1776, Part 5: The Declaration and the Civil War

Episode Topic: The Declaration and the Civil War 

How can Abraham Lincoln’s moral evolution through the bloody crucible of the Civil War help illuminate its profound intersection of political philosophy and historical crisis? Witness how the Civil War transformed the Declaration of Independence from a static document into a living promise.

Featured Speakers:

• Vincent Phillip Muñoz, University of Notre Dame

Read this episode's recap over on the University of Notre Dame's open online learning community platform, ThinkND: https://go.nd.edu/bc82f3.

This podcast is a part of the ThinkND Series titled 1776: The Ideas that Made the Modern World. 

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Transcript

Welcome

Natural Rights Review

Speaker 0:14

Welcome to all those who are watching online. if you're watching online, uh, you can go to the 1776 website, and you can get a link to the, uh, uh, slideshow. now, all those with laptops, this is your opportunity to not be on your laptop for an hour. So it's good for you, right? So, uh, you can just listen and, listen and enjoy. a couple of announcements. the-- I... As you know, I think, I run the Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government. We have a lecture on Thursday by our visiting scholar, Carl Truman. he has a new book coming out. The book actually isn't quite out, uh, All That Is Sacred Must Be Profaned. So he is, to my mind, probably the leading Protestant thinker in America right now. He's, he's really impressive, and he wrote a book, uh, a few years ago on the modern self. I, I think it's one of the most important books that has been written in the last, last generation. and he's a very gifted, a very gifted orator. He's a preacher, so it, it will be, it'll be engaging as well. So it's Thursday night at seven o'clock over in the Eck Visitors Center. so come. Uh, I think you'll enjoy it. If, if you're here, you'll enjoy that as well. So that's Thursday night. Okay, a couple other announcements as well. On Thursday afternoon, we have a, a friend of mine who's a law professor at Catholic University of America, is gonna come and do a, a mock law school class for undergraduates who are thinking about law school. If you wanna know what law school is like, he's just gonna do a mock class on free speech. It's gonna be Thursday at 3:30 PM. Don't remember where it is, but if you email Tyler Castle, who works at the center, just go to the CCCG website. You can find Tyler Castle. He can tell you where it is. and there's also gonna be an admissions officer there from the Catholic University of America. And so if you're, if you're thinking about law school, maybe if you're a junior or even if you're a senior, you wanna, get a little bit an experience of what law school's like or you're thinking of applying to law school, uh, join us, join us if you like. So 3:30 on Thursday afternoon for the, law seminar and then, uh, Thursday night for the, the lecture. okay, two other quick announcements. As you know, a-as I said on the very first day of class, we, we try to structure this class so, we have class when you don't have midterms in your other classes. Now, that's not perfect, but I presume for most of the undergraduates it's gonna get busier right before spring break. So this is our last class in here before spring break. The week we get back in May, presumably when it won't be really cold we're gonna have a visiting scholar come, and he's, he's, he's a big deal. He's a Stanford law professor, one of the leading, constitutional historians. He's a pretty young guy, actually. He's maybe in his... maybe 40. but he, he's really impressive, and he's gonna give three lectures for us. They're pretty academic lectures, but the lectures are on the theme of natural rights and the founding. And he's, he's making some new, pretty bold arguments. and it's mainly gonna be for professors, but, uh, because you're in this class, I think you'll find it of interest. So he's gonna give three lectures. You don't have to come to all of them. That's gonna be the Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Try to come to one, and you'll see what, this m- this sort of material done at a very scholarly level is like. Okay? You can go to the CCCG website. And then we'll resume class, the second week after spring break. I think it's March twenty-fourth. Check your syllabus. And then we'll start the Adam Smith portion. Okay? All clear on that? Any questions on that? Okay. just a quick review. we started, uh, with the declaration,"All men are created equal." Right? What do we mean by that? Equal in what sense? Well, equal in our natural rights, including our natural right, right to liberty. important takeaway points. Where do your natural rights come from? Well, from your nature as a free and rational being. Who authored your nature? According to the declaration, we're endowed by our creator. Now, just to clarify, we have natural rights, and then we have what the founders called a- acquired rights. Or sometimes we say civil rights or political rights, right? So your right to vote is not a natural right. It's a political right be-- That is, you have it by being a member of the political community, or the right to have a driver's license, or the right to a jury trial. Right? There are no juries in nature, right? In the state of nature. Right? Does that make, that-- Does that distinction make sense? But your natural rights, the right to religious liberty, the right to free speech, the right to property, those are inhere in your nature. And, and the important point here is that government doesn't give you those natural rights. We create government to protect those natural rights. And if a government doesn't secure your natural rights, we have a right... You know, after a long train of abuses, we have a right to revolution and to institute new government. Okay? natural rights, all the exercise of all rights have limits, and we talked about that. That was sort of the second point we made, right? We, we misconceive rights. We think if I have a right to do-- If I have a right to free speech, it means I have a right to say anything I want. but that's not true, actually. You can't say false things about people. We talked-- I used that example, right? So all rights are limited by the law of nature, right? Okay. In a political sense, it's true-- What's true of an individual is true of a community, right? W-we're a democracy, and the people rule. We're actually a republic, but-- and the people rule, right? Through representat-representatives. But it doesn't mean that anything we, the people, decide to do is legitimate. Just as an individual's exercise of his or her natural freedom can be measured against the law of nature, the actions of the people can be measured against the law, the law of nature, right? Good law, according to Martin Luther King, or legitimate law, is positive law, that is law passed by the political community, that accords with the natural law. Bad law is law, positive law passed by the community, that does not accord, that contradicts the law of nature, the natural law. So segregation was legal in a positive sense, right? It was the law of the segregated states, but it was an unjust law. And to have the idea of an unjust law, you have to have a standard above the law, right? Is that... It's almost self-explanatory, right? What is that standard above the law? And, and in, in our constitutional tradition, that's the, the natural law or the law of nature, right? And of course, the great exponent of the law of nature is, or the natural law, is Thomas Aquinas, but it's not just him, right? You can see echoes of it in Aristotle and, and all sorts of folks. Okay. Any questions? And w- we haven't had a whole lot of time for questions. So any questions on what we've done? All good? Okay. All

