WEBVTT - Deep Background Presents: The Broken Constitution Ep.3 0:00:15.396 --> 0:00:23.476 Pushkin. Welcome to episode three of my podcast on the 0:00:23.556 --> 0:00:29.996 Broken Constitution, Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America. In 0:00:30.116 --> 0:00:34.116 episode one, I talked about how the Constitution of seventeen 0:00:34.156 --> 0:00:37.156 eighty seven and the way that it was a compromise 0:00:37.476 --> 0:00:41.636 between slave states and free states in order to preserve 0:00:41.796 --> 0:00:46.036 and enable the expansion of the Union. In episode two, 0:00:46.476 --> 0:00:49.316 I brought us into the breaking of that Constitution by 0:00:49.316 --> 0:00:54.196 the Confederacy and Abraham Lincoln's corresponding breaking of the Constitution 0:00:54.556 --> 0:00:57.636 as it was then understood, both by going to war 0:00:57.796 --> 0:01:00.716 to coerce the Southern States back into the Union, and 0:01:00.836 --> 0:01:05.276 then by suspending Habeas corpus unilaterally, even though that was 0:01:05.316 --> 0:01:09.156 a power reserve to Congress, and through that becoming a 0:01:09.316 --> 0:01:12.556 kind of a dictator, one who suspended the freedom of 0:01:12.556 --> 0:01:15.476 expression in the United States through the duration of the war, 0:01:16.036 --> 0:01:20.716 arresting ultimately many thousands of people and shutting down hundreds 0:01:20.756 --> 0:01:25.036 of newspapers. In today's episode, I want to turn to 0:01:25.116 --> 0:01:30.556 the most memorable, significant, and consequential breaking of the Constitution 0:01:30.716 --> 0:01:34.156 that Abraham Lincoln achieved, the one that had the effect 0:01:34.396 --> 0:01:37.276 of transforming not only the meaning of the Civil War, 0:01:37.796 --> 0:01:42.116 but transforming the Constitution itself in the most fundamental way, 0:01:42.636 --> 0:01:46.116 so much so that the Constitution of today is no 0:01:46.396 --> 0:01:50.476 longer the Constitution of seventeen eighty seven, but something new 0:01:50.556 --> 0:01:55.116 and different, the Constitution of Abraham Lincoln, and then ultimately 0:01:55.396 --> 0:02:00.596 the Constitution of the Reconstruction Amendments, the thirteenth, fourteenth, and 0:02:00.716 --> 0:02:05.836 fifteenth Amendments. To do that, we have to begin with 0:02:05.876 --> 0:02:10.116 a recognition of a fact that we've effectively supprest, and 0:02:10.236 --> 0:02:14.116 that is that when the Civil War began, Abraham Lincoln 0:02:14.236 --> 0:02:19.356 remained exactly as committed to the compromised Constitution and therefore 0:02:19.436 --> 0:02:23.196 to the preservation of slavery as he had been through 0:02:23.236 --> 0:02:26.876 the entirety of his political career up to that point. 0:02:27.356 --> 0:02:30.756 The evidence that indicates the depth of this comes from 0:02:30.796 --> 0:02:35.236 Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address. Now you may be thinking 0:02:35.276 --> 0:02:38.956 to yourself, well, wait a minute, what was Lincoln's first 0:02:38.956 --> 0:02:43.876 inaugural address. His second inaugural address, which i'll talk about 0:02:43.916 --> 0:02:47.076 a bit later in this podcast, is part of the 0:02:47.196 --> 0:02:52.356 canon of American political and constitutional thought. When you visit 0:02:52.396 --> 0:02:55.236 the Lincoln Memorial, it's right up there on one of 0:02:55.276 --> 0:02:58.836 the walls, across from the Gettysburg Address. The other one 0:02:58.876 --> 0:03:02.756 of Lincoln's most famous speeches, But the first Inaugural Address 0:03:02.876 --> 0:03:06.596 is all but forgotten, and the reason for that is 0:03:06.636 --> 0:03:10.076 that it began in its first full power graph by 0:03:10.196 --> 0:03:13.436 quoting a statement that Lincoln had made in debating Stephen 0:03:13.476 --> 0:03:16.476 Douglas when he ran for the Senate in eighteen fifty eight, 0:03:17.036 --> 0:03:19.956 and in it Lincoln said, quote, I have no purpose, 0:03:20.356 --> 0:03:24.276 directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery 0:03:24.436 --> 0:03:27.316 in the states where it exists. I believe I have 0:03:27.476 --> 0:03:30.196 no lawful right to do so, and I have no 0:03:30.356 --> 0:03:34.676 inclination to do so. The reason for that was straightforward, 0:03:35.836 --> 0:03:40.356 Southern