[Note:  This essay was originally written on February 15, 2010, as an President’s Day essay in honor of Abraham Lincoln.]

In closing his magnum opus, A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln And The Coming Of The Civil War, Harry Jaffa makes the following statement that I would like to comment upon today: “Lincoln left Springfield for Washington on February 11, 1861, with a task greater than that which rested upon Washington. He was the truest heir of Washington, because of both the clarity of his understanding and the strength of his character. The attempts to diminish the cause of Lincoln in the American mind in Lincoln’s lifetime and our own, have been substantially identical. Calhoun’s heirs have dominated the academy and by a shallow and permissive historicism and relativism have subjected “the laws of nature and of nature’s God” to scorn and contempt. They have done so by propaganda appealing to the basest passions, and reason has been in retreat. Nonetheless, “truth is great and will prevail, unless deprived of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.” We must then take up the weapons of truth and go forth to battle once again for the cause of Father Abraham, of Union, and of Freedom, as in the olden time[1].”

It is the purpose of this paper to very briefly examine why Lincoln’s task was greater than that of Washington, and why our own task is substantially the same as Lincoln’s. We should also explore what the Calhounites of the mid-1800’s have to do with the shallow and permissive representatives of the academy today, and what is the nature of their shared hostility to the foundational principles of this nation. We must also ask by what means that debate and free argument have been attacked in both the antebellum South and in contemporary America. In viewing the similarities of the time before the American Civil War and our own age, we may with grave concern examine the possibility that such fratricidal bloodshed may again come to our nation because the underlying issues remain unsolved.

There are two main reasons why Lincoln’s task was greater than Washington’s task. The first is that Washington’s task (and those of his honored contemporaries whom we respect as Founding Brothers) was to establish a government based on firm biblical principles that was also in accordance with reason, and the founders, by and large, saw no contradiction between the principles of reason and those of revelation. They saw that all men were created equal because we are all equally human beings, neither beasts of burden nor holy angels, but created in the very image and likeness of God and endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. They recognized their imperfections, and sought rationally and gradually to resolve the contradictions between their idealistic rationality and the fallen institutions they had inherited from their colonial forefathers. They lamented the evil, but did not let their recognition of this evil either destroy the institutions they sought to build or call the evil good. By Lincoln’s time, this was no longer the case. Southerners had, since the 1830’s, ceased to call slavery a necessary evil and instead called it a positive good, gradually becoming more aggressively defensive about their “peculiar institution” and less willing to hear, much less consider, any criticism of their culture from Northerners. This moral corruption, in ceasing to see blacks as human beings in God’s image but as lesser beings, spread to the North as well in harsher laws against free blacks, denying them of the citizenship they had held in many states during the Revolutionary Era. A consequence of this corruption, and the growing conflict over slavery, was also to replace the nationalism of the Founding Generation with a sectional identity and the growth of “identity politics.”

This first happened in New England, as hostility over the continuance of the “Virginia Dynasty” because of the additional electoral votes added to Southern states by the 3/5 rule (counting 5 slaves as 3 people for apportioning seats in the House of Representatives) and the resulting capture of the institutions of the United States by Southerners in the early republic led to abortive attempts by some New England Federalists to secede from the Union during the War of 1812. Minority status as a region had led to the formation of regional identities that warred with the national identity of being Americans.

By 1850, the shoe was well on the other foot, as events such as the repeated passage of the Wilmot Proviso in the House of Representatives seeking to ban slavery from all territory conquered from Mexico in the Mexican-American War demonstrated to wary Southerners that a free soil majority existed in the North and that the South may have to face the unpleasant reality of being a permanent minority. Furthermore, its unjust power in Congress and the Supreme Court and in the Presidency, through their control of the Democratic Party, was now in jeopardy. When no further slave states entered the United States after Texas and Florida in 1845, while numerous free states entered the Union before 1861 (like Iowa, Wisconsin, California, Minnesota, and Oregon), the South faced the possibility that eventually it may be possible for ¾ of the states to pass a Constitutional Amendment banning slavery at some time in the future, especially as Delaware became increasingly only a nominal slave state, reducing their power still further. This threat to Southern domination over the majority North and to the system of plantation slavery as a whole led to Calhoun’s adoption of identity politics, and meant that many Southeners (who accepted Calhoun’s argument) no longer saw themselves as Americans first, but as Southeners first.

