The martyrdom of Lincoln represented a deep-seated hate between the South and North even after the Civil War had ended. The inclusion of African Americans into society and then the hostility at which white Americans disabled them with their supremacy justified the inconceivability of ever attaining full African American equality.  The postbellum circumstances of formerly enslaved black people blotted by the harsh segregation of the 1880’s and rekindled by important legislation in the late 20th century all point to centuries’ long efforts to resolve the “racial subjugation of black people in the United States”[37]. 

Abraham Lincoln attacked the philosophy of hyper-rationalism in politics, cautioning that the nation’s “proud fabric of freedom was endangered by the passions of the people --the jealousy, envy, and avarice, incident to our nature”[2]. Circumstantially, he was alluding to the prevalence of slavery as sectionalist tensions mounted, motivating him to douse this radical fervor and  urge it to “favor the slow, organic growth of national feeling”[3]. Martin Luther King’s melodic cadence on the divinity of America’s national conscience echoed Lincoln’s sentiments on preventing the patriotic corruption of national spirit. Yet it split the American audience in two. Some believe MLK’s dream depicts a colorblind meritocracy full of citizens indifferential to race. Others interpret it as a description of a nation where racial diversity is accepted as part of America’s sovereignty. A ploy ingrained in this issue is that the advocacy of its promise to resolve racial issues is consistently hampered by political expediency. Governments and businesses are less responsive to the demands of average white Americans as long as racial minorities can be turned into scapegoats; a supposition evident post-Nixon era: Republican consultant Lee Atwater detailed an infamous strategy to “win over white segregationists that certain economic and social policy positions -- like states’ rights, forced busing, and tax cuts -- were intentional distractions[38]” to hurt African Americans more than whites. A cruel undercut to constitutional notions of equal rights and liberties, this instance suggests an ideological extremism stemming from a willingness to subscribe to racial bigotry even if it means harming those who sanctified themselves for generations as the ‘superior race.’ 

There are many interpretations that have swirled throughout the historical bastions of the world in recent decades, particularly concerning the racist inclinations of Abraham Lincoln. Many see his emancipation of slavery as a rung to uniting the Union; that he didn’t much care for the racial discrepancies in the North and South; that he was subscribing to the common good by allowing the unjust persistence of slavery. Duly, even after emancipation, American has seen the retrenchment of minority groups following decades of civic reform, from the scandalous 1877 election of Rutherford B. Hayes to the harshness of the 20th century Jim Crow Laws, perpetuating such a tantalizing cycle of raucous hyper partisanship that has left redress of the victimized long overdue; raising questions to the effectiveness of the sanctified visionary who brought an end to the slavery institution.  

As such, an exploratory view follows on Lincoln’s racial inclinations by analyzing the various socio-political factors that influenced his actions as well as the notions of the contemporary world that link to Lincoln’s beliefs and ideologies.

THE MIND WILLS IT SO:

The ideological bravado held by both the North and South embattled them in a locked arms to determine the course of slavery. The U.S’s political infrastructure, much like Democrat-Republican relations today, promulgated radical and superficial legislative efforts to for one region, secure further breeding grounds for economic viability, and for the other, to prevent the violation of new-founded republican principles. Yet the North saw an increasing split in loyalties amongst its constituents, especially in the border states and Illinois. The saga of the Missouri Compromise, with its ideological lackluster, complemented with the Kansas-Nebraska Act [which provoked incessant debate over the concept of popular sovereignty], exacerbated the sectionalist schism over slavery. On both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line, staunch advocates rallied for increased federal intervention in such institutionally polarized matters. Southern states’ views began to diverge from Jeffersonian-era’s conceptualization of the ideal man [agrarian-based], instead basing their platforms on “proslavery rhetoric”[40] arguing “that black people had large sex organs and small skulls — which translated to promiscuity and a lack of intelligence — and higher tolerance for heat, as well as immunity to some illnesses and susceptibility to others”[42]. They viewed Northern nonplus as intolerable and insulting to their economic foundations, seeing their protests as a means of gaining economic superiority by removing a critical economic motor. On the other side of the line were “both abolitionists and less zealous anti-slavery men like Lincoln”[28]. Politically sound in his remarks, Lincoln believed that all the agitation on the issue of slavery was being made in vain, and couldn’t be finalized “until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed”[43].  Duly, Lincoln’s beliefs that the inevitability of slavery to persist unless a ideological rift threatened war sculpted his mindset of political unity. Yet he contrastingly stressed the imperative for African Americans to be “created equal in those inalienable rights enumerated by our chart of liberty”[44]. In essence, Lincoln’s caution to political chaos [nonwithstanding his moral take on slavery] is exemplified by one of his own mentionings on the delicateness of poking at the slave bear:

“The thing [slavery] is hid away, in the constituion, just as an afflicted man hides away a wen or a cancer, which he dares cut out at once, lest he bleed to death”[1].

In the midst of sectional crisis underlies the conflict in the 1850’s of how the almost sequestered issues concerning slavery came unglued, especially in its shaping of Lincolns’ notable political actions through its corruption of the Whig Party: 

The Whig Party of the mid-19th century was marred with constituency-disapproval on which presidential candidate to choose: Henry Clay or Zachary Taylor. Many Illinois Whigs -- an influential group of legislators in Congress at the time -- were loyal to Henry Clay and opposed Taylor’s nomination. Other Whigs were concerned that the party was opposing the Mexican War and at the same time, supporting a candidate who helped America win it. In the northern parts of the U.S were anti-slavery Whigs who disapproved of Taylor’s pro-slave beliefs. Then Illinois legislator Abraham Lincoln, despite possessing an “antipathy for slavery”[27], supported Taylor’s campaign duly for the promise of Whig-domination of the Senate and electorate. In Massachusetts, Lincoln attacked Van Buren and the Free-Soilers, who were the opposing faction that threatened to cost the popular Whigs faction their majority in the state . He stated that both Whigs and Free Soilers agreed slavery to be a “distasteful manifestation of a collective paranoia gripping the South”[58] insistent on the degradation of African Americans. Thus, “the only question that Lincoln inferred that could affect voter decisions between the Whigs and Free Soilers was which party could most effectively curb the expansion of slavery”[3].

