Welcome back to the New Thinkery. I'm David Warren with me as always. My good friend Greg McBrayer. How are you Greg?
How are you? I'm doing great. Good to see you again. Good to see you too.
We got a free piece. Oh yes, that's right. Yeah, sorry. You want to introduce our other post to my batch or how are you doing?
I'm doing well. How are you doing? Good. So you're in the middle.
I thought for sure Greg was going to make a joke about having three people named Pete on the audience. That's a little Greg. Yeah, that's Greg humor. You're Alex, you were storing water and vitals.
What's going on? Oh, it's a busy day. You hear the news? There was a philosophy lecture at UCLA.
Did you hear about this? No, UCLA. He threatened the philosophy department at UCLA with all sorts of murder. He's criminally insane.
He's pretty messed up. He sent an 800 page manifesto. I was real bad when they called things manifestos, but I'm like, what else is 800 pages? That's something just emails you.
So, but the reason this connects to me is the guy was in Boulder. He lives in Boulder. So, medicine, threats and so SWAT team descended on Boulder, Colorado, for a sort of wayward philosopher. Might have been of road a bit.
Yeah, I heard the story when I was at the University of Maryland in the philosophy department in the 80s. There's some famous atheist professor who used to make a parade of his non-belief. And so, he was prone to uttering these incredible statements like, well, if God exists, then show me a sign or something like this, and then he would laugh. Anyway, he says something like that, and a student, obviously, well, gets off.
He says, I'm an emissary from Christ and rushes the stage and punches him. It's pretty funny. Yeah, it's a real story. Yeah, it's a real story.
Yeah, it's a real story. Yeah, it's just a... That professor, Joel Austin. Yeah, no.
Are you going to... Are you going to... We've put Dilly Dowling and introduce our esteemed guest. Sure, it's professor Michael Zukert, who's back for the third time.
We're very welcome back. Yeah, we can't. So, what I'm not in UCLA. Yeah.
Yeah. Also, if you're in the political science department, this is what happens to you. The policy departments don't teach prudence. Political science.
Yeah. Well, we don't teach wisdom. But wisdom can't be taught. But we like to be that secret.
And then somebody will... So, what are we talking about today, Michael, or Greg, you want to introduce the episode? Sure, I'm happy to introduce the episode. I think we're going to...
We're planning to release this episode in honor of a President's Day and we thought what better episode than to sort of talk about one of the greatest presidents, if not the greatest president in US history. Paul calm Abraham Lincoln and so, Michael Zukert has been on the show a couple of times with us and we talked a little bit about Lincoln and we thought this might be an appropriate time to bring professors who are back. And we're going to talk specifically about whether or not Lincoln was a statesman or Lincoln state is craft, my degree. Michael's been writing on this and a couple of his volumes and also his new book that he's still working on.
And I was talking to Michael beforehand. It is accepted, right? Yeah. Congratulations.
Coming out. Coming out. We've got thanks to the new thinkories promotion of the book. You've got a.
What's the. I was mentioned. What I was one. Very good.
Turn out. Turn out. There are three more. Let's talk about your book counts as peer review.
They were. They were. They were. They were.
They were. They were. They were. They were.
They were. We were. They were. We were treatment.
But. Right now, but not the natural rights republic. No, that's, that's, that's Notre Dame. And they're there.
Right. Right. Do we want to talk about other books that are published by a different person? I think I was going to get a lot of it.
That's a good time. Alex is in the dark room all we can see is his bald hand. So going out to work in Oracle. Well, I, you think you're introduction and epilogue from a collection of essays that you added where you talked about more generally about Lincoln's sacred.
And these are the fifth chapter in your book where you, which the title is the Faith of our father's Lincoln's case for the declaration, where you focus on his puree speech, but you really focus on the arguments and you try to give an account of how the arguments are informed by the sense of a state graph. So it's specifically you use in all three pieces this phrase, the task of state graph. And you mean something very particular by that. So I thought maybe we could start with what you mean by state graph or statesmanship, with the elements, at least according to ordinary opinion, are how you view their relationships.
So let's start. Let me, yeah. Let me start with the end. I want to add a little bit about how Lincoln, I'd say complicates what we might think of as the ordinary or kind of sense understanding of statesmanship.
So it seems to me I just started with a kind of, you know, off the cuff, maybe almost a notion of statesmanship, something like the capacity to take the best possible action for the good of the political community under the circumstances, something like that is statesmanship. And I identify three particular features that may distinguish us, someone we might want to call a statesman, thinking of statesman as a term of commendation and not just a neutral state, three specific qualities that we might want to talk of. And again, these are meant to be common sensible notions, what people think about it might think. So one would be with regard to the motivation, what distinguishes the statesman, statesman, where Mary, politician, what I call it might say a mere politician, demeaning notion.
So motivation, I mean, we think the name statesman itself already points towards what I think is intended here. Somebody who has the good of the state, the whole, the whole, the political community in mind, has the common good in mind rather than to alter it as say a partisan somebody who has the good of the political party in mind. We have some experience of people like that. And secondly, another option would be something who has a personal goal in mind, his own power, his own fame, whatever, something like that.
So the first part would be, or the first notion, I think that we would normally get is that statesman has a certain kind of motivation and a mere politician would maybe fall sort of that. The second would be that the statesman has some sort of special knowledge or special skill that is some kind of knowledge of the political good of the community that he's talking about, some kind of knowledge of the means, generally necessary to achieve that good. So some kind of skills or arts that would lead to any effectiveness on the part of the person involved. And then third, I think we think of the statesman who in general would be deploying the, he has a morally correct end and therefore he'd be deploying morally correct means to achieve that end.
