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A Libertarian’s Lincoln

A political scientist finds much to admire about the sixteenth president—but scant connections between him and our current leader.

by Elesha Coffman | March 25, 2009

We had a guest in my "U.S. History since 1865" classes last week, Thomas Krannawitter from Hillsdale College in Michigan. Krannawitter was in town to lecture on his latest book, Vindicating Lincoln, and address my colleague's political science classes. It fit his schedule to visit my history classes, too. Even though the syllabus indicated that we were heading into the 1960s instead of the 1860s, my guest had no difficulty bridging the chronological gap with an analysis of changing perspectives on the Constitution and what came to be called civil rights.

Before proceeding, let me be clear that I do not know whether Krannawitter would call himself a libertarian. I did not ask him, nor do I know nearly enough about political philosophies to understand who might be flattered or horrified by association with the term. Wikipedia defines at least 10 strains of libertarianism, one of which includes small-government constitutionalists, and that's at least his ballpark. I should also admit that I have not read Vindicating Lincoln, so my comments refer to a guest lecture rather than to any published work. (It seems I'm on a roll with admitting things here. I don't enjoy Tolkien. There. I said it.)

To create a conversation using data points from my History 102 course, I asked Krannawitter, "How did civil rights legislation of the 1950s and ?60s continue or deviate from the Reconstruction Amendments we studied back in January?"

With a little prodding, my students were able to recall those amendments: the 13th, abolishing slavery; the 14th, granting equal protection to all American citizens; and the 15th, granting voting rights regardless of race, color, or prior servitude. Krannawitter then sketched an even longer historical narrative on the board, writing Declaration of Independence, Constitution, 13th, 14th, 15th Amendments, Plessy v. Ferguson, Brown v. Board of Education, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I will summarize his comments on each.

The Declaration of Independence, Krannawitter said, asserted equality among humans based on equal possession of natural rights. This seemed to be his ideal statement of political philosophy. The Constitution basically translated this notion of rights into government, but it compromised on slavery, because without such compromise it could not have amassed sufficient support of the governed to pass. In the middle of the 19th century, when that compromise frayed, Abraham Lincoln led the country into war to restore African Americans' natural rights. Lincoln had argued for these rights in his debates with Stephen Douglas, and he was willing to sacrifice millions of Union soldiers for this cause. Without Lincoln, Krannawitter averred, there might not have been a Civil War. Few other Americans of the era were willing to take support for natural, inalienable rights as far as he was.

Following the war, the Reconstruction Amendments brought the Constitution in line with the promise of the Declaration of Independence. Unfortunately, instead of ushering in a just and equitable republic, Reconstruction gave way to the long regime of Jim Crow, which Krannawitter described as nothing less than a brutal campaign of domestic terrorism. In Plessy v. Ferguson, an 1896 case about railroad cars in Louisiana, the Supreme Court upheld the Jim Crow emphasis on racial segregation, allowing for "separate but equal" facilities. Only Justice John Marshall Harlan dissented from the ruling, complaining not that separate facilities were inherently equal, but that any law taking account of race was automatically unconstitutional, because the Constitution recognizes no such distinction. "There is no caste here," he wrote. "Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law." According to Krannawitter, Lincoln would have emphatically agreed.

In the 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the Supreme Court threw out the separate but equal idea, but, to Krannawitter's chagrin, it did not use Harlan's reasoning. Instead, the Court drew on, among other things, a study by educational psychologists that asserted children were mentally harmed by segregation. In other words, the decision rested more on social science and the needs of groups (in this case, African-American children) than on natural individual rights enshrined in a color-blind Constitution. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 went even further in identifying and seeking to meet the needs of various demographic groups. Krannawitter finds the ubiquitous racial check-boxes on employment applications prompted by this act especially galling. He checks or writes in "other: human."