The Whig party’s increasing partisan beliefs on the validation of slavery troubled Lincoln. He was dissatisfied that countless Illinois Whigs repressed Taylor as a viable candidate for the presidential bid, seeing the contender’s beliefs as strikingly opposite to the “established structural/institutional arrangements of society”[50].  Some were even defecting to the Liberty Party, an abolitionist faction that sought to further anti-slavery redresses not pursued much by the mainstream Whigs. 

When Lincoln returned to Washington, he focused on the central issues plaguing the new sessions of Congress: slavery and its expansion. These were, initially, issues that he hadn’t given much thought, as his main discussion of slavery was integrated as a motive for swaying voters towards the election of Taylor. However, he had expressed his views as early as 1837, where he and Daniel Stone, to the Illinois legislature, “potrayed slavery as an obstacle to human progress and southerners as economically and socially backward and lacking in morality”[35]. But, he didn’t support any measures to end it because of the idea that the eradication of slavery in the South as “unfulfilled in the Consitution”[56]. Lincoln viewed the extension of slavery instead of its persistence as an entirely different matter. He held the view that slavery would become unprofitable so long as it was confined to the areas in which in already persisted in, as Southern states’ defensiveness in the past had prompted Lincoln to avoid inciting domestic contention by way of radical legislation.  

In Lincoln’s second congressional session, antislavery congressmen were beginning to express impatience on their repeated attempts to pass a legislative document aimed at eliminating slavery from states acquired from the Mexican War. Originally developed in wisps some decades prior, “which developing thru later years, became known, in that period of political agitation just preceding the civil war, as the Wilmot Proviso”[57]. When application of this proviso to curtain slave tension in the ceded territories failed, legislators turned towards applying the void ideas from the proviso to ending slavery within the interior of the District of Columbia.  Lincoln had conflicting views: on one hand, he believed abolitionist agitation as counterproductive, but he felt slavery in Washington D.C to be a source of democratic injustice. Duly, Lincoln’s view on the topic of slavery emerged through his voting patterns. He strongly believed in the First Amendment right of all citizens to petition the government for a redress of grievances, and as such believed “that the Congress of the United States has the power, under the constitution, to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia; but that that power out not to be exercised unless at the request of the people of said District”[2]. 

Holding this view, Lincoln sought a compromise to end the debates that were tearing his party apart by drafting a proposal for a treaty. On January 10th, 1849, he came onto the floor of the House to introduce his proposal. He called for a referendum on slavery in the District of Columbia. If a majority approved, slavery in the District of Columbia would cease.. 

Through this proposal, Lincoln sought to embellish sentiments on slavery by providing a sort of compromise that both anti-slavery men and Southerners could accept. The constitutionality of his actions mimicked a stark relevance to the times: an abidance of the principles that laid the foundation for American governance. Seeing the Whig Party’s defragmentation, Lincoln felt the need to sow shut the internal wounds it had received through differing ideologies on slavery, something that had emerged when Andrew Jackson took hold the reigns of presidency in 1829. He clearly stated himself to be anti-slavery, but his efforts to make treaty with the Union and the South was a response to pacify political conflicts. 

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The African American experience in America reflects the contention that Lincoln attempted to curtain within his own party. The legislature drafted during this era possessed a certain osentibility, as even though its efforts to restrict the expansion of slavery occurred, its [slavery] persistence, as mentioned, would continue in the established Southern states. An implication these legislative efforts had was that they did not mandate the acceptance of African Americans into an equitable society, but merely tolerated their freedom in the acquired territories as perfunctory to keeping Whig party lines from splitting from both internal and external pressures. The modern era carries the same trend: civic hegemony by the affluent; political controverting; strong political-economic-corporatist affiliations, all designed to give majorities to the most lucrative, economically beneficial political actors and figures. Yet behind all the hand-shaking and flimsy rhetoric, are people who are aware that the dainty fabric of American identity is being harassed, but are foolish enough to disavow their contributions to the corruption of America as a sovereign entity. 

Lincoln’s attempts to indoctrinate Congress by his statements on the strict abidance to the constitutional foundations of America --when held in a modern light --is repudiated by the popular premise [frequented by the Lincoln-era naturalist/abolitionist Henry David Thoreau] that unjust laws should be amended, especially whey they are complicit in the enhancement of immoral institutions such as slavery. An interpretation of Lincoln’s actions raises the possibility that he was dousing the hyper, intra-party tensions that inflamed congressional activities. Yet his rationale’s subtext differed: 

The ideological deference Lincoln experienced welded the framework of his mind: his adherence to “cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason” [3]. The common thread that weft and wove these ideals into Lincoln was the Enlightenment, and amongst all its philosophical and ideological ‘liturgy,’ the Age of Reason ‘gospel’ that captured Lincoln was prudence. The concept of prudence, much like the idea of slavery, has fallen victim to decades of connotative readjustment. Contemporaries associate it with a person’s tendency to practice exaggerated caution, hesitation, and ill judgment. 19th century philosophers propped up the concept as one of the four cardinal virtues, linking it to a shrewd intellect and the gift of coup d’oeil [coup of the eye], an ability to take in a situation, its gravity, etc, and know almost automatically how to proceed. The use of prudence in 19th century realpolitik was associated with methodological thinking, purposeful and categorical processes for progress. Montesquieu believed that to attain a coveted political disposition characterized by an exuberance of thought and rationality, one had to practice prudence. At the advent of the American Republic, James Madison believed constitutional ratification in 1787 to be based on the grounds of the liberties of humanity and on prudence. Thus, Lincoln based a lot of the foundation premises of his legislation and speechifying on prudential measures in the war effort against the South. A “prominent example of this occurred when Lincoln addressed the nation in 1861 that the way he would handle the Civil War would be “done consistently with prudence…which ought always to regulate the public service” [22], to avoid exposing “democracy in the raw” [45].

