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.
Read his inaugural address. Read the Lincoln Douglas debates. Read his speeches leading up to his inaguration. It wasn't revisionist at all.
You are aware that Buchanan was president during most of the time covered by both of those posts, aren’t you? Because you said it was Lincoln’s fault. I’m wondering if you read either one.
ping
Your claim would be a bit stronger if you can point to a single Southern leader who agreed with that. Slavery wasn't going to end without the support of the slave owners themselves. And they expected it to continue for generations.
The last country in the Americas to have legalized slavery was Brazil, which outlawed it peacefully in 1883.
Over the strong opposition from the slave owners themselves. And how much of that was due to the fact that slavery had been ended in the U.S.?
Again, name a single Southern leader who agreed with that. Name a single one who believed slavery was doomed. If any of them did, then they were damned fools for going to war to protect an institution they believed was doomed, weren't they?
Oh Gosh.
The Lincoln Assassins are sure to get wind of this thread.
Not talking about immigrants (Americans),,talking about foreigners,
Lincoln precipitated the attack on Fort Sumter by abrogating the protocol agreed upon by Buchanan. He attempted to reinforce the fort, forcing the issue. He knew it would result in war.
Charleston had been supplying Fort Sumter with food and water from the time it was occupied. Lincoln was sending ammunition.
Wrote a college paper on Fremont.
Your claim would be a bit stronger if you can point to a single Southern leader who agreed with that. Slavery wasn’t going to end without the support of the slave owners themselves. And they expected it to continue for generations.
ROBERT E. LEE
Could that be why Lincoln figured it was a ripe time to get it going in full bloom?
Other than that, not bad.
I admit, I’m attracted like a moth to a flame! You know that this is just the longest cease fire in history, don’t you? LOL
You actually think that that the US Constitution should have had 6 Amendments added guaranteeing slavery?
Lincoln himself proposed the 13th Amendment in 1861 which would have guaranteed slavery in all of the states that presently had that institution. He changed his mind only in 1863 when circumstances allowed him to emancipate the slaves in the rebellious states.
Actually it had been the South which abrogated those protocols by seizing Fort Moultrie and Castle Pinkney. And Buchanan had tried to reinforce and resupply the fort in January 1861.
Charleston had been supplying Fort Sumter with food and water from the time it was occupied. Lincoln was sending ammunition.
Not so much, no. Sumter had been short on food from the very beginning. Anderson had warned constantly that he was in danger of being starved out. What little that had been provided from shore was cut off by order of the Davis government on April 1st.
Not hardly.
That doesn't matter. They suddenly had higher costs and no way to pass them along. Meanwhile they see northern manufacturing interest raising their prices and raking it in. To add insult to injury, most of the new revenue from the tariff was designated for internal improvements in the north.
Trust me they were pissed - as indicated by the gunfire.
And you still haven't answered why the equally agricultural western states sided with the Republicans in the 1860 election.
I don't remember you asking me that before but I'll answer it.
The Midwesterners feared the south, and for good reason. The north crafted their manumission laws to encourage slave owners to sell their slaves in the south rather than free them in the north. Southerners resented this, but when their turn came they looked to the western territories as a good place to dump their black population. It was a big problem for the south since some southern states had black populations that exceeded their white population.
The midwesterners were not stupid. Yes they had some economic interests that coincided with southern agrarian interests; but the issue of negros being allowed in the west trumped every other issue at the polls. Lincoln campaigned on this issue in the midwest.
Dang, another product of government schools.
I would heartily suggest you read a decent biography of a guy named Washington.
All others pale in comparison.
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