Posted on 10/25/2007 3:45:36 PM PDT by mojito
In 1861, free institutions seemed poised to carry all before them. In Russia, Tsar Alexander II emancipated 22 million serfs. In Germany, lawmakers dedicated to free constitutional principles prepared to assert civilian control over Prussia’s feudal military caste. In America, Abraham Lincoln entered the White House pledged to a revolutionary policy of excluding human bondage from the nation’s territories.
The new machinery of freedom, though Anglo-American in design, was universal in scope. At its core was the idea, as yet imperfectly realized, that all human beings possess a fundamental dignity. This was a truth that, Abraham Lincoln believed, was “applicable to all men and all times.” In 1861, the faith that all men have a right to life, liberty, and the fruits of their industry was invoked as readily on the Rhine and the Neva as on the Potomac and the Thames.
But in the decade that followed, a reaction gathered momentum. Around the world, privilege rose up to defend its prerogatives. In Russia, in Germany, and in America, grandees with their backs against the wall met the challenge of liberty with a new philosophy of coercion.
It was founded on two ideas. The first: paternalism. Landowners in Russia and in the American South argued that their domestic institutions embodied the paternal principle: the bondsman had, in his master, a compassionate father to look after him, and thus was better off than the worker in the cruel world of free labor. In Germany, Prussian aristocrats sought to implement a paternal code designed to make the masses more subservient to the state. The paternalists, Lord Macaulay wrote disapprovingly, wanted to “regulate the school, overlook the playground, fix the hours of labour and recreation, prescribe what ballads shall be sung, what tunes shall be played, what books shall be read, what physic shall be swallowed.”
The second idea was militant nationalism—the right of certain (superior) peoples to impose their wills on other (inferior) peoples. Planters in the American South dreamed of enslaving Central America and the Caribbean. Germany’s nationalists aspired to incorporate Danish, French, and Polish provinces into a new German Reich. In Moscow and Saint Petersburg, Panslav nationalists sought to rout the Ottoman Turks and impose Russia’s will on Byzantium.
Lincoln recognized that the West had reached a turning point. The decisive question of the epoch, he said, was whether free constitutions could survive and prosper in the world, or whether they possessed an “inherent, and fatal weakness” that doomed them to a premature degeneration. Could America—or any nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal—“long endure”?
It was not improbable, Lincoln said, that if the new philosophy of coercion were permitted to advance, human bondage would become lawful in all the American “States, old as well as new—North as well as South.” America would witness the “total overthrow” of free-state principles: it would become a country in which “all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.”
But it was not only in America that free institutions were threatened. Lincoln repeatedly characterized the struggle between freedom and servitude as a global one. The outcome of the American contest between the two philosophies would, he predicted, have a great—possibly a decisive—influence on the future of liberty. Were the American Republic to shatter on the anvil of slavery, men and women around the world would suffer. If, on the contrary, the United States were saved on principles of freedom, “millions of free happy people, the world over,” Lincoln said, would “rise up, and call us blessed, to the latest generations.”
Scholars have criticized Lincoln for exaggerating the threat to liberty; but it is important to understand how formidable, in his day, the odds against free institutions seemed. The new philosophy of coercion was dangerous precisely because it went to the heart of the free-state ideal: it attacked the principle that all men were created equal. The “definitions and axioms of free society” were, Lincoln said,
denied, and evaded, with no small show of success. One dashingly calls them “glittering generalities”; another bluntly calls them “self evident lies”; and still others insidiously argue that they apply only to “superior races.” These expressions, differing in form, are identical in object and effect—the supplanting of the principles of free government, and restoring those of classification, caste, and legitimacy. They would delight a convocation of crowned heads, plotting against the people. They are the van-guard—the miners, and sappers—of returning despotism. We must repulse them, or they will subjugate us. In the fall of 1862, when Lincoln told Congress, “We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last, best, hope of earth,” the fate of liberty hung in the balance in three great nations: Russia, where Alexander II sought to promote liberal reform; Germany, where Otto von Bismarck applied his dark genius to the destruction of the Rechtsstaat (rule-of-law state); and America itself.
Those three powers—Russia, Germany, and the United States—would go on to dominate the twentieth century. Only one did not become a slave empire. Had Lincoln not forced his revolution in 1861, American slavery might have survived into the twentieth century, deriving fresh strength from new weapons in the coercive arsenal—“scientific” racism, social Darwinism, jingoistic imperialism, the ostensibly benevolent doctrines of paternalism. The coercive party in America, unbroken in spirit, might have realized its dream of a Caribbean slave empire. Cuba and the Philippines, after their conquest by the United States, might have become permanent slave colonies. Such a nation would have had little reason to resist Bismarck’s Second Reich, Hitler’s third one, or Russia’s Bolshevik empire.
The historical probabilities would have been no less grim had Lincoln, after initiating his revolution, failed to preserve the U.S. as a unitary free state. The Southern Republic, having gained its independence, would almost certainly have formed alliances with regimes grounded in its own coercive philosophy; the successors of Jefferson Davis would have had every incentive to link arms with the successors of Otto von Bismarck.
