Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider.
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Before the break
with guest Greg Hamilton,
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we were going hammer
and tong on the Civil War
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and what caused it and...
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And the life of Abraham Lincoln.
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Yeah.
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From the
perspective of Abraham Lincoln,
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well, we got onto the Civil War.
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And of course, you can't
really discuss him with it.
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That's... I mean
his life was long and...
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But his
presidency and his presiding
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over the Civil War,
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and of course, he was
assassinated before really...
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Well, we remember his ideals
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more than we
remember his pragmatism.
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And the reason why, you know,
he had to do the things he did.
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As you said, he
was a man of his times.
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And I think of one of
his idealistic statements
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that I quote in my
book called "Soul Liberty:
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Celebrating
America's First Freedom"
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which you can get on Amazon.com,
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and Lincoln says, "Those
who deny freedom to others
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deserve it not for themselves,
and under a just God,
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cannot long retain it."
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So he actually
believed in a deep sense
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that ending slavery
was not just God's will,
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but it was a way to
not only save the nation,
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so to speak, both
economically and otherwise,
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but also to restore
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the original
intent of the Constitution
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which to him meant making
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basic rights
accessible to women,
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to minorities,
including a lot of poor whites
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who were still treated
like chattel, and in a way,
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almost as slaves
themselves, okay?
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And what I mean
is the poor class
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or what was what known
back then as known as today,
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the same name my grandpa
used to give it years ago,
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called them "white trash".
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You know, that's
terrible to say that.
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But that's in
fact the way it was,
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and so Lincoln wanted to make...
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No, they used to
say the underclass.
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The underclass.
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But Lincoln wanted to make
sure that everyone had access
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to the Bill of Rights,
to their basic human rights.
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No, he had some
very egalitarian views.
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But as I've said, you repeated,
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I think he was a
person of his times.
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You mentioned his comment
on God and justice, you know,
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he was the one that said,
both sides had prayed to God,
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and they couldn't both be right.
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That's right.
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Well, that's because
both the North and the South
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claim Scripture for
their justification.
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And that leads us
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to the discussion
of William Garrison.
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You see,
Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln,
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really believed that
the abolitionist movement,
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even though they
had a good cause,
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he thought they were
too radical, two extreme.
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Lincoln did not
want a Civil War.
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He did not want a Civil War.
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He thought that it
was probably inevitable,
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but he didn't want it.
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And so he had a
hard time linking himself
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to the Christian
right of his day,
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the abolitionist movement.
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Yet, in the end, it was Lincoln
coming together in a wedding,
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so to speak, of ideals
that brought them together
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to produce or to
fight what's called
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the Emancipation
Proclamation Act of 1863,
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which was later, of course,
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voted on by
Congress and made law
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and ratified by all the
states in 1865, after his death.
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Well, yes, I'd
put it in another way.
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Civil War, you
know, is a very desperate,
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violent family feud.
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And as the violence heats
up, the issue sort of polarized.
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And I think
that's what happened.
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We know that John Brown
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who represented
the radical fringe
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of the abolitionist movement
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was really the fuse
that lit the conflict.
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And as it sharpened
and became more bitter,
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naturally, their position
would come closer to Lincoln's,
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if not his views, then
his need, his political need.
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I've often found it
interesting to watch
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how extremists drive moderates
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to take a more
firmer stand on subjects.
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Happens all the time.
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And issues, and
that's fascinating
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in terms of a political dynamic.
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We're seeing it right
now in the United States.
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Oh, absolutely. Yes.
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And there's very
few moderates left,
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and they need to speak up
and rise up and be counted.
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Yeah.
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And the moderates get
shamed into their moderation
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as the system
appears to be polarizing.
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Yes. Very dangerous time.
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And the Civil War
was a dangerous time.
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I don't think it was a
great thing on any level.
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The abolition of
slavery came out of it,
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but I think you could
make very good arguments
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that if they had
written that out,
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slavery would have
died a natural death,
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not too...
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Well, that's what Robert E. Lee
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argued the general for
the South, but in fact,
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that was the
argument of Thomas Jefferson
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that they hoped that it would,
you know, die a natural death.
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Oh, yeah, but it took
longer than they thought.
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Yeah, much longer and...
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But by the time
of the Civil War,
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the machinery for...
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First of all,
cotton was changing
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in its dynamic anyhow,
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but this machinery to harvest,
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that was
becoming more mechanized,
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so there was not even the need.
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Robert E. Lee even argued,
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I just read a
biography of Robert E. Lee,
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a big old, fat
book of about 900 pages,
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and he talked about
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how he cited the constitutional
separation of church and state
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as the reason why the
North was so specifically
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inspired by abolitionists
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to basically make a
moral judgment upon them
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and say that
slavery must be ended.