Most controversially, Krannawitter ended his guest stint in my class by suggesting that, despite President Obama's many evocations of the Lincoln legacy, the only thing the men have in common is Illinois roots. Lincoln, to Krannawitter, represents the individual rights school of thought. Obama comes from the group rights school founded by early 20th century Progressives (whom Krannawitter really dislikes). Lincoln saw the role of the U.S. government as preventing some citizens from infringing upon the natural rights of other citizens. The list of rights is small and never essentially changes. Obama, as a Progressive, sees the role of the government as granting rights not just for protection from other citizens, but for things like health care, a living wage, and decent housing. The list of rights grows whenever the government is willing and able to expand it.

I don't know if I agree with Krannawitter's narrative. It did make me wonder a lot about intersections between Christian thought and the individual vs. group rights debate. Many, but not all, of the founders who touted natural rights were Deists, taking their philosophical cues from the Enlightenment rather than the church. Many, but not all, of the activists in 20th century campaigns for civil rights were Christians. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any Scriptures that either identify "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" as God-given rights or mandate Equal Employment Opportunity. I suspect that Lincoln, who could see both sides of so many issues, could see both sides of this one as well.

Comments

Elesha,

Outstanding. The world has gained a top-notch history prof in you. Proud to know you! Some day you'll walk into one of your classes and I'll be in the back row, beaming--and taking notes.

Thank you for pointing us to this book. I'm always amazed at the low esteem with which Lincoln is held in the Christian community and the amount of revisionism that has been engaged in by Christians who should know better to besmirch Lincoln.

Why the reference to libertarianism? Thomas Krannawitter is not a libertarian, and neither was Lincoln.

Lincoln was no libertarian; he paved the way for a big, centralized Federal government to make "kept slaves" of all people. Anyone who reads "Vindicating Lincoln" should read it in light of work by Thomas DiLorenzo, particularly "The Real Lincoln" and "Lincoln Unmasked."

But Lincoln pushed the US into the war because his only objective was to preserve the union. He seems to disregard Lincoln's own words on the subject. Lincoln said that if he could save the union without freeing the slaves he would. If he could do by freeing all, he would. Or if he could free some, and not others, he would do that as well. Lincoln didn't [care] about the slaves, he was out to preserve the union, no holds barred.

teTo paraphrase Mark Noll, Lincoln did for the "military-industrial" complex what FDR did for social and economic reform. By expanding the federal power of the military -- as FDR did by expanding federal power in terms of Social Security, Fannie Mae, etc. -- Lincoln opted to bypass the "free market" mechanism of resolving the secessionist issue, and subsequently the dilemma of slavery.

The parallels are fascinating. FDR felt that the federal government needed to step in to fix the economy. Lincoln felt the same way regarding the integrity of the union. But clearly, Lincoln was conflicted. As Krannawitter suggests, Lincoln believed in the libertarian ideals of non-racially based citizenship, but he was willing to sacrifice other libertarian ideals; i.e. mainly, the principle of states rights, to achieve these ideals. Neither FDR nor Obama was/is willing to wait for the "free market" to resolve a financial crisis. Lincoln did not have the stomach for waiting for slavery to dissolve itself on its own, as many Southerners thought would eventually happen. But Lincoln did have the stomach for war -- a war that left many war dead, that impoverished the South for many, many decades, and that did not satisfactorily resolve the race issue.

Every libertarian idealist faces the temptation to circumvent those ideals with pragmatic, "realistic" concerns.

In response to the author's comment regarding scriptures identifying God-given rights, some would argue the God given right of freedom of informed choice is implicitly stated in the Genesis narrative (i.e., Genesis 2:16-17). Though God commanded Adam and Eve not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the presence of that tree gave them the choice to disobey and God told them the results of choosing the tree over God would be death.

Adding to Clarke's reference to Lincoln's conflict between the libertarian ideals of non-racially based citizenship and the principle of states rights, that conflict seems to have strong parallels between the Reformation's conflict between Augustine's doctrine of the church and his doctrine of grace. Which is more important, the ideals by which the organization was founded, or the ideals of the organization's identity?

