Abraham Lincoln’s Example of Statesmanship & Unity During the Civil War w/ Dan Mahoney & Jon Schaff

0:00 moderation is a balance of goods there are always competing goods in politics when we talk about democratic politics we usually think of things like the good of consent the good of natural rights the good of equality these sorts of things but also another way of moderation is recognizing the legitimate claims of your opponents you know the the quote i always use from lincoln from

0:20 his washington temperance address is that if you would persuade a man you must first convince him that you are his friend [Music] hi this is tony williams senior fellow for bri and we want to welcome you to our celebration of constitution day

0:41 we’re honored to be joined by dan mahoney who is the author of the statesman as thinker portraits of greatness courage and moderation and also by scholar john shaft who is the author of abraham lincoln statesmanship and the limits of liberal democracy as we think about the important themes

1:03 of rights law and liberty for constitution day now the guiding question for today’s discussion is how did abraham lincoln statesmanship of principle and prudence guide the nation through the civil war towards a vision of principled self-government and the common good for all americans i want to thank you both for joining us

1:25 thank you tony very happy to be here thanks for having me tony i appreciate it great thanks uh dan we’ll start with you uh you wrote a book uh the statesman is thinker and so what is statesmanship and and what is the role of a statesman in a republic or democracy you know i’m tempted to paraphrase potter stewart’s famous

1:46 remark about obscenity that he knows it when he sees it but i don’t think that will do one point in the book i have epigraphs or from some of the chapters of the book and i have a quotation from stephen smith the political theorist at yale who says uh you know both millard

2:07 fillmore and abraham lincoln were politicians but that doesn’t tell us very much but uh lincoln was a statesman and millard filmer was not and that tells us a lot more so that’s a good starting point i think that the statesmanship involves a level of thoughtfulness public spiritedness

2:30 the exercise of the classical or cardinal virtues particularly prudence today prudence often is understood to mean timidity or calculation or what edmund burke once called a false reptile prudence where

2:51 you know wouldn’t be prudent to do anything that involved patriotism or exertion now when i use the word prudence i have in mind what the greeks called phronesis practical reason practical wisdom which is at once an intellectual and moral virtue i don’t think statesmen as charles goldman said have to be informed or should be

3:12 informed by evangelical perfection but i do think statesmanship involves certain intellectual and moral virtues that involve for one thing combining honorable ambition with love of country and public spiritedness so i think almost by definition the

3:35 statesman is not a tyrant the tyrant is all about self-aggrandizement of course the statesman and the tyrant having common ambition but as the political sciences robert faulkner has argued there was a huge difference between a kind of undirected

3:55 ambition lincoln dealt with it in his lyceum address the members of the tribe of the of the lion an eagle who would do anything it will you know they don’t want to follow a beaten path they’ll uh you know free the slaves or enslave in order to satisfy their ambition but that is not honorable ambition so the

4:16 idea of a kind of greatness of soul informed by the the cardinal virtue of prudence combined with a kind of public spiritedness that’s not soft and not you might say excessively idealistic but takes very seriously the exigencies of the of the civic common

4:38 good and you know my book i really emphasize that in many cases uh the highest forms of statesmanship are accompanied by very high levels of thoughtfulness lincoln is certainly a wonderful example of that he didn’t write any books but he’s the philosopher poet of the american political order whether it’s the lysine under us of

5:00 1838 or his second inaugural and everything in between there’s a deep level of reflection i would say not only about constitutionalism not only about the moral foundations of free government not only about the evils of slavery but also in a way about himself what does it mean to be a statesman at the surface of

5:22 of of a free society so the lyceum address or an 1864 address in baltimore where he reflects on you know how hard it is to differentiate the shepherd from the wolf you know but he was thinking i mean he knew that the kind of leadership that was necessary to sustain a a

5:43 free political order is um is not you know he may have talked about government of the people by the people and for the people and he meant it but he also knew that you know when a free political order needed somebody like himself to sustain uh popular self-government so um that combination i think of prudence

6:04 public spiritedness of honorable ambition and thoughtfulness i would say those are uh ref they reflect a a tough-minded moderation and um i can’t think of a better description for what animated lincoln you know the real heroes were not the abolitionists who would have blown up

