Abraham Lincoln, and the resolution of the historic tension in the American Founding
Declaration, Constitution, and the elevation of equality through Lincoln's language
Pre 20th Century America had two epochal wars. The first was the revolutionary war (1775-1783), which resulted in the decisive break from Britain, and the founding of a new country, with newly-proclaimed ideals. The other was the Civil War (1861-1865), which resulted in America’s effective Refounding, and a reconciliation with the harm done by Slavery to the American soul. These events are the bookends of the first fully complete and agreed-upon era of independent American history
Holding to this concept of America’s ‘Founding and Refounding’, I turn to the problem which sits most conspicuously between the two events: the perpetuation of the institution of Slavery. From Washington to Lincoln, Slavery was America’s defining moral issue. This essay will consider the era of the Founders with regard to the creation of America’s two primary founding documents: the Declaration of Independence (1776) and the Constitution (1787). These texts, and their relationship to Slavery, are emblematic of a destructive tension at the heart of the American project. This essay first puts forward an adumbration of the nature of that tension, and how it came about.
The nature of this tension established, this essay’s second part will then examine the personage who would ultimately defeat it - Abraham Lincoln. I will focus not on Lincoln’s final resolution of the slavery issue, but rather, on the formulation of his public raison d’etre in rising to meet it’s historic challenge. For this reason, this essay will focus on the series of landmark speeches Lincoln made in ascending to the Presidency, commencing with his Speech to the Young Men’s Lyceum, and finishing with his Cooper Union Address - the speech which cemented his historic trajectory, securing him the Republican nomination for the 1860 Presidential election. I argue that Lincoln’s great achievement lies in his deployment of language as a tool of statecraft. Through language, Lincoln elevated the high ideals of the Declaration of Independence above the frozen legality of the Constitution. In this process, he set himself on course to refound the nation’s ideological heritage, and would go on to eventually effect the modern, slavery-free reformation of America itself.
The use of ‘The Founders’ and ‘Lincoln’ in the category of ‘eras’ warrants some explanation: The Founders as a group and Lincoln as a man represent the defining moral authority of their times, and I have framed my essay around their national leadership in the broadest possible sense. In the Founders’ case, the focus will not necessarily be on an individual’s own words, but rather, on the texts which emerged as emblematic representations of the era. I will however, pay particular regard to Thomas Jefferson, for his role as the chief author of the Declaration of Independence, and for some of his more contentious contributions to the debate surrounding the status of Blacks in America. In Lincoln’s case, treated in the second part of this essay, the focus is more necessarily on his speeches, as his was a leadership more appropriately dictated from the podium or pulpit. Lincoln’s task in resolving the residual tensions of the founding required a greater focus on rhetoric as statecraft.
The Founding Era - Slavery’s persistence, and the defeat of the ‘equality’ clause, in the Declaration of Independence
The second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is of signal importance to the issue of American slavery for three reasons. Firstly, this is where an absolute claim to equality for all men is made. In these phrases, the founders set out that human equality is a truth ordained by God. Further, the Declaration purports to catalyze the machinery of Government toward securing the freedom enjoyed under true equality. Thirdly, and remarkably, the document lays forth the precept that Government should properly be dissolved and remade, in pursuance of a just mode of existence for man, should it fail in its primary task of securing Freedom. I will return to this third reason at the conclusion of this section, to highlight its later importance to the task of Lincoln.
Taking this, the first authoritative document of the American founding at face value, it would appear that the very idea of Slavery is from the outset, anathema to the American project. Yet, as history evidences, there was a normative acceptance - particularly prevalent in the South - of slavery as being entirely compatible with the essence of America itself.
Logically, there is one clear line of rationalization that can explain this ‘compatibility’. This lies in the question of whether or not African slaves were considered by the founders to be human, or perhaps more accurately, whether or not they were ‘fully human’. If indeed, America, as bound to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence, was by its mores obliged to treat all men equally, then only by a defacto classification of the Black race as subhuman could America lay claim to both the Declaration itself, and the ongoing proliferation of Slavery.
