Lincoln's "First Inaugural Address" was very much focused on the "good of the many outweighing the good of few or the will of the majority taking precedent over the desire of the minority".
"A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible. The rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left."
He uses the Constitution in attempts to show the South that though he has no intention to mess with slavery where it exists, he also has no LEGAL way of doing so.
"There is much controversy about the delivering up of fugitives from service or labor. The clause I now read is as plainly written in the Constitution as any other of its provisions:
No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."Lincoln is speaking directly to the South throughout this entire speech. The paragraphs that talk about slavery, the references to protecting the rights of individuals and states and the comments on respecting the rulings of the Supreme Court were all designed to address certain fears that the South had regarding rule of the country by the Republicans.
1) Slavery comments dealt with southern fears that the radical Republicans, who included such vocal anti-slavery proponents as Secretary Seward, would not only prohibit the spread of slavery into the territories, but also seek to make it illegal in the South itself.
2) Paragraphs about the rights of states and individuals, also referred to slaves, since the South wanted stronger enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act, as well as protection of their property from the institution of slavery being outlawed.
3) The comment about the Supreme Court was to assure the South that the federal government was going to abide by the rulings of the court who dictated that the slaves had no rights and that the federal government had no Constitutional authority to prohibit ANY one from taking ANY property ANY where in the country.
Throughout the Inaugural Address, Lincoln makes references to the founding of the United States:
"Descending from these general principles, we find the proposition that in legal contemplation the Union is perpetual confirmed by the history of the Union itself. The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was further matured, and the faith of all the then thirteen States expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in 1778. And finally, in 1787, one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution was "to form a more perfect Union."
Saying in effect that the concept of "Union" might be enforced by the Constitution, but it exists by the will of the people, in order to express their will. A point which I found myself agreeing with.
Though Lincoln's "First Inaugural Address" is a well written speech, which ends with those evocative words:
"In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it."
"I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
It very much seems at times to be more of a civics and law lesson than an inspirational speech. I know that Lincoln is trying to impress upon the South the need for unity and that they have nothing to fear from his administration, but is not, other than the last few paragraphs, a beautiful speech.
"The Gettysburg Address", is a breathtaking and haunting speech, but I am not going to to discuss it in this post. Instead, I wish to compare Lincoln's "First Inaugural Address" to his "Second Inaugural Address".
Lincoln begins by essentially agreeing with my thought that his "First Inaugural Address" was a tad long-winded, but necessary in order to fully explain to his dissatisfied countrymen the state of the Union. Now, such a statement is not needed, since the entire country knows the state of affairs, after having survived the past four years of war. No reminders of the cause of the civil war are needed.
However, Lincoln still fixates on slavery, pushing it front and center as the cause and reason for North and South fighting it out on the battlefield.
"These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war."
He even invokes "God" into the war, taking some of the blame off of the South, by stating that God may have brought this conflict about in order to make the white race pay for the degradations of slavery they inflicted onto the black race.
"Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
Though Lincoln's tone in this speech is not one of outright condemnation of the South, in particular for causing the war as seen in the last excerpt, he doesn't completely let them off the hook:
"While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came."
Yet despite the horrors of the last four years of war, Lincoln is trying NOT to look towards the past, to who caused the war, to the battlefields of slaughter, to slavery. Instead, he has his eyes on a hopeful future; one in which both sides are united again and working together to heal the wounds, both physical and spiritual, caused by this civil war. And he is saying it with some of the most beautiful words ever written:
"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
Whenever I read these lines, particularly when reading them carved on the Lincoln Memorial, I always get misty-eyed. Lincoln was such a naive and idealistic man, just the type of statesman we need more of right now, who's words cannot help but inspire hope for the future in all who read them, regardless of when or where they live.
Great post! Prof Morgan
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