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Lincoln at Peoria
I hope today’s rather brief group writing post on “Truth” is informative on a topic I regard as significant. The reason for its significance surrounds the mounting accusations of racism involving our Republic, revisionist history with regard to the role of slavery, and the need to temper certain accusations with truth.
We are told almost on a daily basis, even by our leaders, that the United States is systemically racist. We are told that our founding was a product of slavery, as was the Second Amendment. We are told that some of our most revered persons bear the stain of slavery. In addition to the founding fathers, even Abraham Lincoln—in my view, our greatest President—has been subjected to scrutiny.
It is true that, until his address at Peoria, IL, on October 16, 1854, Lincoln had not focused on the issue of slavery. But, in 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act drew his scrutiny. The law permitted settlers to determine whether slavery would be permitted in their region, and Lincoln saw it as a de facto repeal of the Missouri Compromise, which outlawed slavery above the 36°30′ parallel.
So, at Peoria, several years before the Civil War and 165 years from today, Lincoln took on slavery.
I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself.
So said a man with his political future on the line in his rivalry with Stephen A. Douglas. This is an obvious “truth,” but at odds with today’s narrative of a country born and raised on systemic racism.
I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world — enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites — causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty — criticising [sic] the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest.
Here Lincoln presciently understands that our country may be a role model for the world in the eradication of slavery. This is 1854.
My intent here is not to get into the standard “we’ve done some bad things but are making progress” discussion. My intent is to show that outright condemnation of the institution of slavery started a very long time ago. We should keep in mind the efforts of the abolitionists even before this, but here the focus is on a President who deserves to be revered for his words and deeds. That is the truth.
Published in Group Writing
To add to this, Lincoln quite properly believed he did not have the constitutional authority to free slaves, other than in his role as commander in chief, fighting the rebellion. This required legislative and constitutional authority which only came with the 13th Amendment. During the war Lincoln proposed compensated emancipation which, he argued, would be less expensive than prosecuting the war. However, Congress did not pass the proposal.
That is the theme of the entire First Inaugural, that the South had the right to secede but for just cause and keeping slavery was not just cause.
This concept of “just cause” and contracts “in perpetuity” were common parts of life in the United States and were well understood at the time.
This was the anti-slavery clause that the South made the North remove from the Declaration of Independence:
Lincoln inherited a problem that previous administrations hadn’t resolved. The country was already at war. The Republicans had wanted an abolitionist president, and Lincoln had given some three hundred abolition speeches. The Republicans wanted him to be president because of those speeches. The South feared him because of those speeches. Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4, 1861. The South’s attack on Fort Sumter was on April 12, 1861.
A point of clarification. Lincoln opposed slavery but was not an abolitionist as they took the position the President had the constitutional authority and duty to abolish it and further to do so immediately with out offering compensation or without some phase in or any other consideration, all of which Lincoln did not agree with.
In the North in 1861 the war to preserve the Union had broad support, not just limited to Republicans. Stephen Douglas, Lincoln’s opponent in 1858 and the Northern Democrat presidential candidate in 1860, met with Lincoln after the formation of the Confederacy and committed to fully support the raising of troops, which he did during the last few months of his life, imploring fellow Northerners and Democrats to volunteer. Lincoln had no problem filling the first call for 75,000 volunteers, issued after Sumter, or the second one, later that summer, calling for 300,000 volunteers.
Okay.
Except it wasn’t “their” jurisdiction by that time, was it? It was “its” jurisdiction.
I think this is what has changed and what makes it so hard for people today to understand the sentiments that led to the Civil War. You didn’t have to love everyone. You didn’t have to like everyone. You did have to treat everyone decently.
I think people have lost sight of that goal.