Of course Krannawitter isn't a libertarian. But who else did as much for liberty in the US as Lincoln? If he's not a libertarian, the problem may lie more with libertarianism than with Lincoln. A libertarianism that can't look slavery in the face doesn't have much to do with liberty.

It's moronic to say that "Lincoln didn't [care] about the slaves." He could have build a stronger federal government in a variety of ways if that were his only goal. He didn't have to sign the Emancipation Proclamation and work for the thirteenth amendment which ended slavery in the US. But he did.

There are people out there who think that DiLorenzo and other writers of that sort are giving them some new truth that they didn't learn in school, but in fact DiLorenzo and his associates are just reheating old myths that have long been discredited. Anti-Lincoln myths aren't less tired and threadbare than the Lincoln myths that some pride themselves on seeing through.

To read some of the posts above, you would think that the wrong side won the Civil War. The curious thing is that Lincoln was such an admirer of Jefferson.

The logical progression of Jefferson's thought was a society of gentlemen farmers supported by forced labor. The logical result of his opponent Hamilton's philosophy was a society where everyone had a chance to succeed at whatever they dreamed to be: lawyer, doctor, businessman, banker, mechanic, farmer, etc.

In other words, Hamilton envisioned a world like ours and Southern arrogance forced Lincoln to fight a war to make that world accessible for all. In the 1960s, another war of sorts was waged to ensure that it would be accessible for African Americans as well.

Before getting all squishy about Lincoln, read the books on Lincoln by Thomas DiLorenzo AND bear in mind that all history is written by the winners.

I do not share the featured professor's idolatry of the man who stamped out the right of secession from an unfair union. The man acted unconstitutionally, destroyed states rights and foisted the leviathan upon us that is now consuming us all.

There is no "right" of secession. The union had been unfair in that the southern minority had been able to use the racist 3/5 rule to artificially impose its will on the northern and western majority. It was necessary to abrogate certain constitutional rights in Maryland, for example, in order to save the Union. It is entertaining to hear criticisms of Lincoln violating the Constitution from those who would insist on those rights being denied to others on the basis of race and ethnicity.

If I understand Chris correctly, he is criticizing Lincoln for not waiting until the “free market” did away with slavery. I would just point out that it was the South that opened fire on Ft. Sumter when the election didn’t go their way. It is interesting that the British managed to abolish slavery by simply passing a law in their democratically elected Parliament, and having British slaveholders, who were loyal subjects of the King, obey that law. By contrast, when Lincoln was democratically elected, southern slaveholders, anticipating that he would abolish slavery, committed treason and made war on their own country.

I also suppose that slaves living in the 1860’s would not have been enthusiastic about waiting until slavery “dissolved on it’s own”- perhaps in their great grandchildren’s lifetimes. As a descendant of slave owners, I recoil when I read wills written by my ancestors in which they bequeath slaves to their family members in the same sentence as “the second best bed,” mules, and farm equipment. We would all do well to remember the words from Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address inscribed on the wall of the Lincoln Memorial:

“Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether'.”

While it’s not clear whether he believed in “big government,” Lincoln, although he was not a baptized Christian, apparently believed in a “big God."

The Declaration of Independence is unambiguously a Declaration of Secession. The document is eloquent in its statement of the fundamental right "for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another.... If, as an earlier comment stated, "there is no right to secession", then government is just another form of slavery in the guide of collectivism. It is unfortunate that so many who identify themselves as Christians fall for the idea of coercive collectivism.

The Declaration laid forth the grievances of colonists against the Crown. It never purported to be a system of government. When many of the same people who signed that document set forth a system of government, they made no provision for secession. They did refer to treason.

Every form of government is--to some degree--a form of "coercive collectivism". I may not have approved of George Bush's Iraqi adventure, but I did not stop paying taxes. One of those who "fell" for the idea of "coercive collectivism" was the Apostle Paul. Read Romans 13. And he was talking about a government far more coercive than the 19th c US govt. A Roman emperor would not only have crushed the Confederacy, he would have killed all of the Confederate leaders and either killed or enslaved their families. And Paul told us that the Emperor is God's servant, sent by Him for us to obey.

