It we do not learn from history, we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past...
Mood:
chatty
Topic: Summer General
I LOVE history. One of my favorite classes in high school was AP American History. Thus, while researching quotes for another post that I wanted to make about the Obama-Keyes election in Illinois, I was please to find the following article.
As usual I am reprinting it here in the case that it is later moved and future readers of my blog won't get to read it.
Commentary: First of all, this article is awesome for the depth it goes into with the Lincoln-Douglas debates. I've never come across a reading that so intimately delved into the debates. Ever since I was a little kid Lincoln was a bit of a hero to me and it's awesome to see the arguements he used. The only surprise to me was the frank racism in their speeches. I KNOW that it was commonplace back then, but living in a world that is so PC it's very strange hearing politicians say these things. I will highlight the offensive passages for you.
Note- any emphasis (ie bold or underline) was added by me to bring attention to MY readers. The author of the article did not use any emphasis at all.
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The Keyes-Obama debates and the Lincoln-Douglas debates: Does history repeat itself?
Fred Hutchison
August 9, 2004
Alan Keyes will run against Barack Obama for the U.S. Senate in Illinois. Keyes is one of the most articulate spokesmen for conservative Republicans. Obama is one of the most articulate leaders of the liberal Democrats. Both men happen to be black. They are on opposite sides of a culture war which has divided this nation in ways it has not been divided since the civil war era.
In 1858, Abraham Lincoln ran against Stephen A. Douglas for Senate in Illinois. Lincoln was an articulate spokesman for the brand new anti-slavery party called the Republican Party. Douglas was the leader of the Democratic party in the north. The two men were leading opponents in a culture war involving the issue of slavery.
The Lincoln -- Douglas debates were memorable and long remembered. When the presidential election of 1860 came around everyone wanted a rematch. It was like the popular demand for a rematch after a sensational fight between great prizefighters. Thus, Lincoln ran against Douglas for president in 1860. The Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 were published in book form and circulated by the Lincoln camp as required reading material for the voters. Lincoln lost the1858 Senate race but won the 1860 election for the presidency. The debates of 1858 gave Lincoln a national stature and a natural political following. His importance as a central player on the national stage kept increasing as more and more people read the debates. That was a nation of serious readers and avid debaters.
In both culture wars -- the culture war of 1858 and the culture war of 2004 -- Evangelicals and moralists were on one side of the question. Those who were trying to separate morality from politics were on the other side. Northern Evangelicals and Quakers formed the core of the abolition (abolition of slavery) movement. Southern Evangelicals and Catholics form the core of the present anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage movement -- and also the core of the support for the public display of the Ten Commandments and reference to God in the public ceremonies. During both culture wars, the state of Illinois has been a moderate state as a whole -- but with two dominant parties with powerfully opposing opinions.
The Historical Prelude (1820 - 1854)
The Missouri Compromise of 1820 excluded slavery from the lands of the Louisiana Purchase north of the 36.30 parallel with the exception of Missouri which sticks up above the parallel. At the time, the lands of the Louisiana Purchase composed about half the real estate of the United States and its territories -- but only a tiny fraction of the people. By 1860 the population of the western territories had exploded.
Senator Stephen A. Douglas sponsored the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. It was a great victory for Douglas' doctrine of "popular sovereignty" over the edicts of congress. When Kansas and Nebraska became states, they could decide for themselves whether to be slave states or free states. Douglas thought that his bill would ease regional tensions. He assumed that it would relieve his constituents in the free state of Illinois from having to wrestle with the contentious moral question of slavery in the western territories.
To the dismay of Douglas, his legislation stoked up regional tensions and fanned the flames of national division. It was attacked by the "free-soil," and anti-slavery factions in Illinois as a capitulation to pro-slavery factions -- bringing upon Douglas the very debate he was trying to avoid. Passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act was followed by the creation of the Republican party which absorbed the free-soil and anti-slavery factions. Douglas' legislation brought into being the party which was destined to be his political nemesis. 1854 was a political turning point. The nation began moving towards civil war -- something that neither Lincoln nor Douglas wanted.
