What is America?Poli 110J 05

Bound by Mystic Chords

John C. Calhoun• 1782-1850• "the Union, next to our liberty, the

most dear."• From South Carolina, endorsed SC’s

position in nullification crisis.• Federal gov’t becoming tyrannical,

infringing on Const’l rights of the states• Champion of the South, states’ rights in

Senate, 1st half 19th C. Major figure in antebellum Democratic party– VP Under J.Q. Adams, Jackson; Sec. of

War under Monroe“Slavery a Positive Good” – Feb. 6, 1837

John C. Calhoun

• Broke with Jackson beginning with Force Act (gave federal gov’t right to use force to enforce the tariff)– Jackson supported states’ rights, but thought

Union threatened by nullification

John C. Calhoun

• Strong states’ rights– “The subject [slavery] is beyond the jurisdiction of

Congress - they have no right to touch it in any shape or form, or to make it the subject of deliberation or discussion. . . .”• Exactly what powers were and were not ceded to the

Federal government in the Constitution?

John C. Calhoun

• Right to secession• People in non-slave states soon “will have

been taught to hate the people and institutions of nearly one-half of this Union, with a hatred more deadly than one hostile nation ever entertained towards another. It is easy to see the end. By the necessary course of events, if left to themselves, we must become, finally, two people.”

John C. Calhoun

• Southern partisan:– “We of the South will not, cannot, surrender our

institutions.”

• The South feels that the federal government is a tool of the Northern, anti-slave faction. They see it as hostile and oppressive.

John C. Calhoun

• Slavery: something for everyone• For (elite) whites: freedom from labor leads to

greater accomplishments:– “there never has yet existed a wealthy and

civilized society in which one portion of the community did not, in point of fact, live on the labor of the other.”• (While other figures also believed in the supremacy of

whites, it did not play as central a role in their vision of power & government)

John C. Calhoun

• White racial solidarity served to conceal the real class divisions between plantation-owning, slaveholding whites and small, non-slaveholding white farmers/citizens.

John C. Calhoun

• Benefits of slavery to slaves:• “Never before has the black race of Central

Africa, from the dawn of history to the present day, attained a condition so civilized and so improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually.”

John C. Calhoun

• Benefit of slavery to slaves:• “in few countries so much is left to the share

of the laborer, and so little exacted from him, or where there is more kind attention paid to him in sickness or infirmities of age.”– Better than being an industrial laborer, a more

gentle, paternal form of power

John C. Calhoun

• Thus, slavery stabilizes society:• “There is and always has been in an advanced

stage of wealth and civilization, a conflict between labor and capital. The condition of society in the South exempts us from the disorders and dangers resulting from this conflict; and which explains why it is that the political condition of the slaveholding States has been so much more stable and quiet than that of the North. . . .”

Frederick Douglass

• ~1818-1895• Born a slave– Escaped on 3rd attempt, 1838

• Abolitionist & supporter of women’s suffrage

• Supported Irish home rule, but still popular in Britain

• Active in Reconstruction politics

Frederick Douglass

• “Why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?”

• “The character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.”

The Humanity of Slaves• Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves

acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed by a black man, (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of the same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment. What is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being?

• “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham”

• “The Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? or is it in the temple? It is neither.”– Slavery a betrayal of American beliefs

A note on terminology

• Black vs. African-American (power and words)– While the preferred term is today African-

American, the point is that black people at the time we are discussing were deliberately excluded from the American political community.

– When discussing the historical injustice of racial relations in the US, it seems inappropriate to pretend that people of African descent were not excluded from the political community

Abraham Lincoln• 1809-1865• Main themes:– Equality the defining

characteristic of American thought

– National identity prioritized over state identity

– US points beyond itself to something higher

– The law and American political institutions make political freedom and equality possible

Lyceum Address, 1838

• The Revolution is over• Responsibility to the political community

existing across time (forward and backward)• Transcendental ideals of American gov’t• Order, discipline, and self-restraint• The existential threat of chaos to the Republic– Threat by powers above and below

Lyceum Address

• The Revolution is over– “We toiled not in the acquirement or

establishment of [the institutions of republican government]---they are a legacy bequeathed us, by a once hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented and departed race of ancestors.”