I argue that African slaves were clearly not considered (at least by a sufficiently persuasive majority) to be fully human by the American founders. There are three primary pieces of evidence that support this claim. First are the now notorious observations on the Black race made by Thomas Jefferson, in his ‘Notes on the State of Virginia’. Jefferson, in a flamboyant exposition, apprehends the Black race by describing their living organism in the manner of an animal species. He makes reference to sexual attraction between Orangutans and female Blacks, and purports to a knowledge of scientifically observed differentiation between White and Black men. Jefferson further sketches a quasi-justification for the retaining of African slaves in a sub-human condition, when he draws a distinction between the White slaves of the Ancients, and the Black slaves of modern America. Although Jefferson should rightly be credited with establishing the American ambition of equality for all men, he quite tragically failed to afford the Black race the fullest sense of dignity they required in order to realise that equality.
Jefferson’s dispositions are singularly important, because he was the primary drafter of the Declaration itself, and the effective leader of the agrarian South at the time of the Founding. It is his sensibilities that at the very least helped to encourage the view that, stripped of full humanhood by virtue of authoritative opinion, slaves could be viewed as property.
This links to a second piece of evidence highlighting the non-person status of the African slave in the American Founding: James Madison’s ‘Slave Trade and Slaveholder’s rights’. Madison’s papers reflect the consensus view of the personhood status of Slaves. In ‘Slave Trade and Slaveholder’s rights’, he canvasses the views of slaveholders, who see themselves as ‘owners’ of slave property. It should follow that a living being who is owned by another, would struggle to make full claim to humanhood, under the apparently ‘self-evident’ purview of the Declaration of Independence.
I arrive now at the third piece of evidence, which effectively links the Declaration to the Constitution, and frames the tension which I argue lies implicit in the American founding itself.
The Constitution of 1787 sets forth the notorious ‘three fifths’ rule, which gives mathematical clarity to the popularly accepted norm of non (or in this case partial) personhood under the terms of the American founding. Article 1, section II, clause three of the Constitution effectively classifies Blacks as amounting to three fifths of an otherwise ‘ordinary’ citizen. It is important to note that this clause was not purposed specifically to dehumanise Blacks, but rather to secure an advantageous balance of power within the national congress for their Southern owners. It is however, highly instructive, in that it highlights the manner in which the humanity of a Slave could be completely disregarded, for base reasons of self-interest amongst the White ruling class.
We can see that in order to ensure an ongoing compatibility with the Declaration of Independence, and still maintain the institution of Slavery, it was necessary to consider Blacks as non-human, sub-human, or only part-human. Note that this does not necessarily mean that the Founders regarded Slavery as morally right, but merely that they did not sufficiently recognise the full humanity of Slaves themselves. This is an important distinction, for reasons which will become clear in my later commentary on Abraham Lincoln’s ‘Cooper Union Address’. For now though, it is useful to summarise the circumstances which led to this state of affairs as follows:
It is clear that under America’s first founding document, all men are considered equal.
Enslaving human beings in any form would henceforth be incompatible with such a document.
That accepted, and observing slavery’s ongoing existence, it is hence clear that slaves generally may not have been considered fully human in the America of the Founders’ era.
This is evidenced by authoritative opinion (Such as that of Jefferson), and the continued operation of the American slave trade (most conspicuously in the South).
Consequentially, The Constitution itself stands in perpetual tension with the Declaration of Independence, as it evidently permits the proliferation as Slavery under its purview, and effects the defacto classification of Blacks as sub-human via the three fifths clause. This must properly be viewed as a writing into American law of partial-personhood, neutralising Blacks’ claims to equality by virtue of their own births.
Assuming progress is desirable, this state of affairs then sets up an unmet historical obligation for the United States of America. Not every American could rest content with these dualistic carve-outs to avoid achieving real equality among men. It behooved the nation and its leadership after the Founders’ era to meet this obligation through two great tasks.
The first was to establish that Blacks were indeed men, fully deserving of their rights and representation. Following this recognition, the second was to elevate the true ideals of the Declaration over the diminished personhood embedded implicitly within the Constitution. As long as America didn’t address this diminished personhood, its severity could worsen, by proliferating through the still-existant institution of slavery.
In Abraham Lincoln, the agent by which these tasks might be accomplished arises. He is perhaps the emergent ‘Great man of History’ which America required. I will also recall to the reader’s attention here, the aforementioned second paragraph of the Declaration, in which the founders state clearly that the responsibility for those burdened by unjust government is to remake it into a form more suitable for the freedom of all men. Lincoln’s obligation to refound America then, is laid out within the very document which triggered the inner contradictions leading to his own sublime purpose.