And so, I think that's particularly important would be remaining within the law, remaining true to the Constitution, not stepping outside these things for between these. So those three things I think would go into a kind of common sense of notion of statesmanship that we might, you know, the man on this week might accept. The interesting thing is sensible as those three qualities are Lincoln himself, the categories that I just mentioned in interesting ways. And he shows us that the whole notion of statesman's history is a little more complex, quite a bit more complex than I just tried to lay it out.
So in the first place, he has a very, I'm sure all of your listeners are a lot of your listeners are familiar with his very famous first importance he gave, so-called like seeing the dress. And then this address Lincoln, among other things, speaks of a special kind of political actor who speaks from beyond the ordinary. That is, he doesn't just seek to get elected to see Congress, he doesn't just seek to even be president, but he seeks to have towns named after him or a streets named after him, or a big, bigger than that. He aims to have his birthday celebrated by the whole country, things like that.
And he can ask, even the rest of the year. And somebody can call these people, these are people who aim to be of the family of the lion and the tribe of the eagle, a very famous kind of phrase looking out of their speech. Okay, so there were people like this, let's admit it, but what Lincoln then went on to say is that the American founders were that sort of person, that what they did in founding the American Republic was indeed aiming at that kind of theme. And he went down to say, certainly what's to imply there, I think, he went down to apply that those very same people, and they come later.
And somebody already founded this republic and garnered all the fame to be achieved from it, that these same people might indeed be tempted to do the opposite, to undo, unmake the republic that they had created in order to give his or her or their own stamp on whatever new thing they could bring into existence. So Lincoln left us with the idea that the motive, it was so clear that the motive, that the good motive that the American founders had is certainly a significant motive, distinguishes the states and other kinds of politicians. So that's one thing, so we've blurs the whole issue of motive in this kind of interesting way. Professor Zuggen, ask you a question.
Yeah, please. I'm going to feed her up. Okay, good. I'm so cute.
I've always, when I've read that, like seems to have always been sort of tempted to think that Lincoln saw himself as such a type of tribe of the lion, eagle and so forth. And so therefore saw that he did not fit easily into such a regime. Yes. I agree with that.
He actually is one of the main, some of the thesis in my book. I think it's going to be controversial with the historians and others. There are those people who wouldn't like to even get a hint at Lincoln had personal ambition, something like that. But I think it's, I think there's a lot of it.
It's one one. Lincoln's description of these men and what moves them had the kind of ring of like, I know what I'm talking about, you know, because I looked very excited. And that's what I've seen. So that's one.
And another is all through his career, Lincoln has mostly in private places, but not always. And he's left a lot of indications of how much ambition he had, of how it is certain stage in his career, how disappointed he was with how unsuccessful or not unsuccessful altogether he had been in Congress and so on. But how little of a figure he had come in world history and he was looking to cut a bigger figure than that. So I think it's definitely believable.
I at least believe it and great. I hope you too. Yeah. Yeah.
Lincoln indeed had this kind of a sense about himself or these folks about himself. One interesting point I want to jump in is that so therefore, I mean, you're really, I'm really impressed the way you're drawing out in these motivations. I want to know what you think about what his ultimate motivation was because it sounds like you're saying this longing for ambition. Your third point here connects to respect for law and rally, but this particular aspect of statesmanship taken by itself might not lead to statesmanship.
It could just as well lead to tearing down a country. And so by itself, it might be necessary, but it's insufficient. So like a calendar of garrison to want to tear down the country and they could be similarly noted. Yeah.
I wonder if I think it was David. Is David want to tell us that McBeth was his favorite play or something like this? Because he's afraid that he might be. Or was it was, right?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. David, you're just really hoping we may have answered this, but so Lincoln saw these types as necessary for a republic.
Did he consider that it was this an ongoing necessity or just to allow these creatures to pop their heads up during time's surprise? Because they can be great saviors as well as great tyrants. Well, let me take your question first and then I'll try to go back to grace. So actually Lincoln never spoke of the necessity of the need for these people.
He really saw them at least in the, I seem addressed. He saw them as a danger to the republic. The republic had insomnia and when these people arise, they're going to undo it. And so the, I seem addressed as part of the warning against these people in which he says, we really depend on the people, the people of the country to protect us from these kind of people.
And then in every address he goes on to say, but the people are kind of corrupt and now we're not going to get down in that meter. So we're, there are dangers that we face. So he doesn't really think of the necessity for these, for these people, but he does. Well, so, so what I do with my book is that the lyseum address while apparently, the book satisfied with itself and having found a solution to the problem of the main answer to the perpetuation of the American regime, in fact was not that the solution that he laid out was not in the satisfactory end that he was aware of that.
But some years later he gave this other address, the temperance address, another famous address from his pre, really collude presidential years, some of your pre national politics years. And in this other address he puts forward the position that, well, that he had two narrowly drawn the alternatives in the lyseum address. He had suggested in the lyseum address that the alternatives were either you maintain this order or you overturn it. But what he can't discover in the, in the temperance address, what he can't discover in the temperance address is that there are, there's a third alternative and a third alternative is to carry forward some of the implications of the American commitment to equality and liberty in spheres that had not yet been achieved.
And so in that, in that address he speaks about the reform movements that are so powerful in America in the sort of first third of the 19th century. And he wants to say those are connected to the American revolution. The American revolution had proved that a regime of liberty was possible. But what he comes to see is that there are spheres of liberty, not yet, not yet plumbed in the American regime.
And that somebody might come along and abolish slavery in America. That would be, that would not be overturning the regime, it would be extending it on its true principles. But the that person could win the fame and the glory of the founders themselves and lo and behold, somebody came along and kind of did that. Or other examples of FDR, FDR came and made important innovations in the political economy of America.
And maybe not quite the level of fame of Lincoln or of Washington, but nonetheless, he still a very revered person probably made it work so for that level of fame as well. Yeah. I mean, or even Herbert Hoover who broke the point of the White House, unprecedented size in the best. That's tough.
That's tough. Yeah. Damn it. Damn.