Lyceum Address

• “This task of gratitude to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty to posterity, and love for our species in general, all imperatively require us faithfully to perform.”– It is the task of the post-revolutionary generations

to preserve and transmit the institutions of American gov’t to the future

Lyceum Address

• There was glory in the Revolution, but there is none in obedience to the laws.

• The anarchic threat of great men:– “Many great and good men sufficiently qualified

for any task they should undertake, may ever be found, whose ambition would aspire to nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or a presidential chair; but such belong not to the family of the lion, or the tribe of the eagle”

Lyceum Address

• The threat from those who deny their equality to their fellow citizens

• A belief in his own greatness leads the great man to think of himself as above the law– Seeking glory, “although he would as willingly,

perhaps more so, acquire it by doing good as harm; yet, that opportunity being past, and nothing left to be done in the way of building up, he would set boldly to the task of pulling down.”

Lyceum Address

• Threats also from the people:• “if the laws be continually despised and

disregarded, if their rights to be secure in their persons and property, are held by no better tenure than the caprice of a mob, the alienation of their affections from the Government is the natural consequence; and to that, sooner or later, it must come.”

Lyceum Address

• The threat of anarchy presented by mob justice:– The bad will be emboldened by the failure of law– The good will be demoralized– The ideological bond between the people and

their government will suffer

Lyceum Address

• The institutions of American government were once bolstered by revolutionary fervor– “But this state of feeling must fade, is fading, has

faded, with the circumstances that produced it.”

Lyceum Address

• This is the work of time, the Revolutionaries are dying out:– “They were the pillars of the temple of liberty;

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. Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy.”• Note pervasive imagery of religion

Lyceum Address

• How to defend American government?– “Let every American, every lover of liberty, every

well wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others.”

Lyceum Address

• “Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence. Let those [materials] be moulded into general intelligence, [sound] morality and, in particular, a reverence for the constitution and laws”– Restraint, responsibility are political values, they

preserve the state• Democracy is a moral issue: to preserve it the people must

be morally democratic

Lyceum Address

• “As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and Laws, let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor”– As the Declaration was to the Revolution, the

Constitution must be to the post-revolutionary era

Lyceum Address

• Even (especially?) bad laws:– “although bad laws, if they exist, should be

repealed as soon as possible, still while they continue in force, for the sake of example, they should be religiously observed.”

Lyceum Address

• “Upon these let the proud fabric of freedom rest, as the rock of its basis; and as truly as has been said of the only greater institution, ``the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”– Same quote as O’Sullivan, but different emphasis• Contingent, ifthen• America is second to the church

Peoria, 1854

• Pronounced emphasis on equality as ultimate good of American politics

• Power must be used only as constrained by the values and beliefs appropriate to Americans

• Politics with the force of religion– Not just a matter of good and bad, but of ultimate

good and evil

Peoria, 1854

• Kansas-Nebraska act tempts Americans to “war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty—criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest”– Declaration the heart of American politics– American democracy does not have self-interest

at its basis• Such claims are “assaults upon all we have ever really

held sacred.”

Peoria

• Founders put slavery on path to extinction– Did they?– Control of the image of the past, delegitimize one

possible future while authorizing another

• Even slaveholders tacitly acknowledge the humanity of blacks– Why are freemen not rounded up like stray cattle?– Why is the slavetrader despised?

Peoria

• “If the negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me that ‘all men are created equal.’”– Ancient? Only 78 years old– Ancient as in ‘at the beginning’ – “No man is good enough to govern another man,

without that man’s consent.”

Peoria

• Caught between two conflicting goods: equality and Union– Return to Missouri compromise, restore national

brotherhood– “I would consent to any great evil, to avoid a

greater one.”

Peoria

• Self-interest/the marketplace vs. equality/the Republic

• Americans “have been giving up the old for the new faith… These principles cannot stand together. They are as opposite as God and Mammon, and whoever holds to one, must despise the other… Let no one be deceived. The spirit of seventy-six and the spirit of Nebraska are utter antagonisms; and the former is being rapidly displaced by the latter.”