secession needed to be reversed. Lincoln saw his goal 0:03:40.476 --> 0:03:44.716 as recreating the Union. The Union had always existed on 0:03:44.756 --> 0:03:48.356 the basis of a compromise over slavery, and he had 0:03:48.436 --> 0:03:52.876 no idea of any possible mode of recreating the Union 0:03:53.156 --> 0:03:58.116 without recreating the compromise over slavery. His promise in the 0:03:58.156 --> 0:04:01.756 Inaugural Address to respect the institution of slavery was therefore 0:04:01.796 --> 0:04:04.516 a crucial part of his vision of how to restore 0:04:04.836 --> 0:04:10.076 the Union. This view continued through the first months of 0:04:10.116 --> 0:04:14.836 Lincoln's presidency. At the end of August of eighteen sixty one, 0:04:15.156 --> 0:04:18.116 John C. Fremont, who had been the eighteen fifty six 0:04:18.276 --> 0:04:21.956 Republican presidential candidate and whom Lincoln had made a general 0:04:21.996 --> 0:04:26.076 in Missouri, announced that he was freeing the slaves of 0:04:26.116 --> 0:04:30.956 all rebels found in his territory. This, in short, was 0:04:31.036 --> 0:04:36.476 pretty fundamentally similar to what would be Lincoln's active emancipation. 0:04:36.876 --> 0:04:40.676 More than a year later, Lincoln wrote to Fremont and 0:04:40.756 --> 0:04:45.436 told him, no, you cannot do this. I am requesting 0:04:45.516 --> 0:04:49.916 that you retract your emancipation order. Fremont said, I'm not 0:04:49.996 --> 0:04:52.436 going to do that. If you want the order reversed, 0:04:52.716 --> 0:04:56.676 you have to do it. So Lincoln fired Fremont and 0:04:56.796 --> 0:05:01.316 reversed the order himself. In a letter that Lincoln wrote 0:05:01.316 --> 0:05:04.116 to a friend just a few days later on September 0:05:04.156 --> 0:05:08.396 twenty one, eighteen sixty seven, he stood behind his decision 0:05:08.636 --> 0:05:13.676 regarding Fremont's emancipation order. The proclamation, he said, is and 0:05:13.756 --> 0:05:18.316 I quote, simply dictatorship. It assumes that the general may 0:05:18.396 --> 0:05:21.676 do anything he pleases, confiscate the lands, and free the 0:05:21.676 --> 0:05:25.796 slaves of loyal people as well as disloyal ones. In 0:05:25.836 --> 0:05:29.436 other words, Lincoln believed that for a general to use 0:05:29.516 --> 0:05:34.396 his war powers to free slaves was an act of dictatorship, 0:05:34.676 --> 0:05:37.036 and he was not using that term in the positive 0:05:37.036 --> 0:05:40.876 sense of the word. For Lincoln, dictatorship was wrong, and 0:05:40.956 --> 0:05:46.556 the Constitution did not authorize him or therefore the General's 0:05:46.596 --> 0:05:50.276 working for him to free slaves as a matter of 0:05:50.356 --> 0:05:56.076 military necessity. It took Lincoln more than a year for 0:05:56.116 --> 0:06:00.636 his views to evolve and change. In the book The 0:06:00.676 --> 0:06:04.956 Broken Constitution, I take the reader day by day, just 0:06:05.116 --> 0:06:09.276 about sometimes even minute by minute, through the process that 0:06:09.356 --> 0:06:12.956 Lincoln went through to shift his views from the view 0:06:12.956 --> 0:06:15.436 that it would be an active dictatorship to free slaves 0:06:15.836 --> 0:06:19.356 to the view that perhaps he ought to do so himself. 0:06:20.796 --> 0:06:23.156 To summarize it here, I would say that there were 0:06:23.156 --> 0:06:27.036 two major forces that push Lincoln in this direction. The 0:06:27.116 --> 0:06:32.436 first was a circumstantial one. He gradually realized that it 0:06:32.436 --> 0:06:36.396 would be difficult or impossible for him to win the 0:06:36.436 --> 0:06:41.076 war by creating a sufficient incentive for the Southern States 0:06:41.276 --> 0:06:45.996 to rejoin the Union voluntarily. As long as Lincoln thought 0:06:46.036 --> 0:06:50.196 that the Southern States might voluntarily rejoin, it was necessary 0:06:50.316 --> 0:06:54.116 to maintain the possibility of compromise, and that compromise, in 0:06:54.156 --> 0:06:58.516 turn required preserving slavery. But if it turned out that 0:06:58.556 --> 0:07:01.556 the Southern States were not going to compromise, We're not 0:07:01.636 --> 0:07:04.956 going to return voluntarily, then what followed from that was 0:07:04.996 --> 0:07:08.276 that it was at least possible to impose an outcome 0:07:08.316 --> 