Pazdziernik Archive

A Vigorous Personality

[Archive June 15, 2006]

We will continue to look at the life the great American patriot Ben Franklin (1706-1790) since this year we celebrate his Tercentenary. He was born in Boston on January 17th, 1706. Franklin surely lived a “full life” through learning and applying his “vigorous personality” for the good in service to his country. The first part of my series can be found here.

He is most well-known for his “kite experiment” in 1752 by which he confirmed the relation that lightning and electricity are one and the same. He was acclaimed as an inventor (e.g. lighting rod, harmonica) and the publisher of Poor Richard’s Almanac. He was the first to propose daylight-saving time.

Throughout his life he was involved in public works. His latter years were as interesting as his younger years. Here’s a nice summary of his “second career”:

At the time when most men retire from public life, Dr. Franklin, in 1775, began a second great career of usefulness to his country. He was in his seventieth year when he became a member of the Continental Congress and threw all the weight of his vigorous personality into the cause of independence. He was active on ten committees and worked tirelessly day and night. Thomas Jefferson submitted the original draft of the Declaration of Independence to Franklin who, making a few minor changes, heartily supported it. “We must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately” was Franklin’s wise comment as the members of the Congress affixed their signatures.

The signature of Benjamin Franklin appears on all four of the great state papers by which our independence was achieved — the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Alliance with France, the Treaty of Peace with England , and the Constitution of the United States. No other patriot has this distinction.

His diplomatic negotiations with France were his greatest contribution to American independence, and resulted in the French alliance, without which our independence could not have been established at that time. No one except Franklin, so respected and esteemed both at home and abroad, could have accomplished this. His ability as a diplomat has been unequalled in our history. Franklin arrived in Paris late in December, 1776; a little over a year later the treaty of Alliance was signed, and the French fleet was hurried to the aid of America. Even before this, Franklin had secured extensive loans with which to carry on the war; still more were badly needed. In 1780 General Washington wrote to him, “We must have one of two things — peace, or money from France.” And Franklin responded with money; in all, he secured twenty-six million francs.

Almost overnight the aged philosopher became the idol of the French nation; he was received with special honors in court circles; he was fêted and dined and acclaimed. The ladies adored him; his portrait appeared on snuffboxes, lockets, and every variety of souvenir; in a word, he became the fashion of Paris. Here was the originator of Poor Richard whose maxims of thrift and industry were so appealing to the French here was the great scientist whose experiments with electricity had made him world-famous; and to the French he seemed also to typify all that America was fighting for — liberty and freedom and democracy. Yet with it all he was so delightfully human and unaffected, original in everything he did, wearing his brown fur cap amid the powdered heads and wigs, always ready with a charming witticism or an anecdote sparkling with good humor.

More than a year after the treaty of peace with England was signed, Dr. Franklin asked for his recall from France, and was succeeded by Thomas Jefferson. “You replace Dr. Franklin, I hear,” said the French Minister of Foreign Affairs. “I succeed him; no one can replace him,” replied that eminent gentleman. “When he left Passy,” said Jefferson, “it seemed as if the village lad lost its patriarch.” He landed in Philadelphia in September, 1785, amid great rejoicing. Not yet was he permitted to retire to private life, but was elected President of the Pennsylvania Executive Council, to which office he was three times re-elected.

Where is one’s priority? For Franklin it was service to American independence and to his country. As Franklin’s Poor Richard says, “A good example is the best sermon.” (Thomas Fuller, 1608-1661)

Photo and quotation: Benjamin Franklin Apostle of Thrift and Frugality © 1938 John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company
Tags: Benjamin Franklin, United States, inventors

Ben Franklin (1706-1790)

[Archive May 19, 2006]

This weekend at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, the Boston Red Sox will play their first of six games against the Philadelphia Phillles this year. In addition to both cities sharing a great baseball tradition that includes, among other teams, the Boston Braves and Philadelphia A’s and sharing a prominent role in the founding of our nation, both cities share one of our founding fathers in common: Ben Franklin (1706-1790)

Franklin was born in Boston, "The Hub of the Universe", on January 17th, 1706 and gained fame and whatever wealth he had in Philadelphia and in his travels to France. He was a printer, inventor, statesman, father, … a man who really had extraordinary gifts and used them for the common good. I sure hope that our youth are being taught about Franklin and his extraordinary life. He did much more than “discover electricity.” His Poor Richard’s Almanac is a treasure chest of proverbs:

“Well done is better than well said.” (1737)

“No gains without pains.” (1745)

“You may talk too much on the best of subjects.” (1745)

“Neglect kills injuries, Revenge increases them.” (1749)

“Prosperity discovers Vice, Adversity Virtue.” (1751)

“Half the Truth is often a great Lie.” (1758)

U.S. Postal Service is celebrating his Tercentenary by issuing commemorative stamps. (A preview of the new 2006 Christmas Stamp from the Denver Art Museum can be found here.) A quick biography of Benjamin Franklin can be found here.