That's tough. I think you can tell that voice is pretty coarse. Yeah. Yeah.
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Yeah. And now back to the show. That's the show. One thing I was just teaching Aristotle on Kingship, and I'm not trying to pull one of these like Aristotle equals Lincoln equals.
Oh, yeah. I know somebody who thinks that. Yeah. I work at that organization.
Okay. Yeah. His checks are signed by all four. But you know, it's remarkable how much Lincoln, so you know, Aristotle makes this argument, right?
The preeminently virtuous man. Yeah, just make him king. You can't do anything. But a king has to rule by law.
And so you have to use laws to some degree anyways. It's interesting the degree to which Lincoln was able to acknowledge his own important story, his own preeminence, however, passively. And also really tried his best, obviously with the limits that you, you, you, but specifically the second election, right, his reelection was, you know, insisting on an election, understanding that was a very important precedent not to break. And this was, it was maybe worth, I thought it was such a good point.
It's maybe worth allowing the US to break into two, right? Allow the starts to see that that's just our future, then, then undermine one of the central principles of the democracy, right? Going forward. But that sort of balance, I don't know, maybe it was just me reading two things that are similar at the same time, but it struck me as very Aristotelian, as a understanding of his role.
Good question. I mean, I think there are some, well, I think there are, you know, smart guys think about politics, they're going to think about the same thing. So thank you. I guess I'm a little less leaning towards the Earth level analogy than some people who have written on Mckin are.
I think, for example, well, I mean, he came about Harry Jaffa, who seems to think, at least in his first book, a very great book that influenced me quite a lot, although I also take issue with it in many places. But so Harry Jaffa had this view that Lincoln was really an Aristotelian who wasn't as committed as he seemed to the modern principles of the American regime. I just haven't been disagree with that. I think he was committed to those modern principles.
And so I thought I wouldn't go so far as to ask you. I mean, just the combination of sort of moral or political excellence, the prudence with a respect for law. Yeah. You don't always sit well together, right?
I mean, it's a problem as old as. Yeah. Yeah. Well, one of the things that I do in my book that I expect to get a little eat from some of the historians anyway, is I argue that, you know, so Lincoln, on this issue, Lincoln is one of them for us to have, as we say, going outside the boundaries of the Constitution.
So the two examples that are most often raised in this context are his freedom of Haiti's corpus that is, I don't know whether all of you listeners are aware of this, but Lincoln the suspended the Haiti's corpus clause or the writ of Haiti's corpus very rather early in the war. And by the time it was over, he suspended it throughout the entire country, which was, you know, I should say a move beyond the ordinary way in which he was corpus, he was suspended usually in particular theater and a particular occasion, not for long periods of time and over great geographic areas. And Lincoln did that and he was, he's been pretty much criticized for that, although some people use the defense that well, necessity required it. I want to argue that I do argue, I'm not really going to argue, I did it.
Lincoln made the defense that in fact, if you read the Constitution correctly, he didn't have the power to actually suspend the Haiti's corpus and that he, since he had the power, he had the right to judge where it was necessary and where not. And so that what he did was, I argue perfectly wasn't even not on superposition. Someone who would argue with, I'll just push back half of an objector would say, well, you know, of course the Constitution does allow for the suspension of the writ of Haiti's corpus, but that allowances in Article 1 of the Constitution, which should make clear to anybody who can read this with common sense that this, you know, Congress can suspend their Haiti's corpus. Yeah.
Well, this was the main argument, of course it was made by Chief Justice 20 when he took out the Haiti's corpus issue in a, in a case, very mere in case, well, in case of the court. So in 20's argument, I mean, I did the research on this and 20's argument is still pretty much the standard accepted argument today. Some people would go a little beyond 20's and say, well, you know, there was a big necessity. So, you know, he gets the, we'll cut him a little slack for a short while, but interestingly, well, interestingly, Article 1, Section 9, where this suspension clause occurs, isn't in fact directed only to Congress.
It says, for example, no money shall be drawn from the treasury except under, you know, appropriations by Congress, something like that effect. That's not directed at Congress, that's directed at the executive. So I would say if we look at, if we looked at relevant constitutional provision, it's not so clear that this leaves it with the legislature. So I mean, that would be one of the main arguments that I would make in favor of the Clinton's reading of the...
I was also a little bit impressed. I've also been impressed always by Lincoln's argument that his fidelity is his first duty as Chief Executive is to his oath of office, right? So that my primary duty is actually to defend the Constitution and keep it intact. And so, you know, what good does it do to let part of the leadership?
To all the laws, to all the laws be, for the sake of honoring one of them. I think that's a very good point, very good argument. Because what he's appealing to there is the fact that the executive always has to make some judgment as to what can be enforced at any given time and whatnot. And that this would be illegitimate.
Even if there were no express delegation of that power to the executive, this would justify the executive under the executive. Now, I don't believe that is the main appeal that the nation makes. I mean, I think that is a second very much. That is even if my argument that the suspension power is wrong, this argument would be a very good support, right?
What I've done. So, yeah, that's again an important position that Lincoln had defended. He was a pretty good constitutional lawyer, you know, I mean, for a guy who never went to law school. You know, that's actually pretty in segue.
You've talked a little about respect for law and I think it probably come back to it. But one of the things that you mentioned, so your three aspects of statesmanship here are some kind of a proper motivation. The statesman must have no technology skills and they must respect law. So that's the second one that I want to talk about, I wouldn't deny, in fact, I would agree that Lincoln strikes me as, I mean immensely skillful and knowledgeable about politics.
One thing that's always puzzled me is, you know, as someone who's tried to study the great books and, you know, where in the world did he learn it? It was just a foreign capacity or like how in the world does, but he seemed to have the ability to comprehend this. Shakespeare, I wonder if that's part of it. No, I'm just thinking.
