How Lincoln Speaks to Us Today

Abraham Lincoln, whose two hundredth birthday we observe today, was our greatest president and a keen student of political expression. Though his personal hero was George Washington, he also had a high regard for Thomas Jefferson. "I never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence," Lincoln said in a speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia in 1861, a month before his inauguration. His contemporary political heroes during his rise to power were also masters of political language, Henry Clay and Daniel Webster.

Lincoln believed that his two greatest achievements were saving the Union against the secession of the southern states which triggered the Civil War and issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, and today we honor him for these historic accomplishments. Lincoln had loathed slavery from his youth, but he was willing to abide the practice in the South if the slave states would remain peacefully in the Union. What Lincoln held to without compromise was the necessity of preventing slavery from entering the federal territories from which new states would be carved. He believed that if slavery could be confined to the states where it already existed, it would gradually wither and die. Unfortunately, the southern leaders, or at least a significant portion of them, also believed that slavery would be doomed if it could not be continuously invigorated with new additions from the public lands. They also coveted new slave states to increase their political clout in Washington. Almost from the moment of Lincoln's election in 1860, the states of the South began to leave the Union. And so the war came.

Thus was born the irony of a president who longed for peace being called to preside over four years of the bloodiest war in our history. Six hundred thousand young Americans died in that conflict, a number equal to the combined U.S. losses of World Wars I and II. Of course, the losses were so high because the soldiers on each side were Americans -- Americans killing Americans.

One could cite a number of reasons why Lincoln remains such a highly regarded president to all the generations since his assassination so many years ago. Certainly one of those factors has been the inspired and masterful speeches that came from his heart, mind, and soul. No other president possessed such compelling literary power and grace. Perhaps Thomas Jefferson and Woodrow Wilson would rate second and third among the presidents who crafted their own addresses.

I recall vividly during my years in the excellent public schools of Mitchell, South Dakota, being required to memorize and recite Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. That address stirred my respect for Lincoln then as it does today. It belongs with the Declaration of Independence, the preamble to the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights among our greatest state papers. Each of us might add others to that list. In my case I would add Lincoln's two inaugurals and the farewell addresses of two generals who served as president, George Washington and Dwight Eisenhower.

Lincoln worked diligently on his speeches. He would begin by reading the better speeches of Daniel Webster and Henry Clay, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, and he would draw upon his knowledge of the Bible, Shakespeare, Aesop's Fables and John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress. He also kept at hand a file of his own previous speeches. He would then begin to write in longhand a draft of his speech, which he would further refine each time he read it.

This process of reading selected works, digesting the most stirring and eloquent passages of other speeches, and then laboriously writing his own thoughts and words could sometimes take weeks or even months. When he finally had a draft that satisfied him he would call in a critic -- perhaps his secretary of state, William H. Seward -- and ask him to read the speech aloud in Lincoln's presence. Then the president would read it aloud to Seward and the two men would discuss where the draft might be improved. It was through this give and take that Seward suggested a phrase for Lincoln's first inaugural address that in the final draft became the now immortal phrase "the better angels of our nature."

Often Lincoln made his point with a story -- a parable. Here he addresses the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society in Milwaukee, on September 30, 1859:

It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: 'And this, too, shall pass away.' How much it expresses! How chastening in the home of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction.

Perhaps we need to ponder these words in our present national need.

It might also be wise after eight years of "neo-conservatism" to recall Lincoln's words at Cooper Union in New York City on February 27, 1860: "What is conservatism? It is not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried?"

It is also relevant to our own day, while respecting Lincoln's appreciation for historical experience, to recall his appreciation for the need for change:

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present, the occasion is filled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country.

George McGovern, a former U.S. senator from South Dakota and Democratic presidential nominee, is the author of Abraham Lincoln, just published by Times Books.

Comments

[demockracy]

One interesting soil management side-note about slavery: The southern slave holders were soil "miners" -- they depleted the soils on which they farmed, and could ask no better soils management from their slaves -- after all, the slaves didn't own the land and felt no stake in its viability.

Because they depleted the soil as they farmed, the westward expansion of this Southern farming practice was not optional, it would have been required for the survival of the Southern plantation lifestyle. The South was not fighting for slavery, it was fighting for the lifestyle it had taken to be life itself.

Interesting parallel to modern times, too, if you think about it. See Herman Daly's "Beyond Growth" for more.

