Jon Schaff: Lincoln & Civic Virtue | BRI Scholar Talks

0:03 hi this is tony williams a senior fellow with the bill of rights institute and we want to welcome you to another episode of scholar talks uh on this episode we’re very honored to have john schaff join us he is the author of abraham lincoln statesmanship and the limits of liberal democracy and

0:24 he’ll be talking about lincoln and restraint and constitutionalism and some constitutional principles and civic virtues so i’ll look forward to a great talk professor schaff is a professor of government at northern state university who specializes in the study of american political thought and institutions he has published on the

0:45 presidency and political thought of abraham lincoln politics and literature and politics and popular culture he has been a department chair and faculty athletic representative he’s also received the outstanding faculty award from nsu john i want to thank you very much for joining us about this very important topic i’m glad

1:07 to be here tony and all the all the people who are going to view this it’s very exciting great thank you well why don’t we dive right in let’s do it all right so uh you talk a lot about restraint and and the virtues of restraint prudence moderation they really seem to be sorely lacking uh among our leaders today uh

1:30 and even between our our fellow citizens can you help us understand these classical civic virtues and and why they’re really important in a democracy absolutely so let’s take those let me start with prudence we’ll go moderation i think in restraint it’s going to be a theme i think that that works between the two things so prudence um is sometimes uh we’re

1:52 going to get our aristotle on for a little bit uh there’s aristotle makes a distinction between what he calls theoretical wisdom and practicalism theoretical wisdom teaches us what is right and what is wrong right but then there’s practical wisdom or what is sometimes translated as prudence it then tells us how to achieve those

2:13 good things and so it doesn’t do you any good to have all sorts of really high-minded and sound ideals if you don’t know how to actually bring those to fruition in real life so in the example of lincoln we know that slavery is wrong and we should get rid of slavery but then it’s maybe we can get into this

2:35 at some point but it’s not as easy as it sounds like how exactly do you go about doing that or how do you go about convincing people that you’re right you’re wrong and how do you actually affect that as a matter of public policy so that’s practical wisdom or prudence it is choosing the right means to achieve

2:56 a good end that’s what prudence is then moderation is this kind of companion and moderation is uh not what we sometimes say you know sometimes in politics tony we talk about a moderate politician i like we say that like susan collins the senator from maine is a moderate she’s a republican but sometimes she

3:16 sides with the democrats so she’s moderate or we might think of joe manchin on the democratic side who’s a democrat but sometimes he votes with the republicans he’s a moderate and i think that confuses political centrism for moderation and moderation means we all know that there are various competing goods and moderation means to have each good

3:37 thing in its proper amount um and so one could actually be relatively ideological but also be moderate because you’re thinking of balancing uh all these various goods and so for example in the american context we know that uh freedom is good equality is good rule of law is good consent to the

3:58 governed is good but sometimes these things run into conflict with each other the the classic example of sometimes our liberties create inequalities so how do we balance those competing goods or we we like consent of the government but what if what the people want what if they want to consent to is something that is say a violation of natural rights

4:18 how do we balance those things and so aristotle says that these are the two virtues of the statesmen prudence uh getting uh the having the right means to achieve good ends and then moderation the ability to balance these good things by having each good thing in its right amount and so there’s no formula you can go to to figure out what

4:40 that is it requires uh it requires a lot of experience you might see a lot of prudence to figure out how to how to do that so i think prudence and moderation are intertwined i think what you what brings those together is precisely this notion of restraint is that a leader a statesman a population us the citizenry

5:03 we we don’t just do whatever we want however we want it we have to think about how what are we trying to achieve what good are we trying to achieve how does that balance with other goods that we that we want to maintain then how do we go about doing things in a way that actually brings about the good we want to achieve

5:25 right and the founders spoke frequently of the dangers of passions yeah most notably james madison when discussing factions in federalist 10 and and what are some of the dangers of passions uh in in creating alternatively on one hand lawlessness and and yet also demagoguery and tyranny

