“And the War Came.” Lincoln & Stephens “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let.

“And the War Came.”Lincoln & Stephens

“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we

are in.”(Political Science 110EB)

Alexander H. Stephens• 1812-1883• Congressional Representative

from Georgia before Civil War, after reconstruction

• Vice President of the Confederate States of America

• Governor of Georgia 1882-83• Initially opposed secession• “Cornerstone Speech”: March

21, 1861, Savannah, GA– Just after Lincoln’s inauguration

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Cornerstone Speech• Confederate constitution “amply secures all our ancient

rights, franchises, and liberties. All the great principles of Magna Charta are retained in it. No citizen is deprived of life, liberty, or property, but by the judgment of his peers under the laws of the land.”– But “Some changes have been made.”

• “Allow me briefly to allude to some of these improvements.”– No taxes or tariffs to favor one industry or another

• Nullification crisis– No redistribution of funds or resources between states by

central gov’t– Presidency a single, 6 year term

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Cornerstone Speech• “The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating

questions relating to our peculiar institution — African slavery as it exists amongst us — the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the ‘rock upon which the old Union would split.’ He was right.– The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading

statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically.

• It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away.”

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Cornerstone Speech• “This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was

the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. – Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested

upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error.• Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite

idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition.” [Applause.]

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Cornerstone Speech• “This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world,

based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. – Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was

not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind — from a defect in reasoning.”

• “If we are true to ourselves, true to our cause, true to our destiny, true to our high mission, in presenting to the world the highest type of civilization ever exhibited by man — there will be found in our lexicon no such word as fail.”

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Antietam• Sep. 17, 1862– 23,000 casualties in a single day– Bloodiest day in American history– Lee driven out of Northern-controlled territories,

escapes back into Virginia• A few days later, according to diary of Sec. of

Treasury Salmon P. Chase, Lincoln told assembled cabinet: “I said nothing to any one; but I made the promise to myself, and [hesitating a little]—to my Maker. The rebel army is now driven out, and I am going to fulfill that promise.”

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Emancipation• Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy: Lincoln made “a

vow, a covenant, that if God gave us the victory in the approaching battle, he would consider it an indication of the divine will and that it was his duty to move forward in the cause of emancipation. – It might be thought strange that he had in this way submitted

the disposal of matters when the way was not clear to his mind what he should do. God had decided this question in favor of the slaves. He was satisfied that it was right, was confirmed and strengthened in this action by the vow and the results.”

• The war now aimed toward abolition of slavery, the Union cannot be truly restored while slavery exists– Emancipation Proclamation: Jan. 1, 1863 (a military order)– Thirteenth Amendment adopted Dec. 6, 1865

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Gettysburg• July 1-3, 1863

– 23,000 Union and 28,000 Confederate casualties– about one quarter of the Northern and one third of the Southern

forces fielded • July 3: Pickett’s Charge

– Confederate advance of 12,500 men across three-quarter mile of open space, facing concerted artillery and rifle fire • More than half killed, wounded or captured.

• Making sense of the carnage: a national narrative– The project of Lincoln’s speech at Gettysburg is one of interpreting

and revising the American polity’s self-understanding, in fitting with the priestly concern for the codification of belief. In it, he looks not only to embed the carnage of the war within a greater narrative, making it comprehensible and thus meaningful, but also to decisively reject slavery as being outside the bounds of orthodox American life. (119-120)

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Gettysburg Address• Main Themes:

– America is a nation founded in and directed toward equality

– Americans can succeed or fail in this charge

– The Union is the definitive test case for democracy

– Redemptive potential of the current crisis

– Central metaphors of birth, death, and rebirth

– Giving the war meaning by embedding it w/in greater narrative

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The Gettysburg Address• “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought

forth upon this continent a new Nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” – Biblical dating– use of the plural possessive pronoun “our” in reference to

the fathers is suggestive, as the Israelites used the same language to refer to their forebears, and especially to the prophets .

– depicts Americans as being a single people descended from common ancestors, who are in turn themselves dedicated to something higher. • I.e. the proposition that all men are created equal

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Gettysburg Address• Presented not as a new tenet of American belief, but as being in

continuity with original ideals of American politics. The shared heritage of the American people is to pursue the charge of their fathers– Affirming orthodox American belief

• a single Nation, not various States– Nation born in the Declaration, which predates the Constitution or

any other arrangement between states• The pursuit of political equality for Lincoln is the essence of the

American polity, and serves as the common heritage and identity of the American people. – Americans are for Lincoln united by shared belief, and the nation is a

lineage defined by that belief in the place of blood, or rather, that faith is its blood. The fathers are the fathers only insofar as the children embrace the central idea that all men are created equal

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Gettysburg Address

• “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that Nation or any Nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.” – A test or ordeal– A definitive test case that will reveal finally

whether democratic order can resist localist anarchy, and whether republican equality can overcome the aristocratic domination found in slavery.