Lincoln’s political practice of prudence sheds light onto the motives he underlaid in several legislative strategies. A notable circumstance concerns a claim he made about slavery in 1858:

“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 us 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 really good men amongst 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”[22]. 

Yet, despite speechifying his view on slavery, his anchor [prudence] “demanded that he balance the integrity of the ends [elimination of slavery] with the integrity of means [his oath to uphold the Consitution and his near-religious reverence for the rule of law]”[19]. He believed that the evils of slavery should be absolved through prudence as to not denigrate the constitutional authority given to the South [Kansas-Nebraska Act].  What is especially germane today is that Lincoln’s adherence to jurisprudence and his belief to put his best ethical foot forward, provides us with some scope of his political behavior, his beliefs in the unjust subjugation of slaves “seized upon by pro-slavery advocates”[42], and his faith in political and constitutional providence. These beliefs are magnified in their historical appraisal through a document Lincoln wrote almost a decade later: the Emancipation Proclamation. 

The Proclamation --as noticeably perceived by countless historical scholars--  bears an implicit consultation to the Hofstadter question: Why is the language of the Emancipation Proclamation so bland and legalistic? when written by a man known for his linguistic and political flourishes, not deadened, monotone, prudential, flimsy pantomime? Many suggest that acknowledging “prudence as the key to Lincoln’s political behavior gives us the big picture behind the Emancipation Proclamation''[22]. The belief whipping through the worlds’ historical bastions is that Lincoln modeled his writing and elocution out of the fact that its role wasn’t loquaious, eloquent speechifying, but rather to address the emancipation of slaves. And such an undertaking was, at the time, “unquestionably severely hampered” [46]. So as to avoid such an audit, Lincoln debased his own style to keep his address to the American populace in legal simplicity. In a similar skepticality, the question of its overall effectiveness drifts in the wind. The authority and power Lincoln held during his presidential tenure were not one and the same. The Proclamation limited emancipation to all slave states in rebellion against the North, not the four loyal slave states [Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri]. Thus, while Lincoln certainly had the authority to free every slave-persistent state, his power was limited by the political fragmentation at the time, both on the countryside and in Congress.

The skeptics associated with the Emancipation Proclamation’s peculiar rejection of the characteristic Lincoln-touch sheds some leeway as to the appearance of the document as prudential in nature. Yet, Lincoln’s mental response to the circumstances at the time aren’t the only prescribed reason as to why modern-era contemporaries disparage the Proclamation’s purpose and effectiveness during the Civil War: ethical disparity is a crucial factor that touched the political sphere.

Duly, the political theory stages were in upheaval even when Lincoln had integrated the politics of prudence into his legislation and actions. Much of the late 1850’s ‘political gospel’ began to preach the Romantic politics of ethical absolutism, throwing aside the theories of the Enlightenment. Leading social figure in the Romantic era of Western philosophy Immanuel Kant, circumstantially, was able to weave Protestant revivalist evangelicism into a source-finder of “ethical judgment within men”[22] instead of through an understanding of the natural, divine laws that govern the universe. In his book Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant voiced his belief that individuals should possess the ability to “isolate moral decisions from the flux of circumstance, culture, and individual experience, and thus escape the threat of moral relativism”[47]. Alongside this framework for a proper moral conscience, Kant theorized that citizens, especially the influential ones, should base their ideas by categorical imperative in order to clearly distinguish the most pressing problem [out of many] and focus on resolving it.  In essence, he voiced a significant opinion that individuals shouldn’t crutch themselves on justifying their ethics through the circumstances that compel us to perform them, invoking an effective philosophical vehicle for reaching justice in the political practices of America; a stark minification to the idea that circumstances influence us in the courts and institutions of law. Needless to say, the convergence of ethical absolutism and imperative in 1850 politics “erects a translucent shield between our habits of mind and Lincoln’s”[22], yet its presence evinces a more clearer understanding of the ideas that circulated and influenced Lincoln’s political actions. For example, his adoption of cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason in response to sectionalist protests, mob violence, and lynching, compelled him to voice his belief that politicians and other figures of influence should not cultivate seeds of legislation based on the will of others. Duly, the Emancipation Proclamation, in truth, was a bland document, yet it is foolish to call it ineffective. Much like Kant’s view, its monotone writing carried a single imperative. If it had been laden in the moral and eloquent grandeur similar to the Gettysburg Address, its imperative to untinge American soil of the injustices of slavery would have stymied. What was said instead in 1863, therefore, allowed it to become a legislative bill that cleansed a nation “rife with bigotry and intolerance and awash with racial hatred”[48].  

Human worth lies in relatedness to God. An individual has value because he has value to God”[60].

In this way, a somewhat concrete influence on Lincoln’s prudential nature can be scaffolded. And in another way, the Proclamation’s imperative-esque deliverance signifies Lincoln’s focus on improving the status of African Americans in that year, and the years to come. 