Photo: Benjamin Franklin Commemorative (2006 U.S. Postal Service)
Tags: Ben Franklin

“The Armenian Genocide”

[Archive April 19, 2006]

Last night Boston’s PBS station WGBH presented “The Armenian Genocide” as a documentary on the Holocaust of Armenians at the hands of Ottoman Turks during the World War I period. (The First World War or "Great War" was June 1914- November 1918). Armenians funded and produced this television program. It has generated a lot of buzz in which PBS had to defend itself: PBS Stands by ‘Armenian Genocide’

Both the Turkish government and its state educational system maintain that “atrocities” and “tragedies” did indeed happen during this period of history but deny that there was any systematic elimination of Armenians. On the contrary, the evidence points that 1 – 1.5 million Christian Armenians (civilians, men, women and children) were tortured, starved, "endured forced marches" and killed with Turkish Ottoman government oversight during World War I.

In my estimation, this show was very well done, fair and balanced. It certainly presented the case for genocide. Turkish government representatives, we are told, refused to cooperate in this project. However, several Turkish scholars acknowledged — at a high personal price— the truth of the Armenian claims which are backed-up by many outside of Armenia as well. It also gave fair reasons why the Turkish government would want to maintain “denying the Armenian Holocaust.” The “stigma” of being in the same category as Nazi Germany, its aspiration for inclusion into the European Union, and the possibility of material reparation are among them.

This show presented the “incomplete mourning” of Armenians because of these denials. It also presented Armenian terrorist groups that sought revenge on Turks. I was very edified that an Armenian commentator acknowledged that there are many good and noble Turks who seek the truth. The main problem, in their estimation, is with the Turkish government and its state educational system which denies that a genocide of Christian Armenians happened in World War I at the hands of Muslim Ottoman Turks. The idea that Armenian Christians were slaughtered out of hatred for the Christian Faith —which would make them Christian martyrs— could have been explored further. The moral conscience of individuals should have been brought up as a topic rather than the sociological approach that is often taken in these types of history programs: "genocide requires popular support". However, only so much can go into a 40 minute presentation.

Turks today are not personally culpable for past events. However, it seems that a “purification of memory” is needed. Germany to its credit has acknowledged its World War II actions and concretely made spiritual and material reparations etc. In fact, Pope John Paul II on March 12, 2000 (Day of Pardon of the Great Jubliee year) asked for forgiveness for the sins of all Christians. Let’s pray that others will follow these leads. How many do?

Purifying the memory means eliminating from personal and collective conscience all forms of resentment or violence left by the inheritance of the past, on the basis of a new and rigorous historical-theological judgement, which becomes the foundation for a renewed moral way of acting.

(Memory and Reconciliation: The Church and The faults of the Past, International Theological Commission, No. 5.1, December 1999)

The Armenian National Institute has a good site for more information on the Armenian Holocaust.

Photo: Lake Sevan, Armenia © Anna Chelnokova
Tags: Armenian Genocide, Armenia, PBS,World War I

The Prudence of Abraham Lincoln

[Archive April 9, 2006]

The more I read and learn about President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) and his actions in the context of his day, the more I admire him. The January 2006 issue of “First Things” magazine had a nice article on Lincoln by Professor Allen C. Guelzo of Gettysburg College: The Prudence of Abraham Lincoln. Guelzo is the author of “Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America” (© 2004 Simon & Schuster). I enjoyed this book and as such posted about it in three parts last year. Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 .

Certainly that prudence needs to be “re-discovered” should be self-evident given the shrill (at worst) or incoherent (at best) responses of many to vital issues, critical topics, and crises situations. Prudence along with justice, temperance and fortitude make up the cardinal virtues. It seems today that “justice” is unqualifiedly proclaimed from the rooftops, but unless it is reigned in by the other three virtues, it ceases to be a virtue at all! Although Guelzo focuses on the prudence of Lincoln, it would not be too much effort to write on the other three as applying to Lincoln as well.

Say the word prudence to the ancients, and you would have named a virtue. Say it to the faculties of American colleges in the nineteenth century, and you would have described part of the philosophy curriculum. Say it today, and you’ve made a joke. Through much of American history, prudence was considered a desirable trait in public leaders—and the decay we have experienced in the word makes it difficult to understand the prime American example of prudence in political life: Abraham Lincoln.
…

Prudence carries with it today the connotation of “prude”—a person of over-exaggerated caution, bland temperance, hesitation, a lack of imagination and will, a person who walks with mincing steps. This would have surprised the classical philosophers, who thought of prudence as one of the four cardinal virtues, and who linked it to shrewdness, exceptionally good judgment, and the gift of coup d’oeil—the “coup of the eye”—which could take in the whole of a situation at once and know almost automatically how to proceed. Aristotle called it “practical wisdom” in the Nicomachean Ethics, and contrasted it with “intuitive reason,” the natural endowment Aristotle thought some people had for understanding what was ultimately right and what was ultimately wrong. Intuitive reason marked out “the ultimates in both directions,” while prudence “makes us take the right means.”