Bleeding Kansas (1854 - 1859)
Pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces migrated to Kansas in the hopes of winning Kansas to their cause based upon Douglas' legislation of popular sovereignty. The hostilities between these two factions reached a fever pitch. The result was a local civil war (1854 - 1859) which was called "Bleeding Kansas." Lawrence, Kansas was considered a "hotbed of abolitionism." A pro-slavery mob attacked the city. It was called the "Sack of Lawrence." The famous abolitionist John Brown retaliated with the "Pottawatomie massacre." The slavery question in Kansas was finally settled when Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state in January, 1861.
"Bleeding Kansas" provided the Republican Party with a heated anti-slavery issue and a slogan for the election of 1860. It also provided America with a prototype in Kansas for the Civil War. The secession of the southern states from the union in 1861 would have been unthinkable had they not been preoccupied with news about Bleeding Kansas for five years. The rabble rousing election campaign of 1860 was like a match set to a national power keg. Everyone was reading the Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1860 as the tension was rising. There were demonstrations in the streets about John Brown's trial and execution and about "Bleeding Kansas." In 1861, Union troops marched to war singing, "John Brown's body lays a-moldering in the ground." Bleeding Kansas became bleeding America.
Dred Scott (1857)
Dred Scott was a slave who lived in Missouri. His master took him to Illinois, then to Wisconsin, and back again to Missouri. Illinois and Wisconsin were free states. With the help of an abolitionist lawyer, Scott sued for his freedom in a Missouri court on the grounds that living in Illinois and Wisconsin made him a free man. Amazingly, Scott won his case -- a sensational event in a western slave state like Missouri.
The shocked Missouri Supreme Court overturned the ruling, of course. Scott appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. By a vote of 7-2, the court ruled against Scott. Chief Justice Taney ruled that a Negro has no rights as a U.S. citizen and cannot bring a case before federal courts. He said that the Negroes "...have no rights which any white man is bound to respect." Taney declared that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional because congress has no power to prohibit slavery in the western territories. Slaves are property, he said, and slave masters have property rights under the Fifth Amendment. Scott was subject to Missouri law when he was living in Illinois and Wisconsin, according to Taney.
As often happens today, an activist court intervention in a controversial issue and a court opinion filled with opinionated rhetoric stirred up a hornet's nest of trouble. Some Democrats had assumed that the Dred Scott case would settle the issue, be the end of sectional agitation, and would be a death blow to the new Republican Party. The opposite happened. The Dred Scott case rubbed salt into the wound. Sectional agitation increased. The Dred Scott verdict stirred up militants like John Brown into a state of furious indignation. The outraged anti-slavery forces rose up in protest and the Republican party increased mightily in strength.
Dred Scott seemed to obliterate the "popular sovereignty" policy of Douglas. Douglas came up with an alternative plan of local sovereignty. He suggested that if settlers oppose slavery, they could circumvent Dred Scott by not endowing the local police with powers to enforce slave laws or slave master's rights. This policy became known as the Freeport Doctrine in memory of a debate he had with Lincoln in Freeport, Illinois. Douglas loved democracy but was no humanitarian. He stated in a debate that he did not care if a western territory chose for slavery of freedom -- just so the will of the people prevailed. Lincoln, who was a humanitarian, thought that the Freeport Doctrine would seldom work in the interest of slaves.
Douglas thought that his Freeport Doctrine -- a moderate stance for the times -- would reconcile the northern and southern Democrats. It did not. Douglas' policy of compromise on slavery in the western territories infuriated the southern slave-holding Democrats and alienated the anti-slavery Democrats in the north. A policy which once had been uniting was now highly divisive in an increasingly polarized nation.