[Syed Mahmood]

I applaud your short but sharp writing Senator George McGovern- well done!!
Abraham Lincoln, indeed, was a great president of the United States. Although some Americans often disparage on his vivid legacy but it is undeniably true that he led the Union with profound patriotism. On his two hundredth birthday America should proud to embrace this simple truth that Lincoln was the greatest leader and probably will be for another two hundred years.

[LasloPferg]

Senator McGovern was and remains one of my personal heroes. His thoughtful and intelligent commentary never fail to inspire me. Whenever military service is part of our national debate, I think of him and his quiet and selfless service during World War II as a bomber pilot in Europe. He flew mission after mission at a time when bomber crews had 80% casualty rates by the end of their first rotation, and he did several. And here's the thing, he never talked about it. It wasn't part of his campaign persona. He lost in a landslide and really and truly had his dignity intact. One more story that speaks to these times of wall street avarice and political dirty dealings. When Senator McGovern filed his income taxes while in the Senate, he would just send his tax records to the IRS and ask them to figure his taxes. He explained that as a member of congress and a public servant he could do no less. For years I would put his name in nomination at our local Democratic gathering during the primaries, just to honor him again.

[frank3373]

Abe Lincoln, our greatest president? He started a war that got 635,000 young kids killed, another 300,000 had arms and legs blown off. He had two reasons (1) keep the Union together; (2) get rid of slavery.
But do not the people of southern states have the right to go their own way? THAT is democracy, self-determination, not determination from Lincoln. You do not have the right to start a massive killing session because some states don't want to be part of your government.
And regarding slavery, it was abolished everywhere else in the western world within 30 years of the Civil War, no killing necessary.

[Yat1954]

Gotta love it, frank3373. In case you suddenly forgot how to read, Lincoln's election caused the secessions, and the Confederate Army's bombardment of Ft. Sumter opened the hostilities in earnest. Both of them were actions by the rebels, not the Lincoln administration. The secession documents of all the Confederate States say the same thing: they were leaving the union because they wanted slavery to continue. Without the engine of slave labor that drove it, the Southern economy would have collapsed. Southern leaders knew it, and fought a war because of it. The poor suckers who had to do the fighting mostly didn't own slaves; they were too poor. Their hard luck. The European powers watched the struggle with great interest, with nothing less than re-colonization on their minds. A shattered and militarily exhausted American continent would have been a huge prize. Lincoln held on until his army learned how to fight, then the US Army and Navy throttled the Confederacy. The leaders, who should rightly have all been hanged, were allowed to live. The Union was preserved, and the United States of America became the mightiest power on earth, a beacon of hope and freedom. If you have any other candidate for our greatest president, I'd love to hear the name.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

Senator McGovern,

Your one true sentence, "And this, too, shall pass away.", seems appropriate.

I'm a Hanks descendant with roots in both South Dakota and Illinois. Initially, I learned about the values held by Lincoln from my family and later from the school teachers in Chamberlain. Although there are some who do not think of Lincoln of having the abolition of slavery as his highest goal, we were taught that many if not all of the early Republicans were anti-slavery people. They actually cared about other people. A number of parents in South Dakota were good people, similarly cared about other people, and were Republicans. If there was an equivalent to the modern Republican I've-got-mine attitude, I never saw it. We were also taught that Lincoln's highest goal during his time period was to keep the keep the country unified.

What happened to the Republican Party? How was it taken over by the neocons? How did the Republican Party become the party or cult of hateful Limbaugh listeners? How did it become a party that tolerates them and the divisive effect that they are having upon this country? Although they continue to use the word "Republican" for their party, Lincoln wouldn't recognize it.

Those who founded the Republicans Party thought that their descendants would be Republicans forever. Now, some will never vote for any person running for office under the Republican banner no matter what the circumstance.

[freeethnkr]

"Although there are some who do not think of Lincoln of having the abolition of slavery as his highest goal, we were taught that many if not all of the early Republicans were anti-slavery people."

This is true. It does not follow that Lincoln was an abolitionist, however. You may know that Lincoln was the first Republican president because the Republican Party was brand new. The party was formed to bring together two sizable constituencies: the abolitionists and those who opposed merely the expansion of slavery. Lincoln, a former Whig, fell into the latter category.

You raise interesting questions about what has happened to the Republican Party ... I hope you get some thoughtful answers.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

It seems that a point being made by Senator McGovern is that things change. We have also been witnessing some of those political changes.

