by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Whether we like it or not, the United States of America would not exist
without politics or politicians. Our
constitutionally defined representative democracy is one of the greatest
achievements of civilization.
Unfortunately, what makes it great is also its greatest threat: it is the responsibility of the people who
live under the rule of laws written by elected representatives to maintain the
integrity of those laws by participating in the making of them. Our founders understood how fragile their new
form of government would be because it relied on a majority of the people to agree to play by the new set of
rules in order that the country function as a sovereign entity. The question of slavery dogged the founders,
but they found a way to unify the nation by permitting certain southern states
to continue the practice. For the next
80 years, slavery became increasingly divisive as the country began expanding
westward. Slave states wanted the new
territories to permit slavery. Free
states objected to any expansion of slavery, and a growing number of
abolitionists felt that the practice was intolerable for a nation founded on
the principal of liberty and justice for all.
Abraham Lincoln joined the pantheon of great American presidents by
winning the Civil War and by ending slavery.
He became president in a way that seemed accidental, because he was the
least known of the leading contenders for the presidency in 1860. Moreover, he was a humble country lawyer,
largely self-taught, and quite awkward-looking.
What he lacked in appearance and credentials he more than made up for in
intelligence and political skill. Doris Kearns Goodwin’s recent book, Team
of Rivals, explains in detail exactly how Abraham Lincoln used politics not
only to get elected to the presidency, but also to end the practice of slavery
in America. While ponderous, the book is
extremely well written and maintains the sense of urgency felt throughout the
United States before, during, and after the Civil War.
In 1858, former U. S. Representative Abraham Lincoln, at the time a
Whig, lost a senate challenge to incumbent Stephen A. Douglas after a series of
debates highlighted growing divisions in the nation on the question of whether
slave owners could move into newly established western territories. Lincoln opposed the practice of slavery but
recognized that the Constitution permitted it in certain states. Senator Douglas, through a piece of
legislation known as the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, undid the Missouri
Compromise which set the northern boundary for slavery at parallel 36°30′ north
(except within the boundaries of the proposed state of Missouri). Debate over this law emboldened the southern
states because it allowed the settlers of the new territories to decide by
majority vote whether or not to permit slavery.
The southern states’ agrarian economies depended on the industrialized
cities of the northeast where political power was concentrated. Both sides recognized that it had the
potential to change the political balance of power in the United States by
increasing the power of those who depended on slavery. Meanwhile, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s landmark
book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (published in 1852), enlightened the public on
the horrors of slavery, giving traction to the Abolitionist movement in the
north and setting the stage for the Civil War.
Two years after his failed Senate campaign, in 1860, Abraham Lincoln
re-entered politics seeking the Republican nomination to the office of
President. The leading contenders – William
H. Seward, Simon Cameron, Salmon Chase, and Edward Bates – underestimated the
“rail-splitter” from Illinois. After
three ballots Lincoln, through astute political maneuvering, honesty, and good
manners emerged the nominee. The
presidential election results revealed how deeply divided north and south had
become: he won the northern states and
western territories but not a single southern state. His election to the presidency, with no
constituents in the south, was the breaking point and eleven southern states –
South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas,
Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee, in that order – seceded from
the Union. Shortly before Lincoln’s
inauguration, Jefferson Davis became the president of the Confederate States of
America.
Team of Rivals explains with great clarity the political
brilliance of Abraham Lincoln. He was
elected president with less than 50 per cent of the vote; and to offset this
vulnerability he brought several of his rivals for the office into his
cabinet. Not only did this lead to
better debates, it helped him understand the will of the people from many
perspectives. Throughout his presidency,
his rivals both underestimated and attempted to undermine him but he was always
two steps ahead of them. Rather than
seek revenge, Lincoln found ways to defuse his opposition which allowed them to
save face as he outmaneuvered them. His first
and most painful political lesson happened early on in the Civil War.
