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What is America?
Poli 110J
Bound by Mystic Chords
John C. Calhoun
• 1782-1850
• "the Union, next to our liberty, the
most dear."
• From South Carolina, endorsed SC’s
position in nullification crisis.
• Federal gov’t becoming tyrannical,
infringing on Const’l rights of the states
• Champion of the South, states’ rights in
Senate, 1st half 19th C. Major figure in
antebellum Democratic party
– VP Under J.Q. Adams, Jackson; Sec. of
War under Monroe
“Slavery a Positive Good” – Feb. 6, 1837
John C. Calhoun
• Broke with Jackson beginning with Force Act
(gave federal gov’t right to use force to
enforce the tariff)
– Jackson supported states’ rights, but thought
Union threatened by nullification
John C. Calhoun
• Strong states’ rights
– “The subject [slavery] is beyond the jurisdiction of
Congress - they have no right to touch it in any
shape or form, or to make it the subject of
deliberation or discussion. . . .”
• Exactly what powers were and were not ceded to the
Federal government in the Constitution?
John C. Calhoun
• Right to secession
• People in non-slave states soon “will have
been taught to hate the people and
institutions of nearly one-half of this Union,
with a hatred more deadly than one hostile
nation ever entertained towards another. It is
easy to see the end. By the necessary course
of events, if left to themselves, we must
become, finally, two people.”
John C. Calhoun
• Southern partisan:
– “We of the South will not, cannot, surrender our
institutions.”
• The South feels that the federal government is
a tool of the Northern, anti-slave faction.
They see it as hostile and oppressive.
John C. Calhoun
• Slavery: something for everyone
• For (elite) whites: freedom from labor leads to
greater accomplishments:
– “there never has yet existed a wealthy and
civilized society in which one portion of the
community did not, in point of fact, live on the
labor of the other.”
• (While other figures also believed in the supremacy of
whites, it did not play as central a role in their vision of
power & government)
John C. Calhoun
• White racial solidarity served to conceal the
real class divisions between plantationowning, slaveholding whites and small, nonslaveholding white farmers/citizens.
John C. Calhoun
• Benefits of slavery to slaves:
• “Never before has the black race of Central
Africa, from the dawn of history to the present
day, attained a condition so civilized and so
improved, not only physically, but morally and
intellectually.”
John C. Calhoun
• Benefit of slavery to slaves:
• “in few countries so much is left to the share
of the laborer, and so little exacted from him,
or where there is more kind attention paid to
him in sickness or infirmities of age.”
– Better than being an industrial laborer, a more
gentle, paternal form of power
John C. Calhoun
• Thus, slavery stabilizes society:
• “There is and always has been in an advanced
stage of wealth and civilization, a conflict
between labor and capital. The condition of
society in the South exempts us from the
disorders and dangers resulting from this conflict;
and which explains why it is that the political
condition of the slaveholding States has been so
much more stable and quiet than that of the
North. . . .”
Frederick Douglass
• ~1818-1895
• Born a slave
– Escaped on 3rd attempt, 1838
• Abolitionist & supporter of
women’s suffrage
• Supported Irish home rule,
but still popular in Britain
• Active in Reconstruction
politics
Frederick Douglass
• “Why am I called upon to speak here to-day?
What have I, or those I represent, to do with your
national independence? Are the great principles
of political freedom and of natural justice,
embodied in that Declaration of Independence,
extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon
to bring our humble offering to the national altar,
and to confess the benefits and express devout
gratitude for the blessings resulting from your
independence to us?”
• “The character and conduct of this nation
never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of
July! Whether we turn to the declarations of
the past, or to the professions of the present,
the conduct of the nation seems equally
hideous and revolting. America is false to the
past, false to the present, and solemnly binds
herself to be false to the future.”
The Humanity of Slaves
• Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves
acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their
government. They acknowledge it when they
punish disobedience on the part of the slave.
There are seventy-two crimes in the State of
Virginia, which, if committed by a black man, (no
matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the
punishment of death; while only two of the same
crimes will subject a white man to the like
punishment. What is this but the
acknowledgement that the slave is a moral,
intellectual and responsible being?
• “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of
July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more
than all other days in the year, the gross
injustice and cruelty to which he is the
constant victim. To him, your celebration is a
sham”
• “The Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY
DOCUMENT. Read its preamble, consider its
purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the
gateway? or is it in the temple? It is neither.”
– Slavery a betrayal of American beliefs
A note on terminology
• ‘Black’ vs. ‘African-American’ (power and
words)
– While the preferred term is today AfricanAmerican, the point is that black people at the
time we are discussing were deliberately excluded
from the American political community.