5:46 the violation of liberty on the other you know and i’m thinking of the founders and and of lincoln what did they have to say about well i think you know uh my students get sick of me saying i probably say about three dozen times every semester in grunt level american government according to the founders the problem of democracy is not that it acts too slowly

6:08 but that it acts too quickly uh and when things at when you act quickly you a you you make mistakes you do things stupidly and we all you know you you reach a certain age you know that there are times in your life when you’ve acted quickly and then you live to regret it then also that’s when hear and e can start is when we’re acting

6:28 out of passion out of what seems right in the moment instead of using our deliberative sense doing things something on purpose and thoughtfully we react to something uh much like if you you know put your one knee over another and you get hit on it and you have a reflex right that’s not a thoughtful action and sometimes when we act out of passion

6:49 it’s it’s it is literally nature um and uh and that’s when we when we do unjust things and so we think of things like uh you mentioned frelos number 10 but you see this in you know the the first paragraph of the fretless papers and number one with hamilton famously saying that what we want is a government of reflection and choice not

7:10 accident and force because what we had seen is over the course of history why is it that a political thought generally speaking didn’t cotton much to democracy it wasn’t because political thought and leaders were all a bunch of you know out of touch ignorant evil elitists uh

7:31 that’s some of them but mostly because every time they’d seen democracy in reality and this hamilton talks about this in frelas number nine when he talks about wild vacillations between anarchy and tyranny the ancient republics when you gave people power they abused that power they acted out of passion and so

7:51 hamilton and also madison are trying to instruct the people here’s how we can maybe form a government that acts reasonably and thoughtfully instead of passionately and you even see um in fairness 55 when madison says if every opinion

8:12 had been a socrates still every athenian assembly would have been a mob how we develop our institutions and our rule of law is really important that we don’t just have the sense of the people but the deliberate sense of the people and famously and with lincoln you know it’s come up a lot over the last few months when we’ve had a lot of civil unrest people have gone back to lincoln’s lyceum address

8:33 um of 1838 where he did the where the whole theme is mob violence and what he says in there is that the mob in some ways is the voice of the people it certainly is a voice of the people but how can we and sometimes the mob you know it sometimes even has justice on its side it goes against bad people in indeed some examples he uses in the speech

8:55 they go after bad people people are guilty of things and the mob goes after them but why don’t we want the mob because the mob is first of all it’s indiscriminate it gets things wrong the second problem with the mob is that it uh it turns good people who see the mob being indiscriminate and they say well wait a minute this mob doesn’t protect

9:17 rights it’s it doesn’t follow rules it goes after the the the innocent along with the guilty and they start to turn against uh uh against free government against the rule the people because they see the people are becoming a mob and also he says that the lawless and spirit become lawless

9:37 lawless in fact so all of us if we look into our hearts there’s a little bit of lawlessness in us right sometimes if we could get away with things maybe we do that and so one of the things that restrains us from doing bad things is we know if i get caught with my hand in the cookie jar it’s going to get slapped if we get a sense that we can act like

9:59 say as a mob in violation of the law and get away with it that encourages more mob activity and so lincoln really thinks that the rule of law is central to good government because it’s one of those things that restrains us it’s that that kind of that little voice inside our heads that says don’t do this

10:19 if the people are going to do something they have to do it in a certain process that is predetermined and that helps restrain us from acting passionately these are kind of like the auxiliary precautions that madison talks about in fred was 51 right he says that the best way to defend your rights

10:40 is by making government dependent on the people but he says history has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions and what he means by that is all sorts of institutions separation of powers is what he’s primarily thinking about but for lincoln he sees rule of law and due process as being central

11:00 to what makes a government a good decent free government of the people by the people for the people instead of government of the people simply becoming government of the mob that acts too passionately and not rationally not not deliberatively and thoughtfully right so deliberation reason moderation yes restraint yes slowing things down a