Oh, okay. Partly. I mean, the thing about Lincoln is he from a very young age. You know, I think of Lincoln and Benjamin Franklin as having this in common.
Interesting. They're very long young, very young age. Both of them, it was clear to both of them, they were the smartest people in town. What about Hamilton?
Hamilton too. I don't know what degree Hamilton thought that. I mean, I don't have as much, I mean, who's the best. Hamilton is the youth as we do with both.
Oh, I see. I see. Franklin. So I don't want to say they were the smartest people in the country.
They were the smartest people in their environment. And interestingly, in both cases, their condition of being so smart was related to a certain skepticism that they developed about religion when they were quite young. A skepticism that I think Franklin kind of kept through his whole life. Lincoln is more able to how Lincoln stood toward religion later in his life to read a second inaugural and it's hard to find me, make a clear judgment about that.
So, okay, so with the answer, you're going to ask, I don't know. You were just like, I am. Yeah, sure. You're connecting to religion as a relationship because I have been working on a review of some Xenophon books recently and just looking at the analysis, it seems as though Xenophon is trying to connect his own political act and into, I think, is political moral and theologic education you receive at the hands of Socrates.
It's just interesting that, yeah, that might be a really important, in other words, if we're left alone and we're not sort of overseen by benevolent deity, we kind of have to take it upon ourselves to figure things out. I think that's that's part of it. Yeah, the skepticism is really good. That's an interesting point.
I'm okay. I think I can connect this to, you define, again, all three things that you send us by, you define, specifically, this is where the task of the states are. The language varies a little bit, but it's all circling, I think, around the same notion, but I'll just read it one second. Yeah.
The task of the statesman is to bring the good and the possible as close to each other as can be done without at the same time endangering further movement toward a closer reconciliation of the two in the future. There's a present moment aspect, good in the possible, and then there's a future moment aspect. Let me just read another version of this thing, which I think is really helpful, this is from your forthcoming book. Hopefully, the University of Kansas Press doesn't get angry at me for reading this on air.
You said, this might be, you said, what makes the proposition true and what makes the proposition effective as a maximum of action are in fact quite different. This, emphatic, this might be the single most important truth about politics, really sticking your claim there. This disparity sets the task, emphatic, the task for statesmanship to make the true and good and right also the effective or to bring those elements as close together as possible, which I think just to go back to the religion question, you have to have a little bit of worry about divine providence to really make that your task, to really try to bring that together and to not rely on some external power to do that. So maybe you can talk a little bit about this notion and because we're maybe almost halfway through, maybe connect this a little bit to what he does in the Peoria speech.
Yeah, good. Okay. So I came to that formulation of statesmanship when he's thinking about the stuff in the Peoria speech that's really the genesis of that for me, for my thinking about it. And let me try to reconstruct the Lincoln's argument that I was thinking about as I was led to that formulation.
I believe, by the way, that this was Lincoln's understanding of statesmanship, but the statesmanship anyway, not that he ever formulated it like this, but at least I think it fits what he was doing. And so in the Peoria address, he is trying to defend the policy of no extension of slavery or the restoration, in that case, the restoration of the three compromise, which Stephen Douglas in his Kansas and the Graspa Act, he had repealed the three compromise, which probably everybody remembers, had drawn a line across the country and said, it's actually said, more of this line there's no slavery. He didn't say anything about South of the line, but inside that there could be slavery South of the line. So it's a Congress to limit the expansion of slavery, but not to limit it entirely.
And this had been in settlement since 1820, and but in 1854, Douglas, sponsor grew up and sponsored this block, which changed that. And in place of the prohibition of slavery and part of the territories, the new Kansas of Grandpa put in place, Douglas's famous policy of popular sovereignty. That is the decision about the slavery or not in the territories would be made by the people in the localities involved. So the Kansas territory, the people of Kansas would decide that not Washington, there would not be a big crisis in Washington.
Yeah, great. Mr. Zuckert, could you quickly at home? I mean, like most a lot of folks who listened to the show are going to know this, but what does popular sovereignty mean?
This is something Douglas was and probably his most contribution to the political understand the Constitution. Yeah. I mean, what he meant to hear was a simple point that the, you know, the majority of the people of the area would make the decision either in their normal legislation or in the Constitution that they drew up for the new state that they were trying to form a new state and that territory. So he really meant, I have this idea, some kind of democratic process would settle the question.
As he said, I don't, he didn't care whether slavery was loaded up or down himself. He didn't care whether it's loaded down. Just to be voted. Just to be voted.
And he, so he wanted, I mean, he wanted to, as we say, three in a fair elections, but he wanted the issue of whether the Jewish establishment, they were to be decided by a vote of the people in the locality. Part of the goal here was to take the issue of slavery out of national politics and put it into a locality where it wasn't going to be so disruptive to American life or so he thought. So anyway, this is in contrast though to the view that there are certain things that are sort of outside of the, the prerogative of majorities to vote or not vote on, right? But there's certain sort of, yes, there's a link.
That's Lincoln's. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah.
So Lincoln in the period dress is the whole address about 50 pages or more is devoted to attacking Douglas and attacking Kansas and press that. And his main reason for attacking the Kansas and press that is that he hates, is he hates this thing cleared indifference to the, to the rightness, or wrongness of slavery. He was in a way, he was more willing to see slavery exist than he was to see an indifference to slavery set in. So when he, so I didn't, I didn't problem.
So what is Lincoln's basis? What are his grounds for being so hostile to slavery? What was the, what was the basis for his position? So as I look at it, he identified three different kinds of arguments against slavery.
The one argument was look around everybody feels in their heart that it is wrong. It's a history says in, in period in 1854, he says, speaking through the audience of a symbol of purians, your sense of justice and human sympathy continually tell you that the poor Negro has some natural right to himself later on. He says, repeal, blueberry compromise, repeal all compromises, repeal the declaration of independence, repeal all past history. You still cannot repeal human nature.