Douglas had been the emerging leader of the Democratic Party which was the national majority party. The party had been held together through compromises engineered by moderates like Douglas. Now his policy split the party in two. This left Douglas as the undisputed leader of the northern Democrats -- which was neither a national party nor a majority party in faction-riddled Northern states like Illinois.
The Democrats had enjoyed national dominance for thirty years -- the time of Andrew Jackson through the time of James Buchanan -- Lincoln's predecessor as president. It would be over seventy years before the Democrats regained their majority party status (1932). They would hold that status for almost fifty years in the twentieth century -- when the old coalition with southern Democrats broke down (1980). In this particular, history repeated itself. In 1860 and in 1980, the southern Democrats decisively broke away from their coalition with northern Democrats and put an end to the majority party status of the Democratic Party.
Lincoln's Challenge
On June 16th, 1858, Lincoln made a speech at the Republican State Convention which launched his senatorial campaign. It was a barn burner.
"A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe that this government cannot endure half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other." These are words that once heard, imprint upon the memory, and cannot be ignored. Indeed, they became a major point of contention in the Lincoln-Douglas debate.
Lincoln derided the now defunct Kansas-Nebraska Act (Douglas' handiwork) and called it "squatter sovereignty." He said it was a perversion of the "sacred right of self-government." Lincoln claimed that this devise designed so that "...if any one man choose to enslave another, no third man shall be allowed to object." (This was a debatable assertion but it opened the eyes of the crowd to the fact that Douglas was more concerned with the sentiments of the white settlers than the fate of the slaves.)
Lincoln then implicated President Buchanan and Senator Douglas in the perfidious Dred Scott case. (Lincoln never addressed Douglas by name. He called him the author of the "Nebraska Bill.") He reminded the crowd of Douglas' words when asked on the floor of the Senate whether the people of a territory can exclude slavery from their limits. Douglas answered, "That is a question for the Supreme Court." Lincoln recalled a speech Douglas made endorsing the Dred Scott decision. (Then as now, the Democratic Party depends upon the court to intervene when an issue gets too politically sticky to handle in the legislature.)
After ridiculing the collapse of "squatter sovereignty" Lincoln reminded the crowd of Douglas' declaration "...that all he wants is a fair vote for the people, and that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up." "I do not understand his declaration," Lincoln said, "that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up...the Senator's 'care not' policy..." is a piece of policy machinery which serves to "...deprive the Negro, in every possible event , of the benefit of that provision of the ...Constitution which declares that 'the citizens of each state shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of the several states." (Here again, it is debatable whether there was any such "machinery" devised by a conspiracy of Douglas. But the claim is not absurd in light of Douglas' defense of Dred Scott -- which sealed off the slaves from hope. Lincoln revealed where the Douglas' sentiments were with his "care not" policy -- which, after Dred Scott, must work to the advantage of pro-slavery Democrats.)
Lincoln proceeded to make a series of points which stripped away Douglas' mantle of neutrality about western slavery and depicted him as the mastermind of a policy for denying Negroes of their rights.
If this is true, it is only true in an indirect way. Douglas may rightly be accused of indifference to the plight of the slaves, and oblivious to their hopeless situation after Dred Scott. But Douglas was not the mastermind of the pro-slavery cause.
Douglas Replies
Douglas began with a panegyric to "popular sovereignty." He explained certain of his maneuvers -- which Lincoln criticized -- as made in the defense of popular sovereignty. He upheld the "right of every community to decide for itself whether a thing is right or wrong." (Notice how he replaces the universal moral law with "democratic morality?" This is not far from the moral relativism of postmodern liberals. Today, instead of a community deciding right and wrong by consensus, "democratic morality" means that every culture and every individual may subjectively invent a unique morality. "Democratic morality" was not the friend of slaves and is not the friend of unborn children.)
Douglas cleverly misconstrued Lincoln's "house divided" line as a call for a uniformity of laws throughout the nation. He characterized it as a threat to state sovereignty -- even to the abolishment of state legislatures. He suggested that Lincoln was calling for a war of the north against the southern states. (In fact, this was the last thing Lincoln wanted.) He then gave a lecture on the constitution, federalism, states rights, and regional and local diversity. His principle of a diversity which trumps the moral law -- sounds almost contemporary.
