Transcript 06 Essays & Lincoln

What is America?
Poli 110J 06
With malice toward none, with
charity for all
Midterms
• Yay!
• HARD COPY due at the START of class,
Tuesday, Oct. 19
• 5-7 pages
• Prompts posted at course website:
adamgomez.wordpress.com/teaching/110JFA
2010
Midterms
• Your paper must have:
• A thesis statement
• One to three sentences, in the first paragraph
• Clearer is better. Thesis should be argumentative:
– “In this paper I will discuss the causes of the Civil War.” -- NOT
a thesis statement.
– “Slavery was the primary cause of the Civil War.” -Acceptable.
– “The primary cause of the Civil War was slavery, which
produced economic, political, and moral conflicts between
North and South that ultimately could not be resolved by
peaceful means.” -- Better.
Midterm
• Page numbers
• 5 page minimum, less will count against grade
• Paragraphs.
– Seriously, you have to have paragraphs.
• Also, no swearing or text abbreviations.
– For heaven’s sake, people.
• Citations
– Ok to cite lecture. Refer to it by lecture number (for
example, lecture #6 for today)
– MUST cite & quote the texts appropriate to your chosen
prompt.
• Page numbers, sections, articles, issue numbers, etc.
Midterms
• Standard margins, font size, line spacing, etc.
– We were undergraduates once, we know about
Courier New.
• While grammar is not a major element in your
grades, it does matter.
– If your grader does not understand what you’re
saying, your grader does not understand what you’re
saying.
• Papers MUST be submitted to turnitin.com
– Class ID: 3568246
– Enrollment password: PowerUSA
Midterms
• Your graders:
– Aaron Cotkin
• [email protected]
– Andrew Bruck
• [email protected]
Extra office hours this week TBA on website
• 1. “America is a community of belief, and the
shared political beliefs of Americans are the
foundation of their political identity.” Support
or refute this statement, with reference to
three authors in the class so far, one of whom
must be Reinhold Niebuhr.
• 2. It has been argued in this course that the
definition of the political community is in itself
an act of power. Agree, disagree, or modify
this argument with reference to three authors
from the course so far.
• 3. On page 171 of The Irony of American
History, Reinhold Niebuhr describes Lincoln as
“an almost perfect model” of an American
leader. To what extent does Lincoln’s view of
American history fit Niebuhr’s description of
that history as “ironic”?
Gettysburg
• July 1-3, 1863, after Lee’s invasion of the
North
• 95,000 Union soldiers, 75,000 Confederate
– 23,000 Union and 28,000 Confederate casualties
• Myth of Lee’s invincibility broken, major
turning point in the war
– Pickett’s Charge
Gettysburg Address
• Main Themes:
– America is a nation founded in
and directed toward equality
– Americans can succeed or fail in
this charge
– The Union is the definitive test
case for democracy
– Redemptive potential of the
current crisis
– Central metaphors of birth,
death, and rebirth
– Giving the war meaning by
embedding it w/in greater
narrative
Gettysburg Address
• “Four score and seven years ago our fathers
brought forth on this continent, a new nation,
conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal.”
– Biblical method of dating
– Language of conception & birth
– Equality the central ideal of American politics, it is
the telos.
– Defining the American community
Gettysburg Address
• “Now we are engaged in a great civil war,
testing whether that nation, or any nation so
conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”
– The war is an ordeal, a test
– The case of the US is determinative. Can
democratic republican governments endure w/o
succumbing to anarchy or tyranny?
Gettysburg Address
• They came to dedicate the cemetery,
• “as a final resting place for those who here
gave their lives that that nation might live”
– Gave their lives
– Died so the nation might live
– Martyrs
Gettysburg Address
• It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated
here to the unfinished work which they who
fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the
great task remaining before us---that from
these honored dead we take increased
devotion to that cause for which they gave the
last full measure of devotion…
Gettysburg Address
• The living must show greater devotion even
than the dead
• The great task is not the war, but the national
pursuit of equality.