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The African American societal and political experience, as demonstrated by the reformist efforts of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr, is seen as second-world, or second-class citizenship, in which there has always been“painful economic adjustment, persistent social inequality and uncertain democratic consolidation”[49]. The almost immutable ostracization of African Americans throughout the tempers of chaos and reconstruction in American history [through many eyewitness accounts and pamphlets during the Civil Rights Movement] has weaved a common thread amongst all the prejudiced that they can one day, reach socio-economic equality and attain the benefits implicated in the American myth. 

What is the American myth? It is an overarching notion of an unblemished, patriotic, just, and liberal America in which is meant to appeal --and apply-- to all Americans as a point of unison. It implies that everyone experiences the same levels of equality; yet its current iteration in the past century poses the very nation that sanctified it with a perpetuating culpability in its political actions. Martin Luther King Jr, in an eloquent, philosophical address in Nashville, Tennessee, on December 27th, 1962, considers the ethical openness of race implicitly connected to the values enshrined by white Americans in the American myth. 

“Integration seems almost inevitably desirable and practical because basically we are all one. Paul’s declaration that God “hath made of one blood” all nations in the world is more anthropological than religious poetry. The physical differences between the races are insignificant when compared to the physical identities. The world's foremost anthropologists all agree that there is no basic difference in the racial groups of our world. Most deny the actual existence of what we have known as "race." There are four major blood types and all four are found in every racial group. There are no superior and inferior races.  The next truth is evidential in the history of mankind. Not only are all men alike (generically speaking), but man is by nature a societal creature. Aside from the strength and weakness found in Homo sapiens, man has been working from the beginning at the great adventure of "community." Whenever Cro-magnon man, under whatever strange impulse. put aside his stone ax and decided to mutually cooperate with his caveman neighbor, it marked the most creative turn of events in his existence. That seemingly elementary decision set in motion what we now know as civilization. At the heart of all that civilization has meant and developed is "community" --the mutually cooperative- -and voluntary venture of man to assume a semblance or responsibility for his brother.  What began as the closest answer to a desperate need for survival from the beast of prey and the danger of the jungle was the basis of present day cities and nations”[60]. 

What is significant about King’s mentionings is that it invokes a sense of brotherhood and kinship as vital to the fabric of a democratic union. The fundamental elements of human interaction --that “responsibility for his brother”-- makes tangible the retrospect of hard toiling and labor in 19th century Southern plantations. The tight-strung communities and niches formed by abused slaves wove a visage of rebellion, yet ultimated a fight against a regression into the torrents of cruelty at the heart of Southern civilization. The violence proved a point of unison for suffering African Americans with a “desperate need for survival.” The “beast of prey” and the “danger of the jungle” are described as an exceptional occurrence for unison, much like the crackling whips and the ruthless bloodhounds of the South. These elements represent much truthfully, the soul of the Mayflower Compact made manifest in an implicative bond of rebellion and unison; an American mythos much like the one embellished today. 

King hastens on, stating:

“In the final analysis, says the Christian ethic, every man must be respected because God loves him. The worth of an individual does not lie in the measure of his intellect, his racial origin. or his social position. 

Here, he embalms the sacred notion of equality as it is meant to be, where there is no prejudice nor pride in one’s social pedestal, only an egalitarian valuation applied to each individual from one entity. It is by this entity that no bitter resolve or spite is tolerated based on the color of one’s skin. The question of individual worth is further explored in a concept that comprises many of the elements of the American myth: a parable.

We tend to classify a parable as a notable event or idea that is popularized but is largely or entirely untrue. Yet we construe it as a sacred notion despite knowing it to be false because the ideas they communicate bind us together morally. However, when “myths are used as a political tool to appease the public, the intent is no longer honorable”[38]. These are commonly known as noble lies, a phrase labeled in Plato’s allegorical text Republic. In Republic, a noble lie is initiated by the most influential political actors and figures in order to maintain control while providing the public with a sense of purpose and unity. Plato roots from the concept by using the parable ‘myth of metals.’ It concerns stratifying the just country Plato creates in his book into three groups: golden rulers, silver guardians, and brass/iron commonfolk. The regulations that are implemented state that each metal cannot shift their place in society and that they were made to be in their respective places. This decrepit metaphor couches the lie in the American myth. We are told that everyone is created equal, since all metals come from the earth , and that the heavens decree that every citizens’ rank in society must be kept to ensure societal harmony. A fallacy it is, though, as if metals come from the same earth, they should be treated equally, not assuredly stratified and then classified as equal. Hence, a noble lie meant to keep the peace. 

This fallacious political behavior has been well chronicled in U.S history, particularly through African American enslavement. Many white plantation owners bolstered the energized impetus of the slave trade as a system that served to the slaves’ best interests. The Jim Crow Laws inputted into societal structures after the Civil War further magnified the unmagnanimous African Americans as degenerate to the social order. Further, the ideological and racial premise of the George Floyd protests bore a fist of usurpation at America’s professed, patriotic ideals, outlining the injustices they had pilfered since its founding: racial subjugation.  Thereby, our American myth that we herald as a peace-maker in ideology…in theory, contrasts the fact that in practice, politicians “relinquish their agency in favor of political conformity” [50], indicative of a deep-etched hypocrisy of majority-minority discrepancy. 

