Abraham Lincoln, Preserver of the Union
The greatest president after Washington, in my book anyway, is Abraham Lincoln. Washington founded the nation, but Lincoln saved it. Without him, the United States would have lost 11 of its 36 states and 10 of its 30 million people. He freed the slaves, ended the Southern planter society, and ushered in a dynamic political system and market economy. At the same time, Lincoln was confronted by tragic choices that forced him to go to war to preserve the Union. Victory over the South came at an enormous cost -- 600,000 Americans lost their lives, about equal to to American battle deaths in all other wars combined. One quarter of the South's white male population of military age were killed or injured; Southern wealth declined by 60 percent (though Northern wealth rose 50 percent) during the war. Lincoln did not seek war, but understood that there were worse things than war.
It should not be forgotten that his achievements were inextricably linked to his broad vision of presidential power. He invoked his powers to conduct the war, initially without congressional permission, when many were unsure whether secession was even illegal. He considered the entire South the field of battle, which gave him the authority to issue the Emancipation Proclamation and begin Reconstruction. Some historians, like Arthur M. Schlesinger, have called Lincoln a "despot" and "dictator," echoing attacks made against him in both the North and South during the war. I believe, however, that Lincoln's actions for the most part were not unconstitutional, but were instead justified on a broad reading of the Constitution's grant of executive power to the president in wartime. Lincoln often flirted with the idea of the prerogative -- the idea that the president could violate the Constitution and seek approval afterwards (with public statements such as "was it possible to lose the nation, and yet preserve the Constitution?")-- but he always pulled back from it.
Here is a link to another paper of mine on Lincoln, this one on the toughest question for him: civil liberties and war.
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See Also:
Andrew Jackson, Self-Ordained Interpreter of the Constitution
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Comments :
Dec '10
Re: Abraham Lincoln, Preserver of the Union
In general, I love reading everything you post. However, one statement in this struck me like a brick to the face: "justified on a broad reading of the Constitution's grant of executive power" is a very, very scary thought. All it takes is to substitute the Congressional fad of the day (like the commerce clause) in place of "executive power" to render things like the upholding of Obamacare yesterday. Is there place to waiver on how we read the constitution? Shouldn't we be consistently either broad or narrow in our understanding of the founding text?
Mar '11
Re: Abraham Lincoln, Preserver of the Union
"ushered in a dynamic political system and market economy."
Lincoln was essentially a Whig. He favored big taxes and tariffs, and was a protectionist. He instituted an industrial policy where the government picked winners and losers in the railroad race, not unlike the way the Japanese did with consumer products at MITI. If you're looking for exemplars of free markets, Abe ain't one of them.
Apr '11
Re: Abraham Lincoln, Preserver of the Union
You are missing an important prepositioal phrase in there: "justified on a broad reading of the Constitution's grant of executive power in wartime"
Dec '10
Re: Abraham Lincoln, Preserver of the Union
I don't favor changing one's method of reading the constitution with changing circumstances.
Mar '11
Re: Abraham Lincoln, Preserver of the Union
The King Prawn
I don't favor changing one's method of reading the constitution with changing circumstances. · Jun 30 at 2:27pm
Exactly. The Constitution is what it is, and it doesn't matter if it's peacetime or wartime.
Lincoln downplayed the Constitution anyway. He didn't really respect it as our "national document". To him, America was all about the Declaration of Independence. He felt that the Declaration... not the Constitution... was the legal soul of America, that the Declaration better defined us.
Apr '11
Re: Abraham Lincoln, Preserver of the Union
It's not a changed reading but applying the undefined powers to the circumstances. Wartime is a changed state of affairs for a country, which is the reason that Congress was given the power to declare war and the CinC is more assertive than during peace. It is precisely for mobilizing the nation for war that the government has the power to centralize authority and resources.
The Constitution recognizes the changed circumstances: habeas corpus may be suspended during rebellion or invasion when the public safety requires, and reserving the crime of treason for making war upon the U.S.