0:07:12.196 to the war on them. If that solution were therefore 0:07:12.236 --> 0:07:16.436 to be imposed by military force, Lincoln had the possibility 0:07:16.516 --> 0:07:19.796 at least of changing the situation with respect to the 0:07:19.836 --> 0:07:24.156 compromised Constitution as it existed before the war. The new 0:07:24.276 --> 0:07:28.156 constitution that would then have to emerge would no longer 0:07:28.236 --> 0:07:31.916 be based on a compromise. It would instead be based 0:07:31.996 --> 0:07:36.316 on a principle, and indeed on a moral principle, namely 0:07:36.356 --> 0:07:39.476 the moral principle of the end of slavery and the 0:07:39.556 --> 0:07:44.116 equality of African Americans. Lincoln did not deceive himself into 0:07:44.116 --> 0:07:46.756 thinking the Southern States would ever agree to this. This 0:07:46.836 --> 0:07:49.876 was an outcome they would have to be imposed by 0:07:49.996 --> 0:07:56.436 military force. The second element that contributed most fundamentally to 0:07:56.476 --> 0:08:00.316 Lincoln changing his views was the depth of his embrace 0:08:00.556 --> 0:08:05.716 of the idea that, through military necessity, he was authorized 0:08:05.716 --> 0:08:09.756 by the Constitution to do whatever it took to win 0:08:09.836 --> 0:08:15.036 the war. Here, his suspension of habeas corpus and his 0:08:15.156 --> 0:08:20.116 suspension of the free press were actually the groundwork for 0:08:20.196 --> 0:08:24.076 Lincoln's realization that if he could do that, he could 0:08:24.076 --> 0:08:28.396 do anything, and anything included breaking the Constitution as he 0:08:28.436 --> 0:08:34.916 had always understood it, and that included emancipating slaves. Remember that, 0:08:34.996 --> 0:08:37.396 all the way back early in his career, in eighteen 0:08:37.476 --> 0:08:40.556 thirty eight, in his Lyceum address which I mentioned in 0:08:40.596 --> 0:08:44.596 Episode one, Lincoln had said that what made a dictator 0:08:45.036 --> 0:08:49.076 a caesar or a Napoleon was the act of emancipating 0:08:49.156 --> 0:08:54.036 slaves or enslaving freemen. Gradually he had come to the 0:08:54.116 --> 0:08:57.396 view that that act, which was he said in eighteen 0:08:57.476 --> 0:09:00.996 thirty eight, a fundamental violation of the principles of the Constitution, 0:09:01.716 --> 0:09:07.956 was permissible to him in wartime, because in wartime, and 0:09:08.236 --> 0:09:12.196 under the circumstance senses of the broken Constitution, he could 0:09:12.276 --> 0:09:16.516 then further break the Constitution in order to win the war. 0:09:18.596 --> 0:09:22.756 Lincoln first introduced this idea to his colleagues in the 0:09:22.796 --> 0:09:27.876 cabinet on July twenty second of eighteen sixty two, a 0:09:27.996 --> 0:09:31.356 year and several months after he had assumed the presidency. 0:09:32.236 --> 0:09:35.076 At the time, he still hoped that there would be 0:09:35.196 --> 0:09:40.036 some way to introduce compensated emancipation money to be paid 0:09:40.276 --> 0:09:43.236 to those people who were not disloyal and still had 0:09:43.276 --> 0:09:47.276 their slaves taken. When he introduced the idea to his cabinet, 0:09:47.316 --> 0:09:50.916 the cabinet was so shocked that it essentially reacted by 0:09:50.996 --> 0:09:55.876 telling him that emancipation would be a terrible mistake. From this, 0:09:56.076 --> 0:09:59.836 Lincoln realized that he needed to do more to introduce 0:09:59.876 --> 0:10:03.236 the idea of emancipation, not only to his cabinet, but 0:10:03.356 --> 0:10:07.396 to the country, which he knew would hold similar views 0:10:07.596 --> 0:10:10.996 to those of the cabinet. He spent the rest of 0:10:10.996 --> 0:10:15.716 the summer and the fall of eighteen sixty two gradually 0:10:15.796 --> 0:10:22.116 introducing ideas associated with emancipation into the public eye. The 0:10:22.236 --> 0:10:25.156 way he did that, seen in our terms, is not 0:10:25.396 --> 0:10:31.276 necessarily very appealing. Here, Lincoln the politician was not acting 0:10:31.516 --> 0:10:36.036 as Lincoln the moralist. An exemplary and dramatic moment in 0:10:36.076 --> 0:10:39.516 Lincoln's efforts to acclimate the country to the possibility of 0:10:39.516 --> 0:10:44.436 emancipation came in August of eighteen sixty two, when Lincoln 0:10:44.476 --> 0:10:48.316 