Speaker 2 7:31

right.

Speaker 7:32

Okay. today's, uh, uh, I wanna introduce, an old-fashioned word, statesmanship, and this is Frederick Douglass here. And the question is, w-what is statesmanship? So we've been talking a lot about philosophical principles, right? O-one of the pre-class posts, I tried to comment on a lot of them. I didn't comment on all of them. I, I wanted to, but there's a lot, there's a lot of you. one of the pre-class posts says,"It's interesting that we're, um, talking about the Civil War in this class about the declaration." It is interesting, but we're doing that because during the Civil War, say Lincoln gives us the greatest meditation on a declaration in American history, right? Um, and Lincoln's life brings up the question of statesmanship. I asked you last week or two weeks ago, how would you solve Social Security? Right, the looming crisis. None of you think you're gonna get Social Security So it's a real political problem. How would you solve it? And you immediately saw, uh, what's the fundamental problem with solving Social Security? Why, why won't the people just solve it? Yeah, way in the back. There's no political will. Why is there no political will?

Speaker 2 8:50

Yes. Uh, the older people in America who have served the country so well and raised you and paid your tuition think they have a right to Social Security. Well, why don't you just outvote them? There's more of them. Actually, there's not really more of them, but they vote and you don't. So there's no political will, right? And it would be-- So what does that teach us about being a statesman or a stateswoman in a republic? You have to think about this, right? I mean, maybe it's easy to know how to fix Social Security in a technical sense, but how do you actually get it done? How do you move a people? And that's something we don't think about too much, but that's real leadership, right?

