Claiming Lincoln: Progressivism, Equality, and the Battle for Lincoln's Legacy in Presidential Rhetoric

1. Lincoln and the Idea of Equality

ONE Lincoln and the Idea of Equality A B R A HA M L I N C O L N E M B R AC E D A N I D E A of equality that sought to secure individuals’ equal liberty to exercise diverse and necessarily unequal talents and abilities in the pursuit of happiness, under the rule of law, while expecting an inequality of results or outcomes among individuals in that pursuit. Lincoln recognized that this pursuit must be moderated by competing political and constitutional goods, including the fundamental principle of government by consent of the governed, and subject to the practical limitations of political life. This notion of equality—rooted in the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God, and tempered by the realities of political practice—distinguishes Lincoln’s equality from many variants of modern egalitarianism, which often seek to secure equality of substantive outcomes or results, sometimes at the expense of competing political and constitutional goods. Nevertheless, many academics attempt to connect Lincoln’s understanding of equality as a binding national commitment to the pursuit of modern egalitarianism that springs from the American progressives and their modern liberal heirs. On the one hand, many on the American left praise Lincoln as a precursor to modern egalitarianism, as a visionary who ushered in new and improved ideas of equality and national responsibility. On the other hand, many on the right condemn Lincoln as a revolutionary who destroyed the federalism and limited government of the Founders’ Constitution in the name of the necessarily abstract, centralizing, and dangerous principle of equality. While they might disagree about the merits 10 C L A I M I N G L I N C O L N of modern egalitarianism, these observers fundamentally agree about Lincoln’s supposed contribution to it. This connection between Lincoln and modern egalitarianism would seem to be bolstered by the fact that progressive and modern liberal politicians—most visibly U.S. presidents— have routinely sought to appropriate the Lincoln image in their writings and speeches. In this study I will attempt to demonstrate, however, that even though progressive and modern liberal presidents have tried to adopt Lincoln, they have in the process misunderstood, misrepresented, and even ignored Lincoln’s notion of equality. My purpose in this chapter is to examine this supposed connection between Lincoln and modern egalitarianism and to explain Lincoln’s actual understanding of equality. In subsequent chapters I will examine how progressive and modern liberal presidents have misinterpreted, misrepresented, and distorted Lincoln’s equality in their rhetorical attempts to claim Lincoln’s legacy. Lincoln’s Equality as a Precursor to Modern Egalitarianism TheideathatthereissomerelationshipbetweenLincoln’sunderstandingof equality and the modern egalitarianism of contemporary American politics is commonplace. For some, Lincoln is to be praised as a revolutionary who introduced a new regime into American life by establishing the supremacy of the national government over the state governments and by elevating equality as the paramount political goal to be secured by that national government. A representative example of this view appears in Columbia law professor George P. Fletcher’s Our Secret Constitution: How Abraham Lincoln Redefined American Democracy. According to Fletcher, Lincoln departed from and improved upon the constitutional order bequeathed to us by the Founders. “At the heart of this postbellum legal order,” Fletcher claims, “lay the Reconstruction Amendments—the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments. . . . The principles of this new legal regime are so radically different from our original Constitution . . . that they deserve to be regarded as a second American constitution.”1 According to Fletcher, Lincoln is to be praised for supplanting the Founders’ Constitution, which was based upon “the principles of peoplehood as a voluntary association, individual freedom, and republican elitism.” Lincoln’s second constitution, on the other hand, would be guided by “organic nationhood, equality of all persons, and popular democracy.” For Fletcher, the Founders’ Constitution “stood for a maximum expression Lincoln and the Idea of Equality 11 of individual freedom,” which included “the right of white persons to assert themselves freely to seize and control the lives of certain other people known as Negroes.” The second constitution, Fletcher claims, “is dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” As president and rhetorician, Lincoln is said to have laid the groundwork for this new regime with the Gettysburg Address. According to Fletcher, Lincoln’s efforts to refound the nation on the proposition that all men are created equal culminated...