Lincoln's Birthday Blogging

Lots of people have noted Bill Kristol's efforts to argue that 1858-vintage Barack Obama would have been a slavery supporter. The really noteworthy thing here, however, isn't Kristol's novel take on race relations, but his continuing effort to paint Abraham Lincoln as some kind of Kristol-style war enthusiast. Clearly, Lincoln was no pacifist, but nothing could be further from the truth. He was a staunch opponent of the Mexican War which he saw as driven by the political power of slaveholders and a desire to expand the same, rather than by the moral principles of international relations or a sound assessment of the national interest. Nor was he eager to embrace a military conflict with the South. He believed that slavery was a great evil, but also saw that civil war would be incredibly destructive, a great evil of its own. Lincoln opposed Stephen Douglas' compromise-at-any-cost mentality that would merely serve to further entrench slavery. His hope, however, was to preserve the union peacefully and end slavery through the methods of the political process.

It's harder to imagine anything more un-Kristolian than Lincoln's reflections on all this in the second inaugural address:

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. 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.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. 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."

It's hard to avoid the impression here that Lincoln was a leader who genuinely did despise war, and genuinely did adopt a war policy as a last resort; the only available alternative to a path that he thought would lead to the moral and physical destruction of the country. The contrast with George W. Bush's "bring it on" mentality couldn't be clearer.

Comments

I hope Kristol is the fourth person they haul off to Gitmo after Smirk leaves office. I leave it to others to guess the first three.

Posted by This Machine Kills Fascists | February 12, 2007 10:13 AM

I think it's about time people realised just how much neo-cons are under the spell of Harry Jaffa's interpretation of the Civil War. "A New Birth of Freedom" might have been about the USA in the age of Lincoln, but it claims to be the moral touchstone for all times and all people. To hell with context...

Posted by Chris | February 12, 2007 10:32 AM

Kristol's argument is reductionist trash. Any amelioration would be tantamount to supporting slavery.

-I don't like fish.
-OK, honey, howabout steak tonight?
-You ameliorist! You'd be a slave holder if this were 1858!

An empty, smirky little twit. [ s\tw\sh\ ]

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | February 12, 2007 10:34 AM

It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged.

My goodness. What a biting line.

Posted by Steve | February 12, 2007 10:38 AM

you wonder sometimes about kristol: he's smarter than the average rightwinger, but he really doesn't seem to know much of anything.

Posted by howard | February 12, 2007 10:52 AM

Lincoln throughly abolished the institution of slavery in the US. The price was enormous, the total destruction of large swathes of the south, and centuries of hate, but no slavery. Rather a slow learner, he was no general.

Posted by Tim Finnegan | February 12, 2007 10:56 AM

Also, why would he pick 1858? The Civil War, after all, hadn't started then.

Shouldn't he be comparing Obama to some faction within the Union--or, better yet, the Confederacy, if he wants to be maximally offensive (and isn't that clearly his goal?)--who wanted to surrender after the war had already begun?

Posted by dj moonbat | February 12, 2007 10:57 AM

Sometimes I wonder if these right-wing evildoers are geniuses: Kristol makes a guaranteed-to-offend analogy, which everyone naturally focuses on, and meanwhile, the more damaging assertion, that Obama isn't tough and just wants to "get along," goes unchallenged.

Posted by ogged | February 12, 2007 10:59 AM

Lincoln throughly abolished the institution of slavery in the US. The price was enormous, the total destruction of large swathes of the south, and centuries of hate, but no slavery. Rather a slow learner, he was no general.

Posted by Tim | February 12, 2007 11:00 AM

Oddly, in those days in some parts of the country, light skinned mulattoes owned slaves and supported the Confederacy.

Upon seeing a Republican elected in 1860, the South decided their best chance to escape the force of an eventual constitutional amendment to abolish slavery everywhere in the United States was to immediately withdraw from the Union.

That Lincoln said repeatedly he would gladly let the South return peaceably to the Union without abolition as a precondition did not change the South's perception of him or of the general trend of things, nor does it mean they were mistaken.