On the emancipation of slaves…

[I]mmediate abolition was not the only avenue to emancipation. The federal government might have no direct power to interfere in state matters, but it did have considerable fiscal powers with which it could tempt slave states to abandon slavery by legislative action and embrace a federally funded buy-out. And within six months of his inauguration, Lincoln had initiated a campaign for legislative emancipation, beginning with Delaware, the weakest of the four slave states that remained loyal to the Union. This legislative option was based “upon these conditions: First, that the abolition should be gradual. Second, that it should be on a vote of the majority of the qualified voters of the District; and third that compensation should be made to unwilling owners.” Handled this way, emancipation would set up what he expected would be a domino-effect among the slave states for emancipation.
…

Unhappily for Lincoln, the loyal slave states threw his offer back in his face. So, in the summer of 1862, he turned instead to a military order that freed the Confederacy’s slaves—what we now know as the Emancipation Proclamation. But because the proclamation was only a military order, prudence dictated that he limit its application to those slave states in actual rebellion against the Union. And since little (if any) legal precedent existed for the use of presidential “war powers” in this way, he continued to back a legislative strategy, parallel to his war-powers proclamation, and in the end, it was that legislative strategy that produced black freedom in the Thirteenth Amendment. Between these two strategies, legislative and military, Lincoln saw no conflict. He told federal judge Thomas Duval that “he saw nothing inconsistent with the gradual emancipation of slavery and his proclamation.” Lincoln’s procedure was at every step a model of prudence.

You can read Guelzo’s article from "First Things" in full here.

Image: "First Things" Magazine April 2006 cover
Tags:Abraham Lincoln,Allen Guelzo

The Fall of the Roman Empire

[Archive April 1, 2006]

The traditional date for the founding of Rome is 753 B.C. The Roman Empire had a Regal Period of Seven Kings (753 B.C. – 509 B.C.), a Republic Period (509 B.C. – 31 B.C.) and an Imperial Period (31 B.C. – 476 A.D.) The date of 476 A.D. is generally considered to mark the end of the Roman Empire in the West when the last emperor Romulus Augustulus was disposed and replaced by the German chieftain Odoacer. However, the Eastern half of the Roman Empire continued until 1453 when the Turks conquered Constantinople.

There are many different and even popular explanations on the “Fall” of the Western Roman Empire. I hear, time and again, that the Roman Empire fell from within. How true is this? If so, what are we to make of the Barbarian invasions? Professor Garrett G. Fagan, Pennsylvania State University , talked about some of these ideas in his lectures, ”Thoughts on the ‘Fall’ of the Roman Empire” from The History of Ancient Rome series. I present some of his material here.

The idea of the “fall” of the Roman Empire seeks an explanation and is debated even today in scholarly circles.

As a broad rule the eastern half of the Empire remained relatively strong and stable the western half of the Empire showed the inverse experience, becoming increasingly weaker and unstable.

A well–known and popular idea for the “fall” is that of decadence. Did the Roman Empire fall because of decadence? Prof. Garrett G. Fagan answers “no.”

The Romans were as decadent when they were building the Empire as when they were loosing it.

What about the “undermining effects” of Christianity by way of a sort of pacifism?

First of all Christians in later eras showed no trouble when it came to fighting spirit whether it be among themselves or against foreign enemies. Within the 5th century itself there is no evidence that Christians failed to fight aggressively. Secondly, of course, the eastern half of the Empire was even more Christian than the western half of the Empire and that did not collapse in 476, in fact it continued to exist as the Byzantine Kingdom, the Byzantine Empire, into the 15th century of our era.

Some people approach this topic with a set theoretical position in mind like the “class warfare” of the Marxists. Prof. Fagan answers,

There is little or no evidence to support such a proposition. In fact, any theory of the “Fall” of the Roman Empire that superimposes modern prejudices on ancient conditions is usually always largely nonsense, for instance, the idea that was popular at the end on the 19th century and the 20th century that “the Empire fell because of racial miscegenation theories, the weak-blooded and lazy Orientals of the East mixing with the strong work-oriented Arian stock of the West undermined the Western Empire and it fell”, excuse me point of fact, the Eastern Empire full of lazy inferior Asiatic blood survived quite well for a thousand years beyond the fall of the West. That doesn’t seem to hold any water and is manifestly a product of eugenicist thinking.

What about corruption?

Corruption itself was rampant in the late Empire as was in the Republic and the early Empire as well. It is a sign of a society in decline.

Barbarian invasions killed the Roman Empire? Did divisions of rich/poor, elevated/humble, Christian/pagan, Barbarian/Roman, and so forth kill the Roman Empire?

All these characteristics are in the East. Any explanation has to take into account the success of the East.

Prof. Fagan notes the complexity of these arguments. One view of the “fall” of the Roman Empire is that there was no “fall” but rather, simply, a transformation. Basically this “transformationist school” views the Western Roman Empire as evolving into something different: Medieval Europe.

So people over the course of the period covered by the “transformationist school” evidently recognized that the Empire of the West was no longer in existence. So while certainly it’s worth looking at the continuities between the late Roman Empire and the early medieval period we’re still thrown back on the question of “Why did the Roman Empire Fall?” It seems to have fallen for sure but why did it fall? People at the time recognized that it had.