Frederick Douglass On Lincoln

Speaker 9:54

Like, how do you get a people to do something that is right that they may or may not want to do, especially if they don't want to do it or don't see it? And of the lessons we can learn from Lincoln, it's, it's that.'Cause Lincoln knew slavery was wrong, and he's the president, and there's a civil war, but he can't just declare slavery to be illegal, right? He doesn't know he's gonna win the war. In fact, one of the most amazing things about Lincoln is in early eighteen sixty-four, he thought he was going to lose re-election, and he still... You know, some of his advisors said,"You should cancel the eighteen sixty-four presidential election. You're not gonna win, and if you don't win, whoever wins is gonna sue for peace, and all this will have gone to waste. All the lives, all the treasure, all the suffering will have been for naught." But Lincoln knew he couldn't do that, right? The, the life of Lincoln, the presidency of Lincoln is an example of, democratic statesmanship, right? A statesman, a stateswoman needs to know the end. What is the end And then h- especially what are the means? So if the end is the truths of the declaration, how do we make them actual? And that's what I wanna talk to you about today, okay? So that's our general topic. And I, I wanna do it by starting with Frederick Douglass. Now, have you all read Frederick Douglass' autobiography, The, The Narrative? How many of you have read it? Oh, wow, less than half. That surprises me. Well, we have spring break coming up. If you want a good read, you should read, it's called The Narrative, his, his autobiography. I mean, it's, it's an amazing story. In fact, for, for twenty-five years, if, if there's anyone who's a, a playwright or a scriptwriter, someone needs to make a great American movie about the life of Frederick Douglass, and the, the plot is right there, right? I-- It sort of amazes me that no one has made this movie, right? and if you-- if there's anyone watching who wants to make this movie, I can tell you exactly how to, how it should begin, right? it would be a great service to America if someone did it and did it well. Okay, so Frederick Douglass, you kn- you know hi- who he is, right? He, uh, is one of the great orators, great writers, a great- greatest Americans, right? These are quotes from his oration, uh, of Lincoln. it's a speech he gave in eighteen seventy-six. Th- so this is te- more than ten years after Lincoln has passed away, and the, the, the cause or the occasion for the speech is the dedication of a monument, the Freedman's Memorial in Washington, D- DC, in Lincoln Park. And you can still go to this today. It's, uh, on, it's ten blocks northeast, uh, um, east of the Capitol in northeast Washington, D.C. Right? It's just a park. It's Lincoln Park. actually a pretty nice part of town now. And you... And okay, let me... And this is the monument. Okay. The, the statue there is a, is a life, size statue of Lincoln, and it's a little bit hard to see here, but, um, there's a slave who's at, sort of kneeling before Lincoln, breaking chains, and Lincoln, is holding a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation. That's what's in his hand. Okay? So this is where Douglass spoke, and let me go back to those... I'm sorry, let me go back to those quotes, right? he says,"Lincoln was the white man's president, devoted to the welfare of the white man. You," right, you, the white audience,"you are the children of Lincoln. We are only his stepchildren. The Union was more important to him, to Lincoln, than freedom." Right? And I wanna try to, So I think some of you-- many of you pulled out these quotes in your, in your essay. I think there's actually a movement in, in the speech, and if we had more time, I- we'd read the whole speech, and we'd try to see the movement in it. I don't know that these are Lincoln... I'm sorry, these are Douglas' final judgments about Lincoln. I think if you read the speech carefully, you'll see at the end maybe he suggests a somewhat different view or a qualified view. But nonetheless, this is what he says, and we're gonna try to understand why he says that and, try to start to evaluate to what degree this, these quotes are correct or accurate. Okay? Okay. Okay. So I said in the statute, Lincoln's holding the Emancipation Proclamation. I, I, I don't know. Has anyone read the Emancipation Proclamation? You all know what it is, right? So i-it's the proclamation that-- It's an executive order, those have been much, much in the news lately, that declares the slaves free. all the slaves. What do you know about it? It's s-slaves-- Where, where are the slaves, Where does the Emancipation Proclamation take effect? In non-Union-held territory. Why in non-Union-held territory? It, it's sorta curious. Like, in the border states where the Union-- where there was slavery, but the, but the, the Union Army was in control, those slaves weren't actually freed by the Emancipation Proclamation. Yeah. It's a war measure.

Speaker 2 15:52

Okay?