What on earth does any of this have to do with Iraq?

Posted by gaius sempronius gracchus | February 12, 2007 11:02 AM

ogged: [T]he more damaging assertion, that Obama isn't tough and just wants to "get along," goes unchallenged.

I feel safe assuming that Obama is, in fact, less "tough" (i.e., bloodthirsty/reckless) than Bush, or whoever would get the Republican nod in 2008. He is also less "tough" than Clinton. So I don't think Kristol is actually being all that unfair, except that he caricatures Obama's stance as "can't we all get along." (Particularly given the way that phrase evokes Rodney King.)

Posted by dj moonbat | February 12, 2007 11:05 AM

I wonder if it ever occurred to Kristol that if Barack Obama were actually in America in 1858, he would probably be against slavery... because he might be enslaved himself. But maybe Kristol thinks that all war is equal == that WWII and Iraq are alike too. That's his sloppy thinking. He's supposed to be really intelligent-- this is an example of how stupid a man can get if he follows someone as dumb as Bush... or if he allows some tortured ideology (I don't know what it is) to get in the way of his actual reason.

Posted by Anna | February 12, 2007 11:23 AM

Anna: I wonder if it ever occurred to Kristol that if Barack Obama were actually in America in 1858, he would probably be against slavery... because he might be enslaved himself.

Of course it did. Bill's not stupid--rather, he's a very, very bad man.

Posted by dj moonbat | February 12, 2007 11:25 AM

Gaius, I grew up in the South, and that's exactly what I heard year after year from the same people who recently made a stink when Arthur Ashe's statue was proposed for Richmond's Monument Ave right next to all those Confederate general statues. (Ashe was from Richmond.)

In fact, it was very difficult for any "mulatto" to even be freed, much less own slaves. That a few might have done-- there are always exceptions to everything, and they really should not be presented as the rule-- has NOTHING to do with the institutionalized and intractable evil that rich white southerners were willing to die to keep-- or at least make poor white southerners die to keep for them... hmmm... that actually does sound like Kristol.

As for Lincoln welcoming the South back, well, he might have, but the whole point of his 1860 election was to emancipate the slaves. He intended to do that one way or another. He didn't want to go to war over it. He was willing to let the South stay in the Union and then proceed with abolition by legislation when he thought that would work. Yes, he wasn't all that honest about it. He wanted to stave off a civil war, so he tried to ameliorate the South. Didn't work-- probably because they all knew he didn't mean it. But if you really think that Lincoln wouldn't have started the process of freeing the slaves one way or another, considering his personal hatred of the institution and his belief that the US was the scandal of the civilized world for keeping it, please say so. State it out. Do you really think Lincoln wouldn't have, absent a war, begun a process that would have ended in a few years or a decade in the abolition of slavery? After all, the south refused any concession at all, making the evil of slavery so integral to its own existence that it had to appall Lincoln and anyone else who had hoped that reason would work with the South.

The man who in 1864 saw that the South was willing to kill and die for that evil blot on our history knew very well how the institution had corrupted the entire country. It was a process for him, no doubt, but I think it was a process of realizing that the south -- or really, certain interests in the south with great power-- was not amenable to the reasoned progress of democracy-- that they'd been offered that chance and refused it. And it was that anger and anguish that led to this:

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."

That sure doesn't sound like a man who anymore, if he ever, believed that the south should keep its "peculiar institution".

Not that this has anything to do with Iraq. After all, no one else got involved in OUR civil war-- they let us fight it out ourselves.

Posted by hailey | February 12, 2007 11:44 AM

What do you suppose Lincoln would have done to accelerate the end of slavery, absent secession, aside from the long-term agenda of keeping slavery out of the territories?

Posted by Steve | February 12, 2007 11:48 AM

Kristol is delusional enough to believe that he's making an intelligent - and ironic - argument against Obama. It's a bizarre attempt to paint him as a hypocrite, or at least, that was the implicit argument (the explicit one being the contrast with Giuliani).

