Twilight of the Republic: Empire and Exceptionalism in the American Political Tradition

4. Abraham Lincoln: An Ideally United, Potentially Unbound Union

4 AbrAhAm lInColn An Ideally United, Potentially Unbound Union Up to this point we have moved from the western shores of England to the eastern shores of New England and farther south to Philadelphia. The movement has run from the early seventeenth-century American wilderness to a thriving city in the late eighteenth century. The next jump requires yet another plunge into a new century and milieu, into a time and situation of great consequence for the country: the Civil War. What changes, if any, have occurred from the founding period to the Civil War period in regard to the self-conception of the American people? To determine this, we will examine the articulations of the latter period’s most prominent spokesman: Abraham Lincoln. Now that the project has gained some trajectory from the materials already examined, the way forward is fairly clear. After a consideration of Lincoln’s representativeness, three major speeches of Lincoln’s presidency will be taken up and examined according to the criteria already established. Sources of the Idea of American Exceptionalism An analysis of the writings of John Winthrop yielded three main elements by which he could be called the father of American exceptionalism. The Puritans’ particular conceptions of the role played by universality, history, and God in their politics seemed to foster a worldview that is one of the sources of the idea. The unity of the new colony was the main concern, for it was the only way to achieve their end, the founding of a new kind of community and politics that would be an example to the world. The sense in which unity was to be maintained was in their common work and belief. All were to work for the same religio-political end via the same particular means: submission to the covenant laid before them in the early days of the 85 86 Twilight of the Republic colony. The tremendous cohesiveness required by the covenant represented, perhaps, a fatal flaw in the system; the initial unity did not long persist.1 By the late eighteenth century a broader unity of a different sort was thought necessary for the preservation of the extant order. Though the preservation of the colonial order by means of apparently fundamental changes seems counterproductive, the colonists saw the acts and emerging patterns of imperial Britain as radically and unacceptably innovative. Guarding against pernicious innovation required casting off British rule altogether and setting up a new kind of government. The American federal structure of government was neither wholly old nor wholly new. It was an attempt to balance the efficacy necessary to a nation that was seeking to establish its rightful place among the nations of the world—particularly in matters of commerce and war—while maintaining deference to local control and existing structures that had already been governing the former colonies. This new, limited unity was a political aim very different from the radically cohesive oneness of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, but it achieved some of the same basic purposes. Even in its youth as a country, the United States became increasingly secure economically and militarily and was able to meet the challenge of an admittedly distracted and weakened England. Even this limited oneness was not uncontroversial, but it was made possible through particular compromises that circumscribed it within definite boundaries, as shown in the new union’s Constitution. Yet the nature and conditions of the bond enacted in that document were, by the mid-1800s, under serious dispute. At the center of the debate, then and now, stands Abraham Lincoln. His words and actions determined both the course of the conflict at the time and how that conflict has been viewed ever since. The latter is particularly of interest. For, though the symbols we are able to discover in the most consequential speeches of his presidency are corroborated by the various actions undertaken by the government while he was in that office, the depth of our understanding regarding Lincoln’s place in American history and the history of the idea of American exceptionalism remains the primary concern. We are here not concerned, then, with the constitutionality or morality of Lincoln’s actions. Neither is the present chapter an evaluation of Lincoln’s greatness or efficacy as a chief executive or commander in chief—such books have been writtenandrewritten.Furthermore,Iamnotconcernedwithtreatingwhether Lincoln himself was an exceptionalist—just as in the previous chapter I Abraham...