Lincoln and the American Founding (Concise Lincoln Library) - Hardcover

Lucas E. Morel is Professor of Politics and Head of the Politics Department at Washington and Lee University, and Honored Visiting Graduate Professor in the Master of Arts program in American History and Government at Ashland University in Ohio. His previous publications include Lincoln and Liberty: Wisdom for the Ages and Lincoln’s Sacred Effort: Defining Religion’s Role in American Self-Government. He is a trustee of the Supreme Court Historical Society, former president of the Abraham Lincoln Institute, and member of the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission, which will plan activities to commemorate in 2026 the founding of the United States of America.
 
 

Introduction: Looking to the Past for the Sake of the Future
 
The best guides to understanding Lincoln’s political philosophy, next to a close reading of his own speeches and writings, are the principles of the American founding and the political institutions they established. Key among the founders are George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, and the most influential political documents are the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. Lincoln also found subsequent political figures useful to his think­ing: Henry Clay, Lincoln’s professed “beau ideal of a statesman,” and Daniel Webster, who championed “Union and liberty, now and for­ever, one and inseparable,” come readily to mind. Even John Quincy Adams, with his devotion to the Declaration of Independence, could be said to have directed Lincoln’s attention to important political principles for the looming crises of his day. However, the salient figures and documents of the American founding generation exerted the greatest influence on Lincoln as he addressed the disputes and controversies that threatened to divide the American Union.
 
For Lincoln, reverence for the American founders was no mere exercise in nostalgia, a trip down memory lane every Fourth of July by succeeding generations to give a collective pat on the back for their association—by blood or citizenship—with a generation who for their time achieved great political ends. Instead, Lincoln believed that the best way to honor the founding was to recognize how much the current generation owed to their achievement, and therefore to be vigilant in their perpetuation of the institutions of self-government. This involved not only handing down the Constitution and laws bequeathed to them but also understanding the principles and practices that inform those political institutions. The prosperity of future generations, what the preamble to the Constitution calls “the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,” depended on this public practice of looking back.
 
According to Robert Bray, Lincoln read preceptors containing speeches from the American Revolution and the early American republic and consulted several volumes of Thomas Je?erson’s Works, as well as biographies of George Washington, which contained some of Washington’s speeches. Of course, the clearest evidence of Lincoln’s familiarity with the founders’ writings comes from his own speeches and letters. In addition to Washington and Je?erson, Lincoln cited James Madison as among “those noble fathers” who, while respecting state authority over the institution of slavery, made “no allusion to slavery in the constitution . . . that future generations might not know such a thing ever existed—and that the constitution might yet be a ‘national charter of freedom.’” Add to these sources the speeches and writings of the founding era that were in the public domain, from Washington’s well-known Farewell Address to Madison’s less familiar notes of the debates in the Constitutional Convention, and Lincoln had a fount of wisdom and deliberation about the American regime from which to draw inspiration for the political challenges of his own day.
 
his book presents the in?uence of the American founding on Lincoln’s politics in a fairly systematic way, with each chapter tracing a particular in?uence chronologically (for the most part) and drawing heavily on Lincoln’s own words rather than secondary sources to demonstrate his reliance on the American founding for his statesmanship. Chapter 1 focuses on the founder par excellence, George Washington, and how his political vision and exemplary character shaped Lincoln’s devotion to the union of American states and the liberties to which that union was committed. It also explores Lincoln’s frequent appeal to “the fathers” in general and what he thought “those old-time men” should mean to Americans several generations removed from the founding.
 
Chapter 2 shifts from the founding fathers to the founding document—the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration stands as the most formative in?uence on Lincoln’s political thinking—in particular, his understanding of the connection between the rights of humanity and the purpose of government. Lincoln saw the Declaration as the fundamental charter of American self-government, and his political philosophy comprised key principles such as human equality, individual rights, government by consent of the governed, and the right of revolution. These tenets of Lincoln’s political faith also led him to emphasize self-improvement, free labor, and “the right to rise” as necessary implications of the Declaration’s account of legitimate government.
 
Chapter 3 shifts from founding ends to founding means as it explores Lincoln’s reverence for the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law by which it secures the liberties of the people. This chapter traces Lincoln’s devotion to the Constitution from his days as a Whig Illinois state representative to his tenure as the nation’s ?rst Republican president. Lincoln saw the Constitution as a means of securing the ends spelled out in the Declaration of Independence. His respect for the rule of law entailed a respect for the constraints that federalism imposed on e?orts to make American practice align more closely with American principle, with slavery in the states constituting the chief contradiction to the “more perfect union” established by the Constitution. Last, Lincoln’s constitutionalism entailed an aversion to amending the fundamental law of the land.
 
Chapter 4 examines what Lincoln learned from the founding generation about how to address the problem of slavery, America’s pre-existing condition and signal inconsistency with the human equality that formed the basis of the nation’s existence. This chapter explores Lincoln’s many references to how the founding generation intended slavery to be put on “the course of ultimate extinction” and how this should guide Americans in dealing with the increasingly divisive controversy in the 1850s. It answers the question of why Lincoln insisted he was “naturally anti-slavery” but never called himself an abolitionist. His approach to dealing with slavery within a federal system of government posed an alternative not only to the typical abolitionist demand that Congress ban slavery immediately, whether in territories or states, but also to Stephen A. Douglas’s neutral policy of local “popular sovereignty” (or congressional noninterference), to say nothing of the “positive good” school espoused by John Calhoun and his adherents.
 
Chapter 5 discusses Lincoln’s understanding of the original intent of the founders and its relevance to his own times. Although he never used the phrase “original intent,” he made frequent reference to “the opinions and policy of our fathers” and similar expressions. While every chapter of this book explores a speci?c aspect of Lincoln’s dependence on the founding fathers, Chapter 5 examines Lincoln’s understanding of original intent in general and how Lincoln understood his own reverence for the American founding in light of progress, experience, and the responsibility of succeeding generations to govern themselves.
 
If there was an abiding political question that Lincoln wrestled with in his public life, it surfaced early in his political career: namely, how to perpetuate self-government. He did not take for granted that the freedom achieved at the founding of the...