Abraham Lincoln--the Relevance Lingers
Berns, Laurence
Cover Story Abraham Lincoln - the Relevance Lingers Laurence Berns It is almost irreverent to ask: Why celebrate Abraham Lincoln? Why celebrate the birthday of the only other man deemed, almost...
...By a contrast between the generation of the revolution and present and future generations, Lincoln specifies those passions of the people with which in normal times statesmanship must deal...
...It denies that it is glory enough to serve under any chief...
...Towering genius disdains a beaten path...
...unshading and unshaded, to murmur in a few more gentle breezes, and to combat with its mutilated limbs, a few more ruder storms, then to sink, and be no muie...
...Reason, cold, calculating unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defense...
...But those histories are gone...
...The reason of man, like man himself, is timid and cautious when left alone, and acquires firmness and confidence in proportion to the number with which it is associated...
...But the Founders, for all their appreciation of the problem in general, had not sufficiently acted on their knowledge, had not sufficiently founded their political edifice in the hearts and spirits of the people...
...If it be true that all governments rest on opinion, it is no less true that the strength of opinion in each individual, and its practical influence on his conduct, depend much on the number which he supposes to have entertained the same opinion...
...During the revolutionary period all who sought fame and distinction staked their all on the success of the revolution...
...Laurence Berns has been a tutor at St...
...But new reapers will arise, and they, too, will seek a field...
...He evidently knew Federalist, number forty-nine, well...
...They are hewn from a quarry, they are the rock basis of the proud fabric of freedom...
...The other class is that of the ordinary good citizen, who loves tranquility, is patriotic, and desires to abide by the laws...
...With the entrance of this new class, the men of talent and ambition, a new dimension in Lincoln's discussion is opened...
...He suggests that one should not expect these passions to be eliminated, they are rather to be mitigated by more general intelligence and, if not used, to be overwhelmed by the feelings engendered and stimulated by political religion, feelings which include gratitude to our fathers, concern for our posterity, the love of justice, and love for humanity in general...
...the upsurge of a "mobocratic spirit...
...The most important dangers to American freedom are not to be expected from the outside, they come from ourselves...
...Whether it be true or not, I can say for one that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem...
...Jealousy, envy and avarice, "the passions so common to a state of peace, prosperity and conscious strength," these and "the deep-rooted principles of hate, (resentment, indignation and anger), and the powerful motive of revenge," were, during the revolution, directed against the British nation...
...He makes statutes or decisions possible or impossible...
...Neither shall we enter into the dreary details of recent attempts to substitute force, fury and intimidation for orderly legal procedures...
...Harry V. Jaffa...
...He divided the general population into two classes, first the vicious portion of the population, those for whom the only effective restraint is dread of punishment...
...but, what invading foeman could never do, the silent artillery of time has done...
...But what I hope to show is that we celebrate and study Lincoln also simply as students, hoping to learn something about man, about logos, about reason, about reason and passion, and reason and religion, (I do not say reason and revelation...
...He is presently engaged in a translation of Aristotle's POLITICS for Basic Books...
...Let those materials be moulded into general intelligence, sound morality, and, in particular, a reverence for the constitution and laws...
...These, the lawless in spirit, by seeing violations of the law go unpunished, "are encouraged to become lawless in practice...
...But a nation of philosophers is as little to be expected as the philosophical race of kings wished for by Plato...
...How much demagoguery and political fanaticism might be prevented, if the politically aspiring or their educators, were once again educated by those classical authors who made it their business to try to train political men to appreciate the subtlety of their own ambition, to train them to master their master passion...
...One of the subjects of that paper is political veneration:...that veneration which time bestows on every thing, and without which perhaps the wisest and freest governments would not possess the requisite stability...
...They succeeded...This field of glory is harvested, and the crop is already appropriated...