It will still be the abundance of man's heart. That slavery extension is wrong. He says another place. It is very certain that the great mass of mankind consider slavery a great moral one.
And they're feeling against it. It's not evanescent, but eternal. It lies at the very foundation of their sense of justice. So this is one argument that there's a kind of natural feeling in the human art against slavery.
So that's, that's one. The second argument that he makes is an appeal to what he calls his ancient face. And that ancient face is the declaration of dependence and the famous passage that he quotes at the beginning of the Gagitrese, we hold these truths that all men are created equally. And then finally, he served, he has a different argument, which is a rational argument.
This is an argument in favor of equality and against slavery. And it's a little long. Should I read it to your audience or make it board? If I, oh, no, no, already long attention spans.
So you're reflected for emphasis and that all I think driving on. All right. So here's what, here's what he's what he's what he can argue. If a can prove, however, conclusively that he may have right in slave B, why may not be matched the same argument and prove equally that he may enslave A.
You say A is white and B is black. It is colored then, the lighter having the right to enslave the dark. Take care. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet with a Pharisee in their own.
You do not mean color exactly. You mean the whites are intellectually the superiors of the blacks and therefore have the right to enslave them. Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet with an intellect superior to your own.
Let's say you, it's a question of interest. And if you can make it your interest, you have the right to enslave another very well. And if you can make it his interest, he is the right to enslave you. So this is an argument from, I like to think of it as a first person argument and it is Lincoln really fun.
He relates it this way. And it's the first person argument that depends on the inability of the person making your, the instability of the person making the argument to refuse to accept the conclusion of this kind of students in his setup, which is to say, oh, then I can be a slave that is we need none of us can accept slavery for ourselves. This is somehow built into us. And so it's a claim that each one of us as an eye raises for ourselves.
And what Lincoln is trying to show is that any argument we make to prove that to establish the rightfulness of slavery for another will rebound back on us and establish the rightfulness of slavery for us, which we can't accept as true. And so no one would accept being a slave. No one would accept being a slave. And he said, you know, he said, you know, he said in one place, you know, people would share and say, oh, maybe I'll make it with it.
And he says, although I am upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing. We never heard of me. I wish to take care of that by taking it for himself. That's a pretty good argument.
You know, it's a very, very positive. Yeah. So, so let's take these three arguments. I'm still leading up to the question of how I was driven today.
I thought you mentioned about statesmanship. So the first argument that argument from a kind of universal revulsion against slavery, a revulsion in which I can't accept slavery of others. I think Lincoln's point is that so far as that view is in fact accepted, it has a lot of power. If people are really persuaded of that and feel it in a deeply in their hearts, they are likely to oppose slavery and perhaps the abrogance.
The first, that, that, that, I think is true. However, that feeling against slavery is not nearly so universal as Lincoln himself claimed it was. He tells the story of the famous Reverend Ross, who sits there, deliberating with himself about whether this enslaved should be slaves or whether not. And he concludes that Lincoln says, well, Reverend Ross would rather sit in the shade and think about this issue than go out into the sun and dig for his own, dig for his own bread.
So Lincoln's point is when there's a kind of, I should say, there's a kind of interest involved. Many people don't feel this revulsion and Lincoln himself in many places in his speaking in these years recognizes that the sentiment that does or did exist in America was fading, certainly himself, that people were saying slavery is a positive good. So the argument about revulsion, that has a certain force, the one is its felt, but the feeling is not being resolved and not being resolved. The argument from reason, the first person argument I mentioned to you, then argument, Lincoln believed, not at least, that's a perfect argument.
That's a valid argument. However, it's not an argument that's defactual, but it doesn't really influence enough people's actions. And so what Lincoln is led to see in this kind of context is that feeling moves action, reason arrives the truth, but that there's a dimension between what moves to action and what establishes truth that is feeling and reason don't necessarily compare with each other. Michael, on that point, I was revisiting the lyceum speech recently and he talks about feeling and reverence and these things being a motivation for some people, and he talks about calculating reason.
The first one I was discussing was the speech. I wondered if he was actually, like those weren't arguments for different types of people, that there are most people who are passionate about passion, but there are some people who move by cold reason, cold gatherings. So I was wondering if that's not in compatible with the idea that reason doesn't actually move that many people. Yeah, right.
I mean, I don't want to say the reason it moves nobody, but in political life, it's not going to be the thing that's going to go just way down. So, Lincoln, here's where the third of Lincoln's appeal applies, which is the declaration of independence. And I think it's the reason ultimately that leads Lincoln to put the declaration at the center of his rhetoric, because the declaration is an act of faith that he calls it the faith of our fathers is a matter of faith. There's a say it's not held as held by most people held as a rational truth, but it is held as a historical inheritance of our nation of its deeds.
We take pride in this as our founding thought. And so what Lincoln wanted to do is to say this can be this faith is declaration and its pronounce pronouncements about equality and so on rights and equality, that this can be something that would shape and channel feeling to keep it in the aligned with the anti slavery cause. And so what at least what I argue, or at least what I was late to what I was late to believe that what Lincoln was attempting to do while told in his statesmanship was to hold the standard of truth. But only present as far as he could achieve something with it, that is to say there are those who think that Lincoln didn't go far enough in, let's say, welcoming a multicultural society, a society fully integrated, racially integrated.
Lincoln never never endorsed this this fall. And he's often now blamed for that. On the other hand, he makes it clear that the country would not stand for that. And I believe what his life thought was, I can get people to follow me a step one step towards doing towards an anti slavery position.
I can get them to follow me, let's say, to restore them as a recombinized or prohibit the extension of slavery into the territory is at all. But if they think that the end of that road is a fully integrated racial society, they won't even take that one step. And so Lincoln's never endorsed that further step that he thought would prevent the first step from being taken. And I think what he was doing was, let's go as far as we can with the truth more truth in this case, let's not do anything that will foreclose the possibility of a later states and going further that I can go today.