Amazingly, Douglas defended the Supreme Court against Lincoln's criticism of the Dred Scott case! He characterized Lincoln's criticism as an attack on the Constitution and the separation of the judicial powers from the executive and judicial branches of government. He contrasted Lincoln's radicalism with his own respect for the court. (Lincoln was advocating no such thing as Douglas claimed, of course. Douglas was creating a straw man Lincoln in order to rhetorically tear it down.)
Douglas' defense of Dred Scott was a blunder. He thought to hide behind the court's dignity and authority to protect himself and the moderates from taking a stand. But many saw a "guilt by association" in his defense of the court which linked his name to the Dred Scott case and the pro-slavery cause. Douglas was foiled in his search for the safe middle ground.
Douglas freely described his presumption of a benign white superiority and racial paternalism. "...this government of ours is founded on the white basis. It was made by the white man, for the benefit of the white man, to be administered by white men, in such a manner as they shall determine.
It is also true that a Negro, or Indian, or any other man of inferior race to a white man should be permitted to enjoy, and humanity requires, that he should have all the rights, privileges, and immunities which he is capable of exercising consistent with the safety of society." He defined these "rights and privileges" as what each state shall decide. (Notice how Douglas throws a sop to pro-slavery opinion and throws another sop to anti-slavery opinion -- all in the same paragraph!)
During a time of a rapidly developing extremes of opinion, Douglas remained the prototypical moderate. He has no fixed philosophy or moral compass beyond a vague belief in democracy and regional autonomy. His opinions are a congery of common notions and sentiments of the day, cobbled together with a view towards political expedience and practical outcomes which are congenial to majority opinion and majority comfort. His pious hope that the allegedly inferior Negro will gain some elemental rights is little more than sentimental window dressing. As a true moderate, Douglas regarded Lincoln, a man of principle, as a dangerous radical. This was the essence of Douglas' critique of Lincoln in the debates.
Douglas was the wrong kind of man to have in power during a culture war or a shooting war. Now dear reader, think about recent presidents and presidential candidates who can easily change positions as they follows a shifting democratic consensus. Consider whether they called a principled opponent an extremist. Reflect on whether such a candidate is fit for leadership during a culture war or a shooting war.
The Lincoln -- Douglas Debates (8/21/58 - 10/15/58)
After the speeches cited above, Lincoln challenged Douglas to debate. They agreed upon a series of seven debates, one in each of the seven congressional districts of Illinois. Each debate ran three hours and consisted of two speeches -- an opening speech by one of the men and a rebuttal speech by the other.
Challenging Douglas to debate was a risky strategy for Lincoln. Douglas was an eloquent orator with a magnificent voice. He had honed his rhetorical and debating skills during two terms in the Senate. Lincoln had a high-pitched voice and spoke in a perfunctory manner until he warmed up to the crowd or became enthusiastic about his subject. Yet Lincoln acquired a national reputation in these debates.
I shall offer a brief summary of the first debate. The two speeches described above along with the first debate conveys to us the general tenor of the debates.
First Debate -- Ottawa, Illinois (8/21/58)
Douglas answered Lincoln's "A house divided cannot stand," by arguing that the nation can permanently subsist as part slave and part fee. It had endured as such since the founding. The founders designed it as such. (Douglas' point may have worked in 1854. But it ignored all the lessons of Bleeding Kansas in 1858. Abolitionists and pro-slavery groups were still killing each other in Kansas as Douglas spoke.)
Douglas argued that diversity and variety of regions is a good thing -- again falsely implying that Lincoln wanted uniformity on all issues.
Douglas gave a sop to both anti-slavery folks and states rights folks by pointing out that at the founding twelve of the thirteen states were slave states -- and that now half the states are free because of popular sovereignty.