Speaker 15:53

Now, I'll explain Lincoln's reasoning in a moment here, but this quote here is what he says in his first inaugural. In his first inaugural, he says,"I have no purpose or power as president to free the slaves." In fact, he says,"Look, I, I will enforce the fugitive slave law. Slavery is committed to the states. It's a state question. The Constitution is clear." And he says that in eighteen sixty-one. How do-- Just eighteen sixty-three, January first, yet less than two years. How do we get to Lincoln freeing most of the slaves, or at least the slaves in-- he-held by the Union Army? And the short answer is, it's through his commander-in-chief power. The, the president is given the, the commander-in-chief power. And to simplify somewhat, the, the power to wage war is the power to wage war successfully. And so the president can do things. It's not, it's not that the Constitution is suspended. There are war powers that are activated or go into effect in a time of war. And so Lincoln issues this proclamation as a war measure. Now, it's hard for us to understand this. It's extraordinarily controversial. And you have to remember, at this point, it's by no means clear that Lincoln, uh, that the North is going to win the war. It's by no means clear that this proclamation will free many slaves at all, or that it will be followed or respected. It, it's a-- It's hard to explain how controversial this move is. Okay? So a little time, timeline here. Okay, January first, eighteen sixty-three, the proclamation is, issued. Lincoln actually announces he's going to do it in September, so a few months before. and then notice the Battle An- of Antietam. I'll come back to that in a minute. In August, there's this interesting exchange, and I want to dwell on it for, for a moment, and it'll be obvious why. Horace Greeley is the-- has a, is-- he's an abolitionist. He has a newspaper. It, it's not The New York Times, but it's like The New York Times. And he issues this open letter to Lincoln in his newspaper, right? A, a, a plea, uh, the prayer of twenty million. The twenty million are the twenty million Northerners who want the Civil War to be a war for abolition, right? And Lincoln is disappointing them. You know, why won't you do more to free the slaves? Okay, and you can easily just, you just Google it, you can read, read his letter. Okay? So Greeley, Greeley publishes this open letter on, on August nineteenth, and Lincoln responds with a public letter of his own. So, like, there's all these public letters, right? To Father Dowd right now in The Observer, right? You know. so Lincoln writes a public letter of his own, and this is what Lincoln writes. And this, I think, I'm not sure, but I think is where, Douglas is taking some of his observations from. Okay? I know it's a little bit small. oh, sorry, this is Greeley. This is Greeley's Letter, right? This is Lincoln's response, and I'm just, I'll read it to you, right? He writes,"If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it. And if I could save the, save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it. And if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because it helps to save this Union. And what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors, and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views. I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty, and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed wish that all men everywhere could be free." And this letter, which is publ-- It, it's-- L-Lincoln writes it. It's a letter open to the American people, is why some, including Douglass, I think, why Douglass says he's the white man's president. And that would seem to be a fair construction of this letter, wouldn't it? I mean, let's talk about it for a m- I mean, Lincoln clearly says,"Look, I'm against slavery." But what does Lincoln... What comes through is Lincoln's purpose. Well, it's pretty obvious,

Speaker 2 21:15

right? What's his purpose? To save the Union. And I think most students find this deflating, right, or disappointing. And fair enough. I mean, other thoughts? Why do you think Lincoln wrote this letter? So we have to think about this for a moment. Lincoln's the president. He's making a statement to the people. Why is he doing it? It's not a seminar, right? He's not a faculty pr- you know, faculty member just, you know, writing an essay. You gotta think, what is he trying to do? When did Lincoln decide to issue the Emancipation Proclamation Do you know? Or let me ask a different question. What difference might that make? You have to learn to think politically. You have to learn how to analyze political actors. What difference might that make?

Speaker 23:04

maybe that's thinking politically. Maybe. What if I told you this? What if I told you-- go back to that timeline. What if I told you that Lincoln decided to issue the Emancipation Proclamation-- Okay, his letter to Greeley is in August. Lincoln knew he was gonna issue the proclamation,

Speaker 2 23:30

and he told his cabinet in July. And he says,"It is time to do what needs to be done." But why does he wait till September

Speaker 23:57

to, to publicly announce the Emancipation Proclamation? Anyone know? You could probably deduce it, right?

Speaker 3 24:06

A Union victory.

Speaker 24:07

His cabinet tells him,"You gotta wait till we have a Union victory." In Antietam, it's kind of a,

Speaker 2 24:17

actually kind of a draw, but it's, it's, the South... The North held back the South, and that was considered to be a Northern victory. So what is Lincoln doing, sorry, when he writes this? This letter is written with the Emancipation Proclamation in Lincoln's desk. So what is he doing? Yeah. He's trying to maintain the support of the border states. Okay, I think that's true. But why would he lose the support of the border states? Anyone? Okay, but, but What's he-- The Emancipation Proclamation is extraordinarily controversial. Is it legitimate? How could it be perceived to be legitimate?