For my part, I believe in the basic dictum that complex events have complex explanations. In fact it is an interaction of events allied with historical contingency that brought the Roman empire of the West to its knees and allowed the Eastern Empire to survive. A broad “systems analysis” approach I think offers the best way forward, not only just in reference to the barbarian invasions which much have played a major part in the collapse of the Western Empire, but broadly speaking looking at the many of the characteristics of the Western Empire that not only have been identified but amplified as THE explanation for the Fall of the Empire. Let me just take some examples.

We have to as well remember the basic problem is always to explain why the East survived and the West didn’t. That has to be explained in any explanation for the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West. Several features I think do think stand out. Several explanations offer themselves. The East had much more defensible boarders than the West did. For as the Western Emperor was responsible for the entire length of the Rhine and most of the length of the Danube rivers against which Barbarians were pressing the whole time, the Eastern Emperor only had about 300 miles of frontier on the Danube to be concerned about. To be sure he had the problem of the Persians in the Eastern half of the Empire but more of that in a minute.

But in terms of the Barbarian invasions then, the Eastern Emperor only had a small section, a relatively small section of the Danube River to contend with. Furthermore, in terms of the geographic location of Constantinople and its virtually impregnable nature — it was extremely heavily fortified by the fifth century A.D. — it meant that any southward movement of Barbarians across the Danube toward Constantinople would first of all would hit the area of Constantinople and would be incapable of entering it and then almost naturally turn west because the alternative would be to go down into the Balkan peninsula and try to get seaborne to move over to Syria and Asia Minor and Egypt which were the heartlands of the eastern Empire. So it was natural for the Barbarians who initially invaded the East to be turned toward the West and that only increased pressure on the West. So, there are some geographic elements in the whole situation that allowed the East to survive.

The East also relied a lot less on Germanic troops than did the West and general military advisors were not nearly as powerful there and that may be a function of depopulation of the West than the East and so other explanations can feed in to help explain the collapse of the West even if they are not themselves individually determinative.

Although the Eastern Empire has the Sassnid Persians to contend with, the Persians were a civilized people and in fact after 363 there were no major Persian Wars between the eastern half of the Empire and Persia for the entire rest of the fourth and the entire 5th century. The next major Persian wars did not start until the 6th century. So at the very time the West was being assaulted, the Eastern Empire had a very secure boarder on its eastern front on the Euphrates. One could sign treaties with Persia and trust them to keep them in such a way you couldn’t do with loosely organized Barbarian tribes. So it was then that the Eastern Empire survived as the Byzantine Kingdom right into 1453 when the Turks finally captured Constantinople and brought the history of the Eastern Roman Empire and the Roman Empire as a whole to an end. Right up to the end the people of the Byzantine Kingdom called themselves “Romans.” In surviving so long they had preserved the heritage of the ancient world for the modern era.

So, while the Byzantine Kingdom survived, the West had dissolved into a series of barbarous kingdoms that stand at the root of the myriad nation-states of modern Europe.

For over 200 generations Rome had bestrode the “known world” like a colossus and the idea of “Rome never died” as we saw at the start of this course and the idea of unifying Europe once more under a single government is still alive and well and kicking although it is not being done under the auspices of military conquest.

Photo: Nice, France ©Guillaume Dubé
Tags: Rome, Roman Empire,Byzantine Empire,Persian Wars,Constantinople

Emancipation Proclamation, Part III

[Archive September 27, 2005]

This is the final part of my post “Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America” by Allen G. Guelzo (© 2004 Simon & Schuster). Really. The last post was supposed to be the final one but it got kind of long. The first part can be read here . The second part can be read here .

President Lincoln’s “oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free” needed to take into account the political and legal realities of his day. A military proclamation to free some of the slaves would surely get the political, legal and social momentum rolling to free all of the slaves, including those in Union territory.

Lincoln communicated the idea of a military proclamation as the means to free the slaves to Secretary of State William H. Seward on July 13, 1862 on the ride to the funeral of Lincoln’s Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton. According to Seward,

[Lincoln] “said he had given it much thought and had come to the conclusion that it was a military necessity absolutely essential to the salvation of the Union, that we must free the slaves or be ourselves subdued.”

As Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, the President had certain but vaguely-defined “war powers.” Lincoln’s suspension of the writ of habeas corpus at the beginning of the Civil War could be categorized, it could be argued, under these same “war powers.” Congressional approval would not be needed for him to act in such a manner. “Not until Congress passed the Habeas Corpus Act in 1863 was Lincoln actually free from the threat of postwar indictment and prosecution.” It was not certain whether or not the President could be free from indictment and prosecution after the war had ended because he issued a Proclamation to free the slaves. Any proclamation would have to be legally tight to say the least.

On July 22, 1862 Lincoln briefed his Cabinet on “his scheme” to issue a military proclamation which would include freeing the slaves of the Rebel States. His “first draft” included the following:

And as a fit and necessary military measure for effecting the object, I as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, do order and declare that on the first day of January in the year of our Lord on thousand, eight hundred and sixtythree, all persons held as slaves within any state or states, wherein the constitutional authority of the United States shall not then be practically recognized, submitted to, and maintained, shall then, thenceforewared, and forever, be free.

In this single sentence of eight-five words, Lincoln tersely identified the legal rationale for emancipation, the schedule by which he would do it, the people who would were legally affected by it, and the new legal condition those same people would enjoy. The authority underlying it would be the war powers the president held as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and navy of the United States.