Whether Lincoln can be an abolitionist or not may depend upon the particular year in which the evaluation is made.

He certainly was never a John-Brown-type of abolitionist, but few were when John Brown conducted his raid. Certainly the Quakers in Illinois and elsewhere who helped run-away slaves were actively opposed to slavery but were not the type of abolitionists that John Brown and his closest followers were.

Some historians seem to want to reach a conclusion with respect to Lincoln without considering that his views evolved, that they changed over time. If you take any particular earlier time period from his life, it is certainly justified to say that he was not an abolitionist at that point in time. In 1832, for example, he ran for his first office and did so after already being experienced with the slavery along the Mississippi river and New Orleans. He campaigned for his first office without ever mentioning a desire to free the slaves.

Some historians have, of course, also relied upon Lincoln's letter to Horace Greeley and his desire to preserve the union, rather than freeing the slaves, as establishing that Lincoln forever held that view.

Lincoln changed. I suggest that at the point in time when he decided to begin the process of freeing the slaves, he became an abolitionist.

[K-Dog76]

A shaper of American identity, who said that while his party valued the dollar, it ultimately placed the man above the dollar.

I like your comments, thought I have to say that The Republican Party in Lincolns time was the progressive party. The association of the Republican to the dollar is a modern conception.

[ThomH]

It's time for Obama to replicate Lincoln's courageous stand against recalcitrant New York bankers and issue
Greenbacks to pay for a very necessary deficit without increasing the national debt.

Confonted with bankers unsympathetic to the Union, Lincoln decided to finance the war with interest-free bills--Gre­enbacks--p­rinted by the Treasury department, rather than borrow money at interest from the bankers.

Why do we pay interest on money we allow the bankers to create from nothing?

Issuing up to $2 trillion of Greenbacks would not induce inflation, because it would be spent to employ otherwise underutilised resources in the economy. And that is exactly the purpose of the stimulus: put people back to work.

Paying for the stimulus with interest-free government money would be applauded by everyone but the bankers. So Obama should emulate Lincoln, and issue Greenbacks.

[Rog49Thomas]

I believe the correct answer is only through mediums.

[Leatherhelmet]

I think it is funny how the left is trying to turn Lincoln into a democrat hero.

The left whines and whines about the Patriot Act, and then brings up the president who suspended habeas corpus for American citizens as its hero.

LOL. It won't work.

[JeffKolakowski]

Well this is one lefty who ain’t buying it.

[K-Dog76]

This too, shall pass away

[freeethnkr]

Thanks Hannity -- very thoughtful answer. Only if you buy into the right wing talking point that liberals hate America do you conclude that no liberal would support suspension of habeas corpus during wartime and rebellion, i.e., when the US Constitution expressly authorizes doing so.

[knowBuddhaU]

You're right, Senator, Lincoln does speak to us today.

~~~~~~~~
It is the eternal struggle between these two principles — right and wrong — throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, “You toil and work and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.” No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.

–Abraham Lincoln http://harpers.org/archive/2009/02/hbc-900043922]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[[[Full-Spectrum Dominance / Our Common Weal///[[[­{{{Dissent­}}}]]]]]]

Full-spectrum dominance over our common weal based on suppression of dissent

Our patriarchal cult of kinetic power

Closed society: Us vs. Them

Fear and Control: manipulating the media narrative aka myth-jacking(boom & bust cycles)
~~~~~~~~~~­~~~~~~~~~~­~~~~

beloved/[{­UNION}]/Be­loved

In Union We Trust

Our more perfect Union

Open society

Empathy and mutual respect; sharing being aware of our shared narrative of our shared becoming.

The way the world self-empties into itself, "whereby Spring comes and grass grows by itself."

[JeffKolakowski]

Part 2

As Robert E. Lee correctly stated, the Civil War would result in an ever expansionist U.S. government in the pursuit of empire. Who can disagree with that? Up until the Civil War it was considered the right of states to secede from the union. There was nothing holy about the keeping the states together at that point. Perhaps with the threat of secession, the federal government could be kept honest for risk of losing ever more territory and population. With that threat removed by the Civil War, the federal government consolidated ever more power, and participated in ever more adventures of conquest.

I know many people will disagree with this view, and so be it, but I think it is time that we as Americans remove the veil of holiness that surrounds Lincoln. He prosecuted a war that was responsibe for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. He approved of Sherman’s march to the sea, a truly despicable and barbaric action that left large swaths of death and destruction in its wake. How holy could he have been?