Lincoln’s Historic Task - Overcoming the Constitution, in refounding America.
In October 2020, under questioning from Senator Ben Sasse during her confirmation hearing, Justice Amy Coney Barrett had the following to say about the relative importance of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence:
“The Declaration of Independence is an expression of our ideals, an expression of our desire to be free from England. It’s not law, however…. [T]he Constitution is our foundational law and our governing document. And, while the Declaration of Independence tells us a lot about history and about the roots of our Republic, it isn’t binding law”
I include Justice Coney Barrett’s remarks as they frame very effectively the antithesis of the Lincolnian argument implicit in what I argue is America’s refounding. Coney Barrett clarifies the purported virtue of the originalist view of American constitutionalism, the operative law being anchored to the written word of the constitution alone. This ‘originalist’ argument represents the somewhat time-frozen view of American law which Lincoln needed to overcome.
There is debate as to whether or not Abraham Lincoln held that the Declaration did indeed imbue the American project with real, not just symbolic or abstract legal principles, and that its purport should hold legal primacy within the American body politic, as reflected in American jurisprudence. It certainly appears that in his Speeches, he sought to elevate its authority. To claim and perpetuate this authority, he needed to achieve two things: Firstly, to establish African-American slaves as fully, unequivocally human. Secondly, to reconcile that humanity by elevating slaves to true equality, and subsequent full citizenhood. This would prove the elevation of the Declaration over the Constitution in absolute terms, invoking the ‘equality’ clause of the second paragraph as the legislative and judicial antecedent by which the Slave emancipation Act could eventually be justified, and the 13th amendment to the constitution embedded in a refounding of America.
Before Lincoln could enact those reforms, he first needed to embed the ambition for their accomplishment within his own political profile. The energy which drove this ambition can be found in Lincoln’s language.
The first notable speech by Abraham Lincoln appears in 1838, and the title given to posterity by Lincoln’s words is in itself instructive. “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions” by its very name frames America as a nation inheriting a history of its own peculiar nature, and political tensions of its own unique kind. Here at the outset, Lincoln claims that America’s political inheritance has been laid by a “once hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented and departed race of ancestors This is an important complement to the founders. Lincoln, in his language, positively reflects on the virtue of the country’s founding. He establishes that the founding of America was a venture made by virtuous men. He further highlights that this virtue now appears in short supply
This positive framing accomplished, his next phrases speak profoundly to the feat I have earlier outlined as Lincoln’s task in history. Lincoln sets this task up when he claims that, “Theirs was the task…to uprear upon [America’s] hills and its valleys, a political edifice of liberty and equal rights” It is in the next phrase however, that we find the key to the problem Lincoln is formulating. He says of the equal rights he has just mentioned, that it is the task of the Americans of 1838 to “transmit these…undecayed by the lapse of time, and untorn by usurpation”
Although it needs be mentioned that Lincoln is, in this context, speaking to a general unrest in the country, it cannot be ignored that in the broadest sense, he is addressing a nation’s propensity to stray from justice over a period of time. Lincoln, in the passages which follow his opening exposition, refers repeatedly to the ‘disposition’ of the nation, and its growth toward savagery The corollary of these observations, is that a nation’s laws, or the virtues (or vices) of its people needs to be corrected, lest that nation not descend further into anarchy.
To be clear, I am not arguing that Lincoln is here, in the very early stages of his career, specifically framing the Constitution as his enemy. That is not reflected in the text. I do however, point to his positive impression of America’s founding, and his subsequent reflection on the still-inadequate state of the Union, to derive the view that in this speech, he is at the genesis of an argument which seeks to elevate the importance of the ‘equality’ invoked in the Declaration of Independence at the time of that founding.
Four years after his ‘Lyceum’ speech, Lincoln again purports a contradiction contained within the American project, in his address to the Springfield Washington Temperance Society. Reading (as is generally agreed by Lincoln Scholars ) this speech as an allegorical polemic against slavery, I again point to Lincoln’s invocation of America’s founding, alongside its failure to adequately secure the ideals that that founding invoked.