held a meeting with a five member delegation of African 0:10:48.356 --> 0:10:52.596 Americans in the White House. The men he invited were 0:10:52.916 --> 0:10:58.556 part of the city's educated black elite. One Edward Thomas, 0:10:58.756 --> 0:11:01.276 the chairman of the delegation, was a member of one 0:11:01.276 --> 0:11:04.596 of the city's black debating societies, a collector of fine 0:11:04.676 --> 0:11:07.396 art and rare coins, and the proud owner of a 0:11:07.516 --> 0:11:12.076 library of six hundred books, an enormous library for the time. 0:11:12.716 --> 0:11:17.036 The others had similar elite status. Lincoln brought them into 0:11:17.076 --> 0:11:20.716 the White House, and instead of asking them what their 0:11:20.796 --> 0:11:23.996 views were about the possibility of emancipation, or how he 0:11:24.036 --> 0:11:26.796 should do things going forward, or really listening to them 0:11:26.796 --> 0:11:31.076 at all, Lincoln talked at them. And what he told 0:11:31.116 --> 0:11:36.676 them was nothing short of astonishing to our ears. What 0:11:36.796 --> 0:11:40.396 Lincoln told them had two parts. The first was that 0:11:40.476 --> 0:11:43.836 the long term solution to the problem of slavery was 0:11:43.916 --> 0:11:47.436 not merely to free black people, but for black people 0:11:47.476 --> 0:11:53.196 to voluntary leave the United States and be resettled somewhere else, 0:11:53.636 --> 0:11:58.956 either in Africa or in Central America, in circumstances where 0:11:58.996 --> 0:12:02.276 they would be far from white people and where the 0:12:02.476 --> 0:12:05.876 hatred that subsisted between the two races, according to Lincoln, 0:12:06.236 --> 0:12:11.716 would be resolved by effectively a kind of divorce. The 0:12:11.836 --> 0:12:16.556 delegation of African Americans listened with a stony silence, like 0:12:16.796 --> 0:12:21.676 essentially all African Americans, at the time and the overwhelming majority, 0:12:21.796 --> 0:12:25.516 since they had no interest in leaving the United States, 0:12:26.196 --> 0:12:29.076 they had no interest in participating in a plan to 0:12:29.116 --> 0:12:32.276 go to Liberia or somewhere else. That view had been 0:12:32.316 --> 0:12:36.476 a fantasy of white, anti slavery Americans of a certain 0:12:36.596 --> 0:12:39.796 kind all the way since the beginning of the nineteenth century. 0:12:40.356 --> 0:12:44.156 The idea, which was called colonization was the policy of 0:12:44.156 --> 0:12:47.516 a group of people who formed the American Colonization Society, 0:12:48.036 --> 0:12:51.316 a group of which James Monroe had been president and 0:12:51.516 --> 0:12:55.956 of which Henry Clay, the Great wig compromiser and Lincoln's idol, 0:12:56.276 --> 0:13:01.316 had been another leader. At no time was this view realistic, 0:13:01.596 --> 0:13:04.516 and at no time that it enjoys support from any 0:13:04.596 --> 0:13:09.036 number of African Americans. But certainly by eighteen sixty two 0:13:09.356 --> 0:13:13.236 the view was nothing more than a preposterous and frankly 0:13:13.276 --> 0:13:18.236 offensive fantasy. The reason Lincoln was talking to this group 0:13:18.276 --> 0:13:22.916 of African Americans about colonization was not that he expected 0:13:22.916 --> 0:13:25.156 them to listen to him. In fact, he wasn't really 0:13:25.156 --> 0:13:28.636 talking to that group at all. Lincoln was talking to 0:13:28.756 --> 0:13:31.756 white America, and he was trying to set up an 0:13:31.836 --> 0:13:35.636 argument that even if emancipation should occur, there was no 0:13:35.756 --> 0:13:39.036 need for white Americans to worry about any possibility of 0:13:39.076 --> 0:13:43.036 integration or living alongside African Americans towards whom he knew 0:13:43.236 --> 0:13:47.596 white people harbored intense racial prejudice. He was, in short, 0:13:47.676 --> 0:13:51.676 suggesting that it would be possible to emancipate without creating 0:13:51.716 --> 0:13:54.716 a race problem in the United States by sending all 0:13:54.756 --> 0:13:59.076 black people out of the country. The other thing that 0:13:59.156 --> 0:14:03.956 Lincoln told the assembled group of African American dignitaries was 0:14:04.356 --> 0:14:08.396 if it's possible. Even more shocking, here's what he said, 0:14:09.476 --> 0:14:12.356 but for your race among