• ---that we here highly resolve that these dead
shall not have died in vain---that this nation,
under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the
people, for the people, shall not perish from
the earth.
Gettysburg Address
• By the blood of martyrs, the US will be born
anew, purified of its gravest sin.
• But we can fail, we must show necessary
resolve.
• “Under God”
– Religious authorization of refounded Republic, but
also chastened by knowledge of its higher
accountability
Gettysburg Address
• All of the people, the polity includes all
Americans regardless of whites.
• The community is defined by its belief in
equality, not in particular origins or racial
classes
Gettysburg Address
• “perish from the earth”
– Jeremiah 10
– Promise of divine retribution
– The fallibility of human works
Second Inaugural
• Powerlessness of
human effort
• Spiritual equality 
political humility,
forgiveness
• Spiritual unity of the
US
• Critical position on
self, politics, the war
Second Inaugural
• 4 years before, there was cause for extented
remark. “Now, at the expiration of four years,
during which public declarations have been
constantly called forth on every point and
phase of the great contest which still absorbs
the nation, little that is new could be
presented.”
– The binding power of history over the present
Second Inaugural
• “The progress of our arms, upon which all else
chiefly depends, is as well known to the public
as to myself; and it is, I trust, reasonably
satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high
hope for the future, no prediction in regard to
it is ventured.”
– The present is uncertain, the future utterly
opaque
• The limits on human action
Second Inaugural
• “On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago,
all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending
civil war. All dreaded it—all sought to avert it. While
the inaugural address was being delivered from this
place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without
war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to
destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union,
and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties
deprecated war; but one of them would make war
rather than let the nation survive; and the other would
accept war rather than let it perish. And the war
came.”
Second Inaugural
• ‘All’ or ‘both’ said four times: emphasis on
fundamental national unity
• Passive voice: ‘While the inaugural address
was being delivered’
• War emphasized, it is inevitable: ‘war’ said 7
times (9 if you count ‘it’)
• ‘And the war came.’
– abolitionist Wendell Phillips, January 8, 1852:
“Revolutions are not made; they come. A
revolution is as natural a growth as an oak. It
comes out of the past. Its foundations are laid far
back.”
– But for Lincoln there is nothing natural here. It
comes like lightning out of the sky.
Second Inaugural
• “All knew that this [slave] interest was,
somehow, the cause of the war. To
strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this
interest was the object for which the
insurgents would rend the Union; while the
government claimed no right to do more than
to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.”
– Slavery the war’s cause
– South more responsible
Second Inaugural
• But the plans of all have failed:
• “Neither party expected for the war the
magnitude, or the duration, which it has
already attained. Neither anticipated that the
cause of the conflict might cease with, or even
before, the conflict itself should cease. Each
looked for an easier triumph, and a result less
fundamental and astounding.”
Second Inaugural
• Neither/neither/each: the sections are joined
in their failure
• Lincoln includes himself in this failure: his
plans have had results that he never predicted
• The results are ‘fundamental’, astounding.
The US has been transformed.
– Though he led, he was not in control any more
than anyone else
Second Inaugural
• “Both read the same Bible, and pray to the
same God; and each invokes His aid against
the other. It may seem strange that any men
should dare ask a just God’s assistance in
wringing their bread from the sweat of other
men’s faces, but let us judge not that we not
be judged”
Second Inaugural
• Shift to the present, here and now
• Again, emphasis on unity
• Genesis 3:23 “In the sweat of thy face shalt
thou eat bread, till thou return unto the
ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust
thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”
– The curse of God for disobedience
– Slaveowners disobey God’s will
Second Inaugural
• Matthew 7:1 “Judge not, that ye be not
judged”
– From Sermon on the Mount
– Suggests both the mercy and judgment of God
– While the South bears more responsibility, the
North is not without flaw. Universality of sin
means that a people should always first criticize
themselves.