Lincoln here completes three important tasks. One of these is his recapitulation of a positive view of the American founding as a political event, as established in the ‘Lyceum’ address. This is made clear, when Lincoln states, “Of our political revolution of ‘76, we are all justly proud. It has given us a degree of political freedom far exceeding that of any other of the nations of the earth” Another task, is the canvassing of the fact that notwithstanding this revolution for the greater good, the founding had permitted the existence of a particular injustice, which had over time grown into a pernicious civilisational blight: “It breathed forth famine, swam in blood and rode on fire; and long, long after, the orphan’s cry, and the widow’s wail, continued to break the sad silence that ensued. These were the price, the inevitable price, paid for the blessings it bought,”
The third and most important task, however, precedes this commendation and problematization of the Founding within the speech’s text. Just prior to Lincoln’s claim on the revolution of ‘76, he makes the remarkable allusion that America’s most important revolution is actually yet to come:
“If the relative grandeur of revolutions shall be estimated by the great amount of human misery they alleviate, and the small amount they inflict, then, indeed, will this be the grandest the world shall ever have seen”
Though it is important to recognise that this revolution was ostensibly that of the Temperance movement over the drinking classes, the call for revolution itself is remarkable. This is a new development in the rhetorical history of Abraham Lincoln. In this grandiose language, he has now sketched a complete outline of his raison d’être in politics, two decades before he will ascend to the Presidency. This rationale has a tripartite construction. Firstly, the founding, as reflected in the idealism of the Declaration of Independence, has given him a positive intention. Secondly, the founding’s legacy of inequality, as reflected in the nation’s laws through the permissive governance of the constitution of 1787, has given him a problem worth solving. Finally, in his own call to revolution, he has the solution at hand for the problem he identifies. In purporting the need for a restoration of America to a noble beginning, he has set forth the case for Refounding.
I will now give more substantial attention to Lincoln’s ‘Cooper Union’ Address, which appears a year prior to his election as the 16th President of the United States, and plays a pivotal role in securing him the Republican nomination for the 1860 election. This speech is signal in its consequence for Lincoln, and by extension, the fate of America itself. It is also central to understanding the role of language and rhetorical construction in Lincoln’s statesmanship. Through this language, in the Cooper Union Address, Lincoln tackles the Constitution head-on for the first time. There are a number of important effects which bear out in the consideration of this text.
Firstly, to the point of language itself. Lincoln reveals his hand in the very opening of the speech, when he says plainly that “If there shall be any novelty, it will be in the mode of presenting the facts. Here is Lincoln telegraphing that if indeed the Constitution were sound, that its interpreters at law have failed to understand its import. He seems to be suggesting that a new reading (which he will forthwith provide in a new interpretive language) is required.
Next, it should be observed what the effect of Lincoln’s rhetorical construction is, in the overall impression the speech makes on the reader. Lincoln consistently returns to two phrases: “No line dividing local from federal authority, nor anything in the Constitution, was violated by Congress prohibiting slavery in federal territory”, and, “Our fathers, when they framed the Government under which we live, understood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now”. The former is Lincoln’s description of the question of whether or not the Constitution allows the Federal Government to directly address the slavery question. Though the question at hand is on whether slavery could be Federally controlled in National territories, it serves Lincoln’s rhetoric as an allegory for the problem of Slavery At Large, in the United States. The latter statement is a quotation from Senator Stephen Douglas, rival of Lincoln, and advocate for popular sovereignty in finding resolution to the Slavery problem. By returning to each of these phrases repeatedly, after providing evidence weakening the case for slavery, Lincoln ties his opposition in rhetorical knots. It is as if he bludgeons his own argument forward by a rhetorical war of attrition, and confirms its wisdom by using Douglas’ own line against him. The effect is to put forth a constitutional interpretation in favour of Federal government intervention against slavery that now looks plainly obvious, and to have this interpretation confirmed by Douglas’ invocation of the wisdom of the founders.