And that's all I can do and that's the good thing to do with that was that was right. So that's what I that's what I'm getting at it. That's how I came to that idea about statesmanship and I think it's explains Lincoln's own statesmanship. And I think it's what's good about it as a definition of statesmanship is it's not strictly speaking derived from Lincoln, like it's an account of Lincoln state graph.
It's a good account of state graph that I think is it's good for people to process what this means. History is full of noble fools who get nothing done, right, you stream it to it. It has no effect. And a prudent man understands that you can only accomplish so much within a short lifetime and that you have to.
And so you see people who say, well, I don't like Lincoln, he wasn't body positive or something. So it's not just that great. You can't do everything all at once. Otherwise, you just, you know, you're, you know, some lunatics, extremely alone, I'm street in this idea that he understood he had to pay lips over the time.
I think one of the greatest bits of evidence in favor of this is the fact that he, I mean, he shifted his position on slavery, right. I mean, his initial position was right, like we don't want, we don't want to. I'm not an abolitionist, right. I'm just trying to keep it from spreading, right.
But then eventually what is he abolished slavery, right. So clearly he thought I have an opportunity here. I can I can avail myself of it. But when it was time to get elected, it was time to actually get people on the side, he had to, you know, pay to the lies at the moment.
Yeah, I would argue. I mean, I don't want to give way. All the good things I put up with are the things that I put up with. I don't get it.
I didn't seem to podcast to do. Well, one of the things I want to say is that he actually linked in the head in mind much earlier than we think the undoing of slavery as his goal. And from the kind of reasons that I've been talking about, he didn't make that an opening statement. There were two kinds of reasons why he didn't talk about that.
One was because, for the reasons we were talking about that is to say, their opinion wasn't there. So he couldn't bring it along. And the other was that, of course, there were constitutional barriers that I at least argue that Lincoln took those constitutional barriers seriously. You know, the legitimate authority of the office was such that it didn't give him the power to interfere with slavery and the state for it existed and that he has president respected that.
And so he did not believe that there was any way he was a federal government in general could in fact just a mild slavery. But I think he did have in mind a scenario that would lead to that, or at least possibly lead to that. And that's what he is, how is he from about 18, certainly from 1858 on was attempting to accomplish something like that. And that, I mean, that just goes to the point that he had loftier conceptions in mind than he had certain parts.
I believe that's true. Yeah. I believe that's one of the things I tried to argue. Yeah.
I have two points on this. One is that in Douglas's two S's oration for Abraham Lincoln later, he says that Lincoln, a statesman, was bound to consult the opinion of the people in a democratic society. So he had to do what you're saying. But to your point of social equality, I actually think you're right that he, I'm intrigued by this because it sounds, therefore, like Lincoln was self-consciously recognizing that there might be a later statesman like human being, like a Martin Luther King, Jr.
for example, who might help bring about this social equality. And I'm struck by, recently I read some of the Lincoln Douglas debates with a colleague of mine, Jason Siemens, and he helped me to see that Lincoln very famously talks about why I don't want socially equality between blacks and whites. And this, he's commonly criticized for this. But if you read the letter of what he says very carefully in the way that one would read sort of the political thought of an aerosol or a Shakespeare or a Plato or something like this, he's actually, he's actually much more nuanced.
And he's saying, I'm not for a perfect social equality, but then what would even perfect social equality mean? And also he distinguishes, I mean, like he makes different speeches in the South of Illinois between the Central and the North in particular. And I think he recognized that there's a limit to what as the statesman he could accomplish. And so he realized I can't actually accomplish perfect social equality.
But I don't think that means that he didn't hope that someday there wouldn't be that social equality. Yeah, I agree. Although on this issue, I think he had, you know, he favored, so he spoke in favor of colonization for a long time. And indeed, even into the Civil War, he was exploring the possibility of colonization.
You know, he had a very famous meeting with a group of black leaders in which he was attempting to kind of interest them, or see how interested they were anyway in colonization. And he learned at that point they were not, they were not all that interested in it. I mean, he thought as Jefferson and others thought that in some ways this would be a better solution for the blacks in that they wouldn't be subjected to a context in which they would look down on as former slaves, as we have some of this unequal, you know, all of the heritage of slavery that we in fact have experienced. He thought, well, maybe this was a chance for a clean start.
And these people can have their own country and show what they can do. And then his own point there might be whatever my own thoughts are, I might recognize that my fellow countryman might not be capable of arriving at the same view that I haven't said there. Like, just because my recognition that my countryman might not be able to arrive at the position of social equality doesn't mean that he doesn't hold that position. I mean, they suggest me, and in that very same place that you're returning to, he says, well, you know, whether this view that we know what social equality is unthinkable, whether this view is sound or not, that's not a question.
I even raised that question exactly. He's pointing to the possibility. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
One, one thing you brought up, and this is from the epilogue collection that's the way you want to do it. Yeah. One of the points of Lincoln's figure out that seems very relevant to issues of today is his handling, or as some people playing mishandling of the polarization of the country. I don't know if you've been reading the paper, but we're kind of polarized right now.
That's for people's status. I don't know if you may disagree or you think we're not polarized, but maybe you could do lessons from Lincoln's model for, you know, I don't know, in case Don Jr makes a work for office. Yeah. We're a bit of a quiet inside.
How does that have to be got at this point? As much as much time as you want. Well, Lincoln did indeed. As we said, I mean, he was aware of this nation as polarized.
He spoke, for example, he spoke of it as a house divided, which I think is a pretty clear indication that he saw polarization as a major factor. And there are two things need to be said about how Lincoln responded to that. On the one hand, I think the first thing that should be said is while he was concerned to do something about it. He actually failed.
