LINCOLN: A Fish out of Water
Jon Meacham, who is often described as a “Presidential Historian,” has a new biography of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln almost singlehandedly preserved the Union. His actions and foresight allowed the nation to survive its adolescent angst and to fulfill its potential as a world power. It is easy to lionize the former President for that accomplishment alone; however, the legend of Lincoln ignores many complicated facts about the man himself and unflattering facets of the times, in which he lived.
In actuality, the “Great Emancipator” was tentative in freeing the slaves. The Emancipation Proclamation purported to “free” the slaves in the Confederate States, with which the Union was then at war. Few persons remember or care to acknowledge that a handful of Union states continued slavery beyond the onset of hostilities. Some such states maintained slavery throughout the Civil War and up until the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment. In theory, the federal government, with Lincoln at its head, had the power to free the slaves in those Union states but chose not to do so until after the cessation of hostilities.
For all of his positive qualities, including a level of leadership that is almost unequaled in the annals of human history, Lincoln was not, as Meacham himself acknowledged in an interview, a “racial egalitarian.” While eager to free the slaves, Lincoln initially proposed resettling the freed slaves outside of the Union — in Central America, the Caribbean, or back in Africa. Meacham went on to say, “Lincoln was not MLK in a stove top hat.”
Meacham fairly examines Lincoln as a product of his times. History does a disservice when it removes the subjects of history from the difficult and relatively barbaric environs, in which they existed. Today, we often deem almost any impediment to individual success or threat to the status quo as “existential;” however, it was only a few generations ago, even in America and among all but a select few, that daily living was defined by a genuine struggle for survival.
“Presentism” uproots historical figures and places them in the present day within modern environs and confronted with modern sensibilities. Not surprisingly, those legendary figures almost invariably fail to thrive in this foreign environment. The environment is hostile towards them. They are like fish out of water. However, we are disingenuous should we believe or assert that, had we lived in their exceedingly challenging eras, we would have been fundamentally different and better. Almost without exception, we would have been no more moral or noble — no more selfless or altruistic.
For his valiant efforts, Meacham is himself still guilty of recasting history. In an interview promoting the book, he describes Lincoln’s efforts as a victory for “democracy,” but America is a Constitutional Republic. The misguided thirst for democracy is a relatively new development, and it threatens to commit the nation and to condemn ourselves to the vagaries of mob rule. Meacham went on to say that Lincoln believed in the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the “equality” espoused thereby.
The Declaration states, “All men are created equal.” It could have easily stated, “All men are equal.” The distinction is important. The import is that a person’s rank within society is not determined by an accident of birth. However, beyond the moment of birth, our lives diverge and we are no longer “equal.” We are instead byproducts of our respective environments and of our responses to the inevitable challenges of life. Meacham embraces a misguided and perverse sense of equality. In the more modern incarnation, there must be equality of outcomes, and the imposition of equality (by force … of law) is not necessarily related to and quite often detached from equity.
Beyond birth, the only enforceable “equality” is in the equal protection of laws, as enshrined in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. It is beyond the legitimate authority of the state to pick favorites among the populous. However, today the overriding quest for “equality” of outcomes (even when detached from equity) means that government (by and through self-serving political minions) routinely and unabashedly identifies favored constituents, and imposes upon disfavored and unbenefited minorities the costs and sacrifices of government action.
This is not the America for which millions sacrificed blood, sweat, and tears. This is not the America for which hundreds of thousands sacrificed their very lives. This is NOT the America, which Lincoln fought to save. In fact, Lincoln acknowledged in his first inaugural address:
If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might in a moral point of view justify revolution; certainly would if such right were a vital one. … This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.
Lincoln respected the Constitution. He used that venerable instrument as his justification for maintaining the Union, by all means necessary, including acts of war. However, he recognized that the nation could not be maintained if the government extended itself beyond the powers voluntarily ceded to it by the people in and through the Constitution.
Many today, who wish to dispense with constitutional impediments and inconveniences in favor of an increasingly unfettered and unhinged “democracy,” invite revolution. In fits of hubris and in demonstrations of arrogance, they promise Utopia; however, one man’s utopian ideal is another man’s dystopian future.
In an 1814 Letter to John Taylor, former President John Adams wrote:
Remember Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes exhausts and murders itself. There never was a Democracy Yet, that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to Say that Democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious or less avaricious than Aristocracy or Monarchy. It is not true in Fact and no where appears in history. Those Passions are the same in all Men under all forms of Simple Government, and when unchecked, produce the same Effects of Fraud Violence and Cruelty. When clear Prospects are opened before Vanity, Pride, Avarice or Ambition, for their easy gratification, it is hard for the most considerate Phylosophers and the most conscientious Moralists to resist the temptation. Individuals have conquered themselves, Nations and large Bodies of Men, never.
We can learn from history, but we should not use selective elements of history to decorate the façade, which surrounds our preferred but flawed narratives with regard to the world, in which we live today.