11:22 bit right exactly that’s what i say is government runs into trouble when it acts too quickly not when it acts too slowly right well that’s a perfect segue into my next question which was uh lincoln’s political philosophy might be summed up by his his famous image of the the apple of gold in the picture of silver referring to the declaration of independence and its relationship to the

11:44 constitution how does lincoln view the principles of this natural rights republic and the constitutional principles of a free society with those constitutional principles that you mentioned the rule of law popular sovereignty consent majority rule all those auxiliary precautions as part of the american political regime

12:05 and so he so he’s got that famous line which he takes from proverbs right lincoln was very biblically illiterate so proverbs 20 25 i mean it’s the word fitly spoken is so you’ve got this this idea of you’ve got this apple right the golden apple that’s the declaration of independence and it’s framed by this by this uh frame of silver and so the

12:29 the apple is the declaration so the declaration gives us the principles that we are that we are trying to achieve when we talk about natural equality and then these natural rights of life liberty pursuit of happiness and then um to secure these rights governments are instituted among men deriving their uh consent from the governed right so consent

12:49 uh is important as well and so the the decoration announces these principles right well then as i was just saying these auxiliary precautions i’m talking about with madison how and this is prudence as well how do we achieve these good things right and so that is instantiated

13:10 uh uh made substantive by having a constitution how do we literally constitute the republic how do we create uh institutions that actually bring about these good things that we that we want to achieve and so lincoln saw no tension uh far from it that the he’s

13:32 dedicated both to these principles of the declaration which we can get to that it’s lincoln’s strong uh belief and natural rights as being central to what good government is as they i just read what does the declaration say to secure these rights governments are instituted among men so if you ever want to know what’s the purpose of government at

13:52 least according to the declaration of independence is to secure those rights um and so if that’s what the government’s for then how do we do that and then we create these institutions so this is what we’re for natural rights and then he then he’s also very strongly for rule of law and for the constitution because the

14:13 constitution helps secure those things and that’s why uh defense of the union is so important to lincoln as we get to the civil war because because secession uh by the south is kind of is a breaking of that word right it kind of damages that that frame around the apple of gold

14:34 and says we can break that uh and still have to forget about the confederacy also didn’t accept the apple either uh even if they did accept the apple right the fact that you’re that you’re breaking this contract right really this covenant almost of of of the people together uh to try to achieve what you want so yes is is trying to achieve good

14:56 things in the right manner that right manner is almost as important if not just as important as the thing you’re trying to achieve and so achieving good things in an unjust manner uh is a isn’t is an injustice uh and so the justice here the abstract justice is the declaration

15:17 and the constitution and its forms give us the manner in which we go about trying to achieve these good things and so for him they’re really inseparable so as you were you’re saying the garrisonians on one hand and then the positive good school or the pro-slavery advocates on the other they want to blur uh or destroy uh

15:40 one of the two but but lincoln’s genius is to you know preserve the apple of gold and the constitution exactly there there’s there’s one thing that the abolitionists and the successionists i’m talking about the extreme abolitionists and the secessionists agreed on is they didn’t like the us constitution right uh why was lincoln not an abolitionist

16:01 partially is because uh he well he thought the ab again i’m talking about more extreme abolitionists like william lloyd garrison they advocated for things that went beyond the powers of the constitution namely lincoln really did think like it or not the constitution protected slavery where it already was in those southern and border states and the federal government

16:22 lacked independent power to eradicate slavery there um and that’s why garrison said that the uh uh the constitution is is a blood pact right he didn’t believe in fact he burned the constitution he had a public burning of the constitution i forget what year was 1850 something uh he burned the constitution and and uh uh

16:45 what uh no no union was slaveholders and that so he was willing to break the union in order to keep the purity of his of his position now his position ultimately was directed towards justice but this is lincoln’s point is that if you’re willing to destroy the rule of law uh and uh and yourself countenance a kind

17:06 of succession in order to achieve the good thing you’re not really going to achieve the good thing for one thing once the if the north secede if there’s no unit with slave holders there’s nothing to stop the slave holders from having their slaves so the best way to get rid of slavery was to maintain the union that means maintaining rule of law in the constitution right exactly and so so let’s let’s get