I was surprised to learn that the “foundation” for such an act went back 20 years earlier to John Quincy Adams who proposed: ”when a country is invaded, and two hostile armies are set in martial array, the commander of both armies have power to emancipate all the slaves in the invaded territory.”

In the mean time, Lincoln considered and supported various voluntary (not conscripted) colonization plans (relocation of blacks to Central America, for example) in addition to gradual and compensated emancipation.

Lincoln’s willingness to lend an ear to the proposal of colonization has done more than almost anything else to erode his reputation as “the colored man’s president.”

By September 1862, Robert E. Lee had won many victories for the Confederacy against the Union. At this time Lincoln made more than a “resolve” to free the slaves: “I made a solemn vow before God, that if General Lee was driven back… I would crown the result by the declaration of freedom to the slaves.”

The president published his initial proclamation on September 22nd shortly after the Union victory at Antietam, the war’s most important battle to date. This success provided Lincoln the victory he needed to fulfill his solemn vow.

Lincoln listened to arguments for and against the proposed proclamation, as well as to modifications of it. If it were to have a chance of succeess, it would have to be reworked in order to withstand certain future court challenges and the prospect of unintended negative consequences. In short, it needed to be more concrete, less abstract, and more tightly worded with no "loop holes."

Abstraction were just what Lincoln had hoped to keep out of the proclamation, since even the slightest attempt to justify the proclamation on any other grounds than the war powers might put the whole document in legal peril.

It was very interesting to read how the reworked version came to be from its original text.

As he was shifting the specific wording that proclaimed freedom into the present tense, he also deleted the word forever from the announcement that all persons held as slaves were now freed. Forever had appeared in all three previous versions of the proclamation. But the final draft now simply declared that those “persons” are, and henceforeward shall be free. He had never believed that a military proclamation could guarantee freedom forever, beyond the time of the war emergency that called for it. Rather than give the judges even one spike to hang the Proclamation on, at the last minute Lincoln withdrew what he knew he could not actually promise.

On January 1st 1863 Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Due to communications at that time, the news of the Proclamation reached the slaves at different times (April 6, July 4, August 1, September 22, November 1 were cited). June 19th “Juneteenth” was the day that the Proclamation was officially read to the slaves in Texas.

Guelzo explained that “many of the Proclamations principle accomplishments would lie in what it did not do.”

If anything, the proclamation forced officers and generals who had originally been indifferent to slavery and emancipation to get off their fences and embrace both emancipation and black enlistment.

…Another thing the Proclamation avoided doing was forcing the moral and physical catastrophe of mass deportations to African or Central American colonies.

…A much more important consequence of the Proclamation that, like colonization, never managed to materialize in the way pessimists had predicted was foreign intervention

…Surely, the biggest surprise was that the much-predicted race war never occurred, and no one may have been more surprised than Lincoln himself.

…That so few of the dire things promised for the Proclamation ever came true is a measure of Lincoln’s skill as a legal draftsman and his determination to make the proclamation proof against the political hounds that surrounded it.

Integration into civil society, full legal rights, and racism, were among the next challenges for newly-freed Southern Blacks after the Proclamation. President Andrew Johnson’s amnesty for the South did not help their acceptance and in many ways gave hope to those who wanted emancipation “turned back.” Nevertheless blacks did have many practical gains, such as holding public office, early on. After the Proclamation and the 13th and 14th amendments there was no “turning back.” Slaves were “forever free” even if they still had a long road ahead.

Lincoln’s original manuscript of the January 1, 1863 Emancipation Proclamation was destroyed in the great Chicago Fire of 1871.

Image: The Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C.
Tags: Emancipation Proclamation, Abraham Lincoln

Emancipation Proclamation, Part II

[Archive September 25, 2005]

This is the second and final part of my post on an excellent book by Allen G. Guelzo: “Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America” (© 2004 Simon & Schuster). The first part can be read here.

It is fashionable in some circles, especially contemporary academics, to regard President Lincoln as less than the “Great Liberator” when he issued his Emancipation Proclamation (January 1, 1863):

The withdrawal from Lincoln by African Americans has moved in step with the emergence of a profound nihilism in the minds of many Americans who see no meaning in American freedom and no hope of real racial progress.

Others, today as well as yesterday, regard the Emancipation Proclamation as a singular great work:

If all that Lincoln said and was should fail to carry his name and character to future ages, the emancipation of four million human beings by his single official act is a passport to all of immortality that earth can give. There is no other individual act performed by any person on this continent that can be compared with it. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, were each the work of bodies of men. The proclamation of emancipation in this respect stands alone. The responsibility was wholly upon Lincoln; the glory is chiefly his. No one can now say whether the Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution of the United States, or the Proclamation of Emancipation was the highest, best gift to the country and to mankind. –George Boutwell, Massachusetts Republican and abolitionist, 1885.

Regardless of the sentiments toward Lincoln and his Proclamation, the chronology of how the Proclamation came to be through Lincoln’s actions in the midst of a Southern Rebellion (American Civil War 1861-1865) are historical fact.

To understand the Emancipation Proclamation, we have to understand Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was a man of prudence.