Internationally, a declaration establishes formal status upon each side as combatants, delineates the conduct of neutrals, and applies the "laws of war". Domestically, the government assumes certain powers for prosecuting the war and maintaining security.
It's only because we haven't used the formal declaration process when conducting wars (aka kinetic actions) during the past 60+ years that we are this curious twilight of prosecuting wars while operating under the normal legal structure used for peace time.
Nov '10
Re: Abraham Lincoln, Preserver of the Union
All ye Lincoln despisers should read Thomas Krannawitter's Vindicating Lincoln: Defending the Politics of Our Greatest President.
The idea that the South was about "limited government" is a joke.
Nov '10
Re: Abraham Lincoln, Preserver of the Union
Douglas
The King Prawn
I don't favor changing one's method of reading the constitution with changing circumstances. · Jun 30 at 2:27p
Lincoln downplayed the Constitution anyway. He didn't really respect it as our "national document". To him, America was all about the Declaration of Independence. He felt that the Declaration... not the Constitution... was the legal soul of America, that the Declaration better defined us. · Jun 30 at 2:51pm
The Declaration constitutes us as a people. 1776, not 1787, etc. The authority of the Declaration is that it was, as Jefferson said, just an expression of the common sense of the time ("Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, etc."). It's the principles of the Declaration that matter, not its role as some kind of positive law. In Aristotelian terms, it expresses regime principles, which are distinct from laws. More elegantly stated, and in Platonic terms, the Declaration serves as the prelude to the laws.
Aug '10
Re: Abraham Lincoln, Preserver of the Union
The Declaration of Independence is a 'vision' document. While it enumerates the reasons for the revolution, it describes a vision of what government ought to be. The section that deals with natural rights and 'what government is' describes an enduring condition, what government ought to look like.
The Constitution is a 'means' document, it specificies the means by which our government acts to accomplish the ends described in the preamble. If only it would more closely achieve the enduring condition in the Declaration.
Apr '11
Re: Abraham Lincoln, Preserver of the Union
I don't think Lincoln downplayed the Constitution so much as elevated the principles of the Declaration as animating how to interpret and apply the Constitution.
I think Lincolns prosecution of the Civil War was as much on the basis of preserving the Union as fully consistent with defending the Constitution. I think this is reflected in his first inaugural: "The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was further matured, and the faith of all the then thirteen States expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in 1778. And finally, in 1787, one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution was 'to form a more perfect Union.'"
I think this was then a common way of viewing the Declaration. I think that one reason we tend to now discount the Declaration as a "mere" historical document is that it defines a first fundamental right of a free people - the right of rebellion, and that interpretation lost popularity as a result of the Civil War.
Nov '10
Re: Abraham Lincoln, Preserver of the Union
True...which is really a shame.
I've always been conflicted about the Civil War. Maybe that's the birthright of a Virginian. Don't know. Nevertheless, conflicted though I may be, no monument moves me more than the Lincoln Memorial.
Nov '10
Re: Abraham Lincoln, Preserver of the Union
"The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and continued . . . "
Good quote. If one looks at Harry Jaffa's essay in Interpretation, January 1987 ("Equality, Liberty, Wisdom, Morality and Consent in the Idea of Political Freedom," available here in pdf) he expands on this crucial point. See toward the end of the essay where Jaffa’s talking about Jefferson and the other founders. What he says precisely is that these guys, all of them, were already political. They were, in fact, already Americans. They weren’t sitting is some cosmopolitan, universal world, British Empire or whatever, and then had someone come down to them and say “yeah, you should be Americans, you should be political.” No. They’re already political. And they looked to the elementary books of public right – Aristotle, Cicero, Locke and Sidney—to articulate what they already are.
Jun '10
Re: Abraham Lincoln, Preserver of the Union
Layla
True...which is really a shame.