...In the third paragraph from the end of the speech Lincoln prepares for his finale by recounting how the generation of the revolution possessed living histories of those great events in the persons of their kinsmen: The consequence was, that of those scenes, in the form of a husband, a father, a son or a brother, a living history was to be found in every family-a history bearing the indubitable testimonies of its own authenticity, in the limbs mangled, in the scars of wounds received, in the midst of the very scenes related a history, too, that could be read and understood alike by all, the wise and the ignorant, the learned and the unlearned...
...We must return to the Second Inaugural and the Gettysburg Addresses to appreciate that mission in all its sublimity...
...Abraham Lincoln How much of what is now called ideology functions so as to disguise from political men the enormity of their own personal ambition...
...every effort to subvert our national freedom will be in vain...
...The rational structure of our institutions relies upon the indecorous, but never failing, springs of human selfishness, in the words of Federalist, number fifty one, the "policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives," so arranging things that ambition counteracts ambition, "that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights...
...We approach that problem most pertinent to popular governments, the problem of democratic or demagogic despotism, the problem of Caesarism...
...By linking the spirit of the Bible to the spirits of political liberty, the spirit of the Gospel According to Matthew to the Constitution of the United States, Lincoln showed us by example what he meant by political religion...
...They were a fortress of strength...
...Lincoln said, "become the political religion of the nation...
...Lincoln goes on, "While ever a state of feeling, such as this, shall...generally prevail...
...When they see their property destroyed, their families insulted, their persons injured, their lives endangered and no prospect of improvement, they become tired and disgusted with a government that offers them no protection...
...We note with Harry Jaffa and Edmund Wilson the fire of this language, which seems to derive as much from admiration as from apprehension...
...They make a "jubilee" of the suspension of the operations of government...
...It will in future be our enemy...
...They can be read no more forever...
...Great American Series He who molds public sentiment goes much deeper than he who enacts statutes and pronounces decisions...
...shall be that which to learn the last trump shall awaken our Washington...
...We, the American People," Lincoln's Perpetuation Speech begins, possess "the fairest portion of the earth as regards extent of territory, fertility of soil and salubrity of climate...
...The "strongest bulwark of any Government, and particularly of those constituted like ours," is "the attachment of the People", specifically of the better citizens...
...In a nation of philosophers, this consideration ought to be disregarded...
...The new pillars must be stronger...
...It thirsts ''and burns for distinction...
...hoping to learn something about a problem close to all of us, the problem of the relation between intellectual development and moral goodness in the precise language of the schools, about the relation between intellectual and moral virtue...
...The Crisis of the House Divided, Doubleday...
...And in every other nation, the most rational government will not find it a superfluous advantage to have the prejudices of the community on its side...
...The institutional and legal founding of the political edifice of liberty, Lincoln's argument implies, was not sufficient...
...9 March 1832, "To The People of Sangamon County") It is clear that Lincoln no more expects ambition to be rooted out of the hearts of the politically talented than he expected envy and avarice to be removed from the people...
...Passion has helped us...
...and, if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves, or enslaving freemen...
...but the all-resistless hurricane has swept over them, and left only, here and there, a lonely trunk, despoiled of its verdure, shorn of its foliage...
...Under the direction of cold, sober reason men of the loftiest genius have the mission to use their political, rhetorical and poetic powers to mould the minds and affections of what is to be an improved people "into general intelligence, sound morality, and, in particular, a reverence for the constitution and laws...
...This refounding and transmission of the temple of liberty in the minds and hearts of men, for those who have eyes to see, is a task of almost messianic proportions, a task equal to, or greater than, the first founding, a task capable of attracting,and perhaps even purifying, the ambition of a Caesar...
...What seemed most dangerous about mob action to Lincoln was its cumulative effect...
...Lincoln draws a distinction within the men of talent between the "many great and good men sufficiently qualified for any task they should undertake" and the "towering genius...
...When the affections of the better citizens are alienated from the government, when the government has friends "too few, and those few too weak, to make their friendship effectual...men of sufficient talent and ambition will not be wanting to seize the opportunity" and overturn that political edifice that is "the fondest hope of the lovers of freedom, throughout the world...