Prudence carries with it today the connotation of “prude” — a person of exaggerated caution, bland temperance, hesitation, a lack of imagination and will, fearful, and a bad case of mincing steps. This view would have surprised the classical philosophers, who thought of prudence as one of the four cardinal virtues and who linked it to shrewdness, exceptionally good judgment, and the gift of coup d’oeil — the “coup of the eye” — which could take in the whole of a situation at once and know almost automatically how to proceed.

He regarded emancipation as “a goal to be achieved through prudential means.” The goal of emancipation had many obstacles.

The Constitution and constitutional law had erected a firewall between federal and state spheres of sovereignty, and in an era before the Fourteenth Amendment, it was the states, not the federal government, that determined what range of civil rights in any state might be.

Lincoln was a man of integrity and was determined to fulfill his oath of office to uphold the Constitution. He would operate within the parameters of the law and not outside of it. President Lincoln has his own plan for emancipation, well before he issued his Proclamation.

And even when Lincoln would talk about emancipation, it was not on the abolitionists’ terms. He told Missouri lawyer James Taussig in 1863 that “the Union men in Missouri who are in favor of gradual emancipation represented his views better than those who are in favor of immediate emancipation.” Lincoln’s own plan for emancipation would deal effectively with the disease while also prudently ensuring that the medicine did not choke the patient to death. It would “have three main features — gradual — compensation — and the vote of the people.” And if practicable, it might have a fourth, colonization.

His efforts had to take into account the political and social environment of the United States during the American Civil War. Northern Republican abolitionists (Radicals) wanted immediate emancipation. Northern Democrats wanted the status quo. Slave Power controlled the Federal Courts and the Supreme Court. Many top Union generals and commanders were less than enthusiastic with the prospect of emancipation. Lincoln’s top commander George McClellan had “contempt of the entire Republican administration.” The four Border States (slave states loyal to the Union) of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, needed to be kept in the Union. Any action against slavery in their territory would almost certainly have caused them to defect to the Confederacy.

Emancipation, for Lincoln, was never a question of the end but of how to construct the means in such a way that the end was not put into jeopardy.

It was no surprise to read in Guelzo’s book that President Lincoln was not liked by Southern white supremacists for his conviction on the evil of slavery. It was revealing to me that the abolitionists did almost equally not like him.

If Lincoln’s differences with the abolitionists could be put on paper in the form of a comparative table, the two columns would go on for quite a way. Where the abolitionists built their argument on the demand of evangelical religion for repentance, Lincoln preferred gradualism and compensation for emancipated salves. Where they preached from passion and choice, he worked from reason and prudence; where they called for immediatism without regard for consequences, it was precisely the economic consequences of slavery and its extension which kindled Lincoln’s opposition in the 1850s. And where they brushed aside the Constitution, Lincoln would proceed against slavery no farther than the Constitution allowed.

During the start of the American Civil War emancipation schemes such as contraband and confiscation were tried in both acts of law and in practice with varying degrees of success. Martial law also attempted to emancipate slaves. The July 2nd suspension of habeas corpus by President Lincoln “ set off a constitution furor.”

The one thing lawyers could agree upon was that the essence of martial law is the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, the ancient common-law right of civil courts to demand that all other state authorities — including the military — hand over cases involving civilians to the civil courts’ jurisdiction. In times of war, and especially insurrection, suspending the writ allowed governments and generals to strike swiftly and severely at saboteurs and spies without going through a tedious civil arrest and trial.

Union Major General John Charles Frémont declared martial law in the Border State of Missouri on August 30, 1861 and in a proclamation declared slaves within the state free men. The declaration of martial law by Frémont did not sit well with Lincoln because Frémont overstepped his authority and also because Lincoln needed Missouri to remain in the Union. Lincoln quickly removed Frémont. “It was not emancipation he objected to but the way Frémont had chosen to go about it.”

Major General David Hunter also declared martial law and declared slaves of Carolina, Georgia and Florida free on April 25, 1862. Lincoln quickly cancelled his order because “no commander, or person,” had the authority “to make proclamations declaring the slaves of any State free.”

The common defect in all three of these devices for emancipating slaves — contraband, confiscation, and martial law — was their lack of permanence. [The] labeling of runaway slaves workers as “contraband of war” said nothing about the legal status of the contrabands, much less about emancipating those who simply had secessionist masters. Trumbull’s Confiscation Act was limited to “property” actively used in serving the Confederacy, something which proved almost impossible to prove in court. And confiscation neither guaranteed emancipation to those slaves who were confiscated, nor guaranteed that their masters would not be able to sue successfully in federal courts to reenslave them on grounds that the act was unconstitutional. The same was true of Frémont’s military emancipation. Under martial law, Frémont could seize whatever property he liked for military purposes and even declare slaves free. But once the war emergency was over, the federal court dockets would fill up with appeals that either attacked such proclamations as unconstitutional or denied that specific cases really fell within the definitions of the proclamation. And none of the three methods, of course, did anything to slavery itself, which would remain perfectly legal no matter how many individual slaves were emancipated.