That is, he didn't prevent secession. He didn't prevent the most bloody war in American history. He didn't prevent the growth of a kind of hatred and animosity among the sections so that if his policy was to undo the polarization, it's not clear that he succeeded. I'm not what's pretty clear he didn't succeed.
That's about what I'm going to. And if Lincoln was to the great states and by all measures, couldn't solve the problem. One wonders what current management is going to accomplish in this matter. And most recent past management, even more so over this stuff.
But he did try to, he did try to mitigate the problem of polarization. Let me just mention some of the things. I mean, he never, he never for example, denounces slave owners as more the evil that he did not aim policy or rhetoric as we put it only in the slavers. You know, like owning the demises, the main, or owning lives, I think that's a better way to put it and say that's one goal.
He did not call them deportables. That was not how they go know. He did not boast of the moral superiority of his tribe and dismissed the other as enemies of mankind. I mean, the way you put it in one of the pieces you quoted, we had that honey goal.
You catch more flies than that. But another way, you intimated that he gave them the southern, there's nobler sort of sentiments that they actually had. Like, they'd love to be getting rid of this, right? They just rather than the real fact in ours, they enjoyed it quite a bit, right?
Yeah, let me read you. I mean, in one of his statements in the period, I think he says, I think I have no prejudice against the southern people. They are just what we would be in their situation. If slavery did not know it's just amongst them, they would not introduce it.
And if it did now exist amongst us, we should not instantly give it up. Just I believe other masses would do anything south. And if you are coming on that quotation, that's a perhaps generous, overly generous view about the southernness because they were seeing slavery as many of them were seeing it as positive good. And we're looking for new territories to plant it in, including acquiring new territories for the U.S.
effort. I don't have time to find the quote. I was trying to find it. Maybe you'll know it.
But I've always wondered, or I've always, I guess I kind of thought actually that Lincoln's ability to forgive the South and his emphasis on reconciliation. He has some quotes in some passages where he seems to imply that he was inclined to something like, I don't know if I'm going to phrase this, probably like determinism or that kind of like the philosophic view that people are compelled to follow their own good. And so there's a kind of just understanding in this way. You're not familiar with the passage.
I'll see if I can find it, but just sort of recognition that people just act out of a sort of compulsion, which he, yeah, but yes, he said that on more than one occasion. Right. He did seem to accept some version of necessitarianism. One sort or another.
It's a little unclear exactly how he's understanding that. In the second inaugural address where he's very generous, the end, reconciliation, he takes something like that position. And as far as his efforts to mitigate the polarization of the country, the second inaugural is perhaps the greatest example of that because they're, no doubt. He is, I mean, one, you know, in talking about the second inaugural, I like to compare it to the battle game of the Republic, the battle game of the Republic, a great statement that came out of the Civil War.
But the main point is this my mind is my eyes are singing glory of the coming of the Lord. And this coming of the Lord is the Union army. That's what this, the author of this poem is talking about the Union army as the Artillery, so to speak, of the Lord, and that the clear claim there is that God is on our side, and he's going to scramble out the Great, the Great, the Great, the Wrath, and he's going to do all these things because God has been punished himself and vindicate the North. And this idea that God is on our side, of course, it turned out he wrote this very, very, more, the word drag on for the World War and joined him, didn't turn out quite the way she was hoping or did it eventually, but not the first.
But the second inaugural is completely different from there. We can second inaugural wants to say, we don't know who side God was on, God has decreased the end of slavery, but it wasn't like a triumph for us, the good guys. This was a punishment that God has put on both of us, both parties, for our, for a merit, what he calls American slavery, not so in slavery. And so, to view there is, we don't know what God's aims are here, exactly, but it behooves us not to punish the South.
We've already suffered, they suffered, we've suffered, it's time to try to pull together and make it, that's what we got. And keep with that providential note, there is this, to return to the polarization issue. There is this question of restoring polarization, there's the other side of it, which is, well, what's actually good of the country, right? And within all these, I think goes back to historical argument, right, there are three arguments, arguments, reason the argument from feeling.
And then the argument from history or fame. So, yeah, so he seemed, it seems like, as a matter of statecraft, he put living up to restoring or returning to the principles of the declaration, as, as in a way the centerpiece of his, use a really annoying phrase, policy agenda. Oh, geez, Alex. Between his platform and his statecraft.
There's no word for in between those two. Yeah, I wonder, you ended your epilogue from the construction of essays, which is very, a very tourist note about what was given the actions that leaves in our date seems that these lessons still need to be learned. I'm just like, do go on, please. I thought it would be interesting to hear, to what extent, maybe this is kind of catching maybe a little bit off guard.
So, what extent do you think, or in what way do you think a state cement today should he arise, you know, ignoring the current current crop? Yeah, or she would ignore the current crop. I mean, how do we draw on the declaration in such a way as to treat our current divides? That's a good question.
I mean, the million dollar question. Yeah. So the question is, for sure, the declaration, I mean, yeah, let me, let me take my time. No.
So I think the first question, I think the first issue would be, well, one of the issues I think is relevant is why did Lincoln fail to curb the polarization of his time? And the answer, I think, is because the divide that existed then was in fact unbridgeable. In fact, that what the Southerners wanted was for the north to accept slavery, not necessarily, you know, in their own states, or some of them might have gotten to accept slavery as morally okay. And to accept the idea of expanding slavery into territories acquiring Cuba, for example, that was part of the platform of all except the Republican Party at the time of the 1860 election, acquired Cuba where you didn't have slavery, acquired some large hearts of Central America, they had their IMF.
So the idea of expanding slavery was their idea and Lincoln's Lincoln and I think in general, the Republican Party from that unacceptable and would not actually say sign on to the indifference towards slavery that even Stephen Douglas was encouraging. So there was no there was no way to bridge that divide in that time. So that raises the question. I mean, at our time, is there a way to bridge our divide?