– When discussing the historical injustice of racial
relations in the US, it seems inappropriate to
pretend that people of African descent were not
excluded from the political community
Abraham Lincoln
• 1809-1865
• Main themes:
– Equality the defining
characteristic of American
thought
– National identity prioritized over
state identity
– US points beyond itself to
something higher
– The law and American political
institutions make political
freedom and equality possible
• Union politically inseparable from
freedom
Address at Cooper Institute
(1860)
• Sen. Douglas: “Our fathers, when they framed the
Government under which we live, understood
this question just as well, and even better, than
we do now.”
– Lincoln agrees
• Capturing history
• “What was the understanding those fathers had
of the question mentioned?”
– Understanding?
– Fathers?
– Question?
Address at Cooper Institute
(1860)
• The “frame of government” must be the
Constitution.
– Thus, “our fathers” must be the original 39 signatories
of the Constitution
• What is the question that they understood “just
as well, and even better than we do now”?
– Whether or not the Constitution forbids the Federal
government from controlling slavery in Federal
territories
• 21 of the 39 voted in favor of federal regulation, limitation of
slavery in the federal territories
– The judgment of those who understood the question “better
than we do.”
Address at Cooper Institute
(1860)
• “I defy any to show that any one of them ever,
in his whole life, declared that, in his
understanding” any Constitutional prohibition
on federal regulation of slavery in the
Territories.
– In fact, he defies any man to show him that
anyone said this before the past fifty years.
• History
• What is the American way?
Address at Cooper Institute
(1860)
• To Southerners:
• “When you speak of us Republicans, you do so
only to denounce us as reptiles, or, at the best,
no better than outlaws. You will grant a
hearing to pirates or murderers, but nothing
like it to ‘Black Republicans.’”
– Politics of insult & contempt
Address at Cooper Institute
(1860)
• “Indeed, such condemnation of us seems to
be an indispensible prerequisite—license, so
to speak—among you to be admitted or
permitted to speak at all.”
– Baseless accusations
– A dynamic of extremism: individuals have an
incentive to outdo one another in their
condemnation.
– Not disagreement, but hatred
Address at Cooper Institute
(1860)
• “True, we do in common with ‘our fathers,
who framed the Government under which we
live,’ declare our belief that slavery is wrong,”
but there’s no danger of a slave rebellion.
– History
– Gradualism & deportation
Address at Cooper Institute
(1860)
• You say you’ll break up the Union rather than
give up your Constitutional rights.
– Fine, but where exactly is the right to expand
slavery westward in the Constitution? It is literally
silent on the issue.
• The Supreme Court ruled in Dred Scott that slavery was
Constitutionally protected, but they said it was
“distinctly and expressly affirmed” in the Constitution.
– The word “slave” does not appear
– Other documents use the word. Why not this one?
Address at Cooper Institute
(1860)
• “You will not abide the election of a
Republican president! In that supposed event,
you say, you will destroy the Union; and then,
you say, the great crime of having destroyed it
will be on us! That is cool. A highwayman
holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through
his teeth, ‘Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you,
and then you shall be a murderer!”
Address at Cooper Institute
(1860)
• To Republicans:
– Peace is the most desirable things
– The Southerners say they want only to be left
alone, but we leave them alone, and still they are
not satisfied.
– “What will convince them? This, and this only:
Cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in
calling it right.”
• In both words and actions
• Blackmail
Address at Cooper Institute
(1860)
• “LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES
MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, DARE TO DO OUR
DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT.”
– Duty
– Epistemological limitations
Secession
• Nov. 6, 1860: Lincoln elected
• December 20, 1860: South Carolina secedes
– By February 1861, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama,
Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas join it to form the
Confederacy, later joined by Virginia, Arkansas,
North Carolina, and Tennessee
• March 4, 1861: Lincoln inaugurated
• April 12, 1861: South attacks & takes Fort
Sumter, war begins
First Inaugural
• Major themes: Secession is bad because it
– Breaks contract
– Violates the nation
– Is anti-democratic
First Inaugural
• Contract & Covenant:
– ““All profess to be content in the Union, if all
constitutional rights be maintained”
– No one can name “a single instance in which a
plainly written provision of the Constitution has
ever been denied.”
First Inaugural
• Contract & Covenant:
– Even if the Constitution were only a contract (it’s
not), one party cannot unilaterally exit a contract
– The question is one of definitive interpretation:
• “May Congress prohibit slavery in the territories? The
Constitution does not expressly say. Must Congress
protect slavery in the territories? The Constitution
does not expressly say.”