Against these schemes for emancipation, Lincoln was in favor of a “fourth way”: “to offer a federally financed compensation scheme to persuade the slave states themselves to abolish slavery by an act of their own legislatures.” Lincoln explained that in his thought, “gradual, not sudden emancipation is better for all.”

Lincoln cheerfully assured his old juridical friend, David Davis, then “Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri will accept the terms.” By these means, “it seemed to him that gradual emancipation and governmental compensation” would bring slavery “to an end.”

Lincoln’s plans for gradual and federally compensated emancipation were met with heavy resistance. His “Delaware proposal” failed to pass in February 1862. Missouri’s “gradual emancipation scheme of 25 years” failed by a state convention vote of 59-18. However, he did have some success. Lincoln signed a bill of emancipation for Washington, D.C. on April 16, 1862.

This post got kind of long so it will be continued here .

Photo: “The First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation” by Francis Bicknell Carpenter (1864)
Tags: Emancipation Proclamation, Abraham Lincoln

Emancipation Proclamation

[Archive September 11, 2005]

Today our President is constantly criticized from many sides. These stem from ideas and passions that are at odds with the current administration. Our President swore an oath to uphold the Constitution and so forth and has many grave responsibilities for the life of our nation.

Presidents of the United States have always had such responsibilities. His descisions are not made in isolation. He cannot do anything he pleases because he is not emperor or dictator. Congress and the courts, both federal and state have jurisdiction on many matters. The President of the United States is limited in many ways from what he can accomplish.

When Abraham Lincoln took the office of President in 1861 there were 4 million black slaves in the United States. Slavery was even legal in Washington, DC, but not the slave trade. Slave Power was in control of the Supreme Court and federal courts. Chief Justice Roger Taney ruled in favor of the pro-slavery Dred Scott (1857) case. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1858 (Stephen A. Douglass author) allowed for the expansion of slavery into the western territories. Congress and many state legislatures could not get bills passed to challenge the status quo of slavery.

On December 20, 1860 South Carolina seceded from the Union soon after Lincoln was elected. In six weeks the slave states of Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee followed. The U.S. Civil War between the North (Union) and the South (Confederacy) commenced.

With all these obstacles and difficulties how did slavery come to an end? Why did Lincoln wait until July 22, 1862 and January 1, 1863 to issue his Emancipation Proclamation? Why was it issued in two parts? How many slaves did his Proclamation actually free? Was it legal?

The Emancipation Proclamation is the topic of an excellent book, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America by Allen G. Guelzo (©2004 Simon & Schuster). This book is a comfortable read because it is both well-written and free of barbs, anachronistic or otherwise. He examines Lincoln’s actions in the context of his day. This is something that all good history books should do.

We take it for granted today that we have legal protections from slavery. Guelzo’s book for me was a very edifying eye-opener to understanding the eradication of slavery in the United States. I’m glad I read it and share here part of it with y’all.

The second part can be read here.

Photo: Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
Tags: Emancipation Proclamation, Abraham Lincoln

The Philosophy of Communism, Part 3

[Archive September 9, 2005]

This is the final part of a three-part blog in which we allow the late Fulton J. Sheen to help us to understand two fallacies of Communism. “Economic determinism” was the first principle that Sheen presented. Here he tackles the “Communist notion of man.”

The second basic principle of Communism is that man has value only inasmuch as he is a member of a class. In one of his earlier writings, Karl Marx, who is the father of Communism, said, “We have already destroyed the outer religion; now we must destroy the inner religion,” that is, man’s spiritual nature.

Then follows this very remarkable statement in which Marx very correctly tells us the essence of democracy. Marx knew the basis of democracy far better than many who live under its blessings. Marx said that democracy is founded on the principle of the “sovereign worth of a person.” “This, in its turn, he continued, “is based on a postulate, a dream and an illusion of Christianity, namely, that every man has an immortal soul.” In the first edition of his work on capital, Marx says, “Persons of and by themselves have no value. An individual has a value only inasmuch as he is the representative of an economic category, ‘the revolutionary class’; outside of that, man has no value.”

Molotov developed this idea by saying that “bread is a political weapon.” We believe in food for the hungry, regardless of who they are. Molotov in good Marxist fashion argues that bread be given only to certain people, namely, those who follow Communist revolutionary ideas.

Some years ago, Heywood Broun told me of a cartoonist employed by one of the Communist papers in New York. The cartoonist developed cancer and was obliged to give up his work. Broun went to the Communists and asked if they would not give him some pension to help pay his hospital bills. The answer that he received from the Communists was “He is of no use to us. He is no longer a member of the revolutionary class, and therefore for us he does not exist.” That was good Communism, but is not good humanitarianism. Once you start with the principle that the person has no value, but only the revolutionary class has, then liquidation becomes inevitable.

Man is then likened to lower forms of life in which an individual fly, an individual gnat, and individual ant is of no consequence; what is of importance is the species.

Marx and Communism have turned the supremacy of the species into the supremacy of the class. Once admitted, it follows that what happens to an individual person is of no concern. The revolutionary class of Communism alone has value. Communism is an aggressive religion of the species.