Peoria

• Lincoln is looking to attack the moral legitimacy of slavery

• Mammon: demonic figure representing the love of wealth– Name means “money”– Matthew 6:24 – “No man can serve two masters:

for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”

Peoria

• Lincoln looks to ground loyalty to his vision of the state in the force of religion, tradition• Commonality of biblical language

• Two visions of the American future, only one legitimate– Faithful to “Ancient Faith”– Corrupt, even heretical

Peoria

• Ancient Faith– Equality• This is what makes America good, that it points beyond

itself toward this ideal– Loyalty to nation– Continuity with the past• Declaration, the community of belief• At least as Lincoln describes it• Revising the past to delegitimize one future and

authorize another

Peoria

• Worship of Mammon– Self-interest

• Points to nothing beyond the self, posits the self as the final value

– Radical break with past• Abandons the beliefs in the Declaration in favor of new

ones. Sen. John Petitt: Declaration’s claim of equality “a self-evident lie”– Then he does not hold these truths to be self-evident

• But is it really a break?– Loyal only to self

Peoria

• The soul of the nation is in danger of fatal corruption

• “Our republican robe is soiled, and trailed in the dust. Let us repurify it. Let us turn and wash it white, in the spirit, if not the blood, of the Revolution.”

Peoria

• The proper use of power in America has a spiritual and moral component– Kansas-Nebraska, and by implication slavery, is a

sin– Cleansing by Christian mechanism of turning,

repentance– But not Christian content: it is the spirit of the

Revolution in the office of the redeemer. Purification by return not to religious, but political truths

Equality

• Equality the first-order political good of the Union:– In letter to Lincoln, friend quotes Proverbs 25:11:

“A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.”

Equality

• Lincoln’s response:– “The expression of that principle [that all men are

created equal] in our Declaration of Independence was the word ‘fitly spoken’ which has proved an ‘apple of gold’ to us. The Union and the Constitution are the picture of silver subsequently framed around it. The picture was made not to adorn or destroy the apple; but to adorn and preserve it. The picture was made for the apple, not the apple for the picture. So let us act, that neither picture nor apple shall ever be blurred, bruised or broken.”

Secession

• Nov. 6, 1860: Lincoln elected• December 20, 1860: South Carolina secedes– By February 1861, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama,

Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas join it to form the Confederacy, later joined by Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee

• March 4, 1861: Lincoln inaugurated• April 12, 1861: South attacks & takes Fort

Sumter, war begins

First Inaugural

• Major themes: Secession is bad because it– Breaks contract– Violates the nation– Is anti-democratic

First Inaugural

• Contract & Covenant:– ““All profess to be content in the Union, if all

constitutional rights be maintained”– No one can name “a single instance in which a

plainly written provision of the Constitution has ever been denied.”

First Inaugural

• Contract & Covenant:– Even if the Constitution were only a contract (it’s

not), one party cannot unilaterally exit a contract– The question is one of definitive interpretation:• “May Congress prohibit slavery in the territories? The

Constitution does not expressly say. Must Congress protect slavery in the territories? The Constitution does not expressly say.”– Power over the meaning of the law

First Inaugural

• Likewise, the Constitution is silent on “the only substantial dispute” facing the country; that “One section of the country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the other believes that it is wrong, and ought not be extended.”– How is this dispute to be resolved?– The black letter of the law can’t fix this, it is a

matter of persuasion & argument (politics)

First Inaugural

• But the Union is not a contract, it is a single, national people

• “The Union is much older than the Constitution… finally, in 1787, one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution, was ‘to form a more perfect union.’

• But if the destruction of the Union, by one, or by a part only, of the States, be lawfully possible, the Union is less perfect than before the Constitution, having lost the vital element of perpetuity.”

First Inaugural

• Secession anti-democratic• “Unanimity is impossible; the rule of a

minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy, or despotism in some form, is all that is left.”– The choices are between despotism, democracy,

or anarchy

First Inaugural

• The Union is bound by a shared history and belief• “I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but

friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, streching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”