Lincolnesque policies and legislation sought to include African Americans into American society not as the subjugated but as the prosperous propellers of economic advancement. On March 3, 1865, Lincoln signed a bill “creating the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands”[24],  an abolitionist-incentivized vehicle for former slave integration into society and into equally-standing citizens as their fellow white countrymen who unjustly denounced African Americans as a lesser people. This view was further espoused five years ago, when Lincoln gave an influential candidacy speech at Tremont House in Chicago. In the speech, Lincoln “channeled his thoughts into searing incantations as he argued that white supremacy was poisoning the soul of America by slow degrees”[25]. He denoted the hypocrisy of America’s justification in enslavement when they themselves denounced Great Britain’s justifications for encroaching their social and political institutions. Summing it up with an eloquent metaphor, Lincoln stated of the detractions America had taken from the Declaration of Independence and the principle that all men are created equal.    

                      “…the same old serpent that says you work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it. Turn in whatever way you will --whether it comes from the mouth of a King, as an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent… ”[25]. 

The impetus African American subjugation has carried over two hundred years is represented by Lincoln’s identification of the noble lie in which white Americans instilled upon the populace: a natural hatred towards African Americans as the lesser race, one that undermines the egalitarian principles that root from our American myth. 

Further, this trend represents the famous 1896 dissent in the case Plessy v. Ferguson, where Justice John Harlan wrote, 

“The destinies of the two races in this country are indissolubly linked together”[29]. The racial divisions that reside in America bleeds the fact that resounding racial cries for justice will always be countered by the other race, leading to an embattled war of ideological violence. In fact, the incoherence of America to agree is shown through its political factionalism. In 2019, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made a series of remarks that sparked immense controversy. When asked on reparations on slavery made in the modern era, McConnell replied that reparations, “for something that happened 150 years ago, for whom none of us currently living are responsible”[30] are not a good idea, further suggesting that the election of Barack Obama could be considered as compensation for the toils of injustice African Americans’ ancestors experienced. 

"We tried to deal with our original sin of slavery by fighting a Civil War, by passing landmark civil rights legislation, elected an African American president."(...) "I don't think we should be trying to figure out how to compensate for it. First of all, it would be hard to figure out whom to compensate”[30].

Considerable backlash followed, with many highlighting the ignorance and blatant disregard McConnell carried when dismissing America’s recompense to over two hundred years of injustice as culminating into a singular event. This controversy capitalizes onto the fact that our modernized creed of progressivism has made racism and its “danger feel outmoded rather than contemporary”[30]. Evidently, even though racism survives as a lesser interpersonal form of bigotry, we fail to acknowledge the race sediments in our largely settled history. After the Civil War, freed slaves propped up by the Freedmens Bureau and given political freedoms such as the right to vote, are seen as great leaps of progress in the Reconstructionist Era. Yet many fail to realize that terror followed those black Americans who experienced “ethnified inferiority”[51] in the political power structure. The Civil Rights Movement largely eradicated unjust segregation, but racial groups were again thrown into the politics of ideological contention in order to secure election victories at the expense of American unity, leading to a process coined as trickle-down citizenship, where nations are influenced by immediate priorities and often accomplish secondary goals without an initial intent to do so. For example, when Truman  and Kennedy  were running the risk of losing their presidential elections, “they reached out to black constituents through symbolic and material civil rights policy gestures to mobilize black voters''[38]. What is largely premised here is that African American circumstance has undermined a creed of rapid progression held by many, instead exposing the fact that their predicament is based on piggyback-politics, and “cold political calculus, not of warm, fuzzy feelings about our exceptionalism”[38] glorified in the American myth. Also attesting to the lingering, unresolved racial issues is the idea that our democracy is not sufficient to duplicate the ideological utopia embellished in the Declaration of Independence, as modern ignorance to the true African American experience will always incite political debate. 

The compulsion to validate African American reciprocity with the American economic and political ecosystem is appealing. Yet their structures, much like the philosophical and ideological wave that swept through the 1850’s, have a tendency to build enduring cults with opinionated views not purely based on religious movements, but economic/political ones as well. As such, the next section will approach the topic of territorial expansion through the lenses of Aristotle’s ideas and beliefs, how they modeled the political climate, and ultimately, how they influenced Lincoln’s political actions. 

INDUSTRIAL GOSPEL:

Aristotelian metaphysics involves a recurring theme of realism, or a realist approach towards life: external reality serves as a gauge of our consciousness and its capacity to process information, and our consciousness a window to external reality. Rooting from there, Aristotle proposed a theological amalgam: he identified that the act of reasoning itself [intellectual virtues] and activities aligned with right reason [moral virtues] were characteristic of human nature as well as a basis for human happiness -- all perceived through our ability to draw inferences and observations about the things around us -- granted by the relationship our minds had with our surroundings. He recognized that rational humans should engage in activities of reason itself as well as activities according to the right reason in order to become happy. From this, he reasoned that by repeating good deeds, human beings develop moral sensibility, moderation, and courage. This is further exemplified through his book, The Politics, where he cites that humans have a natural inclination to live cooperatively within a community, as well as mate and procreate, thereby expanding prevalence of nuclear families and fostering the growth of intellectual companionship with the environment [polis]. However, he also mentions that petite-societies cannot fully satisfy humans’ applications for their intellectual curiosity, while a large politically organized society can. 

Before elaborating further, an important concept needs to be cleared: a polis, according to its Greek origins, represents a functioning city-state, not a governing union seen in 19th century America. However, a city-state is defined as a sovereign city independent of territorial overlap and cultural hegemony, meaning that its definition conforms somewhat with the Southern secession from the Union between 1860-1861. Furthermore, a polis cannot effectively overlap the people it governs if its own essence borders on dissolution. A core premise that this section will explore is represented by a quote from Jean Baudrillard’s work, the Agony of Power: “Every extension of hegemony is also an extension of terror”[4].