[freeethnkr]

Do you have any citation backing your assertion that "Up until the Civil War it was considered the right of states to secede from the union"?

[JeffKolakowski]

To say that it was a bonafide right may be going to far. But up until the Civil War, it was at least an open question. As long as the states could exercise their sovereignty, there was no reason to leave the union as collectively, they were all more secure within in its confines. But when the South felt that the Federal government was no longer willing to let it control its own affairs, the notion of state sovereignty was tested. The result ended the debate. The Civil War deemed the Federal government all powerful, and the states subservient to it.

[JeffKolakowski]

Part I

I think is time for America to understand what Lincoln really was. He was a man who chose to fight an unnecessary war, he was a man who suspended habeas corpus, and restricted press freedoms. He was very similar to Bush in that way. He suspended freedom in the name of freedom. He suspended liberty in the name of liberty.

I know that to many, the civil war is what ended slavery, but slavery continued under the name of ”Jim Crow” for another 100 years. As their own nation, the South would have had to end slavery at some point. Perhaps it would have been more just if done voluntarily. And it must be remembered that Lincoln was a racist himself who saw black people as inferior. He freed them because he had to. He would have retained slavery if that would have helped keep the union together.

“United we stand. Divided we fall.” Who says? Does anybody honestly think that the North and South could not have survived as separate countries. Both nations would have had territories larger than every nation in Europe except Russia. Why not: “We’ve got to fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here.” Just another cheap slogan used to sell a war.

[Riekang]

I agree and disagree with what you've written. Lincoln lived in a time where it was written that blacks were inferior and were considered property. He did what he did, for whatever reason, because of the times he lived 200 years ago. I don't think he's holy but I do admire him, as a whole, for what he did in the time he lived.

[K-Dog76]

Lincoln was not a racist, he may have thought differently about blacks, but he was against slavery since his youth. His attempts to limit the spread of slavery and prevent the importation of new slaves was a "diplomatic solution" aimed at appeasing the south while undoing slavery from the inside out rather than through abolition. This instead drove the south to succession. Then Lincoln went for abolition.

[freeethnkr]

Racism can be defined as "a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievemen­t." By this definition Lincoln was most certainly a racist.

I think the claim that Lincoln was against slavery since his youth is misleading. As a lawyer, he took several cases in which he sought to protect a slaveholder's right to his "property.­" There is substantial evidence that indicates Lincoln was not against slavery as an institution until well into his adulthood and that he was not an abolitionist (if ever) until just before he died. [I'm repeating what I've read in "Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President" and elsewhere].

[JeffKolakowski]

The important thing in my mind is that Lincoln was at least indifferent to slavery, whether he was racist or not. He would have kept it if it would have kept the union together. And in the end, he chose war to maintain the union, or more correctly, the imperial infant. If the union had split, neither nation would have been as strong on their own, and may not have been able to dominate the continent so readily. The point being that Lincoln used the excuse of advancing liberty and freedom to advance the cause of empire. Lincoln was the first Republican president, but he is sounding quite a bit like our last.

[BiGnBulKY]

our geatest president was a white supremist.­... whats that say about America.. the real heroes at this time was the white men and women who help create and maintained the "underground railroad".­...

[K-Dog76]

?

Who is this White Supremacist?

not Lincoln, please read a book

[BiGnBulKY]

our geatest president was a white supremist.­... whats that say about America.. the real heroes at this time was the white men and women who help create and maintained the "underground railroad".­...

[freeethnkr]

Yes, Lincoln was literally a white supremacist (or, perhaps better, a "black inferiorist"). He believed and often stated that blacks were an inferior species.

Lincoln did, however, have sympathy for their suffering. This seems to elevate him morally as compared to most contemporary supremacists. Moreover, Lincoln's viewpoint was far from uncommon at the time. Today, that opinion seems an inexcusable and abominable. One must judge Lincoln in the context of the time in which he lived.

[cktirumalai]

No one who lived through 1972, when he was the presidential nominee (the turbulence of Vietnam, the faith of Flower Children), can forget George McGovern. He seems the veritable Ancient Mariner. The articulate informed voice of the prairies.
Lincoln was a man of many facets: an eloquent speaker who put his whole being into his words, whose cadences are worthy of the King James Bible. What would America not give to have a recording of the Gettysburg address? A shaper of American identity, who said that while his party valued the dollar, it ultimately placed the man above the dollar.