Bullets and Ballots: Lincoln and the "Right of Revolution"

Abstract

THE concept of the of revolution, wrote the historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., in 1959, is one of America's seminal to civilization. In a discussion of ten contributions to civilization by the United States (and the thirteen original colonies), he placed first the idea of the of revolution': First and foremost stands the concept of the inherent and universal of revolution proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence.' A sharp contrast, however, to these words was a comment which Judge Learned Hand included in a court decision almost ten years earlier: Revolutions are often 'right,' but a 'right of revolution' is a contradiction in terms, for a society which acknowledged it could not stop at tolerating conspiracies to overthrow it, but must include their execution.2 The disparity between the words of the well-known historian and those of the well-known judge is striking, but one possible explanation of the disparity comes readily to mind. According to that explanation, Schlesinger's words are to be understood as referring to a or ethical right, whereas Hand's comment is to be understood in a legal or constitutional sense concerning a right which is enforceable in courts of law. Thus, Schlesinger can be pictured as speaking the language of those Americans who have expressed their support for the concept of a moral of revolution-the language, for example, of Thomas Jefferson, whose Declaration of Independence Schlesinger cited, or the language of John C. Calhoun in the Senate on January 5, I837, or of Abraham Lincoln in the Congress on January i2, I848, or of Henry David Thoreau in his essay On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, published in i849, or of John L. Motley in his letter to the London Times of May 23, i86i, or of Ulysses S. Grant in his Personal Memoirs published in i885.3 Conversely, Hand can be depicted as speaking a different