6:24 the union at a pure principle the real hero was a statesman such as lincoln who knew that a free political order that the arts of prudence were necessary both to sustain the american republic and put slavery on the road to eventual extinction exciting uh yeah thank you uh so over to you john and you know bri uh has a lot

6:46 of curricula that address the civic virtue and i know you’ve written about it extensively in in your books so what were the habits of civic virtue that that the statesman lincoln cultivates among americans for that spirit of a common good and common purpose it might be helpful to start by thinking just a little bit about what is virtue

7:07 uh virtue of course means excellence and it is a product of habit and of action so a passive people can can not be called virtuous that’s that’s not civic virtue uh if if a people is passive so what are the excellences that that lincoln would like um the american people

7:29 to practice uh i think there’s there’s four of them i hope i can get through these uh a pace uh number one is rule of law and i think we’re this is going to come up i think probably more than once uh but uh lincoln wants the people to develop a deep respect for the wall i know the definition of tyranny is when

7:49 the government acts arbitrarily without limit now one of the virtues of dan’s recent book is its discussion of cicero informed uh eventually by a bit of christianity the way it it adds a sense of humility and restraint to aristotle’s discussion of magnaminity uh this idea of limit so the rule of law

8:11 directs the public will and keeps it from being arbitrary so that’s one rule of law two would be moderation and i mean this in two senses one is moderation is a balance of goods there are always competing goods in politics when we talk about democratic politics we usually think of things like the good of consent the good of natural rights

8:31 the good of equality these sorts of things and you have to give each of these things its proper due and part of that requires the prudence that that dan just talked about and the the avoidance of ideological politics which is emphasizing one good thing at the expense of all the other good things and dan talks about this i think mostly when

8:52 he’s talking about edmund burke in his recent book that ideological politics and its quest for your purity for purity ends in terror uh so that this balance of competing goods is a great civic virtue that but also another way of moderation is recognizing the legitimate claims of your opponents you know the the quote i

9:13 always use from lincoln from his washington temperance address is that if you would persuade a man you must first convince him that you are his friend you have to give some indication that you understand and respect the other person’s point of view i think you could look at the uh what is my favorite lincoln speech which is the speech at peoria in 1854 on the

9:35 repeal of the missouri compromise when over and over in that uh speech he he gives credit to the southern opinion and wants to um sort of uh chasten or humble the self-righteousness of northern opinion the anti-slavery opinion we know what side lincoln’s on he’s not siding with the south but he won’t say

9:56 here’s our here are their legitimate claims and i want to forthrightly uh recognize those even though i’m now going to say why they’re ultimately wrong right so so rule of law moderation i do want to say something about free labor about an ownership society lincoln’s economics are driven by a desire for independence

10:18 rather than wealth creation though he has no problem with wealth creation an economy that promotes free labor right and the habits of liberty the habits of of a citizen are developed with economic liberty he thinks when he says in his wisconsin uh agricultural speech that we will be

10:40 free of crown kings land kings and money kings if each man owns his own labor what we might call a kind of proprietorship or entrepreneurship is important uh to create civic virtue then last thing you can’t talk about lincoln without talking about natural rights um i’ll talk about this more a little bit later but we all have to recognize there

11:00 are things that we want that aren’t good for us um that and if that’s true of us as individuals is true of us as a people and there’s a justice of the people’s decisions uh are are not just reflected that it’s an act of public will but that they conform with some concept of natural justice

11:20 uh which for lincoln is natural right as articulated in the declaration declaration of independence so those virtues again are rule of law moderation a kind of economic liberty and natural rights i think these are the things he wants to cultivate excellent uh back over to you dan um lincoln spoke of an apple of gold and a

11:42 picture of silver in this very poetic and eloquent um biblical metaphor to describe the connection between the declaration of independence and the constitution so what were the ennobling and timeless principles of the national law of constitutionalism of law and liberty in lincoln’s words and

12:04 statesmanship yeah i think uh just to relate uh my remarks to what john had just said i think it’s very clear that lincoln did not did not advocate a kind of positivistic constitutionalism that our principles are simply inherent