us, there could not be war, 0:14:12.796 --> 0:14:15.276 although many men engaged on either side do not care 0:14:15.316 --> 0:14:18.236 for you one way or the other. Nevertheless, I repeat, 0:14:18.556 --> 0:14:21.796 without the institution of slavery and the colored race as 0:14:21.836 --> 0:14:26.996 a basis, the war could not have an existence. That 0:14:27.116 --> 0:14:29.876 quotation is so astonishing that it may take a moment 0:14:29.916 --> 0:14:33.236 to explain it. In essence, what Lincoln was telling the 0:14:33.276 --> 0:14:36.316 black people in front of him was that the war 0:14:36.716 --> 0:14:42.356 was their fault. Instead of blaming the war on southern slavery, 0:14:42.636 --> 0:14:46.876 or Northern hypocrisy, or the inability of the compromise between 0:14:46.876 --> 0:14:50.756 North and South over slavery to subsist, Lincoln was saying 0:14:51.516 --> 0:14:54.996 that black people were themselves the but for cause of 0:14:55.036 --> 0:14:58.996 the war, and were therefore in some sense responsible for it. 0:15:00.356 --> 0:15:02.676 If you think that I'm making that up, listen to 0:15:02.676 --> 0:15:05.716 what Frederick Douglas said when he heard the reports of 0:15:05.756 --> 0:15:10.756 that conversation. Lincoln was showing all his inconsistencies, Douglas wrote, 0:15:11.276 --> 0:15:14.516 his pride of race and blood, his contempt for negroes, 0:15:14.716 --> 0:15:18.676 and his canting hypocrisy. How an honest man could creep 0:15:18.676 --> 0:15:21.596 into such a character as that implied by this address, 0:15:21.916 --> 0:15:25.836 we are not required to show. Douglas went on. He 0:15:25.876 --> 0:15:28.356 said that Lincoln was like a horse thief or a 0:15:28.436 --> 0:15:31.916 highway robber who was blaming his crime on the horse 0:15:32.316 --> 0:15:36.876 or the traveler's purse. No, mister President, Douglas said, it 0:15:36.996 --> 0:15:39.156 is not the innocent horse that makes the horse thief, 0:15:39.476 --> 0:15:42.276 not the traveler's purse that makes the highway robber. And 0:15:42.356 --> 0:15:44.876 it is not the presence of the negro that causes 0:15:44.916 --> 0:15:49.316 this foul and unnatural war, but the cruel and brutal 0:15:49.396 --> 0:15:52.956 cupidity of those who wish to possess horses, money, and 0:15:53.236 --> 0:15:58.316 negroes by means of theft, robbery, and rebellion. What was 0:15:58.396 --> 0:16:03.596 behind Lincoln's conversation with the African American delegation, however, was 0:16:03.716 --> 0:16:07.716 not to make a reasonable point. He was instead again 0:16:08.076 --> 0:16:11.676 trying to prepare the ground for the possibility of emancipation 0:16:12.276 --> 0:16:17.796 by convincing white Americans that he had no particular solicitude 0:16:18.196 --> 0:16:22.996 or care for black people. He was trying to make 0:16:22.996 --> 0:16:26.476 the argument that the reason to end slavery was to 0:16:26.596 --> 0:16:30.436 end the war and to end the controversy and conflict 0:16:30.636 --> 0:16:35.356 between Northern whites and Southern whites about the question of race. 0:16:37.116 --> 0:16:41.516 Did Lincoln mean everything he said? This is a question 0:16:41.636 --> 0:16:45.716 that still engages historians, and one again that I discuss 0:16:45.796 --> 0:16:48.876 in a great deal of detail in the book The 0:16:48.956 --> 0:16:53.836 Broken Constitution. I would say that on the whole my 0:16:53.916 --> 0:16:58.716 answer is yes. Listen to what Lincoln said in an 0:16:58.756 --> 0:17:01.796 open letter to Horace Greeley, the editor of the New 0:17:01.876 --> 0:17:06.356 York Tribune, just a week after he had spoken to 0:17:06.396 --> 0:17:10.356 the group of African Americans in his office. My paramount 0:17:10.436 --> 0:17:14.436 object in this struggle, Lincoln said, is to save the Union, 0:17:14.876 --> 0:17:19.356 and is not either to save or destroy slavery. His 0:17:19.516 --> 0:17:22.996 emphasis on those words, if I could save the Union 0:17:23.036 --> 0:17:26.916 without freeing any slave, I would do it. And if 0:17:26.916 --> 0:17:29.716 I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I 0:17:29.756 --> 0:17:31.436 would do it. And if I could save it by 0:17:31.476 --> 0:17:34.596 freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. 