As Northern and Southern states’ economies became increasingly distinct during the Antebellum Period, both spheres’ ways of life were dramatically altered. The years leading up to the Civil War were of strenous tension between the Whigs and Democrats on issues pertaining to slavery and the economic infrastructure of the U.S during the Antebellum Period. Indeed, “politics and morality and politics and reform were for many antebellum Americans one and the same: in the years before the Civil War, the moral aspect of slavery stirred many men to action”[1]. T

The idea of a polis permeated all throughout America: groups of families living together and forming towns and interlinked communities. Aristotle’s beliefs that petite-societies couldn’t satisfy humans while a large political unit could relate to American ventures westward; to be the best versions of themselves they could be. This was represented in the North, as industrial booms spurred large towns and cities into existence and prompted the formation of a working hierarchy. An inherency that underlaid these motives mimicked the wisdom of ancient contemporary Plato, which was that “the heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone”[20]. America had just decades ago shaken off the British, French, and Spanish in Florida, the Midwest, and Canada to attain unequivocal dominion in North America. Important treaties ratified a unionized, domestic political sovereignty against international powers [i.e the Monroe Doctrine and Pinckney's Treaty]. The desire not to be governed by a tyrannical monarch prompted colonists to favor a democratic republicanism that gave more rights to the people and access to opportunity and land.  As pioneered settlements emerged throughout the American West, especially in California, governing bodies manifested in the way of judicial circuit courts and federal districts such as Vandalia. With a more politicized presence [Marshall Court], Congress and the Supreme Court became more involved in state matters. These increased interventions forced many western and southern states to fight against this sort of “reign of general exchange --against which there is no possible revolution, since everything is already liberated”[4]. The Southern states’ discontent over Northern influence on the management and efficiency of their plantation economy and its “growing disparity of wealth between the poor and the rich [3]” mandated the legislation of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which allowed settlers the jurisdiction to legalize or outlaw slavery in settled territory. What was particularly interesting about this act was that it did not curtain contention between pro-slavery and anti-slavery legislators and common-folk. Instead, it put increasingly more glare on the strenuous divide that had manifested itself over the distinct economies the Northern and Southern states had grown into. The U.S was already liberated, in a sense [British oppression], so some states couldn’t intercolute in the Supreme Court or Congress issues that had been deemed by others as foundational to democracy while others couldn’t approve of slavery in states when the consituients in others didn’t find it justifiable; a more or less general exchange in American politics where one part of America wanted to carve a economic niche of their own [distinctive macro- polis] in a system that heralded political debate as the means to an end. 

This slave debate permeated into government as well: Abraham Lincoln’s notable presidential bid against Stephen A. Douglas was an alarming calamity to the disruption of political infrastructure between the Northern and Southern states. In his pursuit to debasing Douglas, Lincoln “evidenced first Douglas’s Kansas-Nebraska bill opening all the national territory to slavery, which had upset a long-standing national consensus”[2], as he saw that it would foster an “irrepressible conflict between slavery and freedom”[3] Moreover, in his famous house-divided speech, Lincoln set forth the “inevitability of a syllogism”[10]. In it, he stated three things: “The tendency to nationalize slavery had to be defeated. Stephen A. Douglas powerfully contributed to that tendency. Therefore, Stephen A. Douglas had to be defeated”[11]. Not only did this exhibit Lincoln’s staunch, anti-slavery mindset, but his debate with Douglas represented the divide between the American people. For Douglas, “the fundamental issue in the debates was self-government.” He thought that every American was entitled to a government of their own choosing and that “their own social institutions --including slavery, if they so desired -- was a moral question”[2]. In a summing up statement in his final debate, Douglas proclaimed: “I care more for the great principle of self-government, the right of the people to rule, than I do for all the negroes in Christendom”[11]. Lincoln, on the other hand, “felt passionately that no majority should have the power to limit the most fundamental rights of a minority to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”[2]. These distinct ideologies on the fundamental, moral question of slavery, proved much like the Kansas-Nebraska Act to be a significant watershed to the secession of the South from the Union.

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE:

The Whig Party collapsed in 1855, three years before Lincoln v. Douglas debate. The divisive slavery issue that had corroded it was exacerbated by the Kansas-Nebraska Act and internal allegiances to various political factions. Anti-slavery Whigs prompted a split from the party and renamed themselves as Republicans, leaving conflicted Whigs [over slavery] with an inability to maintain sufficient political standing in the U.S government to tangibly impact the upcoming presidential election. Thus, the newly formed Republican Party became free to focus on the contentious slavery issue [of which Lincoln emphasized in the debate of 1858]. One of its first opportunities was the Dred Scott Case, in which a slave by the name of Dred Scott sued “for his freedom on the ground that he had been a resident first of a free state and then of a free territory”[2]. Reaching the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney ruled that an African American was not entitled to sue in the courts of America. The Chief Justice held further that “residence in free territory did not entitle Scott to freedom, since all congressional enactments that excluded slavery from the national territories, including specifically the Missouri Compromise, were not warranted by the constitution andd were therefore void”[12]. Then Illinois Republican Abraham Lincoln, admittedly, “was reluctant to challenge the Court’s ruling”[3]. His past experiences, both in practice and enforcement, bound him with an enormous respect for the law and for the judicial process. Moreover, he felt as if Taney’s strict enforcement of the Constitution and other legislation “offered a standard of rationality badly needed in a society threatened”[1]. Yet, the Dredd Scott decision compelled him to reconsider his stance: The aspect that troubled him the most was the decision’s violation of the Declaration of Independence.  Lincoln believed that dissolved the document “of its vitality, and practical value; and left without the germ or even the suggestion of the individual rights of man”[12]; an idea he expressed as he traveled across federal circuits in 1857 and 58.  

