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LINCOLN AND HIS LEGACY
by Joe Sobran
At this point it is probably futile to try to
reverse the deification of Abraham Lincoln. Next year, if
I know my countrymen, the bicentennial of his birth will
be marked by stupendously cloying anniversary
observances, all of them affirming, if not his literal
divinity, at least something mighty close to it.
No doubt we will hear from the high priests and
priestesses of the Lincoln cult: Doris Kearns Goodwin,
Garry Wills, Harry V. Jaffa, and all the rest of the
tireless hagiographers of academia, who regularly rate
Honest Abe one of our two greatest presidents, right up
there with Stalin's buddy Franklin D. Roosevelt, father
of the nuclear age and defiler of the U.S. Constitution.
Such, we are told, is the Verdict of History.
But if Lincoln was so great, we must ask why nobody
seems to have realized it while he was still alive. The
abolitionists considered him unprincipled, Southerners
hated him, and most Northerners opposed his war on the
South. Only when the war ended and he was shot did people
begin to transform him into a hero and martyr of the
Union cause. But that cause was badly flawed.
The Declaration of Independence, which Lincoln
always quoted selectively, says that the American
colonies of Great Britain had become "free and
independent states" -- separate states, mind you, not the
monolithic "new nation" he proclaimed at Gettysburg. The
U.S. Constitution refers constantly to the states, but
never to a "nation"; and this is a fact we should ponder.
Alas, it appears that Lincoln seldom thought about
it. For him the Union was somehow prior to its members,
except in his younger days, when, oddly enough, he had
been a passionate advocate of the "most sacred right" of
secession -- in other countries. When and why he changed
his mind, or the reason he never applied this principle
to his native country, we do not know; but Gore Vidal,
among other keen observers, has called attention to this
most striking inconsistency of his career. What he called
"saving the Union" simply meant the denial of this most
sacred right, and he was willing to pay any price in
blood to achieve it.
No wonder his favorite play was MACBETH. He may have
seen himself in the tyrant who had waded too far into a
river of gore to turn back. Far more Americans died in
his war than in any other in our history.
A few books have told the dark story of Lincoln's
suppression of liberty in the North, including the
thousands of arbitrary arrests and hundreds of closings
of newspapers; his war on the South required a war on the
Bill of Rights in the North as well. All in the name of
freedom, of course.
Despite his symbolic importance, most Americans know
little about Lincoln. He was very secretive about himself
and his family, and he remains something of an enigma to
his biographers. One fact is clear, though: he was poorly
educated. He made up for this with his rare rhetorical
and political genius; his eloquence continues to create
the illusion of greatness.
Maybe it would have happened anyway, but since
Lincoln the Constitution has meant not what it says, but
whatever the U.S. Government decides it shall mean. The
very meaning of constitutionality has become entirely
fluid, so that the law itself has become exactly what law
should never be: unpredictable.
Think of the U.S. Supreme Court's notorious 1973
abortion ruling. Nobody before then had ever suggested
that abortion was a constitutional right, but the Court
suddenly discovered that it was, protected somehow by the
Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments. The laws of all 50
states were struck down at a blow, but thanks to Lincoln
the remedy of secession was no longer available to them.
Today's United States of America would be
constitutionally unrecognizable to the authors of the
original Constitution, because today the government has
become the wolf at the door. Do I exaggerate? A
television commercial asks, "Is the IRS ruining your
life?"
Imagine what Washington and Jefferson would have
said about that question! They never dreamed that their
countrymen would live in dread of the government created
to secure their liberty. But that is what has happened to
this country, and much of this is Abraham Lincoln's
by Joe Sobran
At this point it is probably futile to try to
reverse the deification of Abraham Lincoln. Next year, if
I know my countrymen, the bicentennial of his birth will
be marked by stupendously cloying anniversary
observances, all of them affirming, if not his literal
divinity, at least something mighty close to it.
No doubt we will hear from the high priests and
priestesses of the Lincoln cult: Doris Kearns Goodwin,
Garry Wills, Harry V. Jaffa, and all the rest of the
tireless hagiographers of academia, who regularly rate
Honest Abe one of our two greatest presidents, right up
there with Stalin's buddy Franklin D. Roosevelt, father
of the nuclear age and defiler of the U.S. Constitution.
Such, we are told, is the Verdict of History.
But if Lincoln was so great, we must ask why nobody
seems to have realized it while he was still alive. The
abolitionists considered him unprincipled, Southerners
hated him, and most Northerners opposed his war on the
South. Only when the war ended and he was shot did people
begin to transform him into a hero and martyr of the
Union cause. But that cause was badly flawed.
The Declaration of Independence, which Lincoln
always quoted selectively, says that the American
colonies of Great Britain had become "free and
independent states" -- separate states, mind you, not the
monolithic "new nation" he proclaimed at Gettysburg. The
U.S. Constitution refers constantly to the states, but
never to a "nation"; and this is a fact we should ponder.
Alas, it appears that Lincoln seldom thought about
it. For him the Union was somehow prior to its members,
except in his younger days, when, oddly enough, he had
been a passionate advocate of the "most sacred right" of
secession -- in other countries. When and why he changed
his mind, or the reason he never applied this principle
to his native country, we do not know; but Gore Vidal,
among other keen observers, has called attention to this
most striking inconsistency of his career. What he called
"saving the Union" simply meant the denial of this most
sacred right, and he was willing to pay any price in
blood to achieve it.
No wonder his favorite play was MACBETH. He may have
seen himself in the tyrant who had waded too far into a
river of gore to turn back. Far more Americans died in
his war than in any other in our history.
A few books have told the dark story of Lincoln's
suppression of liberty in the North, including the
thousands of arbitrary arrests and hundreds of closings
of newspapers; his war on the South required a war on the
Bill of Rights in the North as well. All in the name of
freedom, of course.
Despite his symbolic importance, most Americans know
little about Lincoln. He was very secretive about himself
and his family, and he remains something of an enigma to
his biographers. One fact is clear, though: he was poorly
educated. He made up for this with his rare rhetorical
and political genius; his eloquence continues to create
the illusion of greatness.
Maybe it would have happened anyway, but since
Lincoln the Constitution has meant not what it says, but
whatever the U.S. Government decides it shall mean. The
very meaning of constitutionality has become entirely
fluid, so that the law itself has become exactly what law
should never be: unpredictable.
Think of the U.S. Supreme Court's notorious 1973
abortion ruling. Nobody before then had ever suggested
that abortion was a constitutional right, but the Court
suddenly discovered that it was, protected somehow by the
Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments. The laws of all 50
states were struck down at a blow, but thanks to Lincoln
the remedy of secession was no longer available to them.
Today's United States of America would be
constitutionally unrecognizable to the authors of the
original Constitution, because today the government has
become the wolf at the door. Do I exaggerate? A
television commercial asks, "Is the IRS ruining your
life?"
Imagine what Washington and Jefferson would have
said about that question! They never dreamed that their
countrymen would live in dread of the government created
to secure their liberty. But that is what has happened to
this country, and much of this is Abraham Lincoln's
