Lincoln the Liberal Backed an Active Government
By: Tom Peet
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Peet, who holds a doctorate from The Ohio State University, taught high school history for many years. He is the co-author of “Reading Lincoln: An Annotated Bibliography,” which contains reviews of hundreds of books about the 16th president.
My reading of Lincoln, particularly his own words, suggests it is risky to pigeonhole him as any one thing. Often, we find that while we can’t say what Lincoln was, we can say what he was not. We can agree with historian Richard N. Current that Lincoln, “despite the wealth of words written by him and about him, remains in many ways a mysterious man.” Each generation post-Civil War, Current noted, has struggled “to get right with Lincoln.”
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As thoughtful students of history, we must also “get Lincoln right,” and we must be aware of the danger of present-mindedness, particularly on the issue of racism. By today’s standards, Abraham Lincoln was racist. But it is neither fair nor just to judge him by our contemporary values.
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The fact is that Lincoln was a Whig for much of his political life and never claimed to be a liberal. Do his views, however, align with those of contemporary liberals?
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Lincoln was serious about the phrase “all men are created equal.” The Declaration of Independence was his touchstone. Furthermore, he didn’t believe that it was intended exclusively for white men as Roger B. Taney and Stephen Douglas contended.
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“Now, my countrymen, if you have been taught doctrines conflicting with the great landmarks of the Declaration of Independence; if you have listened to suggestions which would take away from its grandeur, and mutilate the fair symmetry of its proportions; if you have been inclined to believe that all men are not created equal in those inalienable rights enumerated by our charter of liberty, let me entreat you to come back,” Lincoln said in an August 17, 1858 speech.
“I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence,.” He said in Philadelphia in February 1861
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“The assertion of that principle, at that time, was the word, ‘fitly spoken’ which has proved an ‘apple of gold’ to us. The Union, and the Constitution, are the picture of silver, subsequently framed around it. The picture was made, not to conceal, or destroy the apple; but to adorn, and preserve it. The picture was made for the apple — not the apple for the picture, he wrote in the .” Fragment on the Constitution and Union in 1861.
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He also had strong views favoring education. “Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in,” he wrote in an 1832 handbill.
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On July 2, 1862 Lincoln signed the Morrill Act, which provided each state with 30,000 acres of federal land for each member in their congressional delegation. The land was then sold by the states and the proceeds used to fund public colleges that focused on agriculture and the mechanical arts. Sixty-nine colleges were funded by these land grants.
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As for the role of government, he wrote in 1854, “The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but cannot do, at all, or cannot, so well do, for themselves—in their separate, and individual capacities.”
Lincoln acted upon this belief in what government could and should do by voting for internal improvements as an Illinois state legislator to build roads, canals, railroads and bridges much along the model of Henry Clay’s American system.
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As president, Lincoln signed the Homestead, Morrill and Pacific Railroad Acts, created the Department of Agriculture, implemented federal banks, introduced greenbacks, and oversaw our first income tax, all of which were consistent with his progressive views
Lincoln stood by the rule of law.
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“Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well-wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others. . . Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap--let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in primers, spelling books, and in almanacs;--let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation,” he said in his 1837 Lyceum Address.
He also favored a loose interpretation of what the Founding Fathers wrote.
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At Cooper Union in 1860, he said, “Now, and here, let me guard a little against being misunderstood. I do not mean to say we are bound to follow implicitly in whatever our fathers did. To do so, would be to discard all the lights of current experience - to reject all progress - all improvement. What I do say is, that if we would supplant the opinions and policy of our fathers in any case, we should do so upon evidence so conclusive, and argument so clear, that even their great authority, fairly considered and weighed, cannot stand.”
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And he favored immigration:
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“I again submit to your consideration the expediency of establishing a system for the encouragement of immigration. This noble effort demands the aid and ought to receive the attention of the government,” he said in his annual message to Congress in 1863.
In 1864 Lincoln signed into law the first major federal legislation encouraging immigration.
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And he backed gender equality:
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“I go for all sharing the privileges of the government, who assist in bearing its burdens. Consequently, I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage, who pay taxes or bear arms, by no means excluding females,” he wrote in 1836.
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From 1837 to 1859 Lincoln’s law firm was involved in 131 divorce cases representing women in 82 of them. He also defended nine women accused of riot for smashing barrels in a saloon after they warned the proprietor they would close him down.
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He promoted science, lecturing six times on discoveries and inventions in Illinois between 1858 and 1860. He used scientific investigative techniques in a number of court cases. In 1863, Lincoln signed the charter of the National Academy of Sciences. And he was our only president to hold a patent.
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He was an environmentalist,
signing the Yosemite Valley Grant Act in 1864. The legislation gave California the Yosemite Valley and the nearby Mariposa Big Tree Grove, the first time land had been set aside, “upon the express conditions that the premises shall be held for public use, resort, and recreation,” a forerunner of our national parks.
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Lincoln understood the importance of religion and knew the Bible better than any other president. That said, he never formally joined a church and promoted a “wall of separation” between state and religion. In his second inaugural address, Lincoln noted the danger of being misled when faith and politics are mixed. “Both 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 assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces 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. The almighty has his own purposes.”
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He championed free speech.
“The gentleman from New York made such a speech as he believed to be right. He expressed the sentiments he believed to be correct, and however much others may differ from him in those views, he has a right to be heard, and should not be interrupted,” he said in 1847.
Lincoln, of course, opposed slavery. In his 1854 Peoria speech, he said, “This declared indifference, but, as I must think, covert real zeal for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world; enables the enemies of free institutions with plausibility to taunt us as hypocrites; causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity; and especially because it forces so many good men among ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty, criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest.”
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“I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so think, and feel, he wrote in 1864.
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Lincoln’s stance on race and citizenship was complicated.
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At the Charleston, Ill, debate in 1858, Lincoln said, “I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people.”
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However, on April 11, 1865, Lincoln would say the following about Louisiana’s new government. “It is…unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise is not given to the colored man. I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers.” These words cost Lincoln his life.
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Point for point, Lincoln spoke and acted as a liberal, a conservator not a conservative.
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