To the free economy that Lincoln idealized, he juxtaposed the slave society of the South. James Henry Hammond of South Carolina “proclaimed labor was the mudsill on which the social edifice was erected”[58]. Lincoln’s view on the slave society was that a slave was a “blind horse upon a tread-mill”[59]. Spatially, the free and slave economy had developed in confluence, but increased political exhortations and radicalism disseminated urges to abolish the peculiar insitituion, especially by the urgings of Republicans after the injustice of the Dred Scott Desicion. Lincoln himself believed that slavery would either expand or die, and its chances of expanding when the South’s soil became depleted would be hindered, as free society had also the imperative to expand. Further, he thought of all national territory to be lands of economic opportunity, not subjugation. He exhorted Illinois audiences to settle in the western territories, revealing his “continuing pragmatic aim and strategy in respect to slavery”[23] and its restriction by any means possible. Lincoln utilized this mindset in his presidential bid against Breckenridge, strongly advocating for republican ideals of equality and free justice. Thus, as a finality, Lincoln’s support for anti-slavery propositions as well as his denoucement of the Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed him “1,866,452 votes to 1,376,957 for Douglas [3]” in the presidential bid.  However, he received not a single vote in ten of the Southern states, foreshadowing Southern discontent over the results of the election ballot that symbolized the election of an opponent of contrasting ideology. And ultimately, within a month of Lincoln’s election, “every state of the lower South had taken initial steps towards secession”[21].

Southern secession prompted President Lincoln to be swept into the tumultuous fractures of America’s de-unionization. The spurring of the Republican Party and his inauguration placed him at the center of public scrutiny. Many criticized the President for not attacking slavery, the cause of the war. Thaddeus Stevens, a prominent Pennsylvania Republican, lamented that Lincoln had made “no declaration of the great objects of Government, no glorious sound of universal liberty”[1]. As a note of redress, Lincoln made no attempt to disguise his antislavery feeling; as he told a group of border-state representatives, he  “thought it [slavery] was wrong and should continue to think so”[3]. 

Lincoln had once said on July 10th, 1858, that “White Americans were feasting on evil fruit, if they convinced themselves that their black fellow countrymen deserved nothing better than enslavement”[1]. Lincoln fervently believed that the exemption of African Americans from the Declaration of Independence, which stated all men to be equal upon principle, would question the foundational credibility of the document and lead to questions on whether one group of men would be superior to another and why African Americans were exempt and another group wasn’t; “And so the degradation would spread --the American Republic would degenerate”[2].

Historians have of late classified Lincoln as a moderate Republican, whose views contrasted sharply with radical Republicans. Yet, the politics and initiatives of Lincoln during the Civil War were complicated and layered, and the fact is that this is unbeknownst to many who see him as a moderate whose anti-slavery goals were inferior to the pervasiveness of abolitionists’ Willian Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass. This stereotype is, however, an apparent contradiction to the enigmatic, passionate nature of Lincoln's wieldy command of the political sphere. Notable historian Richard Striner describes Lincoln as a political ethicist whose genius imitated that of a Machiavellian orchestra and who juxtaposed the evils of the Civil War with the progressivism needing to be adopted in order to abolish slavery. As Stiner describes, “Like any political virtuoso, he weighed both the content and tone of what he said at different places and different times''[1]. Any musical piece has its escalations and minifications; if the robustness of the violins and the promptness of the cello commanded confidence, the violas would answer with their silence. Demonstrating this, Lincoln deliberately addressed either anti-slavery over unification or unification over anti-slavery whenever the political sphere nesseciated it. 

Lending to Lincoln’s genius was the apparent tact he used when legislating or speechifying. His wartime anti-slavery propositions were ploys as to Union preservation, and in truth, justification for it [preservation]. He utilized this mentality for respect; respect from his anti-slavery opponents and “opponents whose support he needed to win the Civil War and to achieve his full objectives for America.” An introductory remark from James McPherson supports this, as he states that “Lincoln never lost sight of the essential truth that without Union victory there would be no emancipation”[23]. 

Lincoln’s duality in his actions signifies how stereotypical questions on his commitment to abolishing slavery emerged. His imperative to save the Union began with a rallying cry to preserve it, with his criticism of the Dred Scott Case largely uniting the North’s morale against the cruelties of slavery.  In essence, Lincoln took to saving the Union on two different levels at once. The first level was attempting to unite America and remove the North-South sectionalism divide that he perceived as harmful to the principles of republicanism and self-government. The second level correlated with his affinity to the Declaration of Independence and its principles. The document’s proclamation that all men are created equal resonated with Lincoln in that he put African Americans under that banner. He believed that for the Union not only to unify, but also preserve itself, its societal decency must be enshrined to complement the sacred laws the nation followed. 

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The sacredness of our constitutional foundations, much like in the mind of Lincoln, is exacting to the point where we have developed a strong, nationalistic civil region. The case with civil religion is that it takes the American myth and makes it a point of unity among Americans. Yet, what unites us can divide us as well. Civil religion can begin to feel like a “supreme and unchallengeable arbiter”[55] of ideological conformity that pivots hate towards one group or another, meaning that the challenges we face from the very institutions we enthroned as economic and political bastions have corrupted our societal and ideological foundations, perpetuating a cycle of extremist [and sometimes subtle] racism: 