0:17:35.196 --> 0:17:37.956 What I do about slavery and the colored race, I 0:17:38.076 --> 0:17:41.116 do because I believe it helps to save the Union. 0:17:41.476 --> 0:17:44.836 And what I forbear, I forbear because I do not 0:17:45.036 --> 0:17:49.516 believe it would help to save the Union. There in 0:17:49.556 --> 0:17:54.756 a nutshell was Lincoln's public position about emancipation. On his 0:17:54.836 --> 0:17:58.236 way to September of eighteen sixty two, when he announced 0:17:58.276 --> 0:18:03.156 a draft of the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln was saying, in 0:18:03.196 --> 0:18:07.476 words too simple to mistake, that he did not want 0:18:07.556 --> 0:18:09.996 to base the decision to a man incipate at that 0:18:10.076 --> 0:18:14.276 moment on the immorality of slavery, but rather on the 0:18:14.316 --> 0:18:19.476 necessity of saving the Union. No doubt, Lincoln felt it 0:18:19.556 --> 0:18:22.796 necessary to speak this way in order to convince white 0:18:22.796 --> 0:18:28.596 Americans of the plausibility of emancipation, and also because he 0:18:28.716 --> 0:18:32.156 knew that he was breaking a constitutional compromise that had 0:18:32.196 --> 0:18:36.676 always been based on slavery. Nevertheless, if Lincoln had wanted 0:18:36.796 --> 0:18:41.556 to speak directly about the immorality of slavery itself as 0:18:41.636 --> 0:18:46.636 part of his act of emancipation, he could have done so. 0:18:47.396 --> 0:18:51.836 The Emancipation Proclamation evolved in the course of three versions 0:18:51.876 --> 0:18:54.676 of the document. The first was the one that Lincoln 0:18:54.676 --> 0:18:58.396 suggested to his cabinet in the summer of eighteen sixty two. 0:18:59.116 --> 0:19:02.756 The second was the preliminary declaration that Lincoln made public 0:19:02.996 --> 0:19:07.196 in September. The third and final one was the formal 0:19:07.276 --> 0:19:13.876 Emancipation Proclamation, into effect on January first of eighteen sixty three. 0:19:14.596 --> 0:19:19.116 In none of these did Lincoln expressly say that the 0:19:19.196 --> 0:19:24.236 point of emancipation was to end a moral wrong. Indeed, 0:19:24.396 --> 0:19:29.636 these documents were written in fairly legalistic tones. Karl Marx, 0:19:30.076 --> 0:19:33.836 a contemporary of Lincoln's, as we sometimes forget, who watched 0:19:33.916 --> 0:19:37.556 events in the United States with great interest, did consider 0:19:37.596 --> 0:19:41.316 the Emancipation Proclamation to be quote, the most important document 0:19:41.436 --> 0:19:45.196 in American history since the establishment of the Union, tantamount 0:19:45.276 --> 0:19:48.876 to the tearing up of the old American Constitution. Yet 0:19:48.916 --> 0:19:52.876 at the same time, Marx derided the language of the 0:19:52.916 --> 0:19:56.716 proclamation as devoid of morality. He said it had been 0:19:56.756 --> 0:20:01.476 intentionally drafted to sound like, quote, an ordinary summons sent 0:20:01.596 --> 0:20:05.476 by one lawyer to another. That was true of the 0:20:05.516 --> 0:20:11.116 body of the proclamation. The only place where Lincoln hinted, however, 0:20:11.156 --> 0:20:15.796 in the emancipation Proclamation at some potential moral purpose was 0:20:15.876 --> 0:20:21.476 in its final paragraph. There he wrote, and upon this act, 0:20:21.956 --> 0:20:25.876 sincerely believed to be an act of justice warranted by 0:20:25.876 --> 0:20:31.156 the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment 0:20:31.196 --> 0:20:36.876 of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God. This 0:20:36.916 --> 0:20:41.676 paragraph did include a repetition of Lincoln's insistence that his 0:20:41.756 --> 0:20:45.796 act was justified by the Constitution because of the military 0:20:45.836 --> 0:20:49.156 necessity of doing so. In other words, that the reason 0:20:49.196 --> 0:20:52.636 emancipation was permissible under the Constitution, despite it being a 0:20:52.676 --> 0:20:55.956 breaking of the Constitution as it had always been understood before, 0:20:56.556 --> 0:20:59.756 was that there was a military necessity to do so. 0:21:00.236 --> 0:21:03.556 He needed to emancipate the slaves in order to win 0:21:03.636 --> 0:21:08.036 the war. And yet if that were the only reason, 0:21:08.396 --> 0:21:11.716 there would be no significant basis for Lincoln to invoke 0:21:11.836 --> 0:21:16.076 the judgment of mankind, much less the gracious favor of God. 0:21:16.916 --> 0:21:19.916 By thinking of the judgment of mankind, Lincoln was referring 0:21:19.956 --> 0:21:23.916 back to the Declaration of Independence, which had also appealed 0:21:23.956 --> 0:21:27.876 to the opinions of mankind and referred to a creator 0:21:28.076 --> 0:21:32.356 who endowed men with inalienable rights, including the right to liberty. 