What was most remarkable was that no one on the panel even challenged his claim. Perhaps their minds couldn't even process the innumerable layers of absurdity.

Posted by Bryan | February 12, 2007 12:13 PM

"What do you suppose Lincoln would have done to accelerate the end of slavery, absent secession, aside from the long-term agenda of keeping slavery out of the territories?"

Either getting Congress to repeal the Fugitive Slave Act, or simply not do anything if northern citizens and/or states flouted it.

"That sure doesn't sound like a man who anymore, if he ever, believed that the south should keep its "peculiar institution"."

That's a big point, though. Lincoln in 1860 and Lincoln in 1864 would seem to me to be pretty different. In 1860, he didn't like slavery and he didn't like "The Slave Power," the organized use of political power by the slave states over the North. He probably didn't think much of the fact that free speech on certain subjects was not tolerated in the South. In 1864, he'd seen hundreds of thousands killed because the South wanted to preserve all those things.

I think his perceptions and beliefs were probably changed by that.

Posted by witless chum | February 12, 2007 12:21 PM

Not that this has anything to do with Iraq. After all, no one else got involved in OUR civil war-- they let us fight it out ourselves.

Actually, the British were on the South's side. Karl Marx wrote often in support of Lincoln and the North. Marx wasn't a pacifist, like many on the left.

Posted by Peter K. | February 12, 2007 12:45 PM

England was ready to jump in in the summer of 1862. The failure of the Maryland campaign scotched those plans.

Posted by Tim | February 12, 2007 12:51 PM

I think the poster above's understanding of Lincoln and what he wanted to do about slavery and very importantly what everyone else during his time thought about him could be bettered.

Lincoln never even implied that he would do anything directly about slavery in the slave states. He was against the Dred Scott decision which was about slavery in the territories, and he didn't want to continue the one slave state for one free state stuff. The average Virginia tobacco planter of Lincoln's day lost money on operations on his tobacco revenue alone, he turned a profit only when the profits from his livestock business, selling slaves to relatively sparsely settled slave states were figured in. Lincoln's policy would have caused a collapse in the slave market and would have stuck it to the Slave Power indirectly. This was well understood at the time.

The Dred Scott decision was feared for what everyone thought might happen next, the next decision would have basically made 'proporty rights' formed in slave states enforceable in free states, and thereby abolishing free states, and ensuring lots of bids for slaves. Roger Taney was a 'Living Constitution' guy, one surmises.

Lastly, the South seceded when they did because they didn't like the outcome of the 1860 election. Lincoln was right, that no 'majority rule' political system could ever last if the minority could just leave if they didn't win the election. In the end, you get a bunch of little political units if one allows this to occur, i.e. no Union of any kind.

Lincoln is famous for not only what he did, but how suprisingly well he did, given his bio. He had far more political savvy, wisdom and steel in his spine that anyone expected he would, or would have been prudent to expect, given his bio. He was a suprise.

I don't know what Kristol said, but I believe Obama is the one running around comparing himself to Lincoln, a good thing to do given Obama's unimpressive bio, as long as noone laughs at Obama for being obviously silly. If I remember correctly, someone else tried to do this too in previous years, though he unambitiously compared himself to Kennedy, rather than Lincoln, and everyone still laughed at him.

What was all that about eliminating the silliness in politics being good for the donks?

Posted by j mct | February 12, 2007 12:52 PM

A few historical points. In the first place, Stephen Douglas was not actually a compromise at any price person. Even for him, the fraudulent Lecompton Constitution of Kansas was a step too far for the slave power, and he opposed it. his position with respect to Dred Scott was that, even if slavery couldn't explicitly be prohibited in the territories, territorial legislatures could make it implicitly illegal if they so desired, by not passing any of the secondary laws that would make slavery a viable system.

For these heresies, the southern Democrats refused to accept him as party nominee in 1860, and went with John Breckinridge instead, a decision which certainly helped the Republicans on to victory. Later, after the war started, Douglas strongly supported Lincoln and efforts to restore the union. If he hadn't died later in 1861, it's likely he'd have remained a strong war democrat.