A further important feature of the Cooper Union address is the manner in which Lincoln narrows in on the idea of a Constitutional intention in his mathematical analysis of the voting records of the framers themselves. This can be viewed one of two ways. It is either an attack on the Constitution itself, or, an attack on what Lincoln views as ingrained, perpetuated political misinterpretation of the Constitution. Either way, the effect is the same. Lincoln’s exposition of the framer’s voting records undermines a particular purported view of constitutionalism. In its place, he sub-textually brings forth a ‘better’ reading through his own language. This reading seems to place greater import on the humane-political disposition of the framers in their aggregate. It elevates their true intentions over the limitations of the written law produced through the imperfect processes of the Philadelphia convention. This new approach to constitutional interpretation is supported by the manner in which Lincoln peppers his speech with references to the political views of framers (both individually and collectively), throughout the text. For example, in the middle of the speech he states, “As those fathers marked it…as an evil not to be extended, but to be tolerated and protected only because of and so far as its actual presence among us makes that toleration and protection a necessity.” Similarly, when addressing the slave trade itself, he mentions that “Among that sixteen were several of the most noted anti-slavery men of those times - as Dr. Franklin, Alexander Hamilton and Gouverneur Morris - while there was not one now known to have been otherwise, unless it may be John Rutledge, of South Carolina”,.
This new impression of the Constitution’s intended functioning, finally, allows Lincoln to bring forth his most strident call yet for revolution. Like much of Lincoln’s writing, that call is couched in careful qualifications, and appears in a way which burdens his opponents with a commensurate task of their own. Nonetheless, it does come, and as it appears at the end of the text, can rightly be viewed as something of a final departure point for his Presidential telos:
“Holding, as they do, that slavery is morally right, and socially elevating, they cannot cease to demand a full national recognition of it, as a legal right, and a social blessing.
Nor can we justifiably withhold this, on any ground save our conviction that slavery is wrong. If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away”
The American founding, viewed from a distance, contains an inherent contradiction. In the Declaration of Independence, America stated its positive ambition for humanity in unambiguous language. Unable to realise these ambitions, in order to maintain a national coherence under law, American constitutional order functioned in a manner which effected the dehumanisation of its slave population. This tension perpetuated, manifesting in the profound human suffering of Slavery in post-founding America. In Abraham Lincoln, American history has its singular figure by which the founding, its tensions, and slavery itself were dealt with. In Lincoln, through the art of his persuasive, descriptive, and legally creative language, there emerged the capacity for America to reconcile with its own destiny.
This essay has examined the source of this tension between the Declaration of Independence, and the reality of operative American constitutionalism. It has revealed, through the source material, evidence which speaks to the dehumanising of African American slaves. Finally, it has presented a picture of the rising figure of Abraham Lincoln, and assessed his speeches as the vehicle in which he deployed a peculiarly effective language, in framing the problem he as President, would later go on to solve. This text alone is not sufficient to give a full picture of all Lincoln’s eventual political actions, and his rationalisations in emancipating the slaves. That would take an altogether more comprehensive work. Nonetheless, this essay does however present a full picture of the purpose for which Lincoln emerges in history, and the course which he would set himself upon - most significantly by the use of his own skills of language - in righting the historic wrong of Slavery in America.
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Benjamin Crocker is a Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation Postgraduate Scholar at St John’s College, Annapolis. He is a constitutional fellow at the American Conservative, and writes for The Spectator Australia. Ben has previously taught at The University of Sydney, conducted the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, and recorded new music for radio, for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC Classic FM).
Sources
Barnett, R. (2022). Review: Deep State Constitutionalism, in; Claremont Review of Books (Spring, 2022)
Channing Briggs, J. (2005). Lincoln’s Speeches Reconsidered. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Hamilton, A. (1779). Letter to John Jay.
Jefferson T, et al., (1776). Declaration of Independence.
Jefferson, T. (1781). Notes on the State of Virginia.
Lincoln, A. (1838), On the Perpetuation of our Political Institutions - Speech to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois.
Lincoln, A. (1842). Address to the Washington Temperance Society of Springfield Illinois.
Lincoln, A. (1860). Cooper Union Address
Madison, J. (1788). The Slave Trade and Slaveholder’s Rights
Neely, M. (1982) The Abraham Lincoln Encyclopedia. New York: Da Capo Press, Inc.
Various (1787). The Constitution of the United States of America
Wise, Eric (2016). Abraham Lincoln’s Understanding of the Constitution, Part 1 - Relationship to the Declaration of Independence.