Likewise, our own day is threatened by identity politics that seek to corrupt and pervert the national government in favor of favored and privileged minorities. Whether the attempt is to “redress historical wrongs” by affirmative action, or the attempts of evolutionists and gays and abortionists to thwart the spread of Intelligent Design and the defense of marriage and the lives of fetuses through the courts, these modern solutions by threatened and privileged minorities are the same as those adopted by their Southern predecessors. Just as Southerners sought to make speech against slavery hate speech, and to use their control of the courts to declare personal liberty laws defending the rights of free blacks unconstitutional, gay activists seek to make speech demonstrating the immorality of homosexual behavior a criminal act and seek to make unconstitutional democratically passed laws defending marriage. Just as Mormons sought to redefine marriage as including more than just between one man and one woman despite the hostility of the majority of Americans, so gay activists wish to re-introduce the subject of plural marriage into the political discourse of this nation. Furthermore, just as pro-Confederate groups after the Civil War sought to control textbooks and prevent them from speaking against Southern slavery, or prevent them from properly assigning to slavery the cause of the Civil War, modern evolutionists seek to control textbooks to defend their own threatened and false scientific positions. Neither the neo-Confederates nor Evolutionists have wished to see free argument and debate about their theories, but have rather sought to corrupt the academy to bolster their own threatened positions. Not much has changed.

In many ways, the hostility of the Calhounites to the United States and the hostility of those who threaten the United States today is the same. The enshrining of human equality in the Declaration of Independence, a recognition of the common human nature and the common image and likeness of God in all human beings, was offensive to Calhoun and many Southerners of his time. This was because such a recognition of humanity meant the South was guilty of denying God-given rights to the black slaves in their midst. Rather than seek to ameliorate that guilt through preparing their slaves for freedom through education and staged and responsible emancipation, they sought instead to replace the egalitarian impulse of the Declaration of Independence with a rigid race code that made race the standard of citizenship, rather than moral character or any other reasonable factor. Likewise, for many identity groups today, it is identity as a member of a particular group that matters most—whether that group is based on sexuality or ethnicity or gender. Rather than see the common and transcendent moral standard that applies equally to all, there is the spread of relativism based on one’s identity. Just like Southeners refused to admit their failure to meet to the standard of republican equality in the Declaration of Independence, gay activists rail against the standard of moral sexuality enshrined in the Bible (and, to be honest, many more heterosexuals do the same, and a shared hostility to biblical standards of morality certainly allows many heterosexuals to support the gay agenda). Just like Southern slave owners sought to deny the humanity of blacks so they could do what they wanted with their slaves, so abortionists seek to deny the humanity of fetuses so that they can do what they want with their own bodies. Rather than admit their own fault in the face of a transcendent moral standard, they seek to deny the applicability of that standard to them, even as they apply transcendent moral standards of their own devising against their opponents in the aggressive defense of their own “rights,” even while denying the only source of those rights.

What underlying issues remain the same after all these years? For one, the requirement for freedom to rest upon morality is central in the disputes over slavery as well as modern disputes over abortion, homosexuality, and race. It is not membership in a given identity group that makes one’s actions righteous, but rather the extent to which those actions match the divine standard of God’s law. The only transcendent standard that can exist is a standard that comes from outside this temporary physical universe in which we live. Otherwise, a standard of behavior is not transcendent, as it would either exist only by custom, personal opinion, or the despotic power of a tyrannical government. None of those sources are transcendent. Holding to such a standard, though, places us in the very awkward position of being required to submit to the authority of God over the universe, and this is not an easy thing to do, especially for those who wish to become like God themselves, choosing good and evil for themselves. Only a moral people can be free, because only those who are in control of themselves are fit to be free to be responsible over others, or are fit to be free of the need for external coercion.