I think the assertion that "most of the founding fathers were Deists" is not correct. I would refer you to primary resources for determining the truth of these matters. There are actually letters from so many of our founding fathers that have been preserved and are available online to see now. I think all but one or two were Christians and many of them we can find out what religion they were. This was one of the topics at a conference I was at in January, and we were dealing with primary resources. Now I am going to have to go look for them and post them here. I believe one book is called "Faith of Our Founding Fathers".

The only two well-known Founders who could be described as Bible believing Christians were Alexander Hamilton and Patrick Henry. Whether they were Deists per se or not, Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, and Adams could not be described as Bible believing Christians. Adams' son John Quincy was a very devout Christian. Adams, however, very explicitly denied the Resurrection before his death. Washington was, I believe, briefly denied Communion by a very zealous Episcopal priest because of his unbiblical views. Franklin praised the positive effects of Christianity on the citizenry but never accepted it. Jefferson's New Testament devoid of miracles is well known.

I think it's important to define who the founders were. There were 56 signers of the Declaration, 14 presidents from 1774-1789, about 36 military leaders, 55 men at the Constitutional Convention, and the 90 members of the First Congress, the Supreme Court members, and members of the first cabinets. This would give you around 250 "Founding Fathers". Of these none were atheists, a handful were deists, and the vast majority were men of faith. I would refer you to "Original Intent" by David Barton, chapter 6.

When reference is made to the Founders, almost no one is thinking of the 56, or the 14, or the 36, or the 55, or the 90. They are thinking of the men I have mentioned. It is also worth considering that in that era, someone who was an atheist would scarcely admit to it.

Truly, it doesn't matter how many "founders" there were. What we are supposedly discussing here is, do we, as Christians, think that leaders of the southern states were justified in making war on their own country in order to uphold their "right" to maintain the institution of slavery. I don't make excuses for my father's family; they had the Bible, they had the example and teachings of Jesus, yet they continued to treat human beings as livestock, and to take up arms to defend the practice. Most of them ended up in poverty after the Civil War, but the South engineered its own poverty by basing its economy on a quasi-feudal, "plantation" model. My father's family were "wannabe" aristocrats, who didn't know what to do when there were no more slaves to do the work they had never learned how to do.

It should at the same time be noted thatboth slavery and Jim Crow lasted as long as they did because the people of the North were just as racist as those of the South.

You're right about that, Bill. A little earlier in the 2nd inaugural, Lincoln says "that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came,"

My mother had a half-sister who, for reasons unclear, had rather dark skin for somebody from a "white" family. Nevertheless, she was generally accepted as white, and met with no discrimination in 1930's Oklahoma City. However, she was refused service in a restaurant once-"I'm sorry, we don't serve colored people here," in Boston.

David--TY. I am astonished that your mother's half-sister met no discrimination in 1930s Oklahoma City. Oklahoma was the scene of some of the most brutal attacks on African American communities in the country in the post-WW I period. Whole communities were destroyed, I believe.

Clarke--As to Lincoln, his goal was to restore the Union. He did oppose slavery but only decided to end it when it was evident that there was no other way to defeat the Confederacy. Ending slavery and the political power of the Old South was good for the country as it enabled us to build the foundation for the industrial and economic superpower that we have become.

The Civil War gave much less to African Americans. Lincoln, in particular, had come to believe that the freedmen and women had earned true equality and, in fact, a speech he gave to that effect inspired Booth to carry out his plan to assassinate Lincoln.

The country was not ready for Lincoln's vision as expressed in the 13th. 14th, and 15th Amendments. Slaves were granted freedom by the 13th Amendment, but the 14th Amendment was applied to aid just about every aggrieved group EXCEPT African Americans during the next 100 years and the 15th Amendment voting rights were also a dead letter during that period. Read Gabor Borit's "Gettysburg Gospel." The problem was not Lincoln's prosecution of the war, but American racism.