17:28 into this uh statesmanship uh to lincoln statesmanship that you write about and you describe it as as i said one of her strength can you can you provide a few examples of his restrained leadership and an exercise of presidential power yeah i’ll mention a couple i think we’re

17:48 going to talk about emancipation a little bit later so i’m going to hold out because that’s that’s actually a great example but uh something that’s related to emancipation anyway uh you know famously um one of the a republican newspaper uh man of the time horse greely very you know a famous uh man at the time

18:10 wrote something called uh the prayer for the 20 millions excoriating lincoln for not moving faster on abolition right and lincoln responds in august of uh 1862 uh to really in an open letter this is an open letter

18:30 and he explains why union is more important than getting rid of slavery at least in the first instance and that’s an example he says at the end of that letter my what i’m saying here that i’m going to defend the union and he says if i can defend the union by freeing all the slaves i’ll do that if i can defend the union by free none of the slaves i’ll do that if i can defend the union

18:50 by and keeping some in slavery uh but i will do that he says this is my expression as president of the united states this is not an expression of my personal belief that all men everywhere should be free so he’s saying my belief is that all men

19:12 everywhere should be free but in my role as president i have to follow the law and i only have certain powers as president and i need to be restrained and using them and if i end up using my powers however i want that’s the very definition of tyranny right is that when when government becomes an act of will

19:33 as opposed and as opposed to rule of law when it becomes an act of passion that’s where tyranny begins and free government ends and another example that is you know the second half of my book is a lot about domestic policy is lincoln was very deferential to congress on most areas of policy that that didn’t

19:54 have anything to do with the war so as a war president lincoln was very aggressive very strong but he also he largely left the non-controversial run-of-the-mill governing of the country to congress this is even though um congress at the time was passing major major pieces of legislation things like homestead act which helped settle the

20:15 west where i’m sitting right now in south dakota specific railroad act uh land-grant college act these are really important pieces of legislation uh that helped shape uh the second half of the 19th century and lincoln was relatively passive on those saying no the job of of legislation is largely with

20:36 congress and i will leave it to them they’re i’m not going to say there was hero presidential leadership it was relatively small even in his use of rhetoric uh lincoln was very cautious about speaking out about public policy when he did speak he pretended to speak in kind of broad universal language that would that tended to unite

20:57 instead of uh instead of divide and and so that’s very different from the modern presidency lincoln actually rarely spoke um lincoln in his four plus years as president gave a little bit under 100 speeches and most of those were just sort of serenades from the balcony sort of saying hi to people they weren’t really speechless

21:18 contrast that in barack obama’s first one year as president he gave 699 speeches that were formal enough to require a teleprompter that’s in that’s in one year um and so they just that’s a lot of speaking right our presidents speak a lot lincoln actually was very restrained and one of the reasons he he acted that

21:40 way is that when i speak i want my words to have power and as you know if you’re speaking all the time then people tend to tune you out right but if you speak rarely when you do speak people listen and lincoln knew that and so he was restraining his use of rhetoric very good uh and speaking of rhetoric uh you write that lincoln’s rhetoric guided

22:02 the american people to noble propositions of the declaration and to principle them how do how do his speeches they’re few but important such as the the gettysburg address and and the second inaugural address how do they they point americans to those noble and principal events

22:22 yeah and you’ve mentioned two of the very few speeches like real speeches what we would today in in in mom pollens they really think of his speeches even though as we famously know the gettysburg address was you know about two minutes long not much of a speech but there’s a lot packed into that into that two minutes

22:42 yeah well i think it is constantly doing well let’s take to get towards those noble ends of the declaration right even you think of the gettysburg address is structured in a time sequence past present future it starts out in the past right four score and seven years ago uh et cetera et cetera right

23:04 uh our father’s brought forth on this land right so in his of course he’s dating the start of the of the the the regime to the declaration so here’s what it was he says now we are met on battlefield so he brings us to the now and that these men are have sacrificed to help bring this dream

