Current Commentary
Outside view: Abraham Lincolnversus the left
By Jerry Bowyer,
A UPI Outside view commentary
WASHINGTON, (UPI) -- Were the founding fathersof the United States racists who believed that blacks were subhumanbeings without inherent rights? When Thomas Jefferson wrote that"all men are created equal" was he excluding men ofAfrican descent? Are some things really evil, or does good andevil simply depend on your point of view? While these seem likemodern examples of the fault lines in today's culture war, infact, Abraham Lincoln was about the business of answering thesevery questions 144 years ago this week. The occasion was the IllinoisRepublican convention; the speech has become known as the "housedivided speech."
On June 16 in 1858, Abraham Lincoln hadone principal political objective: to drive a wedge between IllinoisRepublicans and his opponent in the upcoming Senate race, DemocratStephen Douglas. Douglas had been able to position himself asa moderate on the divisive slavery issue by supporting the rightof the citizens of Illinois to ban slavery in their state.
Lincoln's job in this now-famous 'housedivided' speech was to persuade Republican voters that they andDouglas differed on the fundamental issues. He chose to do thiswith reference to the then-recent 1857 Dred Scott decision.
Dred Scott was a black slave and the propertyof a Southern slave owner who argued that when he and his masterentered a free state he became a free man, and therefore he couldnot be compelled to return with his master. But the Supreme Courtheld that he was property no matter where he went and that noact of emancipation by any other state could change that fact.
This famous opinion, written by Chief JusticeRoger Taney and known as the 'Dred Scott Decision,' had even morefar-reaching implications. According to Lincoln it said, "thatno Negro slave, imported as such from Africa, and no descendantof such slave, can ever be a citizen of any State, in the senseof that term as used in the Constitution of the United States.
The point was made in order to deprive African-Americans,in every possible event, of the benefit of that provision of theUnited States Constitution, which declares that: 'The citizensof each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunitiesof citizens in the several states.' "
Douglas refused to condemn the Dred Scottdecision, he but did adopt a policy giving the citizens of Illinoisthe option to ban slavery. This tempted anti-slavery activiststo see Douglas as an ally, but Lincoln would have none of that.He described Douglas' approach as the "care-not policy."
In other words, Lincoln said, Douglas didn'tcare whether Illinois went slave or free, he defended only itsright to choose. Douglas called this the "sacred right ofself-government," but Lincoln said that the phrase self-government,"though expressive of the only rightful basis of any government,was so perverted in this attempted use of it as to amount to justthis: that if any one man, chose to enslave another, no thirdman shall be allowed to object."
The disagreement between Lincoln and Douglaswas this: is there a law that is higher than the law of the state?
To Stephen Douglas and to Chief JusticeTaney law was merely power. Just like the ancient sophists, theybelieved that the word justice was simply a cover for the advantageof one man (or race) over another.
Lincoln told his fellow Republicans thatalthough Douglas was with them on the small question of whetherIllinois had the right to choose its own slavery policy, he splitfrom them on the big question of whether slavery itself is wrong.Douglas split from them on the biggest question of all: whetheranything is truly right or wrong. Douglas and Taney were, in themodern parlance, relativists; Lincoln was an absolutist.
It is ironic that Abraham Lincoln, a heroof 20th-century political progressives, should turn out to havediffered from the cultural left on its most fundamental distinctive,moral relativism. But perhaps it was not so strange to 19th centuryears. The friends of slavery in the middle 19th-century understoodthat their political survival depended on an atmosphere of hostilitytowards religious involvement in the public sphere.
While many textbooks today point out thatthe South offered Biblical arguments in favor of slavery, sucharguments were relatively rare. The most common defense offeredby slaveholders amounted to this: "mind your own business."
The Southern churchmen adopted a theologicalmethod which they called "the spirituality of the church,"which meant that the clear biblical case against slavery shouldbe ignored because the church should only be concerned about spiritualthings and private matters; public things belonged to reason asexemplified by the ancient Greeks and Romans, who defended slavery.
It is also ironic that Chief Justice Taneyand his Dred Scott decision should be in such fundamental agreementwith the academic Left in their interpretation of the intent ofthe authors of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
Modern leftists complain that our foundingdocuments are fundamentally racist, written by racists, in anatmosphere of racism. Similarly, Taney said that when the declarationsays "that all men are created equal" it means all whitemen.
Taney said that the Constitution deniedcitizenship not just to slaves but also to all blacks. Lincolndisagreed, arguing that the founding fathers created a frameworkthat tolerated slavery because it was the only framework thatwas possible, but that they did not enshrine it permanently inthe Constitution and that the Declaration of Independence planteda seed that would ultimately end it.
Chief Justice Taney loved slavery and commandeeredthe reputation of the founding fathers to preserve it; the modernleft hates the founding fathers and uses slavery to smear themby distorting their record on the matter. Both had an incentiveto portray Adams, Washington, Jefferson and Madison as racists.
On the other hand, Lincoln loved libertyand the founding fathers and stood with them at the cost of hisown life.
Those who would portray the founding fathersas degenerate racists and those who reject the idea of moral absolutesfind themselves on the opposite side of history from Abraham Lincoln.