12:26 in the constitutional framework uh i think he he he is not simply a a person who affirms the creedal foundations of american liberty i think you can have a one-sided reading of lincoln that in a way exaggerates this uh the the centrality of the declaration of

12:46 independence and ignores all the other pillars john talked about including a certain understanding of political economy a certain understanding of the rule of law a certain understanding of self-restraint but it is the case that lincoln saw that the declaration of independence broadly understood

13:07 provided the soul you might say the animating principles the animating spirit of america’s constitutional arrangements and of course that image of the apple of gold and the frame of silver comes from proverbs so as so much of lincoln’s rhetoric it’s a kind of biblical republicanism but i

13:29 do think there’s a reason why certain paleocon conservatives have been so skeptical of lincoln i mean you read you read some of them going way back uh and you know lincoln is called a gnostic and a someone with messianic politics an advocate of the very ideological

13:50 politics he repudiated and i think that has to do with this misplaced judgment that um an appeal to universal principles is necessarily at odds with a politics of prudence or with the framework of rule of law that

14:11 instantiates and gives form to those principles the principles of the declaration among them and i also would say that lincoln um you know there’s lots of debates about what the declaration is you can read it in a kind of strictly lockheed way but it is important i think that lincoln placed great emphasis on um

14:32 its religious dimension um and that meant liberty under god you know tocqueville has a beautiful expression liberty under god are the laws i think lincoln in his own way of firm sign at gettysburg and elsewhere that it’s you know the declaration is not only a declaration of independence it’s not only an affirmation of enduring truths

14:55 it’s not only right-centered but it also gives rise to high claims about duty and honor and self-respect so john the emancipation proclamation has really come under a great deal of scrutiny uh perhaps even criticism uh in recent years

15:15 you know in thinking about a statesmanship how does lincoln combine the principles of the moral law of understanding that slavery is morally wrong with the prudence and restraint of a constitutional statesman with the emancipation proclamation yeah i think probably if if there are probably two complaints

15:36 about the emancipation proclamation one is you know the the argument of richard hofstetter in the mid-20th century that had all the moral grandeur of a bill of lading which means like a sales receipt basically um and then the argument you’re probably more referring to the contemporary argument is that it didn’t really free the slaves it didn’t go far

15:56 enough it was it was uh too too restrained so let’s take some of those in turn well lincoln didn’t use poetry in the emancipation proclamation because he wanted it to be seen as a legal action lincoln had argued that a constitutional amendment or possibly compensated emancipation are the only way

16:17 constitutionally to get rid of slavery but in the midst of war he he argued that as a war measure using his commander in chief power he could uh uh emancipate slaves under certain conditions which i’ll get to in a second and so the wording of the document is a legal document it’s not a poetic document that we normally expect from

16:37 lincoln especially when he’s dealing with slavery and so but other people the argument is that it didn’t go far enough so just recall that slaves in various states missouri delaware maryland kentucky were still in the union and they were not freed by the proclamation as well as areas under union control parts the confederacy

16:59 under union control well again lincoln is issuing this as a war measure therefore he doesn’t think that it pertains to those places not at war with the united states with the union and so you know he uh you know he his secretary of treasury sam and chase criticized him uh for not going further

17:20 chase an abolitionist and lincoln simply responded i’ll i’ll quote from him when he said what defense is there of extension beyond where where he had the these areas that were at war the united states quote except the one that i think the measure politically expedient and morally right would i not thus give up all footing upon constitution or law

17:41 would i not thus be in the boundless field of absolutism could this pass unnoticed or unresisted he simply didn’t think he had the legal authority to free all slaves which is why he supported the 13th amendment because it did free all slaves and then he wasn’t sure the emancipation proclamation would be good law once conflict was over

18:02 and so the 13th amendment deals with this question of when his hostilities are done now what’s the status of slaves while the 13th amendment um deals with that lincoln provides us with a really an unparalleled example of unity a spirit of a common purpose again in the the beautiful and eloquent

18:23 second inaugural address which we’ve alluded to how does he seek to bind the nation together and that common set of ideals that common purpose that can provide maybe a strong example for us today well i mean i guess an answer to that would be in part speculative but um

18:45 i think we can see in uh the gettysburg address of november 1863 and the second inaugural sort of a two thronged effort to encourage what lincoln and the gettysburg address are called a new birth of freedom