Despite superior manpower and war machinery, the Union fought a
half-hearted battle to reclaim the wayward states. This was largely due to the failure of
General George McClellan to lead the army.
The Confederate soldiers, on the other hand, fought with passion and bested
the Union troops in battle after battle.
It seemed possible that the unthinkable might happen until the
deliberative president, with his considerable political skill, reorganized the
army’s leadership and rallied the troops behind the cause of preserving the
Union. Lincoln, being a civilian, had to
tread carefully among the military leaders in order to keep their loyalty. It took time and many lives before he was
able to remove McClellan from command and replace him with a general who was
willing to fight.
As calls for ending slavery became louder in the north and conditions in
battle grew worse, Lincoln issued the “Emancipation Proclamation” (1863)
ordering the entire executive branch of the government, including the armed
forces, to treat the slaves in the Confederate states as free people and used
this as leverage to attempt to bring the Confederate states back to the Union. The Proclamation’s sole purpose was to weaken
the Confederacy, not to eradicate slavery from the nation because it did not
apply to the five slave states which did not secede. Lincoln knew that it would take an amendment
to the Constitution to abolish slavery from the entire country.
Senator John B. Henderson of Missouri, on January 11,1864, called for
this constitutional amendment which quickly passed in the Senate. The House of Representatives, however, failed
to achieve the two-thirds majority vote required until the following year. President Lincoln, again used his political
skill to persuade just enough Representatives to support it while he
simultaneously campaigned for re-election.
He won and shortly after his inauguration in January of 1965, the House
passed the amendment by a vote of 119 to 56.
The northern states voted to ratify the 13th amendment in
short order, but before it became part of the Constitution, President Lincoln
was assassinated on April 14, 1865, as he watched a play at Ford’s Theater in
Washington, DC. Vice President Andrew
Johnson assumed the presidency and pushed the Confederate states to return to
the Union and ratify the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. In all, 27 of the (then) 36 states voted to
ratify and slavery ended, freeing millions of black Americans from bondage, but
not from hardship.
President Lincoln, shortly before his death, had advocated giving black
men the right to vote. Not everyone who
opposed slavery and supported the 13th Amendment agreed with
this. Many Abolitionists favored sending
the freed slaves to Liberia in Africa where many previously freed slaves had
settled beginning in 1820. This might
have appealed to those who had been captured and imported on slave ships, but
the majority of slaves in the United States in the mid-1800s were born on
American soil and were not inclined to leave the only home they knew. Thus began a massive migration of freed
slaves to the industrialized north which created an entirely new set of
problems for the nation’s politicians to deal with for more than a century, in
ways both ugly and beautiful, but never with the finesse of Abraham Lincoln.
Today’s politicians are an unpopular lot, and deservedly so, thanks to a
political system mired in dysfunction. Very
few Americans seem satisfied with the work being done by the politicians we
have elected to do the nation’s business because they are not doing very much
that could be called work (and this has been true for far too long). The so-called “Sequester” is the latest
example of politics gone bad in America.
It’s draconian spending cuts and tax hikes were designed to be so
heinous that neither political party would let it happen, but they did
anyway. Watching the Washington drama
play out is like witnessing a toxic divorce:
the parties cannot even agree on the weather. Once upon a time, liberals and conservatives,
Democrats and Republicans, could argue about policy, play a round of golf, and
reach a consensus. Gradually across the
past thirty years politicians have stopped using good manners and have become
focused on winning – the argument, the tactical maneuver, the debate, the
election – by any means necessary.
Today, the American people are more cynical than at any point in our
history, and this is a danger to our democracy.
In his first inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln closed with these words:
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, stretching from every
battlefield 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.
This country may never again be blessed with a politician of Lincoln’s
greatness, but that is no excuse for the mockery we, the people of the United
States of America, are making of our miraculous form of government when we
allow political organizations to turn us against each other over issues we
ought to be able to talk about.
Copyright 2013 Teresa Friedlander, all rights reserved