23:27 of a government based on equality into reality so we know that a government based on equality and democracy doesn’t just happen it’s something it has to be fought for someone has to be defended and then he then he’s then he brings it to the future right it is now up to us right for in the future what do we

23:47 what do we need to do to protect and defend these things and maybe try to explain our expand our conception of equality so it’s he’s bringing us back to the declaration and trying to give us here’s what it was here’s what it is and here’s where it’s going and so he wants to remind us of the importance of the founding oh he’s always bringing it back to the

24:07 founding right for lincoln all change has to be in continuity with founding principles he is not an innovator in that sense there’s nothing new happening it’s just how can we apply these old principles to our current circumstances and that’s i think what the second inaugural or the second inaugural does as well is that there’s

24:28 this first of all the notion of collective guilt right that he doesn’t blame the north or the south anymore does he doesn’t just poke fingers at the south you know there’s sort of wink uh in that direction it may be it’s weird that some people might think that they should earn their living off the sweat of another man’s brow but then he says do not judge unless you be judged

24:49 uh that that when he talked to him this is we are all paying the penalty right for you know 250 years of the bondsman’s lash right this is justice and we’re both suffering and because we have suffered together after the war we will heal together so this call to unity which we all think of this in

25:10 terms of today we think things are divisive now as of yet we’re not literally shooting each other right and even after the civil war lincoln can say with malice towards none with charity fraud now it helps be on the winning side it’s it’s easier to be magnanimous when you’re winning uh which by the time he gave that second inaugural it was pretty

25:30 clear who was going to win the war but nonetheless there was not an air of vindictiveness uh or revenge directed toward the south but we are going to care for the widows and orphans it doesn’t make a distinction between widows of the north widows of the south all the widows and orphans we will care for and this is a call to reconciliation i really think an example of magnaminity

25:52 of great greatness of soul that is uh sorely lacking in american politics today right and your words and and lincoln’s words seem just infused with constitutional principles with moderation prudence with restraint everything you were talking about earlier to to bring national unity right uh even

26:14 civil war so now you mentioned uh earlier that we would get to the emancipation proclamation and uh that’s the subject of my next question so how does his political philosophy and and constitutionally restrained use of power how do they shape his views and approach

26:35 particularly to slavery with the emancipation proclamation well i i hinted at that in the reference to horus greeley when he when he’s writing to greeley in august of 1862 lincoln already knew what he was going to do because it was within a month of that or so that he issued the preliminary emancipation proclamation because famously he was waiting for a

26:56 good battlefield win uh which they basically got at antietam in september and then they then he issued the initial proclamation saying on january 1 1863 here’s what’s going to happen and it with greely he said you know the primary thing is union and i have to act and constrain with the law

27:16 and so the emancipation proclamation is it when you read it it’s uh it’s couch in terms of his commander in chief power right so lincoln’s lincoln says essentially my legal authority to emancipate slaves comes because we’re at war i have a commander-in-chief power and that’s why it’s limited he didn’t free

27:36 slaves everywhere but he says anywhere in rebellion as of january 1 1863 because his commander-in-chief power has authority where there’s still rebellion if if if if an area is within the union my commander-in-chief power doesn’t reach there that’s got to be achieved through other means which ultimately would be the 13th amendment

27:58 um or some kind of compensated emancipation but it ended up being the 13th amendment that’s how he went about that but even you know he got criticized one of my favorite stories of lincoln i think really gives you uh his his mentality is his secretary of treasury sam and chase was a very ardent abolitionist and wrote link in a letter a little no chastising lincoln for not going further

28:21 in the emancipation proclamation and lincoln says what would the justification be right if i was boundless in my assertion of power is under what rule of law would that be and i would i would be i would commence to be a tyrant if i went beyond the constraints of what the law gives me as president