Douglas didn't feel strongly about slavery one way or the other, and his positions, especially before 1858, were largely designed to smooth over differences so as to make himself an acceptable candidate to both sections for the presidential nomination. What 1858 did was force Douglas to take the stand noted above, that, in spite of Dred Scott, territories could still ban slavery, a stand which made him unacceptable to the south.

In the second place, so far as I can tell, almost everything Hailey says is wrong. The "whole point of the 1860 election" was not to abolish slavery. That's total nonsense. The Republican platform was to ban slavery in the territories. Even so, had there been no secession, the Republicans would not have had a majority in either the House or (certainly) the Senate, and so wouldn't have been able to pass much of anything. Kansas wouldn't have been let in as a slave state, certainly, but that's about as good as it would have gotten. As someone else pointed out, Lincoln in 1864 and 1865 is quite a different figure from Lincoln in 1860 and 1861. What the former said should not be taken as evidence of what the latter believed, at least in terms of practical politics. That Lincoln abhorred slavery is certainly true. That Lincoln in 1861 was actually looking to abolish it in any kind of short term is almost certainly false.

Posted by John | February 12, 2007 1:35 PM

Besides reading Lincoln more intelligently and noting the reality for a person of Obama's skin color, Kristol might consider reading what Obama actually has said. In his speech before the Iraq invasion, he uses as a repeated tagline that he is not against all wars. Well, no doubt Kristol does know this and just lacks honesty.

It's all just "Obama opposes unprovoked military aggression, especially when it takes us away from basic American security needs; the Civil War involved the military; therefore Obama would be against it." Or the dog in Sy Harris's cartoon: "I have four legs. Cats have four legs. Therefore I am a cat." Well, no doubt Kristol is smart enough to know his reasoning is flawed, too. What is it with these guys, that it's all about what they can get away with? And of course the right always has enough funding and media control to give its shills unlimited attention.

Posted by John Haber | February 12, 2007 1:40 PM

'In fact, it was very difficult for any "mulatto" to even be freed, much less own slaves.'

I believe it was more common in Louisiana. While under French rule, different gradations of race were recognized that did not happen in the rest of the south.

Posted by Njorl | February 12, 2007 1:54 PM

I'm surprised by the erudition displayed here. I mean, isn't' obvious enough that Kristol is an idiot? I usually cringe at any Civil War discussion because there's always a steaming pile of that states' rights nonsense.

Posted by Chris | February 12, 2007 2:16 PM

One thing I like about Obama: he has the certain intangibles necessary to say something like, "Certain commentators might have something valuable to say in the future. Meanwhile, this is what I believe."

Posted by Jalmari | February 12, 2007 2:23 PM

Obama addresses exactly this issue in the course of discussing the importance of looking for common ground in The Audacity of Hope. It's basically just "Eh, sometimes the radicals are right," and Matthew's Lincoln analogy fits pretty well.

Posted by DaveL | February 12, 2007 2:32 PM

You misunderstand Kristol and assume he was sincere in his smear. He is a hack, a clever hack, and a morally bankrupt hack in that he is willing to spend the blood of others to obtain political power for his faction. Eric Altermann's 27 January 2007 column in The Nation analyzes him perfectly. He is not even a patriot since he is smart enough to know how disastrous this war has been for the United States and its interests, and as William Odom pointed out in the Sunday Washington Post, continuing every day makes the situation worse.

Posted by Rickster | February 12, 2007 2:50 PM

A-Sullivan had a lincoln post up that is relevant:

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/02/lincoln_on_pree.html

"Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose, and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after having given him so much as you propose. If to-day he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, — 'I see no probability of the British invading us;' but he will say to you, 'Be silent: I see it, if you don't.'

"The provision of the Constitution giving the war making power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons: Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions, and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood," - Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to William H. Herndon, Feb. 15, 1848.

