Lincoln and Citizenship (Concise Lincoln Library) - Hardcover

Mark E. Steiner, professor of law and associate dean at South Texas College of Law Houston, is the author of An Honest Calling: The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln. Steiner received both his law degree and a doctorate in history from the University of Houston. He twice has been awarded Fulbright scholarships. Steiner is actively involved in pro bono efforts to assist immigrants on the path toward citizenship.
 

Introduction
“My Fellow Citizens”
 
From Springfield to Washington
 
 Over the course of his political career, Lincoln used “fellow citizens” as a salutation in speeches over 100 times, from his 1832 “Communication to the People of Sangamo County” to a response to a serenade in the last week of his life. His use of the phrase may have been most pronounced during his eleven-day journey to Washington, DC., after he left Springfield as president-elect in February 1861. Lincoln gave over 100 speeches during the trip, addressing crowds gathered at train stations, state capitol buildings, and hotels. He would greet those crowds with different salutations, most often using “fellow citizens.” In one speech in Pittsburgh, he used the phrase seven times in his brief talk. It’s not clear what Lincoln meant when he addressed his “fellow citizens.” Who were they? 

In one speech at the steps of the capitol in Columbus, Ohio—the only occasion in his journey to Washington Lincoln used the word “citizenship”—he remarked, “Judging from what I see, I infer that that reception was one without party distinction, and one of entire kindness—one that had nothing in it beyond a feeling of the citizenship of the United States of America.” Lincoln was suggesting the members of the assembly were joined together by a sense of community, a sense of national identity.

The salutation Lincoln used almost as often on his 1861 journey to Washington was “ladies and gentlemen.” Did he see any difference between those two greetings? Were women also citizens? Lincoln was clear that women had no serious role to play in the ongoing drama over secession through his acceptance of traditional gender roles. When he took the train to Washington, his brief remarks to the gathered crowds at each stop invariably mentioned that many ladies were there to see him but he had “decidedly the best of the bargain.” He told the crowd at Painesville, Ohio there were few instances at such stops where he had seen “so many good-looking ladies.” Lincoln regretted not being able to give a speech in Newark, Ohio because it deprived him of “addressing the many fair ladies assembled.” 

In Cincinnati, Lincoln expressed pro-immigration views he had held as a Whig in the 1840s when he addressed a committee representing German workers. The chair of the committee first spoke of workingmen as the basis of all governments and Lincoln happily agreed with those sentiments, “not only of the native born citizens, but also of the Germans and foreigners from other countries,” of whom he said, “I esteem them no better than other people, nor any worse.” When he saw “a people borne down by the weight of their shackles,” Lincoln added, he didn’t want to make their life any worse. He wanted to do all he could “to raise the yoke.” Since the United States was “extensive and new and the countries of Europe were densely populated,” Lincoln welcomed “any abroad who desire to make this the land of their adoption.”

In Philadelphia, Lincoln was the most philosophical. Filled with “deep emotion” at Independence Hall, the birthplace of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, Lincoln declared all the political sentiments he held “originated, and were given to the world from the hall in which we stand.” Lincoln affirmed he never had “a feeling politically that did not spring from the Declaration. The Declaration of Independence was about more than separating from England, it gave “hope to the world for all future time.” While Lincoln never expressly mentioned slavery in any of these 100 speeches, in Philadelphia, he added an antislavery message when he noted the Declaration’s “promise in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance.” A reporter for the New York Daily Herald wondered what Lincoln meant: “Does the President elect speak of ‘men’ in the aggregate as a nation or a community aspiring to nationality, or does he refer to man in his individual capacity—white, red, yellow or black?” Based upon Lincoln’s 1858 senate campaign speeches, the reporter concluded Lincoln “means the individual man,” and Lincoln’s interpretation of the Declaration “puts the white and the black on the same footing of natural equality.” Lincoln’s notion that “the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men” meant “nothing more nor less than the progressive steps of African emancipation.”

While Lincoln called for all men to have an equal chance, he didn’t mean all men should have equal rights or all men should be citizens. The New York reporter astutely observed that Lincoln believed white and black people should be “on the same footing of natural equality.” Lincoln attacked slavery because it denied the natural rights of black people; however, he didn’t yet believe black people were entitled to equal rights of citizenship.  
 
The Meanings of Citizenship
            
Citizenship was a developing concept in antebellum America. In 1862, Edward Bates, Lincoln’s attorney general, lamented the lack of a “clear and satisfactory definition of the phrase Citizen of the United States.” During Lincoln’s lifetime, citizenship was sometimes seen as reciprocal duties of allegiance and protection. Military service would loom large as an obligation of citizenship. Citizenship was also tied to rights; this is how most Americans today view citizenship—as the “right to have rights.” But Lincoln and many of his contemporaries divided rights into distinct categories. The most basic rights were natural rights—the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Lincoln consistently said black people were entitled to their natural rights. Civil rights consisted of legal entitlements “essential to pursuing a livelihood and protecting one’s personal security”; they included such rights as owning property and going to court. Political rights included voting and holding office. Voting was becoming emblematic of citizenship but some states, including Illinois, allowed non-citizens to vote.

At its most basic level, though, citizenship is about membership in a political community. The crucial questions Lincoln and others asked were these: who belongs and who doesn’t belong in this political community? 

This book explores what citizenship meant to Lincoln at different times in his political career. For most of his career, it was clear to Lincoln that white males were members of this community. Women and racialized others were not.
 
In the first chapter, I examine Lincoln’s 1836 call for “admitting all whites to the right of suffrage, who pay taxes or bear arms, (by no means excluding females).” This was a peculiar statement. For one thing, by limiting suffrage to taxpayers and militia members Lincoln was calling for a rollback from universal white male suffrage, which had existed in Illinois since it became a state in 1818. For another, allowing taxpayers to vote would have given some women voting rights, which Lincoln expressly recognized. When Lincoln entered politics, women were not members of any political community in the United States. Lincoln may have been carried away by an odd combination of Whig conservatism and a...