And one of the interesting things, I think what he thinks about our time is that it's a little difficult to say just what exactly the divide is. I had a conversation with a former student of mine today in which he said, well, the divide he thinks is more unbridgeable than it was in make its time, because it's a complete divide over life views, a built on shadow of conflict in which there's one group which believes in an ordered universe and ordered nature another group that rejects those claims. Now, I'm not sure I would go so far, but that's at least a possible way of talking about what the situation that we face today is. I am going to have more inclined to think that there's that divide is potentially bridgeable because, yeah, well, let me, let me maybe I'll come back to that because in a minute.
I think the divide might be bridgeable, but each side is going to have to give up something in order to get it. And so what my view of this might be what do we need now more than anything we need to restore trust in each other. That that's the thing that's going and what trust is absent. Little is actually possible.
So for everybody who's still interested in making this country work, I think trying to restore trust is the first most important thing. And that means I think each party must give up something. The Republicans are the conservatives. Everyone's back.
You have to give up Trump. They have to give up Trump because Trump is not committed to this nation. He's not committed to its principles. He's committed to his own advancement.
And he led a movement which was, in my opinion, simply this wasteful, I mean, January 6th in their box, not really the attack on the Capitol, but this plot to from the electors and my parents and all of that. So I think that Trump and serious Trumpers have to be given up by the Republicans. I think the Democrats have to give up, not give up, but have to say to the left wing of their Democratic Party, not now. What we need to do is to find the center and to restore trust.
That's the primary need. And therefore, however valuable your goals may be, we can't see them now. And maybe we'll stay open to those possibilities later on sometime. And I think Biden failed as president in not seeing that that was really what was needed, not merely as some people say that his mandate to extend to a new appeal, a better deal, a newer door, newer there.
But it isn't really what his mandate extended to. That's what the country needed and called for. And interestingly, to refer to that to an earlier podcast that I did with you guys, the podcast about Lincoln's UOG for the Henry Clay. You may remember that in that place, Lincoln talked about clay as somebody who fails to understand the nature of democratic politics.
That is the politics in which going to the people and educating the people is the first task. And then Henry Clay thought politics was about the legislature and making deals and giving important speeches in the legislature. But remember Lincoln calls attention to the clay, didn't give forth its life versus and didn't give you a cheese for diet that politicians. And I think what Lincoln was getting in here was that clay just didn't get what democratic politics are really about.
And I think Biden should come to the same problem for the same reason that his body has a whole career in Congress and Senate. And he thought that's what politics in America was about, you know, maneuvering in the Senate. And he had a lot of confidence that he could accomplish great things through his experience in the Senate. But in fact, that was not, again, even if he could have, that wasn't what was needed.
He was needed is to go out to the country and do things that he's not being successful in doing. Yeah. I mean, when wishes Biden some more time trying to win over the Senate and trying to control people, I mean, it seems like he's pursued a sort of extreme agenda without any regard to winning votes. But I think the point that you're bringing across, you know, it's very difficult because the criticism of clay from Lincoln was what, right?
It was, it was, you're not pushing hard enough, right? You're not, you're, you're putting the right place in the wrong way. Yeah. And then, but then his criticism of probably the abolitionist would be you're too pure in your, your pursuit, your principles.
Yeah. And maybe I'm just bringing this around a hairstyle on the weird way, but it seems like finding the sweet spot between pursuing the just and pursuing what's effective is, right? Clay is too, too much in, you know, the, you know, too much of an institution man, right? Too much just trying to work from within.
You know, the abolitionists are still outside. Nobody, nobody cares. Listen to them. Whereas Lincoln really tries, I mean, to borrow your phrase again.
And he was trying to bridge the effective, right? Right. Right. Right.
The conjunction that in the present, it doesn't destroy, doesn't destroy the possibility of their further conjoining or further coming together in the future. Right. Right. Yes.
That's, that's why I think he's taught. Certainly the way I see it. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. And, yeah, I don't know if that gives us a solution to the current problem, but that's at least what I advise it's anybody. Yeah. There.
I mean, I guess you have to say, you know, what do people, what should people, what should people do starting from the fact that there aren't people who are on all sides. That's true. Well, I think that trust is a something we should all aim for. And I think that folks at home can trust that when we have Michael Zuberdon, they're going to learn some stuff about Abraham Lincoln.
And they can trust that they make a medium to large donation quality programming like this episode will be brought to them on a continuous. That's right. We're brought today by folks like you at home and they can trust, they can trust that they will get more wisdom from our podcast from, than from flag tailors. Where are you picking on poor flag?
I'm going to get Michael. Well, happy, happy President's Day to all the folks at home. Happy celebration, maybe having Lincoln's birthday and Michael, it's, it's a treat as always. You're now our first three feet.
Is that right? I think so. And we hope that's again. Yeah.
I can't emphasize this enough. My father loves history and, you know, because he's French is usually French history, you know, the French enjoy that. But I'm going to get your book as a gift because I think it's remarkably smart. It's readable and it's, it's the right kind of history.
Right? I was talking with friends. I was just saying, to problem with most histories, it's written by historians, but there were more than more Thucydides or church halls. Right?
So I like that somebody's coming out with an eye on the enduring questions. Michael, can you remind us of the name of the book again? It's going out with University of Kansas Press. When can people expect it and what's the title?
The title is a nation so conceived, Abraham Lincoln and the paradox of democratic sovereignty. It's coming out, I'm told, in the fall, fall of 2022. You're in University Press of Kansas to get it exactly right. The University Press of Kansas folks.
We'll make sure to tweet it out. We'll make sure to promote it when it comes out and we'll read, we'll retweet this episode as well. So thanks again. It was a real treat happening on here.
Okay. Well, thank you all. We'll treat to be here. See you next time.