0:21:33.036 --> 0:21:36.436 Lincoln was suggesting to an international audience, not to the 0:21:36.516 --> 0:21:43.276 US audience, that there was value in the freeing of slaves. Similarly, 0:21:43.316 --> 0:21:48.756 by invoking God, Lincoln was hinting, but only hinting, that 0:21:48.876 --> 0:21:53.516 in the eyes of the ultimate judge of morality, there 0:21:53.756 --> 0:22:01.676 was good reason to free enslaved African Americans. By emancipating 0:22:01.716 --> 0:22:07.676 African American slaves, Lincoln fundamentally changed the possible outcomes of 0:22:07.676 --> 0:22:11.996 the war, and in the process, he fundamentally transformed the 0:22:12.036 --> 0:22:16.636 meaning of the Constitution. That was because by doing so, 0:22:17.036 --> 0:22:21.636 Lincoln blocked once and for all, any possibility of return 0:22:22.036 --> 0:22:26.836 to a constitution based on compromise. The compromise constitution had 0:22:26.876 --> 0:22:31.236 always been a compromise based on slavery. By announcing that 0:22:31.516 --> 0:22:34.956 enslaved people in the South would not be returned to 0:22:34.956 --> 0:22:38.036 their owners when the war was over, by announcing that 0:22:38.076 --> 0:22:40.436 there would not be slavery in the South when the 0:22:40.436 --> 0:22:44.436 war was over, Lincoln was guaranteeing that there would not 0:22:44.636 --> 0:22:48.676 be the possibility of future compromise, at least if he 0:22:49.076 --> 0:22:52.756 were re elected president. He knew that he might lose 0:22:52.836 --> 0:22:57.116 the presidential election in eighteen sixty four, and if that happened, 0:22:57.156 --> 0:23:00.876 He realized a new president might reoffer some version of 0:23:00.876 --> 0:23:03.676 a compromise to the South, but as long as he 0:23:03.796 --> 0:23:06.956 was president, he was insisting there would not be a 0:23:06.996 --> 0:23:13.476 compromise by this Emancipation Act. Therefore, Lincoln broke any possibility 0:23:13.716 --> 0:23:17.316 of return to the Constitution of seventeen eighty seven, as 0:23:17.356 --> 0:23:20.716 it had been shored up and rebuilt by a series 0:23:20.716 --> 0:23:24.396 of quasi constitutional compromises in the year before the war. 0:23:24.996 --> 0:23:29.796 He was taking slavery off the table. In so doing, 0:23:30.076 --> 0:23:33.996 Lincoln was also opening up a new possibility, one we 0:23:34.036 --> 0:23:37.556 are familiar with today, but that had not existed before. 0:23:38.196 --> 0:23:42.356 That was the idea of the Constitution as a constitution 0:23:42.596 --> 0:23:47.636 genuinely in keeping with morality, a moral constitution that could 0:23:47.636 --> 0:23:53.316 itself be considered a higher law. The Constitution had never 0:23:53.436 --> 0:23:56.796 been considered a moral document in the years before the 0:23:56.836 --> 0:24:00.916 Civil War because it entailed a compromise with slavery. Even 0:24:00.956 --> 0:24:03.516 those who like Lincoln believed there was a moral duty 0:24:03.636 --> 0:24:07.276 to follow the Constitution believed that that flowed from a 0:24:07.316 --> 0:24:10.556 promise that had been made to follow it, not from 0:24:10.596 --> 0:24:14.276 the morality of the Constitution itself, which was a compromise 0:24:14.436 --> 0:24:18.516 with immorality. But if the Constitution would no longer be 0:24:18.556 --> 0:24:22.436 a compromise over slavery. Then it could be a moral document. 0:24:22.956 --> 0:24:25.356 It could be a moral document based on the principle 0:24:25.436 --> 0:24:29.356 of liberty for all, and by implication, also based on 0:24:29.356 --> 0:24:34.796 the principle of equality. Liberty and equality were moral concepts. 0:24:35.276 --> 0:24:38.556 Compromise was a concept that was at best a moral 0:24:38.916 --> 0:24:42.476 and at worst immoral to the extent it entailed an 0:24:42.516 --> 0:24:48.116 agreement to preserve slavery. The Gettysburg Address is the archetypal 0:24:48.236 --> 0:24:52.436 moment when Lincoln introduced this idea to the United States. 