Speaker 3 25:41

Only if, states can-

Ends Versus Means

Speaker 2 25:44

Okay. True. If it's an actual war measure.'Cause everyone agrees he has the commander-in-chief power. So Lincoln knows what? To free the slaves, he can only do it via a, a means that is viewed by the American public to be constitutionally legitimate. What are the means at his disposal? Well, his constitutional powers as president, including his commander-in-chief power. Well, then how are you going to present your extraordinarily controversial proclamation to free the slaves? Does everyone see? So when a s- when evaluating the acts of political actors, you have to-- W-what's the evaluation? That they say the right thing or that they actually achieve the right result? And that's how you have to look at politics, right?

Speaker 27:28

Isn't it? If you want to evaluate Lincoln. So this letter is used over and over and over in textbook after textbook after textbook in American high schools to say that Lincoln really didn't care that much. He cared about the Union, and he didn't care about the slaves, without at all understanding its context and what he was actually trying to do. So things in politics aren't always as they seem, and if you wanna be a student of politics, you have to look at not only ends, but also means and the constraints of poli-- constraint a

Speaker 2 28:20

political figure is under Okay, everyone with me? Okay, let me pause for questions on any of this. Yeah, please. This is the entire letter. Yeah. Yeah. If you Google it, you can see the actual picture in the Wa- the Washington, uh, newspaper.

Speaker 28:47

Okay, so we should think about that when we approach, think about this, you have to remember, Lincoln is a political actor acting in, in real time. And so let's turn to the Gettysburg Address. Do you have to, uh, memorize the Gettysburg Address? Did anyone memorize it? Just a handful of you. Anyone wanna come do it by memory? Oh, I should-- I skipped a slide here. This is, this is also from the oration, Frederick Douglass' oration, so the same speech. And I said I, I think there's a movement in the speech, and so this is part of the evidence that there's a movement. All right, his great mission. He's talking about Lincoln."His great mission was to accomplish two things: first, to save his country from dismemberment and ruin, and second, to free his country from the great crime of slavery." Now, now this is Douglass appreciating Lincoln."To do one or the other or both, he must have the earnest sympathy and the powerful cooperation of his loyal fellow countrymen. Without this primary and essential condition to success, his efforts must have been vain and utterly fruitless. He had put the abolition of slavery before the salvation-- Had he put the ab- abolition of slavery before the salvation of the Union, he would have inevitably driven from him a powerful class of the American people and rendered resistance to rebellion impossible. Viewed from the genuine abolition ground," Douglass was an abolitionist. He was constantly pressing for abolition."Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent. But measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical,

Speaker 2 30:45

and determinate." Right. That's Douglass' final analysis of Lincoln. A view that took him a long time to reach, and you see the movement in his, uh, in, in the speech. Okay.

Speaker 31:05

Okay, the Gettysburg Address. we could say a lot about this, and by no means do I think I have, the knowledge to say everything that could be said, right? Let me-- I wanna bring out three, three things in the Declaration, and I take, I take these from your comments you wrote before class. All right? All right."Fourscore and seven years ago." What, what is that? Any Protestants in

Speaker 2 31:36

the o- in the audience, where does that come from, that language? Yeah. It's biblical, right? You got Bible, right? Catholic audience, so you never know, right? Any-anyone wanna tell me the biblical passage he's paraphrasing here? I mean, I don't know either. I'm Catholic too, so... Yeah. Okay, it's biblical language. But what is the fourscore and seven years ago? What, what is that?

Speaker 3 32:17

I don't know the passage, but I, I believe the Bible tells us that the life of a man is threescore and ten.

Speaker 32:25

Threescore and ten, yeah.

Speaker 2 32:26

Yeah. I think it's somewhere in Psalms. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Th-that's certainly true. Yeah. But what is fourscore and seven? Eighty-seven. All right. S-s-so what year is that? S-seventeen seventy-six. So when is the birth of America? It's with what? The Declaration of Independence, right? Now, that seems ordinary to us, right? We celebrate the Fourth of July every year. But why was that? That wasn't so obvious then. What are the other-- What's the other possible birth of the nation? Eighteen eighty-seven. Seventeen eighty-seven with the Constitution. So Lincoln is putting the c- the Declaration before the Constitution, right? The Constitution has all sorts of

Speaker 33:43

compromises with slavery. It was imperfect, right? He calls, uh, the relationship between the Declaration and the Constitution, Lincoln says the, the Declaration is like, um, an apple of gold in a, in a frame of silver. The f-frame is the Constitution. The frame is less perfect than the apple, right? The painting. So he dates America, the meaning of the America Right? It's, it's not just self-government in the States, right? Conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. What-- It's interesting. What, what does the dec-declaration-- what's the language of the Declaration about equality? We hold as a proposition

