consumed all of politics.
A statesman, a statesman, my kingdom for a statesman!
Great article with thought provoking comments.
...but most of his other forebears came to the American colonies via the South, and even the Lincoln branch ended up in Virginia, which is where his father Thomas was born...Lincoln himself was born in Kentucky...I believe his family was Baptist in faith...
Thank you JK.Most illuminating.Tends to underscore the word CIVIL in Civil War.Just as I had suspected.
And thanks to you as well DM.Papal recognition would have been of no practical value in any event.
"And thanks to you as well DM.Papal recognition would have been of no practical value in any event."
Well, maybe not as a military ally, but it would have given us a measure of prestige with much of the Catholic world. It may have opened the door to recognition by Austria or France.
But, one can only dream.
Although I agree with the primary thrust of Dr. Fleming's essay, I was saddened that he lumped Warren Harding and Millard Fillmore with presidential miscreants as Ulysses Grant, Abraham Lincoln and James "Jimmy" Carter. America would do better by electing limited men with limited schemes and passions. Give me Warren Harding over Woodrow Wilson or Barack H. Obama any day.
It is always important to note the point of comparison. For example in comparing Lincoln to 20th century dictators, the point is not that he tortured and murdered people or opened up concentration camps but that he destroyed the rule of law, centralized power, etc. The point of putting Filllmore and Harding in with Grant and Carter was their insignificance and failure.
John Wilkes Booth was finally laid to rest in Greenmount Cemetary in Baltimore, MD. I'll be there to lay a wreath on April 26. Memory eternal, sic semper tyrannis!
Booth was a nutcase--an actor, of all things--who did far more harm than good in shooting a husband and father he did not know. Lincoln probably deserved what he got, but Booth had no justification in giving it to him. I recall an interesting exchange in the Lord of the Rings, between Frodo, who wanted Gollum dead, because he deserved to die, and Gandalf who reminded him that we should all be afraid to receive our desserts and what we cannot give we should be chary of taking away. "Treat every man according to his dessertm and who shall scape whipping?"