0:24:53.876 --> 0:24:57.436 He gave it on November nineteenth, eighteen sixty three, and 0:24:57.516 --> 0:25:01.156 already in its first sentence, Lincoln spoke of a new 0:25:01.236 --> 0:25:05.996 nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that 0:25:06.196 --> 0:25:10.916 all men are created equal. The nation was new because 0:25:10.916 --> 0:25:14.956 the Constitution of seventeen eighty seven was gone. This new 0:25:15.036 --> 0:25:18.716 nation was conceived in liberty, which could never be said 0:25:19.036 --> 0:25:22.756 of the Constitution of seventeen eighty seven because it entailed 0:25:22.756 --> 0:25:27.116 a compromise over liberty by assuring the continuation of the 0:25:27.196 --> 0:25:31.716 enslavement of African Americans and the core proposition that all 0:25:31.756 --> 0:25:35.836 men are created equal, though it existed in the Declaration 0:25:35.836 --> 0:25:39.916 of Independence, had not been morally present in the Constitution 0:25:40.316 --> 0:25:46.116 because it had explicitly excluded people of color. In the 0:25:46.116 --> 0:25:50.116 course of the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln's introduction of the idea 0:25:50.156 --> 0:25:55.196 of morality started to take on biblical overtones. You can 0:25:55.276 --> 0:25:57.836 hear that in some of the language of the address 0:25:58.276 --> 0:26:01.956 four score and seven years ago a formulation hinting at 0:26:01.996 --> 0:26:06.076 the Bible shall not perish from the earth more language 0:26:06.076 --> 0:26:11.036 from the Bible. But Lincoln's religious description of the meaning 0:26:11.156 --> 0:26:14.796 of the end of slavery came most famously in his 0:26:14.916 --> 0:26:18.916 second inaugural address, which he gave on March fourth of 0:26:19.036 --> 0:26:24.876 eighteen sixty five. In that famous address, Lincoln offered nothing 0:26:24.996 --> 0:26:28.876 less than a theology of slavery and what it meant 0:26:29.036 --> 0:26:34.276 in America. According to that theology, slavery was an offense 0:26:34.396 --> 0:26:40.236 against God, an original sin, and that sin had been 0:26:40.796 --> 0:26:46.876 purged or atoned only through the violence and bloodshed of 0:26:46.916 --> 0:26:50.876 the Civil War. He said, if we shall suppose that 0:26:50.916 --> 0:26:54.436 American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the 0:26:54.476 --> 0:26:58.796 providence of God must needs come, but which having continued 0:26:58.836 --> 0:27:01.836 through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and 0:27:01.876 --> 0:27:04.396 that he gives to both north and South. This terrible war, 0:27:04.756 --> 0:27:07.836 as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, 0:27:08.516 --> 0:27:12.476 shall we scern therein any departure from those divine attributes 0:27:12.516 --> 0:27:17.156 which the believers in a living God always ascribed to him. 0:27:17.196 --> 0:27:22.116 Lincoln was saying that the war had been inevitable, inevitable 0:27:22.276 --> 0:27:29.316 because of the slavery compromise, which itself was a sin. Thus, 0:27:29.356 --> 0:27:32.156 he said, the war might continue until all the wealth 0:27:32.276 --> 0:27:35.276 piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of 0:27:35.396 --> 0:27:38.876 unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of 0:27:38.916 --> 0:27:41.876 blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another 0:27:42.196 --> 0:27:46.236 drawn with the sword. The blood of slavery would be 0:27:46.236 --> 0:27:51.156 repaid by the blood of the Northern and Southern dead. 0:27:53.036 --> 0:27:56.876 Through this atonement, an atonement that would have been familiar 0:27:56.916 --> 0:28:00.796 to Americans of the time as the model of Christ's 0:28:00.876 --> 0:28:04.356 sacrifice of his own blood to atone for original sin, 0:28:05.196 --> 0:28:09.436 the United States could be healed. The result would be 0:28:09.516 --> 0:28:14.396 a new Constitution that stood in relationship to the Old Constitution, 0:28:14.756 --> 0:28:18.916 the way the New Testament stood in relationship to the Old. 0:28:20.996 --> 0:28:24.996 Lots of scholars have talked about the difficulty that Lincoln 0:28:24.996 --> 0:28:28.396