Racism is indisputably, through its applications in history, an apparent theory concerning the distinctive human characteristics and traits that provide the basis for institutional antagonism. Its meaning has been somewhat distorted, as it has traveled through a global lexicon of cultures and demographics, with each society perceiving the idea of racism differently from the next. As such, varying perceptions about racism and its origins have been the source of contention in recent decades, especially during the 1980’s. Prominent studies from that decade outlined an increase in critical forms of citizenship and growing ad hominem between people and politics as globalization occurred manifold, inciting dangerously radical protests in recent years. Progressively, this disproportionate, protest-based culture has injected controversy as citizens deviate from standard protest conformity and instead pursue radical avenues that seek permanent answers to their problems. The core fundamental that lies at the root of these radical protests is the prevalence of climactic mistrust surrounding institutionalized politics’ ability to produce desirable results, especially in civil equity reform. This leads to citizens’ inability to think for themselves amidst mass circulation of partisan news. All this ad hominem in party politics has forced Americans to ‘jump on bandwagons’ or adopt a certain way of thinking based on extrinsic stress rather than intrinsic beliefs, leading to unnecessary radicalism and violence in the way of vigilantism during the George Floyd protests.

Duly, our nation’s foundations are bludgeoned every year with threats that challenge the notion of a liberal democracy, instead mirroring one of illiberality where minority groups are at the focus. Roman philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero once stated:

“In a republic this rule ought to be observed: that the majority should not have the predominant power”[54].

A majoritarian standpoint harnesses the full benefit of the political system for itself, leaving the underrepresented wanting. And in the case of American history, the African Americans’ cries for change have consistently been muted. An immutable, age-long referendum of white vs black has rippled throughout the almost 250 years of U.S existence, unable to reach proper consensus; and when contention flares, it rectifies it with horrific calamities through blood, violence, and martyrdom. Henry David Thoreau voiced similar beliefs, stating in many of his works that consensus reached by a majority-minority vote ought to be demolished on the grounds that it has the potential to disenfranchise the well-meaningness of the votes cast by the minority in terms of eliciting beneficial change.

A PERSISTENT LINGER: 

Historian Richard Striner, in his book, Father Abraham: Lincoln’s Relentless Struggle to End Slavery, questions “to what extent should Abraham Lincoln be regarded as our nation’s Great Emancipator”[1]? Countless historians have deemed his anti-slavery propositions as unintentional; and as Allen C. Guezlo describes in the The End of Slavery in America, a “reluctant recruit to the abolitionist cause”[22]. Other historians offer a more morally foundational angle. In his acclaimed book LINCOLN, Harvard Professor of History David Herbert Donald contended of an “essential passivity,” and a “reluctance to take the initiative and make bold plans”[3] that defined Lincoln’s actions throughout his life. Furthermore, historian LaWanda Cox stated that the “sheer craft of Lincoln’s ways”[23], and the rationality that he commanded and demanded from his fellow politicians made certain his beliefs of intellectual engagements in life. In his early career as a Illinois legislator in Springfield, Lincoln attacked the philosophy of hyper-rationalism in politics, cautioning that the nation’s “proud fabric of freedom was endangered by the passions of the people --the jealousy, envy, and avarice, incident to our nature”[3].  In this case, he was alluding to the prevalence of slavery as sectionalist tensions mounted. He believed that these escalating tensions that had permeated the country, from New England to Louisiana,  motivated him to douse this radical fervor and  urge it to “favor the slow, organic growth of national feeling”[3] “not resting on emotion and custom but carved from the solid quarry of sober reason”[2]. Lincoln’s coherence to rational means both in his early political days and well into his presidency, signified an inherent link to Plato’s belief that by adopting rationality, humans could live peacefully as a single polis. Understandably, the idea of a polis was that of utopian, philosophical perfection. Yet it nonetheless supports Lincoln’s duties with resolving fragmentation. A society, especially one as large and imperfect as the United States, couldn’t reach a gratifying consensus with each of its citizens, due to factors such as geographical differences. These differences mandated the need for different economic and political accommodations [slave states; slave = ⅓ a person in Congress; plantation-based economy]. And these were all developments that Lincoln witnessed, along with internal Whig fragmentation and sectionalist aggressors. Knowing human limitations, no one is exact enough to resolve these age-long issues, but Lincoln invested himself in appealing to the masses and legislating other ways of reducing intra-nation tensions [reasoning/rationality], some of which might lead many to believe his efforts weren’t aimed at discrediting slavery. However, Lincoln was focused on preserving the U.S and party unity; and in that commitment, he addressed fundamental issues pertaining to liberty and freedom of which were trampled upon by the persistence of slavery. These issues impelled Lincoln to reconsider the democratic principles the U.S laid upon, leading him to rationalize the unlawful deceit slavery commanded over the Declaration of Independence. In his own words, Lincoln proclaimed that “this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free”[2]. Such findings sharpened his angle on slavery in denouncement of the Dred Scott Case and even in his debates with Douglas, showcasing his resolve in halting America from dooming its republican roots.

His legacy, however, is another matter. Lincoln’s vindication of democracy, eradication of slavery, and preservation of the Union all complemented his masterful ability to lean into the masses and appeal his broadcasts, however unilateral they were. His commitment to abolishing slavery has been distored significantly in modern times, yet his relentlessness in unifying the Union, his malleability in beliefs to fit with changing times, posed as an important force of change that still echoes today. In his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama referenced a quote from Lincoln’s Second Annual Address to Congress: “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present”[53], in order to call upon politicians to overcome disagreement and help usher the nation to prosperity in future generations. He implied that racial tendencies still linger, and efforts to resolve them, to rechurn our American myth into an all-inclusive point of unison devoid of oppression and racial malpractice, have fallen short. Such reference in congressional politics is, in retrospect, a powerful indicator of Lincoln’s role in achieving peaceful racial coexistence and resolving what he himself had uttered pre-presidency: “A house divided against itself can not stand”[52]. 

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