28:42 and i’m not going to do that and so even on the verge of achieving uh his at least his adult lifelong dream of getting rid of slavery uh you know it was within his grasp and he restrained himself because my legal authority only goes so far my legal authority is commander-in-chief

29:02 and that only pertains to those parts of the of the union that are in rebellion at that date which is january 1 1863 so that act itself was an act of restraint and an act of recognition of the limits of the rule of law superseding his own personal desire

29:22 stated in the greely letter that every man everywhere should be free right right excellent and so as we conclude our our conversation what what lessons can can lincoln’s political philosophy and and his restraint his prudence’s moderation help our own divided society today and and help restore

29:43 our common identity as americans and our more civil conversation i i think this is true in at least two ways one is and this would actually be without going details maybe the more controversial thing is lincoln i think would redirect us towards the declaration the constitution what do we have in common what can we

30:05 ground our disagreements have to be grounded in something that we agree on right and and that would direct us back to our founding and to the declaration and and the constitution right and being dedicated to those um now in some circles that itself is is the controversy the second thing i would talk about which i think would be

30:26 probably more unanimity around is there’s a quote from lincoln’s 1842 washington temperance address if it’s not my favorite lincoln quote it’s certainly top three and lincoln says in that that address um if you would want to persuade a man

30:49 you must first convince him that you are his friend so what does he mean by that and you can if people want to go look up that speech it’s readily available you’ll see what he’s talking about is if i want to convince tony if we disagree on something and i want to convince him to be on my side i don’t convince him by calling him names by

31:09 questioning his motives by by assuming he’s either a fool or a knave that’s the only reason he could possibly disagree with me so i insult his intelligence or his honor but that’s not going to convince him because now he’s mad at me right because i’m calling him names i need to convince him that i wish the best for him that i would i have no animosity towards him

31:31 and that we can then start to discuss as if we are friends right that we want the same things right and what we we want a mutual good and so you look at lincoln’s 1854 peoria address which is i think uh probably lincoln if you wanted it lincoln’s political thought in one speech that’s what i would go to

31:52 it’s not pithy and short the way the gettysburg address are in the second inaugural are but unless it’s there and there’s a couple times in that speech where he says directly to to any southerner who who might end up reading this speech uh i you know if we were in your position we would we would take we would take your view if you were in our position you would take our view i i

32:12 hold no animosity to the south i recognize your your legal rights not begrudgingly but but but but uh full-heartedly i recognize your legal rights and so he’s trying to say here’s what i agree with you on here’s how i appreciate your situation and how i’m trying to identify myself with you and then here’s why i think slavery is a

32:34 fundamental moral law and that the law cannot countenance ultimately that cannot be justly countenanced in the law um uh and why he’s against the expansion of slavery but that has to start with a recognition of whatever legitimacy there is of legal rights and of interest of southerners

32:55 so it’s his way of trying to ingratiate himself uh to them and that’s i think what what what we’re really missing civility is fellow citizens how can we treat each other as fellow citizens so after if tony and i disagree with something when we’re done disagreeing can we remain together as citizens and that means we have to be restrained

33:15 in our rhetoric and and ellie at some level focus on what we have in common and try to persuade each other as friends not as enemies john i i really like that sentiment and and and i no charges better myself i mean like you know lincoln said yeah we we are friends right we must not be

33:37 enemies uh we’re friends and we’re all americans in the uh you know i stumbled into the first inaugural not not meaning to yeah i know i mean it’s just a great sentiment we need to see exactly what he says in the first inaugural right we we must be friends we cannot be enemies um and that’s that’s still true today right right we we have to listen to each other

33:57 have to sit across from each other and talk and and as you say not engage in name calling and not questioning each other’s motives but recognize where we’re all patriotic americans and we believe in the same ideals and we need to work together uh so john uh you’re right america uh abraham lincoln statesmanship

34:17 and the limits of liberal democracy it’s it’s a magnificent book uh and we look forward to too many more so again thank you for joining us i really appreciate it thanks for having me and everything that the bill of rights institute does you’re doing doing good work