Speaker 2 34:36

that all men are created equal. Lincoln is doing something here, right? What's the difference between a proposition and a truth? Are propositions true? Potentially. Isn't that interesting? The country was dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. What's Lincoln saying here? It, it's, it's something that needs to be proven or made true or made ac-- And how are we gonna make our birth, which was conceived in liberty, how are we gonna make it true? Who's going to make it true? Where are they at? Wh-wh-why is he speaking at Gettysburg? Well, you know this, right? It's the, the field of a great battle. And what happened there? Soldiers died. How will the truth or the proposition of equality be made true? Isn't it through the acts of these soldiers? I mean, there's a movement

Speaker 36:13

in, in, in the Gettysburg Address. It's a, um-- it's, it's such an interesting thing, right? He says, you know,"We will little note nor long remember what is said here." Right? Some of you commented on this, right? Of course, why do we remember Gettysburg? I mean, some people might remember it, but why do we all remember Gettysburg? Because of what was said there. And the relationship between acts and words permeates the speech. And he seems to be saying something like,"It is our job, it is their job," what these, these men who died, died for, is to make the

Speaker 2 36:54

proposition or the truth of the Declaration actually true, actually realized. Okay And then there's that no one commented on the end,

Speaker 3 37:12

right?

Speaker 2 37:13

A new birth of freedom. What is this language of new birth? When are you born again? You guys are too Catholic to know anything. When are you born again? Baptism. What happens in baptism?

Speaker 3 37:40

Believers made free in Christ.

Speaker 2 37:42

Okay. Okay, how? Okay, water. What are you freed of? From original sin. What is Lincoln saying here? A new birth of freedom. Every word of this speech was crafted to communicate something to you as a statesman communicates to his people. We're at Gettysburg. The country is undergoing a new birth. What is the water? The blood of the soldiers. And what is the original sin? It's slavery, isn't it? America at Gettysburg in the Civil War is undergoing its baptism. Which means America was born with an original sin. And he's explaining to the widows and the Americans both then and now the meaning of this war, right? There's a whole theology of America which is begun in the Gettysburg Address

Speaker 39:40

and comes to its culmination in the Second Inaugural. All right. Questions and thoughts? I'll tell you what, let me go to the Second Inaugural and then we can come back and we should have some time for, for questions, okay? All

Speaker 2 39:56

right.

Lincoln Memorial As Temple

Speaker 39:58

Uh, this is only part of-- you can't even read this probably. Sorry, it was too much. What I like to do in class is actually read the second inaugural. Um, if we had more microphones, I'd just have you each read one sentence. You should, at some point in your li-- How many of you have been to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC? Oh, many of you. Very good. You should go back, and here's my recommendation. Go back in the evening. It's great in the summer when it's warm, but go late at night,'cause it's crowded and everything. Go when there's no one there and, and spend some time... And the Gettysburg Address is on one wall, and the second inaugural is on the other. Right. Some late summer evening when you can just be there. I mean, think about the Lincoln Memorial. Can you, can you picture it in your head? Right. If you didn't know what it was, and you were just standing at the steps, what would you think it is?

Speaker 2 41:00

A what? A temple. It's constructed like a temple, right? And what is Lincoln? Lincoln is like our civic deity, right? And if you... I, I should have had a picture of him. next time you go there, look at him. Does anyone remember? He's sitting, but i-is he at rest? It looks like he's about to get up or move, right? So this is a civic temple. I mean, do you know, do you know about Lincoln's death? I mean, it's at the theater. Do you know what day it was?

Speaker 3 41:48

April fourteenth.