– Power over the meaning of the law
First Inaugural
• Likewise, the Constitution is silent on “the
only substantial dispute” facing the country;
that “One section of the country believes
slavery is right, and ought to be extended,
while the other believes that it is wrong, and
ought not be extended.”
– How is this dispute to be resolved?
– The black letter of the law can’t fix this, it is a
matter of persuasion & argument (politics)
First Inaugural
• But the Union is not a contract, it is a single,
national people
• “The Union is much older than the Constitution…
finally, in 1787, one of the declared objects for
ordaining and establishing the Constitution, was
‘to form a more perfect union.’
• But if the destruction of the Union, by one, or by
a part only, of the States, be lawfully possible, the
Union is less perfect than before the Constitution,
having lost the vital element of perpetuity.”
First Inaugural
• Secession anti-democratic
• “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.”
– The choices are between despotism, democracy,
or anarchy
First Inaugural
• The Union is bound by a shared history and belief
• “I am loth 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,
streching from every battle-field, 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.”
Gettysburg
• July 1-3, 1863, after Lee’s invasion of the
North
• 95,000 Union soldiers, 75,000 Confederate
– 23,000 Union and 28,000 Confederate casualties
• Myth of Lee’s invincibility broken, major
turning point in the war
– Pickett’s Charge
Gettysburg Address
• Main Themes:
– America is a nation founded in
and directed toward equality
– Americans can succeed or fail in
this charge
– The Union is the definitive test
case for democracy
– Redemptive potential of the
current crisis
– Central metaphors of birth,
death, and rebirth
– Giving the war meaning by
embedding it w/in greater
narrative
Gettysburg Address
• “Four score and seven years ago our fathers
brought forth on this continent, a new nation,
conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal.”
– Biblical method of dating
– Language of conception & birth
– Equality the central ideal of American politics, it is
the telos.
– Defining the American community
Gettysburg Address
• “Now we are engaged in a great civil war,
testing whether that nation, or any nation so
conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”
– The war is an ordeal, a test
– The case of the US is determinative. Can
democratic republican governments endure w/o
succumbing to anarchy or tyranny?
Gettysburg Address
• They came to dedicate the cemetery,
• “as a final resting place for those who here
gave their lives that that nation might live”
– Gave their lives
– Died so the nation might live
– Martyrs
Gettysburg Address
• It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated
here to the unfinished work which they who
fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the
great task remaining before us---that from
these honored dead we take increased
devotion to that cause for which they gave the
last full measure of devotion…
Gettysburg Address
• The living must show greater devotion even
than the dead
• The great task is not the war, but the national
pursuit of equality.
• ---that we here highly resolve that these dead
shall not have died in vain---that this nation,
under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the
people, for the people, shall not perish from
the earth.
Gettysburg Address
• By the blood of martyrs, the US will be born
anew, purified of its gravest sin.
• But we can fail, we must show necessary
resolve.
• “Under God”
– Religious authorization of refounded Republic, but
also chastened by knowledge of its higher
accountability
Gettysburg Address
• All of the people, the polity includes all
Americans regardless of race.
• The community is defined by its belief in
equality, not in particular origins or racial
classes
Gettysburg Address
• “perish from the earth”
– Jeremiah 10
– Promise of divine retribution
– The fallibility of human works
Second Inaugural
• Powerlessness of
human effort
• Spiritual equality 
political humility,
forgiveness
• Spiritual unity of the
US
• Critical position on
self, politics, the war
Second Inaugural
• 4 years before, there was cause for extented
remark. “Now, at the expiration of four years,
during which public declarations have been
constantly called forth on every point and
phase of the great contest which still absorbs
the nation, little that is new could be
presented.”
– The binding power of history over the present
Second Inaugural
• “The progress of our arms, upon which all else
chiefly depends, is as well known to the public
as to myself; and it is, I trust, reasonably
satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high
hope for the future, no prediction in regard to
it is ventured.”
– The present is uncertain, the future utterly
opaque
• The limits on human action
Second Inaugural
• “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, insurgent 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.”
Second Inaugural
• ‘All’ or ‘both’ said four times: emphasis on
fundamental national unity
• Passive voice: ‘While the inaugural address
was being delivered’
• War emphasized, it is inevitable: ‘war’ said 7
times (9 if you count ‘it’)
• ‘And the war came.’
– abolitionist Wendell Phillips, January 8, 1852:
“Revolutions are not made; they come. A
revolution is as natural a growth as an oak. It
comes out of the past. Its foundations are laid far
back.”