None of this came to pass. The virtue of Lincoln preserved the liberties of America. In the decades that followed, the nation that he saved played a decisive part in vindicating the freedom of peoples around the world.
“No one can persuade me that there was not something supernatural about this giant of a man, and that Lincoln was not the agent of a special destiny.”
Likewise, no one will convince me that he didn’t fight his own demons, and make his share of mistakes that costs thousands of lives and the fortunes of many.
I think that Lincoln, like Washington and Jefferson, was a great man. I just don’t “idolize” him in the way that some do.
Lincoln made no attempt whatsoever to avoid a major civil war, foolishly thinking any war would be very short in duration.
Specifically, Lincoln refused to accept the Crittenden Compromise, even though it was strongly supported by Senator William Seward, his soon to be Secretary of State. It could have avoided all the bllodshed, because the South including Jefferson Davis had also approved it. Lincoln wanted a war, or at least wanted not to avoid one.
Sec. of State Seward also told Lincoln not to provoke a war over Fort Sumter, but Lincoln brashly rushed in.
Anyone who thinks slavery was ended because of Lincoln doesn’t realize that slavery was becoming obsolete for economic reasons . . it would have been abolished peacefull within 20 years regardless. The last country in the Americas to have legalized slavery was Brazil, which outlawed it peacefully in 1883.
Sure looks like it to me:
Lincoln's Cooper Union Speech:Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the National Territories, and to overrun us here in these Free States? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored - contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man - such as a policy of "don't care" on a question about which all true men do care - such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance - such as invocations to Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington said, and undo what Washington did.
Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT.
I don’t think it was a lost cause..,,The country had to change as times were and it was either going to get in better shape or get into a mess ,,Yankees might as well do the job,,and I must say,,well done..
Actually, the plan was to return the slaves back to Liberia.
Lincoln and even Jefferson wrongly thought that the blacks would want to leave the United States.
I still think Lincoln caused the unnecessary death of hundreds of thousands, because he didn’t have the the wisdom to understand that slavery was becoming obsolete. Many states had abolished slavery recently with no war, such as New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, so there was no excuse for such obtuseness.
Lincoln has to be the most overrated president of all.
An absolute falsehood. There was no increase in tariffs for many years prior to the Civil War. Tariffs had actually been reduced. Secession and the Confederate Government happened before Lincoln became President. Even after Lincoln was inaugurated, Democrats held large majorities in Congress, as well as every member of the Supreme Court. There would and could have been no increase in tariffs or any other unfairness to the southern states.
Lincoln added:
One more thing before we close,,,Can I get a couple thousand Germans over here to help us out..?
Big time, look at the development of the republican party 1839, and look at what democrats did ti Fremont with Lincoln as his VP.
Brought in a guy from Europe - sound familiar? Somebody who had little (negative) past. That somebody (Buchanan) launched a smear campaign from the word go, assaulting Fremont’s mother, and Fremont - probably one of the best and most qualified persons running for president at the time.
The “Path finder,” as he was called failed to win the election, but as a member of the Army Corps of Engineers, served his country well (few people talk of his previous obligation as a junior officer in the Fleet aboard the war sloop Natchez.
It was Fremont who was the driving force of westward expansion in this country in the early 1840’s. It was Fremont’s political connections back east which caused Lincoln to gravitate toward Fremont.
Now, let’s toss out the emancipation proclamation, and the start of the war, which came first?
The war, Lincoln knew he could not float a war on slavery, the North had as many slaves as the South, just more industrialization - which stopped the South.
As you said, slavery was on the way out since the English had abolished slavery in their country and holdings in 1853.
You actually think that that the US Constitution should have had 6 Amendments added guaranteeing slavery?
About 25% of the United States Army was foreign-born, compared to 9% of the confederate army, but given that immigrants went to northern states in far greater numbers than southern states, its actually the confederate army that has a disproportionate number of foreign-born soldiers, based on the percentage of foreign-born in its overall population.
“In Germany, Prussian aristocrats sought to implement a paternal code designed to make the masses more subservient to the state.”
And part of that was Public Education, which was imported by the U.S. in the late 1800’s.
You need to read some American history.
The United States was the only country in the world where one region thought slavery was important enough to launch a rebellion to to protect it. So it should be thanks a lot, Mr. Davis!
They blame their problems on everyone but themselves.
With all due respect, it's complete nonsense.
You forget that it was the South that chose war which lead to all those deaths. So the responsibility for every Southern death, every bit of destruction visited on the Southern states can be laid at the feet of one man, Jefferson Davis.
He only wanted to keep the blacks bottled up in the south until he could figure out a way to deport them all somewhere. What Lincoln opposed was not slavery, but negros per se.
And the Southerners only wanted to keep the blacks bottled up as property. They didn't want blacks, they wanted property. If blacks weren't slaves then they had no business in the South.
Uh, no. He didn't.
Better tell the Haitians.
You have it backwards. Had the North done that then the South would have still rebelled in order to protect and conserve their slave property.
If Slavery was the issue,,and not money
Slavery WAS the issue. For the South.
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