I disagree with your assessment of the progress of American government. Our government adapted to meet the demands of the modern industrial world. Our attitudes toward racism, unfortunately, did not begin to change until we were confronted with the logical outcome of racism and intolerance by WW II. Only then did we begin to experience the new birth of freedom of which Lincoln spoke.

As to religion in the Founding Era, the average American practiced traditional Christianity. The thing is that Washington, Adams, Franklin, Jefferson, and Madison were not average Americans. Of course, neither were Hamilton and Henry, but they found faith. And I would disagree that modern American government has really hurt the Church. Keeping the Church out of the public sphere or at least limiting its role in the public sphere is better for the Church as well as society.

We're straying a little here, Bill, but it's kind of complex. Yes, those terrible things happened, but I suspect they were incited more for political reasons than racial prejudice. When I was in first grade in a rural school near Seminole, OK, I rode to school in a yellow school bus. "Negro" students rode in a yellow bus with black fenders. Their little country school was even more run down than the one I attended. In my school I had a friend who, by his color, would have been classified in the north as African-American, but he was a member of the Seminole Indian tribe (which was formed partly by intermarriage between Creeks and runaway slaves).

Segregation in the south was based on some rather quaint 19th century theories about "race" (I remember my father talking about "the German Race," and Jews were considered to be a "race," for example). I didn't fully grasp this until I took a college course in the anthropology of South Africa (back during the Apartheid era), and learned about the convoluted methods used there to determine a person's "race." So my aunt's family's neighbors could tell themselves that she was "Indian," even though I know for a fact that there was gossip that the the family had "negro blood". People chose to see what they wanted to see.

It occurs to me that one possible consequence that would have ensued if the South had succeeded in seceding, would be that this region would still resemble South Africa in the 1970's.

David--On Long Island, where I am originally from, the tribes were subjugated to the point where they were kept as slaves along with African Americans and they too look African American. The social history of Brazil is interesting. There are about a half dozen distinct groups based on gradation of skin color whereas--as our President discovered--if you are even a little bit "black" you are black.

My impression of Jim Crow is that it was a system designed to keep freedmen and women in as a near a condition to their former state as possible.

If Romans 13 is sufficient grounds for the support of slavery in the form of statist government then we can be certain that it is a great contributor to the undoing of the American experiment in democracy. I agree with the Christian writer, Gary North, that much of the thinking that has informed the American State since The Declaration of Secession (1776)is retrograde to human liberty and social progress.

If Romans 13 is a valid point and authority, then the American Revolution is invalid and all this discussion about Abraham the Tyrant is pointless.

Hmmm. Romans 13 is part of the Bible. IF you are a Christian, there should be no question as to whether it is "a valid point and authority".

The British Crown never had a viable relationship with the American people. America needed its own government. It chose one and that form did NOT allow for secession.

The thinking that has shaped American democracy since 1776 has been progressive and has expanded the notion of freedom to apply to larger and larger segments of society. The only slavery that has existed in this country is that which has been perpetrated on African Americans because of their race.Perhaps you and Gary would be happier if African Americans were still slaves, Native Americans were still being brutalized, and women were still treated like property. Most Americans disagree.

Bill is right--EVERY government is a form of "coercive collectivism"--even the "government" formed by Jefferson Davis. Some of us need to grow up and give up some of our Southern agrarian fantasies.
BTW, my understanding is Lincoln was NOT a fan of Jefferson.
Krannawitter had this to say about a work by DiLorenzo: * * *

Lincoln Unmasked: What You're Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe, by Thomas DiLorenzo.

In this sequel to his 2002 diatribe, The Real Lincoln, Loyola College economist Thomas DiLorenzo continues his assault on America's 16th president. In some minor ways, Lincoln Unmasked is better than The Real Lincoln. In the first book, Lincoln was barely allowed to speak a full sentence, but this time he speaks in sentences on at least five separate pages. Moreover, unlike the earlier book, most of the quotations in Lincoln Unmasked appear to be authentic and are not attributed to the wrong authors.