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Gettysburg Address• “We are met,” he says, “on a great battle-field of that war. We are

met to dedicate a portion of it as the final resting-place of those who here gave their lives so that the nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we do this.” – Conception, birth, death, redemption– Gave their lives

• “But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or subtract.” – The ground is sanctified by the martyrdom of soldiers

• “The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.”– Humility

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Gettysburg Address• It is for us, the living, rather to be rededicated to

the unfinished work that they have so far so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion; – that we here highly resolve that the dead shall not

have died in vain—that this nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

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Gettysburg Address• A renewal of dedication and surpassing “the fathers,” completing the

work that they began• Human agency

– Conception, birth, death, sacrifice, rebirth– This rebirth enables the living to draw increased devotion even as the dead

gave the last of theirs; the living must go beyond what was given by the fallen, as the task remaining is one which only they can complete

• Under God– Equality before God

• “Perish from the earth”– Jeremiah 10

• By the time of his speech at Gettysburg Lincoln has come to define and affirm the nation by its dedication to the ideal of equality, by definition depicting the defenders of slavery as being alien to the American polity and opposed to its world-historical mission

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Second Inaugural

• Powerlessness of human effort

• Spiritual equality political humility, forgiveness• Moral preconditions for

democracy• Spiritual unity of the US• Critical position on self,

politics, the war• March 4, 1865

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Second Inaugural• 4 years before, there was cause for extended remark.

“Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the nation, little that is new could be presented.”– The binding power of history over the present

• “The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself; and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.”– The present is uncertain, the future utterly opaque

• The limits on human action

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Second Inaugural• “On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago,

all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it—all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.”

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Second Inaugural

• ‘All’ or ‘both’ said four times: emphasis on fundamental national unity

• Passive voice: ‘While the inaugural address was being delivered’

• War emphasized, it is inevitable: ‘war’ said 7 times (9 if you count ‘it’)

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Second Inaugural

• ‘And the war came.’– abolitionist Wendell Phillips, January 8, 1852:

“Revolutions are not made; they come. A revolution is as natural a growth as an oak. It comes out of the past. Its foundations are laid far back.”

– But for Lincoln there is nothing natural here. It comes like lightning out of the sky.

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Second Inaugural• “All knew that this [slave] interest was, somehow, the

cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union; while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.”

– Slavery the war’s cause– South more responsible

• But the plans of all have failed:– “Neither party expected for the war the magnitude, or the

duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding.”

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Second Inaugural

• Neither/neither/each: the sections are joined in their failure

• Lincoln includes himself in this failure: his plans have had results that he never predicted

• The results are ‘fundamental’, astounding. The US has been transformed.– Though he led, he was not in control any more

than anyone else

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Second Inaugural• “Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and

each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not that we not be judged”– Shift to the present, here and now– Again, emphasis on unity

• Genesis 3:23 “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”– The curse of God for disobedience– Slaveowners disobey God’s will

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Second Inaugural

• Matthew 7:1 “Judge not, that ye be not judged”– From Sermon on the Mount– Suggests both the mercy and judgment of God– While the South bears more responsibility, the

North is not without flaw. Universality of sin means that a people should always first criticize themselves.• Equality and forgiveness

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Second Inaugural

• “The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes.”

• God the major actor in the drama of the war• Both sides could not win• Neither side has truly gotten what it wanted• God’s will over all history, distinct from human plans

and desires– Humans rendered equal in this way

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Second Inaugural

• ‘Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!’ – Matt. 18:7

• God’s will controls history, nothing can go against the will of God.– Yet individuals remain responsible for their sins

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Second Inaugural

• “If we shall suppose that American Slavery is once of those offences which, in the Providence of God, must needs come, but which having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him?”

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Second Inaugural

• “American” Slavery was– An offence to God– Allowed by God– Willed by God to end now

• North and South equally guilty before God, though not before humans– Divine justice vs. human justice– Perfection a dichotomous variable

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Second Inaugural• “Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this

mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.”– Humans can do nothing to alter God’s will. They must humble

themselves and pray that God’s mercy is greater than his justice– Distilling moral & religious meaning from the bewildering events

and destruction of the War• Shared moral community of Americans

– Both guilty in their shared failure to uphold equality– Both powerless to resist the will of God

• Transcendence of God– Not some tribal deity– His justice and purposes are very much different from those of

humans.

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Second Inaugural

• “Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still must it be said ‘the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.’”

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Second Inaugural• The US is guilty enough to deserve destruction– Slavery a mortal transgression against American

obligation to equality– Affirms the perfection of divine justice over human

claims to justice– Though the justice of God is inscrutable, it is

nonetheless perfectly just• “three thousand years ago”: these ideas predate

the US, & may outlast them by as much• Just as the war is not the product of human

agency, neither will be its end

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Second Inaugural

• The judgments of the Lord– Psalm 19– Lincoln must somehow act ethically • within a context beyond his comprehension • with outcomes that are impossible to firmly predict • and be judged by the inscrutable mind of God

according to standards that he cannot fully understand • humility as political good

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Second Inaugural

• “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in”– Forgiveness motivated by recognition of moral

equality– Act firmly in the right, as God gives us to see it• Moral conviction & moral humility

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Second Inaugural• “to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who

shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve a just and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”– Atonement between North & South– Atonement between America & its God– Political humility: don’t strive for utopia, strive for a better

world– Equality demonstrated in a commitment to alleviated

suffering– Care for widows & orphans a condition of minimal justice

in the Bible

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Second Inaugural

• March 15, 1865• “Men are not flattered by being shown that there has

been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them. To deny it, however, in this case, is to deny that there is a God governing the world.”– If God is always on your side, is he really there?

• “It is a truth which I thought needed to be told; and as whatever there is of humiliation there is in it, falls most directly on myself, I thought others might afford for me to tell it.”– Why does the humiliation fall most directly on him?

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Long-term outcomes of the Civil War

• Federal government decisively rendered superior to state governments

• Blacks being citizens, racial equality becomes civil rights issue

• Necessities of war lead to dramatic expansion, bureaucratization of federal gov’t

• Push to homogenize law across states• Expanded power of corporations, closer ties

to government

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