19:07 and a new birth of freedom unnecessarily entailed some active effort not only to abolish channel slavery but to make blacks full or fuller participants in in the american republic um i think once lincoln made that

19:28 decision to arm free blacks and have them fight for union and liberty once blood was shed on behalf of common principle and common purpose there was no going back and we know four days before lincoln was shot at ford’s theater he delivered a speech on the franchise

19:48 in louisiana where he i think it shows where he was heading he didn’t call for universal suffrage for ex-slaves or for blacks but he called for black suffrage and i think he alludes to them essentially the most educated i think he wanted a gradual approach not the sort of heavy

20:11 handed approach pursued by radical republicans after 1866 but he wanted a prudent approach that was unequivocal in its recognition of common citizenship but that recognized i guess you know there are some preconditions of that and

20:31 and there may be a transition and one has to deal of course with white opinion uh even lincoln was good at that because you know lincoln uh in the lincoln douglas debates or many of the speeches he gave in illinois in the late 1850s he was dealing with a free soil population that

20:52 was anti-slavery but by today’s standards racist and so most of those lines are qualifications that are always conditional you know where you don’t have to bar you know you just because you can’t enslave uh i have no right to enslave a black woman doesn’t mean you have to marry her you know my students look at that and say this horrible racist

21:13 this was a statesman trying to get people who didn’t want too much you know interplay between black or white populations to at least recognize the starting point the humanity of the black man and woman and then the follow-up to them their citizenship

21:33 in a political order dedicated to common purpose now with today i would say i think part of what we have to do is recover what i’m going to call the moral grandeur of lincoln’s perspective and that means recovering the moral grandeur of statesmen like prudence

21:56 it is calamitous i think that most intellectuals and most academics and the students who study under them think that the fanaticism of the abolitionists is the moral high ground and and lincoln’s position was much more arduous

22:17 it involved much less self-righteousness and moral preening it involved exactly the coming together of principle and prudence that was needed to address the sectional problem as well as the the problem of channel slavery and

22:38 lincoln’s also very important for us today because he provided an accurate genealogy of the founders views on slavery the cooper’s union address for example in new york it’s so important because right before the civil war lincoln makes very clear that we have to at a minimum remain faithful

23:00 to the founders position to put slavery on the road to eventual extinction and that meant you know being all the measures that were taken the abolish for the slave trade the northwest ordinance forbidding slavery in new states and territory all of that and john uh last question uh you and dan wright of lincoln’s what’s called

23:21 political or civil religion what what principles and virtues comprise that civil religion and and how can embracing this vision maybe help unify us again more today sure you know we’ve referenced multiple times that lyceum addressed and that’s where lincoln explicitly says that the rule of law should become a political religion what

23:43 the founders uh sacrifice their sacred uh their lives their sacred honor to the declaration he says we should do the same for the constitution the rule of law more broadly so there’s there’s a concept here of gratitude be thankful for and protect that that which has been handed down to you and that’s an important virtue and then as

24:03 the subtitle of my book suggests limits um we need to live within limits and as i kind of reference before we all know when we look into our hearts that we all want things that aren’t good for us even if it’s something as mundane as that second donut it’s not good for us um and sometimes it’s more morally serious things than donuts uh but what

24:25 does a good parent pastor friend teacher do they say no to you and this is what a statesman has to do sometimes is say no and this is i think at the heart of lincoln’s political religion again partially with the rule of law that’s a big part of it but also i think in that defense of natural right of which

24:47 lincoln’s defense of natural equality uh stems from so whatever our inequalities and there are some they don’t translate into a right to rule or the right to have um some people have more rights than other natural rights than other people do so even if a majority wants something and they think they see it as good and desirable if it violates the standard of

25:08 natural justice then uh then it’s wrong there’s because there’s a standard that’s beyond public opinion and so lincoln said in that 1854 pr address that there has to be a standard of justice beyond self-interest well dan mahoney and john schaff i want to thank you very much for joining us as part of our bri constitution day celebration and

25:30 you’ve given us a lot to think about so thank you very much thanks for having me great and thank you all for joining us uh for this conversation with two of our finest scholars to consider these timeless principles for constitution day