Otherwise, DiLorenzo serves up more of the same bombast, repeatedly denouncing all scholars who attempt to understand Lincoln sympathetically as "court historians," part of a "Lincoln Cult," whose writings are "myth, fantasy, and idolatry." He almost never engages them in actual argumentation, however. More importantly, he refuses to abandon his oversimplified economic analysis, which is woefully inadequate to explain the legal, political, philosophic, religious, and cultural forces that erupted in the Civil War. For instance, DiLorenzo never explains the nature of abolitionism and its effects on Southern opinion, nor does he even acknowledge such momentous antebellum transformations as the positive-good theory of slavery, the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, or the schism in the Democratic Party's 1860 presidential convention.

DiLorenzo's flawed economic view of history causes him to see only what he likes in the South, while unfairly demonizing the North. He complains, for example, that "Yankees never shied away from using the coercive powers of government to compel others to be remade in their image." Yet on the eve of the war Southerners were demanding federal protection for slavery in all the territories—what, at that time, would have amounted to the greatest increase in the federal government's power in American history.

Professor DiLorenzo writes about Lincoln because he says he wants to recover limited, constitutional government. But his methods are simply not up to the task his subject demands.

—Thomas L. Krannawitter

Lincoln idolized all of the Founders but held Jefferson in particular reverence. There are many references, but this is one that I found readily online:

http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-31450568_ITM

Bill, thanks. This actually conflicts with several biographies I have recently read on Lincoln. Since he was a Henry Clay man and a Whig, I'm not sure an admiration for Jefferson makes much sense.

Prof. Allen Guelzo, a respected Lincoln scholar, has an excellent review of the Krannawitter book, found here: http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.1548/article_detail.asp

Don't know what you have read, but everything I have read over the years reflects that Lincoln idolized the Founders, especially Jefferson. His entire political career revolved around his reinterpretation of the Declaration which was the bedrock of his politics. Read Boritt's The Gettysburg Gospel. The Thomas bio points out that not only did Lincoln idolize Jefferson but that the Republican party took its name from Jefferson's Democratic-Republicans because they saw their platform as being based upon Jeffersonian egalitarianism. Oates' Abraham Lincoln: The Man behind the Myths is another good one. In Sean Wilentz' The Rise of American Democracy, he quotes Lincoln:

"All honor to Jefferson" for introducing the ideal of equality as "applicable to all men and all times."

Lincoln did not connect Jefferson with Jackson and neither did Jefferson. He, Madison, and Adams were all horrified at the rise of Jackson. They had hoped that gentlemen like themselves would run the US forever.

Bill,

I want to say it is the latest book by Allen Guelzo where I got the information, "Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Defined America." Jefferson was of course a Southern agrarian who was violently opposed to the "monied interests" of the East. The Whigs saw themselves as opposed to Jefferson and Jackson.

Jackson, yes. Jefferson, not so much. Remember that after the demise of the Federalists, everyone became Democrat-Republicans or National Republicans. Now it is true that the Whigs adopted many of the Hamiltonian policies and that Jefferson would likely have opposed them had he been alive. But---perhaps you have heard the phrase "marble men"? Jefferson was not seen as connected with the partisan frays of the Jacksonian era--especially not by Lincoln. He may have had an idealized view of Jefferson, but he was certainly an admirer.

Elasha,

I thought your readers might want to be aware of Richard Carwardine's Lincoln Lecture at Wheaton College:

http://isae.wheaton.edu/

as well as another blog concerning religious history here:

http://esrh.blogspot.com/

Best,

Andy

The Lincoln haters of his day detested Lincoln so much, that all through the election of 1860, the South threatened that if Lincoln was elected, they would take this as "A declaration of war".

Think I'm making this up. Nope. Southern historians wrote this AT THE TIME -- in fact, they bragged about it. See one of the first major books written by Southern "historians" explaining the Civil War, within months of Lincoln's death.

"Southern history of the great civil war in the United States" By Edward Alfred Pollard, which is easily available on Google books. Page 37

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