...We note how Lincoln mitigates the sting of this hardly flattering description of the people by emphatically including himself among them...
...But a rational structure of institutions, even with enlightened and intelligent men at the helm, is not enough...
...This may be a condition, but not the chief cause, for our finding ourselves under a government conducing more to the ends of civil and religious liberty than any other the world has known...
...and, that we improved to the last...
...John's College in Annapolis since 1960, and received his Ph...
...that, during his long, sleep, we permitted no hostile foot to pass over or desecrate his resting place...
...Lincoln did not stress the incident closest to his audience's conscience, the lynching of the abolitionist editor, Elijah Love joy, some twelve weeks earlier in near-by Alton...
...Why celebrate the birthday of the only other man deemed, almost universally, fit to share equal honors in the temple of liberty with the great Washington, the Father of our country...
...26 January 1863...
...The young Lincoln, surely, is not in as full control of his materials here as he is in the great speeches of his later years, but, I believe, no speech reveals more clearly than this what he regarded as the mission of his life...
...Lincoln believed in and, by long and constant study, appreciated the wisdom of our system of checks and balances and separation of powers...
...stotle's POLITICS for Basic Books...
...The spirit of the first class is constant, what is required to deal with them is vigilance and firm government...
...The effect of mob rule on the spirit of the second class is in the long run more serious...
...We study Lincoln, of course, partly to understand ourselves, to understand and therefore, in some degree, to control the spiritual forces which have shaped our civic lives as Americans...
...and as truly as has been said of the only greater institution, "the gates of hell shall not prevail against it...
...the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions, in lieu of the sober judgment of Courts...
...The clue, I think, may be found by watching more closely what Lincoln himself has done in this speech...
...In a political announcement at the age of twenty-three Lincoln took cognizance of his own ambition: Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition...
...What reasonable bounds are large enough to encompass the ambitions of those Lincoln calls men "of the loftiest genius," potential Macbeths, potential Caesars...
...When the examples which fortify opinion are ancient as well as numerous, they are known to have a double effect...
...the levelling of its walls...
...They are gone.-They were a forest of giant oaks...
...but can do so no more...
...D. from the Social Sciences Division of the University of Chicago in 1957...
...It seeks regions hitherto unexplored-It sees no distinction in adding story to story, upon the monuments of fame, erected to the memory of others...
...It may be a little too much to link so intimately our political salvation to our personal salvation, to have us answer on the Day of Judgment to George Washington as well as to God Almighty...
...It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious...
...Hamilton suggests what the cause is in the opening paragraph of The Federalist: It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force...
...A reverence for the laws would be sufficiently inculcated by the voice of an enlightened reason...
...Ambition, Lincoln wrote to General Hooker, "within reasonable bounds, does good rather than harm...
...In contrast to the paragraph on the people, the towering genius is referred to with the impersonal "it...
...Let reverence for the laws...
...The old pillars were of wood, they have crumbled away...
...And thus, from the force of circumstances, the basest principles of our nature were either made to be dormant, or to become the active agents in the advancement of the noblest of cause(s...
...We return to this subject shortly...
...Political religion, addressed primarily to that larger group of normally decent citizens, is to be the preventive medicine against those maladies that could lead to the disaffection of the people from their government...
...The most deadly symptom is "the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country...
...We turn now from the people, from the many, to the few, to the men of talent and to their ruling passion, ambition, the love of glory, the craving for distinction...
...The danger comes from the latter, who will not fail to seize upon the opportunity presented by general disaffection due to mob rule...
...and now, that they have crumbled away, that temple must fall, unless we, their descendants, supply their places with other pillars, hewn from the solid quarry of sober reason...
...Upon these let the proud fabric of freedom rest, as the rock of its basis...
...They were the pillars of the temple of liberty...
Vol. 4 • February 1971 • No. 4