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He said, you know, he says,
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"It will probably
die a natural death,
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but you don't have
a right to intervene
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in our sovereign states' rights
to do what we think is best."
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And so therefore, he cited
the constitutional separation
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of church and state,
why the Civil War was unjust
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and immoral which
I find fascinating
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because, in fact,
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Lincoln took a big
risk being called immoral,
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being called all kinds of names
for moving forward this war.
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I mean, if you think
about how many lives were lost,
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660,000 lives, the
largest loss of lives
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combined of any war
in American history,
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foreign or home.
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And I find that interesting
because Lincoln wasn't fighting
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an immoral war, he was
fighting a war of justice.
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I think you can argue that case.
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You're brining it close to
what I had mentioned to you
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in-between times.
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I've just read
an article recently
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about the morality
of sovereign states
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and their wars and
dynamic between states.
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And it's very hard to
point to an absolute legal
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morality of states, how
they act to or does this,
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you know, when they
murder millions of people
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doing large
territory or whatever,
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in the past, it's
not been on this pure,
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moral state that you
are attributing to Lincoln.
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Really, it's might make right,
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and if it's in the
national interest, fine.
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It's only when
they lose the war,
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we have the
Nuremberg trials typically,
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but I think as Christians,
we need to recognize,
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and I think, on that level,
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Abraham Lincoln is
due to some credence
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that he did sort of
insert a personal mortality,
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not always consistent.
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It's the only
explanation or else,
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I don't think
history could be kind to him
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because he was
willing, basically,
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as Hitler in his worst
days was willing to sacrifice
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the whole nation to get his way.
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Well, and you look
at the 66th Congress
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which was basically
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the radical
Republicans post Civil War,
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they came up with
the 14th Amendment.
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They gave us the
Due Process Clause,
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the Equal
Protection Clause and so on.
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And if you look
at that movement,
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there were radical Republicans
who wanted to make sure that
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the south to be
admitted back into the Union
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abided by the Constitution.
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And they wanted to make
sure that the southern people
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had access to the same rights
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as the other states did
in the federal constitution,
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specifically in
the Bill of Rights.
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And so what they did
is they incorporated,
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they came up with
incorporation doctrine
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which was that the
south had to, in other words,
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the Bill of Rights was intended
also at the state level.
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It wasn't just
intended to be obeyed
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or executed by the
Federal government,
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that it had to
also be put forward
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by the southern states
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who didn't
allow for human rights
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or basic civil rights forted
in those same Bill of Rights.
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And so they made sure that
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the Supremacy
Clauses of Article VI,
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sections 1 and 2
of the Constitution
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which were originally there
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when the founders
signed off on the Constitution,
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the south never
really fully agreed
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to those what's
called the Supremacy Clauses.
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I don't think...
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That is the south had to abide
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by federal law,
and this idea that...
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I don't think all the
states quite saw it that way.
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Well, this idea that
states were ultimately sovereign
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was a misnomer, and really,
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the Civil War decided that
once and for all that states...
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You're right.
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The war decided
it, but I don't think
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it had been decided
in the Constitution.
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Right.
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States could not nullify any law
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that the federal
government came up with.
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After the Civil
War, that became clear,
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the Supremacy
Clauses of Article VI,
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sections 1 and
2 made that clear.
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When we examine
the life of Lincoln,
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we have to understand
that he fought a just war.
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If you hunt, you can
still find spirituals
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that mention father Abraham.
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Abraham Lincoln doing
his sobriquet honestly
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as the president
who signed proclamations
00:10:00.96\00:10:04.50
that ended slavery.
00:10:04.53\00:10:06.63
As a president though, he was
definitely very controversial.
00:10:06.67\00:10:10.41
His religion
itself was challenged
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because he was not
an orthodox Christian.
00:10:12.81\00:10:15.58
But in many of
his personal dealings,
00:10:15.61\00:10:18.08
he exemplified a morality
that we still wonder at.
00:10:18.11\00:10:22.75
How he came at
that is a mystery.
00:10:22.78\00:10:25.19
But it is no question
00:10:25.22\00:10:26.92
that great men
like Abraham Lincoln
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have changed and determined
00:10:29.49\00:10:30.89
the courses of
nation for centuries.
00:10:30.93\00:10:34.96
But rather than look at
great men as something unique
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or divinely inspired,
recognize that like all of us,
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they challenged
their deficiencies
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and reached toward the
divine for their true hope.
00:10:44.37\00:10:49.38
For Liberty Insider,
this is Lincoln Steed.
00:10:49.41\00:10:52.65