Douglas shifted to fear-mongering and raised the stakes. He claimed that without the protection of Dred Scott,
masses of Negroes would swarm into Illinois, darken the prairies with black settlements and turn Illinois into a "free Negro colony." He said the Negro vote would benefit Lincoln and the "black Republican party."
Douglas opposed Negro citizenship on the grounds of Negro
"inferiority." Once again Douglas offered to the Negroes such
rights as they can "safely handle."Although Douglas opposed Negro slavery in Illinois and wanted Negroes to have a limited set of rights, he also opposed full Negro citizenship -- adopting a position similar to the later Jim Crow segregation which was to develop in post Civil War America in both the north and the south.
Douglas proposed that we be tolerant of other states who choose slavery -- and thus we can enjoy peace. Then as now, politicians appeal to "tolerance" as a buffer to the troubled conscience.
Lincoln opened his rebuttal speech by denying that he sought to interfere with other states or that he sought full social and political equality for Negroes. He claimed to seek only the "natural rights" of Negroes. "In these the Negro is equal." (Here is Lincoln as the clever huckster -- appeasing the fear-mongering of Douglas -- and seeking to bargain on behalf of Negroes for what rights he thinks he can get for them based upon what a reluctant white world can endure.)
Lincoln reminded the crowd that "A house divided cannot stand," are the very words of Christ -- and if Douglas quarrels with these words, he quarrels with Christ.
Lincoln agreed that regional diversity is good -- and makes for a "house united." but that slavery has always been divisive. The founders restricted its spread to new territories. Stopping the spread of slavery will eventually lead to the extinction of slavery -- and thus will be in the cause of peace and union. (Lincoln ignored the fact that the fight to stop the spread of slavery into Kansas stirred up strife and division. However, his claim has merit when taking the long view.)
Lincoln argued with some merit that popular sovereignty combined with Dred Scott law does not allow a community to not have slavery. (Dred Scott upset the political balances in such a way that the old compromises were no longer possible -- and pushed the nation towards an all-or nothing contest.)
Lincoln again denied that he was for uniformity or civil war. He plausibly claimed that it is not war but the Dred Scott case which nationalizes slavery. Lincoln cleverly hung the albatross of Dred Scott around Douglas' neck.
Summation
The debates lost the election for Lincoln in Illinois, but won the presidency for him. The debates turned the south against him so totally that they never gave him a chance to appease their wrath. The southern states began seceding from the union before Lincoln was inaugurated. Lincoln entered office as the Civil War president.
In fine, an epic debate between brilliant men about an issue of grave national concern can change the course of history. Let the Keyes -- Obama debates begin!
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Fred Hutchison, a Christian layman, has had a variety of opportunities to teach, ranging from pulpit invitations to being a banquet speaker. He has written hundreds of essays about religion, politics, history, philosophy, and science, and is the author and director of short dramas and comedies.
He has an MBA and a CPA and is retired. During his career, he was a technical specialist in governmental accounting and auditing, and he wrote technical literature, did research, taught classes, prepared training seminars, and performed quality review work.
Fred is motivated by the pursuit of truth, and is fascinated by how we can abstract information from many fields to assemble a framework of ideas with which to understand the world. However, he believes that scriptural truth is the essential foundation for wisdom and knowledge and an indispensable antidote to self-deception. His book The Stages of Sanctification is the product of twenty years of intermittent study and meditation on the subject.
Fred is working on another book, which will be titled, The Rise and Fall of Western Culture. Later chapters in the book will examine the roots of Postmodernism and our present culture war. Fred was the first "Christian intellectual" selected by the Talbot Department of Philosophy, of the Talbot School of Theology, for a special program. Talbot seeks to network with Christian intellectuals for cooperation in fighting the culture war and to build up the intellectual discipline of Evangelicals.
? Copyright 2004 by Fred Hutchison
Posted by Eric
at 9:44 AM EDT
sad
incredulous
Pay Attention!