Speaker 2 41:49

April. Okay, April fourteenth. Good. Do you know what day April fourteenth, eighteen sixty-five was? Anyone? It was Good Friday. All right, this is what Lincoln says. Let me, let me read it since it's so hard to see. I won't read the whole thing. I'm tempted to, but I won't. I'm

Speaker 42:25

gonna start in the third par-- or, I don't... halfway down."One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew this, that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war, while the government claimed no right to do no more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it." Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it already has attained. Neither anticipated the cause of the conflict might cease or, or even before the conflict itself should cease. That's a reference to the Emancipation Proclamation, right? Each looked for an easier triumph and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both r- read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistant, assistance in wringing the bread from the sweat of another man's face, but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. Now, pay attention to what Lincoln's about to say. The Almighty has His own purposes. Woe unto the world because of offenses, for it must needs be that offense comes. But woe to that man by whom the offense cometh. If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came. Shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continues until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's 250 years of unrequited, unrequited toil shall be sunk and every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword. As was said 3,000 years ago, so it must be said,"The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have b- borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all that may achieve a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. So at this point, Lincoln

Speaker 2 45:40

knows the end is coming. And so what's Lincoln doing in this speech? I want you to step back for just a

Speaker 45:52

moment I asked you to think about, last class, right? That you were in 1858 and the difficulty that was before the country. It is almost impossible to imagine what Lincoln saw. And remember, if you go back to 1854, Lincoln was a relative no-- I mean, he was a congressman, he wasn't a nobody, but he was just a lawyer, a small-town lawyer. And he sees Stephen Douglas and popular sovereignty, and he sees how attractive it is, right? Every people decides for itself whether they want slavery or not. And he sees that, that if the American people accept Stephen Douglas' position, it will be the end of America,

Speaker 2 46:48

at least the America dedicated to the Declaration of Independence. And he sees all this, and he's just a lawyer. And what does he do? I mean, he is-- he-- it's almost to say, like, he's just no one in 1854. I mean, do you know who the local congressman is? He's a good guy. But do any of you-- Like, how many of you know his name? I mean, that's Lincoln. And six years later, he gets himself elected president of the United States. And then with a high s- high school, with three months of education, he conducts a war successfully. And then he writes this speech, arguably one of the greatest speeches in human history, to explain to the American people then and now what we just went through or are going through. And what is it that he explains? I mean, pausing it, can you... one of the reasons we study these people is to have images of human greatness. It is amazing what he did. I mean, could you write this? I mean, this is Shakespearean. So what does he say? What is the war? And it's shocking what he says.

Speaker 48:46

It's punishment, right? So let's, let's go through it again

Speaker 2 48:52

Right?

Speaker 48:52

If we sup- shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come. Well, this is interesting. Okay. For whatever reason,

Speaker 2 49:06

God allowed slavery. What's our s- maybe I should ask it. What's our sin? We're being punished for the sin of slavery, but, but what exactly is the sin?

Speaker 3 49:24

Keeping slavery

Speaker 2 49:25

around that far.

Speaker 49:30

Listen again. If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which in the providence of God must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, that is God's appointed time, He now wills to remove it, and He gives... and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due by whom those offenses came. So what was our of- offense? Not that slavery was in America. We weren't responsible for that.

Speaker 2 50:05

But letting it persist when? Past its appointed time, right? Everyone see that? Well, when, when did-- When was the appointed time up? In seventeen seventy-six when we knew all men were created equal, endowed by their creator with inalienable rights. We knew slavery was wrong, and yet we persisted. And so who is given the war? Who is God punishing? What does Lincoln say? And that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came. So who's guilty? The entire nation, right? Isn't that stunning? I mean, the war is still going. So why would Lincoln say this? Well, I mean, perhaps it's simply true. Any thoughts here? Yeah,

Speaker 3 52:01

Haley.

Speaker 2 52:05

It's-- This is the first act of reconstruction, and it is a truth that everyone is guilty in some way or another. Lincoln is playing the role of an Old Testament prophet explaining the workings of providence as experienced by a particular people. And it was we knew the natural moral law. And for whatever reasons, perhaps understandable, but it persisted, and it persisted for too long. And no one, no nation is going to escape divine judgment. So what is our task now? It's not retribution on the South, right? It is to bind the nation's wounds with malice towards none and charity for all. To care for him who shall have borne the battle. No distinction between North and South because Southerners, there's Southern widowers too, and Southern orphans too, right? Starting in the Gettysburg Address, we see that the Civil War, in Lincoln's understanding, is, is our baptism for our original sin, right? And that baptism is, right, needed because of a, of a sin, and it's painful. So he's explaining to us not only the meaning of equality and of the natural law, but of divine providence

Class Wrap And Next Topic

Speaker 54:31

in our nation's history, right, through the Gettysburg Address and then the second inaugural. Okay, let's see you after spring break, um, and we'll, we'll go to Adam Smith. All right. Have a good

54:46

night.