• Equality and forgiveness
Second Inaugural
• “The prayers of both could not be answered;
that of neither has been answered fully. The
Almighty has his own purposes.”
•
•
•
•
God the major actor in the drama of the war
Both sides could not win
Neither side has truly gotten what it wanted
God’s will over all history, distinct from human plans
and desires
– Humans rendered equal in this way
Second Inaugural
• ‘Woe unto the world because of offences! for
it must needs be that offences come; but woe
to that man by whom the offence cometh!’
• Matt. 18:7
• God’s will controls history, nothing can go
against the will of God.
• Yet individuals remain responsible for their
sins
Second Inaugural
• If we shall suppose that American Slavery is once
of those offences which, in the Providence of
God, must needs come, but which having
continued through His appointed time, He now
wills to remove, and that He gives to both North
and South this terrible war, as the woe due those
by whom the offense came, shall we discern
therein any departure from those divine
attributes which the believers in a Living God
always ascribe to Him?
Second Inaugural
• “American” Slavery was
– An offence to God
– Allowed by God
– Willed by God to end now
• North and South EQUALLY guilty before God,
though not before humans
– Divine justice vs. human justice
– Perfection a dichotomous variable
Second Inaugural
• “Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—
that this mighty scourge of war may speedily
pass away.”
– Humans can do nothing to alter God’s will. They
must humble themselves and pray that God’s
mercy is greater than his justice
– Distilling moral & religious meaning from the
bewildering events and destruction of the War
Second Inaugural
• Shared moral community of Americans
– Both guilty in their shared failure to uphold
equality
– Both powerless to resist the will of God
• Transcendence of God
– Not some tribal deity
– His justice and purposes are very much different
from those of humans.
Second Inaugural
• 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 must it be said ‘the judgments of the
Lord, are true and righteous altogether.’
Second Inaugural
• The US is guilty enough to deserve destruction
– Slavery a mortal transgression against American
obligation to equality
– Affirms the perfection of divine justice over human
claims to justice
– Though the justice of God is inscrutable, it is
nonetheless perfectly just
• “three thousand years ago”: these ideas predate
the US, & may outlast them by as much
• Just as the war is not the product of human
agency, neither will be its end
Second Inaugural
• The judgments of the Lord
– Psalm 19
– Lincoln must somehow act ethically
• within a context beyond his comprehension
• with outcomes that are impossible to firmly predict
• and be judged by the inscrutable mind of God
according to standards that he cannot fully understand
•  humility as political good
Second Inaugural
• With malice toward none; with charity for all;
with firmness in the right, as God gives us to
see the right, let us strive on to finish the work
we are in”
– Forgiveness motivated by recognition of moral
equality
– Act firmly in the right, as God gives us to see it
• Moral conviction & moral humility
Second Inaugural
• “to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him
who shall have borne the battle, and for his
widow, and his orphan—to do all which may
achieve a just and a lasting peace, among
ourselves, and with all nations.”
– Atonement between North & South
– Atonement between America & its God
– Political humility: don’t strive for utopia, strive for a
better world
– Equality demonstrated in a commitment to alleviated
suffering
Second Inaugural
• Men are not flattered by being shown that
there has been a difference of purpose
between the Almighty and them. To deny it,
however, in this case, is to deny that there is a
God governing the world.
– If God is always on your side, is he really there?
Second Inaugural
• It is a truth which I thought needed to be told;
and as whatever there is of humiliation there
is in it, falls most directly on myself, I thought
others might afford for me to tell it.
– Why does the humiliation fall most directly on
him?
Long-term outcomes
of the Civil War
• Federal government decisively rendered
superior to state governments
• Blacks being citizens, racial equality becomes
civil rights issue
• Necessities of war lead to dramatic expansion,
bureaucracratization of federal gov’t
• Push to homogenize law across states
• Expanded power of corporations, closer ties to
government