The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln
Page 89
while you thus require me to deny the humanity of the Negro, I wish to ask whether you of the South, yourselves, have ever been willing to do as much? It is kindly provided that of all those who come into the world only a small percentage are natural tyrants. That percentage is no larger in the slave States than in the free. The great majority South, as well as North, have human sympathies, of which they can no more divest themselves than they can of their sensibility to physical pain (this page).
How do you imagine a Southerner might have answered this?
5. In denouncing slavery in the Peoria speech, Lincoln appeals a number of times to the Declaration of Independence and in particular to its founding principle that it is a self-evident truth that all men are created equal. Yet he also states that he would not be for freeing slaves and making them the political and social equal of whites [“My feelings will not admit this” (this page)], and at another point, right after invoking the Declaration of Independence, he says “Let it not be said that I am contending for the establishment of political and social equality between the whites and blacks. I have already said the contrary” (this page). He clearly thinks there is no contradiction in his position. Is there? Why do you think he believes his position is sound?
6. Lincoln states at one point in his Peoria speech that he would accept the extension of slavery if it would save the Union [“Well, I too go for saving the Union. Much as I hate slavery, I would consent to the extension of it rather than see the Union dissolved, just as I would consent to any great evil to avoid a greater one” (this page)]. How do you think Lincoln might have justified his claim that the dissolution of the Union would be a greater evil than the expansion of slavery?
7. Compare the first speech addressing the issue of slavery to later ones [e.g., August 27, 1856, at Kalamazoo, Michigan (this page to this page); July 10, 1858, at Chicago (this page to this page); his replies/rejoinders/opening speeches in the Lincoln-Douglas debates (this page to this page); February 27, 1860, at the Cooper Institute, New York]. Do you see any differences in his views over time? Does he change his approach to the problem of slavery or propose new ways of resolving it? Does his speaking style change? If so, in what ways?
8. According to Douglas B. Wilson in Honor’s Voice: The Transformation of Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln was a confirmed fatalist from his earliest days (likely owing to his Baptist upbringing with its Calvinistic roots), and believed that human beings did not control their own destinies. How does this fatalism manifest itself in his letters and speeches? Can his belief in predestination be squared with his ambition, his desire to better himself, his will to succeed, and his belief that human beings are responsible for their actions? (Wilson notes that among the fundamentalists Lincoln grew up with, there were some who objected to reform programs like the temperance movement, but that Lincoln wasn’t one of them.)
9. In his message to the Congress in a special session on July 4, 1861, the President states in discussing the Civil War that the issue of war versus dissolution of the country “embraces more than the fate of these United States,” that “it forces us to ask … ‘Must a [democratic] government, of necessity, be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?’ ” (this page). Is there in all democracies, as Lincoln himself puts it, this “inherent and fatal weakness”?
THE MODERN LIBRARY EDITORIAL BOARD
Maya Angelou
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Daniel J. Boorstin
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A. S. Byatt
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Caleb Carr
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Christopher Cerf
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Ron Chernow
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Shelby Foote
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Stephen Jay Gould
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Vartan Gregorian
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Charles Johnson
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Jon Krakauer
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Edmund Morris
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Joyce Carol Oates
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Elaine Pagels
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John Richardson
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Salman Rushdie
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Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
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Carolyn See
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William Styron
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Gore Vidal