This explains how Russia uses her satellite people in war. Communist tanks run over the bodies of their wounded. No one else would even kick them out of the path of the great machines, because they are no longer of worth. It also explains their war tactics in Korea. The first line of attack rushed into battle to be cut down. The second line, which was unarmed, carried mattresses and threw themselves on barbed wire to be shot. The third group had guns and gave battle.

This liquidation of man in the modern world will not be arrested simply by protests of horror. We must recognize the evil of this Communist philosophy and begin affirming, in the United States, the worth of a person as a creature of God.

As Hitler put the emphasis upon race, as Mussolini put it on the nation, so the Communists put it on a revolutionary mass. The hour has struck to affirm the power and worth and vocation of the individual. That means returning to what Marx rightly saw as the basis of democracy, namely, the truth that every man has an immortal soul. What we are attempting to do now in our Western world is foolishly to preserve the fruits of Christianity without the roots. Personality has a religious basis. A person is a subject, not an object. A person has more worth than the universe: “What doth it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?” A person realizes himself and comes to relative perfection in society, but only because he has within himself a principle independent of a society, namely, a soul. This soul has rights anterior to any state or dictator, parliament or king. As our Declaration of Independence puts it, “The Creator has endowed man with certain inalienable rights.” The world must move away from mass civilization by restoring values to the person. The Lord of the Universe saw value in the lowest kind of criminal and addresses him in the second person singular: This day Thou shalt be with Me in paradise.” This promise was the foundation stone of democracy.

Communists are right in saying this world needs a revolution, but not their cheap kind, which merely transfers booty and loot out of one man’s pocket into another’s. We need the kind of revolution that will purge out of a man’s heart pride and covetousness and lust and anger. The true battle against Communism begins in the heart of every single American. The revolution must begin in man before it begins in society. The Communist revolution has been a basic failure; it is not revolutionary enough; it leaves hate in the soul of man. We need not fear Communism as much as we need fear being Godless. If God is with us, then who can be against us?

Part 1 can be found here.
Part 2 can be found here.

From Life Is Worth Living © 1953 Mission Foundation, Inc.

Photo: Street scene in Havana Cuba ©Norman Pogson
Tags: Communism, Fulton Sheen

The Philosophy of Communism, Part 2

[Archive September 6, 2005]

Here is part 2 of Fulton Sheen’s “Philosophy of Communism” in which he continues to counter the fallacy of “economic determinism”:

What is the fallacy of economic determinism, which means that economics determines everything? The first fallacy of economic determinism is that Karl Marx, who studied philosophy and should have known better, confused what is known as a condition with a cause. For example, the window is a condition of the light, but the window is not the cause of light. We are willing to admit that economics, to some extent, does condition literature and art. But it certainly does not cause literature and art.

If economics is the cause of culture and religion, why, in the pre-Christian era, were different cultures and religions produced by the same economic methods of production? There was no difference between the economic methods of production among the Jews and those among the Hindus or the Chaldeans, but their civilizations were different; their religious and moral concepts were different, the Hebrews having the highest moral concept that was known to man in the pre-Christian era. Since their economic methods of production were identical, it cannot be said that economics was the cause of the difference in cultures.

There was no change of economic methods in the Roman Empire when it became Christian from when it was pagan. But the civilization and the art and the religion and the morality were totally different in the two periods. Therefore, it is not the economics that determines civilization. The way a violin is made does not determine the music that will be played on it.

Economics has gone to the head of the Communists like wine to an empty stomach. Notice that whenever the Communists try to convince us of their superiority, they make moral judgments about us. They say we are “immoral,” “unjust,” “unethical,” and “bad” while they are right and good. These moral judgments do not belong in the economic category. Whence comes their moral worth, if it reality be not moral? If economics is at the base of reality, how can it be said that any system is “right” and another “wrong”? If religion be a product of economic method of production, how could it be an opiate? Finally, if changes in morality, art, and culture are due to changes in methods of production, what causes changes in the methods of production? They are often due to invention, and invention is an intellectual or a spiritual cause. Those who believe in an ethical order independent of Communism can condemn exploitation, but the materialism of Communism cannot do it without repudiating the whole system. They have no right to use the words “right” and “wrong,” but only “private” and “social.” If everything is economically determined, right and wrong, truth and error have no existence, for they do not fit in an economic category.

Communism is strong only when it borrows some of the moral indignation that has been inherited from the Hebraic-Christian traditions; Communism is weak when it departs from that tradition. Communism has bootlegged and smuggled into its system the decency and morality that have come from the great Hebraic-Christian tradition of the Western world and then uses it to pass judgment on the world. Moral indignation is needed against an injustice, but Communists have no basis for using it.

This is a reminder of how we ought to meet Communism on the Voice of America and elsewhere, not to talk about the supremacy of our economics. Whenever we talk about the supremacy of economics, we pay tribute to the Communists’ error of the primary value of economics. Communists are speaking to the rest of the world on the basis of ethics, which their system repudiates. We, who have moral ideals, are speaking to the rest of the world in terms of economics. They are using language that we ought to be using.

Part 1 can be found here.

From Life Is Worth Living © 1953 Mission Foundation, Inc.

Photo: Sickle and Hammer (Ukraine) ©Ravi Taliramani
Tags: Communism, Fulton Sheen