– But for Lincoln there is nothing natural here. It
comes like lightning out of the sky.
Second Inaugural
• “All knew that this [slave] 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; while the
government claimed no right to do more than
to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.”
– Slavery the war’s cause
– South more responsible
Second Inaugural
• But the plans of all have failed:
• “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.”
Second Inaugural
• Neither/neither/each: the sections are joined
in their failure
• Lincoln includes himself in this failure: his
plans have had results that he never predicted
• The results are ‘fundamental’, astounding.
The US has been transformed.
– Though he led, he was not in control any more
than anyone else
Second Inaugural
• “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 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 not
be judged”
Second Inaugural
• Shift to the present, here and now
• Again, emphasis on unity
• Genesis 3:23 “In the sweat of thy face shalt
thou eat bread, till thou return unto the
ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust
thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”
– The curse of God for disobedience
– Slaveowners disobey God’s will
Second Inaugural
• Matthew 7:1 “Judge not, that ye be not
judged”
– From Sermon on the Mount
– Suggests both the mercy and judgment of God
– While the South bears more responsibility, the
North is not without flaw. Universality of sin
means that a people should always first criticize
themselves.
• Equality and forgiveness
Second Inaugural
• “The prayers of both could not be answered;
that of neither has been answered fully. The
Almighty has his own purposes.”
•
•
•
•
God the major actor in the drama of the war
Both sides could not win
Neither side has truly gotten what it wanted
God’s will over all history, distinct from human plans
and desires
– Humans rendered equal in this way
Second Inaugural
• ‘Woe unto the world because of offences! for
it must needs be that offences come; but woe
to that man by whom the offence cometh!’
• Matt. 18:7
• God’s will controls history, nothing can go
against the will of God.
• Yet individuals remain responsible for their
sins
Second Inaugural
• If we shall suppose that American Slavery is once
of those offences 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 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?
Second Inaugural
• “American” Slavery was
– An offence to God
– Allowed by God
– Willed by God to end now
• North and South EQUALLY guilty before God,
though not before humans
– Divine justice vs. human justice
– Perfection a dichotomous variable
Second Inaugural
• “Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—
that this mighty scourge of war may speedily
pass away.”
– Humans can do nothing to alter God’s will. They
must humble themselves and pray that God’s
mercy is greater than his justice
– Distilling moral & religious meaning from the
bewildering events and destruction of the War
Second Inaugural
• Shared moral community of Americans
– Both guilty in their shared failure to uphold
equality
– Both powerless to resist the will of God
• Transcendence of God
– Not some tribal deity
– His justice and purposes are very much different
from those of humans.
Second Inaugural
• 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 must it be said ‘the judgments of the
Lord, are true and righteous altogether.’
Second Inaugural
• The US is guilty enough to deserve destruction
– Slavery a mortal transgression against American
obligation to equality
– Affirms the perfection of divine justice over human
claims to justice
– Though the justice of God is inscrutable, it is
nonetheless perfectly just
• “three thousand years ago”: these ideas predate
the US, & may outlast them by as much
• Just as the war is not the product of human
agency, neither will be its end
Second Inaugural
• The judgments of the Lord
– Psalm 19
– Lincoln must somehow act ethically
• within a context beyond his comprehension
• with outcomes that are impossible to firmly predict
• and be judged by the inscrutable mind of God
according to standards that he cannot fully understand
•  humility as political good
Second Inaugural
• 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”
– Forgiveness motivated by recognition of moral
equality
– Act firmly in the right, as God gives us to see it
• Moral conviction & moral humility
Second Inaugural
• “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 a just and a
lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”
– Atonement between North & South
– Atonement between America & its God
– Political humility: don’t strive for utopia, strive for a better
world
– Equality demonstrated in a commitment to alleviated
suffering
– Care for widows & orphans a condition of minimal justice
in the Bible
Second Inaugural
• Men are not flattered by being shown that
there has been a difference of purpose
between the Almighty and them. To deny it,
however, in this case, is to deny that there is a
God governing the world.
– If God is always on your side, is he really there?
Second Inaugural
• It is a truth which I thought needed to be told;
and as whatever there is of humiliation there
is in it, falls most directly on myself, I thought
others might afford for me to tell it.
– Why does the humiliation fall most directly on
him?
Long-term outcomes
of the Civil War
• Federal government decisively rendered
superior to state governments
• Blacks being citizens, racial equality becomes
civil rights issue
• Necessities of war lead to dramatic expansion,
bureaucratization of federal gov’t
• Push to homogenize law across states
• Expanded power of corporations, closer ties to
government