In its review of the dialectic struggle the
nation has experienced since almost its inception – that of a federal sense of
liberty and of a natural rights sense of liberty – this blog is currently
reviewing the contribution of Abraham Lincoln in that struggle. Lincoln’s presidency is situated in time at a
turning point other than that regarding slavery. His administration occurred at the cusp of the
nation’s industrialization phase of development.
The
last posting left off with describing Lincoln’s admiration of capitalism as an
empowering turn for Americans. He was
taken by its vibrancy and how it promised to avail people of untold
opportunities. And he supported the
notion that government should limit its doings to those areas of concern where
people could not provide for themselves or provide for themselves to an optimal
level. This view is nuanced and while
reserved, it is not a laissez faire position.
Allen
Guelzo quotes Lincoln, “we do wish to allow the humblest man an equal chance to
get rich with everybody else … I want every man to have the chance.”[1] And in that, slavery was most offensive. It, Lincoln judged, perpetrated the ugliest
offense against what capitalism promised.
But the problem was the restraints that the Constitution placed
on its eradication since that institution was established and protected by
state law as per the provisions of the national compact.
And in a day when romantic movements were
espousing the end of slavery, damn the Constitution, Lincoln held that
the basic law should take precedent. So,
while national law could make slavery more cumbersome or less profitable, it
could not legally prohibit it where it already existed. Probably, its most promising route was to
prohibit its expansion to the newly developing states and one can see that that
question held a central position in the debate between pro and anti-slavery
forces in the years leading up to the Civil War.
And it was Lincoln’s determination to stop its
expansion that convinced the seven slave states to secede upon his election and
before his inauguration (a total of eleven states eventually did so). This was the case even though plans were
being considered by which to buy out the slave holders as a way to bring the
practice to an end. Guelzo shares,
With
a plan for federal compensation, a gradual timetable, and some form of referendum,
either through Congress or the state legislatures, Lincoln was “quite sure”
slavery “would not outlive the century … Gradual emancipation and governmental
compensation,” he wrote, “would bring it to an end.”[2]
But with the attack on Fort Sumter, these
considerations came to end. Secession
was not in the legal cards; the Constitution is a perpetual compact
since its goals can never be fully accomplished. It would have to be amended to accommodate
such an option. So, the nation was to
suffer a tragic war, but its compact stood that test and still serves the
American people today. One good
consequence of that sacrifice was that it afforded Lincoln the grounds – through
his war powers – to end the inhumane institution of slavery on Confederate
soil.
Toward the end of his life, just after his
reelection, he gave his fellow Americans a glimpse of how that war changed his
purview on life and politics. Through
his second inaugural address, Lincoln hints at a change of heart. He reveals a turn from his more deterministic
side to a more accountable view of human endeavor – the war seems to him to be
a retribution for the sin of slavery.
It seemed to lay bare some sort of hidden
purpose by a supernatural power – eerily a Calvinistic notion harkening back to
his early upbringing. In that, perhaps a
chink in his reasoned armor was exposed.
Of course, given the further tragedy of his assassination, that limits
one’s ability to interpret his words more fully. “Nothing about the Civil War, it seemed, had
quite turned out as Abraham Lincoln, our last great Enlightenment politician,
had expected. Even less would turn out
that way in the Gilded Age which followed.”[3]
And such a moving moment in this nation’s past
ends one period and begins another. What
was to follow would fundamentally bring into question the basic assumptions that
the founding fathers held in writing the founding compact. Almost immediately, it would be amended by
the three Civil War amendments, the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth
Amendments. This blogger has heard a
constitutional scholar describe the Fourteenth Amendment as creating a
new compact – it was that basic a change.
And in its way, it allowed the nation to
develop not only on a national level, but also on a global level. It helped usher in the takeover of corporate
entities in the economic sphere. And so,
this story moves on, as the American drama hardly pauses no matter how grave
the loss due to the passing of an icon or the tragedy of a costly war. What follows quickly introduces this next phase.
Michael Sandel describes how this
aggrandizement of corporate power became a central issue toward the end of the
1800s and the beginning of the next century.
With the Progressive Era, a movement straddling the two centuries, there
was a debate emerging as to what to do about the abuses attributed to corporate
behavior, such as exorbitant pricing, unsafe and low-quality products, and the
exploitation of labor.[4] The Progressives, advocates of a reactive
movement, were divided in how they defined these problems and furthered the
dialectic struggle over freedom.
For one, nothing will prove to challenge a
cornerstone of federalism – its honorific positioning of local politics – than
the nationalization and eventual globalization of the economy. This development will, more than any other
change, promote a divorce or a lack of intimacy between employer and
employee. Even the old family farm will
experience drastic change with the introduction of labor-saving machinery that industrialization
introduced.
With such advancements, economies of scale will
prove to undo the economic viability of the family farm, the family town
business, and the local charitable modes of assistance to the indigent. The result is a nation that would be exposed
to a level of depersonalization that undermined (and still does today) the
ability of people to federate among themselves.
With that, the forces of a natural rights
mentality will be augmented, beginning to deem personal, communal sensitivities
as old fashioned. This blog will
continue describing this dialectic struggle in its next posting.
[1]
Allen C. Guelzo, The American Mind, Part 2 of
3 – a transcript book – (Chantilly, VA: The
Teaching Company/The Great Courses, 2005), 79.
[2] Ibid., 80-81.
[3] Ibid., 82.
[4]
Michael J. Sandel, Democracy’s
Discontent: America in Search of a
Public Philosophy (Cambridge, MA:
The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996).
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