The difficulty is in maintaining the necessary tension between two different constraints upon those who recognize problems in society. For one, it is necessary to hold ourselves and our society (and its institutions) to the same moral standard. We cannot overlook our own faults even as we critique those of others. Indeed, some of us are skilled in recognizing different faults. Some will see the lingering remnants of racism or sexism or class snobbery, while others will see the faults of avoiding responsibility, engaging in moral depravity, or the loss of control due to addictive behaviors. By applying a consistent standard to all behaviors, we can see many flaws, and much room to grow on all sides, and the avoidance of turning truth into a partisan issue, since all sides are flawed and fallen human beings—the trick is that we must all seek redemption rather than wallow in our imperfect state. In addition to the need to hold everything and everyone to a consistent high standard is the need to be patient. Genuine change comes from conversion, not coercion, and it is vital that those who wish to help improve society not only model the behavior they wish to instill in others, but to realize that political power—whether through passing laws or making Supreme Court decisions or executive orders—does not change the hearts and minds of people. One cannot either lose patience with the slow process of conversion or lose sight of the standard of moral perfection our lives and institutions should ever more closely approximate. To forget either is to be in grave danger causing another internal cultural war like the American Civil War.

What, then, are we to do? The process to reforming a culture, as Lincoln and his supporters sought to do in 1860, is not a simple one. First, one must understand and internalize the Bible so that our standards are the same as God’s standards and that we are a fitting example of the way of life we promote. Then, we must subject ourselves and society’s institutions in total to that divine standard with the realization that the entire universe is under the jurisdiction of God. Third, we must present our case through free argument and debate, knowing that truth defeats error in an open competition, which means as well that we should encourage open discussion of important issues. Those who fight against openness are afraid of losing, and lack confidence, and this means they are vulnerable to the truth. As lasting change comes from the bottom up, through the conversion of individuals and the spread of their example, any sort of movement for meaningful change will require a grass roots effort as well as the building of bridges with other like minded people. The process is long, but cannot be short-circuited.

In this we see that Lincoln had a much more difficult task than Washington, and our task today is much like Lincoln’s. Washington and his associates were seeking to build a free nation on the basis of the culture that had long developed in the colonies where freedom of discussion, a high concern for rationality, and the long propagation of scriptural truths were all a longstanding part of the unified culture of the nation being established. Evils like slavery were recognized as such, but action on removing such evils was deferred to future generations. By the time Lincoln became president, though, slavery was no longer being viewed as a necessary and lamentable evil, but rather as a positive good. In addition, the prudent actions of the Founders were being denounced by abolitionists as compacts with the devil. In the environment between impatient power-hungry reformers and vulnerable and defensive slaveowners, conflict became inevitable. Likewise, our society today shows several related fault lines where prolonged political conflict may break out into a shooting war if matters continue to deteriorate. Both Lincoln and we ourselves are faced with the need to counteract a society that is being corrupted by evil and challenged by impatient reformers who seek after the power to coerce change from the top down, which can only fail in an atmosphere of bitter conflict.

And so we are called today to do battle, not against flesh and blood, but against the wicked spirit of the times. We must examine how we ourselves have been affected by our society, and what we can do to cleanse ourselves and then seek to gradually reform our surroundings through the power of personal example and instruction to our children. To do so we must take up the weapons of truth and do battle—we cannot escape conflict and tension. Nor can we concede any ground as belonging to the forces of evil—be it an institution or a realm of human activity. We are engaging in a battle for everything—and we cannot afford to lose.

[1] Harry V. Jaffa, A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln And The Coming of the Civil War (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2004), 470-471.