Posted by chuck | February 12, 2007 2:53 PM

Well, that last Lincoln quote about sums it up, doesn't it? It's something when you get a 160 year old comment that is more timely and on point than anything you will read in an editorial page today. What a man he was.

Kristol is no fool, he's a propagandist and a liar. He doesn't consider the accuracy of his statements, only their effect.

Posted by MQ | February 12, 2007 3:06 PM

MY:

You miss the point of Kristol's argument: he's not arguing that Lincoln was a champion of war for war's sake. Rather, he's arguing that he was a champion of moral causes for their own sake, even at the cost of war.

It's analogous to Bush's "dog-whistle" mention of the Dred Scott decision in the 2004 debates.

There's a whole industry devoted to making retroactive neoconservatives out of American historical figures.

Posted by brendan | February 12, 2007 3:38 PM

Reading the 2nd inaugural in the Lincoln Memorial is one of the inspiring places left to us as Americans.

I'm an atheist, but his rhetorical use of the notion of "God" is overpowering.

Posted by brendan | February 12, 2007 3:43 PM

England was ready to jump in in the summer of 1862. The failure of the Maryland campaign scotched those plans.

That and the Emacipation Proclamation. But according to Wikipedia, they weren't against the Confederacy:

"During the American Civil War, Confederate commerce raiders (the most famous being the CSS Alabama) were built in Britain and did significant damage to Union merchant marine and naval forces. The United States claimed direct and collateral damage against Britain, the so-called Alabama Claims, and was awarded $15,500,000 by an international tribunal in 1871 as part of the Treaty of Washington. United States Senator Charles Sumner originally requested $2 billion, or alternatively the ceding of Canada to the United States."

Posted by Peter K. | February 12, 2007 3:46 PM

Sure, Stinky has a helluva nerve coming up with the things he does. But, shouldn't the blame really go to those who still let him do so? How do you think the loved ones of a soldier killed in Iraq feel when they turn on their TV and there he is? I mean- if a perv on NBC's "To Catch A Predator" were hired to host a new Nickodeon series on "Friendship"- people would be going nuts and the execs would be forced to resign. But, look at the anguish and suffering this moral pervert has caused- and nothing- just a few blog complaints. Eichmann seems almost human compared to him.

Posted by Trevor | February 12, 2007 6:16 PM

In fairness to Kristol, many more people were resolutely opposed to war in 1865 than in 1858. Of course Kristol wouldn't have been one of them.

Posted by Andy McLennan | February 12, 2007 7:10 PM

Kristol's face is the definition of a shit-eating grin.

Posted by Reality Man | February 13, 2007 1:25 AM

There's a whole industry devoted to making retroactive neoconservatives out of American historical figures.

The Great Revisionist, Clinton Rossiter is probably taught by everybody who slums about in the social sciences. A revolution to conserve, shit like that. I don't know how you kids have managed to climb out from under the neo-con woodpile.

Posted by Tim | February 13, 2007 12:19 PM

Oh, and the British weren't ready to jump in in 1862. They were nearly ready to propose mediation and some of the more extreme pro-Confederates wanted to diplomatically recognize the Confederacy, although this was far more controversial. Had mediation been rejected, it strikes me as unlikely the British would have done much of anything. For reference, the British also tried to mediate a conflict in 1859 between Austria and France. When the two sides went to war instead, the British, er, didn't do anything. If Lincoln had rejected mediation, it is rather likely that, er, the British wouldn't have done anything. Nobody was actually interested in a war with the United States, and Lord Palmerston, for all his supposed sympathy for the Confederacy, made it his first priority in American policy not to get into a war with the US.

The only time a war between the US and Britain seemed likely was in December 1861, over the Trent affair.

Posted by John | February 13, 2007 3:52 PM

Had the Maryland campaign suceeded, England would have had to sniff southern tailwind because the Confederacy would then rule the hemisphere. Davis and Lee took a long chance, and failed utterly. Palmerston's luck was better.

Posted by Tim | February 14, 2007 8:32 AM