Lincoln and the Rebirth of Liberal Democracy

Abstract

Lincoln and the Rebirth of Liberal Democracy ROBERT K. FAULKNER It is a privilege to speak in this, the house of the Supreme Court of the United States, of Abraham Lincoln, our supremely great President. His task, he said, was greater than George Washington’s. In the United States’ gravest crisis and most terrible war, Lincoln saved the country, its democratic republic, and the republic’s devotion to the equal rights ofman. He did more than save. He renewed the republic and purified it ofslavery. My topic this evening is more about the saving and the renewing than the purifying. I mean to discuss chiefly not the new birth of freedom, but the rebirth of a republic fit to be the home of freedom. Lincoln knew that “[slavery] was, somehow, the cause ofthe war.”1 He had always hated slavery, and he devised, in my opinion, the only practicable way to emancipation. But only if “the home of freedom” lived could it provide that new birth of freedom. We live amidst a lesser rebirth, a revived appreciation of Lincoln’s greatness. If any­ thing is original in this essay, it is the com­ prehensive political focus. I try to bring out Lincoln’s understanding of what makes a lib­ eral democracy work. Put prosaically, away from Lincoln’s gorgeous metaphors, he re­ vived both a government and a people. He en­ ergized constitutional institutions grown weak with strictconstruction and sedition. He turned in a liberal direction a Northern majority tempted to be excessively populist, and he turned in a politic direction Northern lead­ ers tempted to be excessively principled. Very broadly put, he carved a way just as well as politic between Stephen Douglas’s popu­ lar sovereignty and William Lloyd Garrison’s abolitionism. So I shall contend. I talk first ofLincoln’s energizing ofour institutions, and then ofhis fostering in majority and their lead­ ers reverence for free institutions and equal rights—both. Popular Government—with Teeth Lincoln is famous or notorious for contend­ ing that the Civil War’s chief purpose was to defend our republican government and union, not to abolish slavery. His first war message to the new Congress explains: “Is there, in all republics, this inherent, and fatal weakness? 202 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY Must a government, ofnecessity, be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?”2 This was no idle question. Since its famous revolution, France had had six other revolutions, two of­ ficial republics (not counting the crises within each), two monarchies, and two Napoleonic emperors, not to mention a reign of terror and the revolutionary and imperial wars that killed millions. In 1861, the year of Lincoln’s mes­ sage, France had been for nine years under its second Napoleonic tyranny. Back home, in the United States, skeptics had existed from the start. Alexander Hamilton doubted whether a democratic republic could be forceful enough; Thomas Jefferson, whether any forceful gov­ ernment would not tyrannize. Lincoln was not a skeptic, but he knew the skepticism: the lib­ eral party throughout the world, he said in the Peoria Address, worries about the fate of the United States.3 He saw the Civil War itself as a great test of the republican experiment: the “central idea” ofthis struggle is the neces­ sity ofproving “thatpopular government is not an absurdity.”4 Two points had already been proved: a “constitutional republic, or democ­ racy,” could be established, and it could be administered. A third test remained, he told Congress: could it be maintained against a formidable rebellion? To pass the test, the people and their gov­ ernmenthad to demonstrate for the world—not just for us—“that those who can fairly carry an election, can also suppress a rebellion.” The government had to show elemental authority: strength enough to defend a constitutional ma­ jority’s decision. It was a great object of his, he said, to teach “the futility of... [an] ap­ peal ... from the ballot to the sword.” So the country must not give in to a politics of extor­ tion. It must not permit an extortion of slavery extension in the Territories by threats...