I've always been conflicted about the Civil War. Maybe that's the birthright of a Virginian. Don't know. Nevertheless, conflicted though I may be, no monument moves me more than the Lincoln Memorial.
"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes... But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government..."
Yes, the Declaration establishes the right to rebellion but only for a just cause. Why did the South secede? Essentially because they lost a Presidential election. Boo-hoo.
Apr '11
Re: Abraham Lincoln, Preserver of the Union
Joseph Stanko
Yes, the Declaration establishes the right to rebellion but only for a just cause. Why did the South secede? Essentially because they lost a Presidential election. Boo-hoo. · Jun 30 at 4:37pm
I agree entirely with that construction. And accept "Boo-hoo" as a summary of Lincoln's First Innaugural address.
Mar '11
Re: Abraham Lincoln, Preserver of the Union
OK, so the country is older than the Constitution... so what? The Constitution is the bedrock law of the land. That quote sounds like nothing but a justification to flaunt the Constitution as long as it's done for the good of the country.
Jul '10
Re: Abraham Lincoln, Preserver of the Union
I'm going to play Devil's Advocate and throw out a loaded question here: shouldn't people of a libertarian bent accept secession as the ne plus ultra of political expression? What can be more purely libertarian than a polity deciding they no longer want to be a part of a larger group and leaving to form their own group?
Please understand I am aware slavery was a major consideration of the time, and I am not endorsing it or the idea that all peoples free and slave expressed their political will through the vote for secession. But I often hear secession as an end in itself discussed in pejorative terms as if it is in all cases evil. In fact, Lincoln is hailed here as Preserver of the Union, but is that in all cases a good thing if the constituent members of that Union no longer want to remain united?
Jun '10
Re: Abraham Lincoln, Preserver of the Union
Douglas
OK, so the country is older than the Constitution... so what? The Constitution is the bedrock law of the land. That quote sounds like nothing but a justification to flaunt the Constitution as long as it's done for the good of the country. · Jun 30 at 5:51pm
The argument of the South was that they had joined the Union by ratifying the Constitution, and so they could just as easily leave the Union the same way they entered. Lincoln's saying no, to the contrary you were already part of the Union before that.
Apr '11
Re: Abraham Lincoln, Preserver of the Union
Douglas
OK, so the country is older than the Constitution... so what? The Constitution is the bedrock law of the land. That quote sounds like nothing but a justification to flaunt the Constitution as long as it's done for the good of the country. · Jun 30 at 5:51pm
I don't think that's Lincoln's point.
The first inaugural is basically a counter-argument to the seceeding states. The quote above followed this line: "Again: If the United States be not a government proper, but an association of States in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a contract, be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made it? One party to a contract may violate it—break it, so to speak—but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it?"
Basically, the Southern States, participation in the Union was not a function of the Constitution alone but the Union predated all prior cited authority.
Edited on Jun 30, 2011 at 6:21pmJun '10
Re: Abraham Lincoln, Preserver of the Union
I agree that secession is a valid right but only as a last resort, only when "a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism." The burden of proof is on the side seceding, and that's what most of the Declaration is: a list of grievances.
The South to my knowledge never produced such a list. If they had, it would have said: we're afraid we might lose our slaves. So not only were they not victims of a despotism, it was in fact to perpetuate a despotism that they seceded.
Apr '11
Re: Abraham Lincoln, Preserver of the Union
I'm game. I think this touches on the North's motivation to fight to preserve the Union in the first place. There is no exit clause from the Union and the Declaration sets a high bar for justifying armed rebellion (none of which occurred here). Allowing states to leave whenever they are on the losing side of a political debate or contest throws into question the ability to self govern in the first place because you are going to be on the losing side of debates at some point. I think this is why some Unionists saw the South's actions as anarchy. I'm not sure of libertarian thinking on secession, but I would imagine that if you are going to participate in a political association that you need good cause to pull out.