Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party (11 page)

The northern Democratic defense of slavery was epitomized by Stephen Douglas, who made a new and ingenious defense of black servitude that went under the banner of “popular sovereignty.” Douglas was no friend of blacks, and routinely referred to them as “niggers.” In his second debate with Lincoln in the Illinois Senate race, for instance, Douglas said, “Those of you who believe that the nigger is your equal and ought to be on an equality with you socially, politically and legally, have a right to entertain those opinions and of course will vote for Mr. Lincoln.”

In the third debate, Douglas bluntly asserted, “I hold that a Negro is not and never ought to be a citizen of the United States. I hold that this government was made on the white basis, made by white men, for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever, and should be administered by white men and none others.” Indeed Douglas went on to suggest that since many of the Founders had slaves, clearly they couldn’t have meant what they said that all men are created equal.
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Interestingly, Democrats today make the same point about the Founders, not to defend white supremacy but to suggest that the Founders are hypocrites whose ideals as set forth in the Constitution should give way to progressive alternatives. The resemblance between today’s Democrats and the Democrat Douglas goes even further. Douglas’s argument for popular sovereignty regarding slavery is identical in substance, and very nearly in form, to the Democratic Party’s position on abortion today.

Let’s follow the argument more closely. Douglas professed to be indifferent himself to whether slavery was voted up or down. To the degree he confessed to an opinion, he implied he was “personally opposed” to slavery and would not have slaves himself—as indeed he couldn’t, since he lived in the free state of Illinois. Even so, Douglas contended that popular sovereignty was a democratic solution to an otherwise insoluble problem that threatened to divide the country and plunge it into chaos.

The solution, Douglas said, is for Americans to agree to disagree. Specifically, each state and territory should decide for itself whether to have slavery. Douglas staked his position not on the right or wrong of slavery, but firmly on the “right to choose.” For Douglas, the moral dignity of slavery came not from its own merits but from its affirmation through the democratic process. Douglas sought to resolve the contradiction of the American founding—to eliminate its hypocrisy, if you will, on the slavery issue—by placing slavery itself on a democratic foundation.

Here we see the resemblance to the Democrats’ contemporary pro-choice position on abortion. Both are efforts to take something that
destroys the life and liberty of another, and make it into a political good. Both embrace the high ground of freedom or “choice” in order to cancel out the choices of others. Both use the language of democracy to deny the fundamental equality of others who are somehow placed outside the orbit of humanity.

In one case it is the planter who makes the choice; in another, it is the pregnant woman. In one case the choice involves owning and enslaving a black person; in the other it involves destroying an emerging life in the womb. Still, one can hardly deny the similarities; this method of reasoning seems to be part of the Democrats’ political DNA, from their pro-choice arguments about slavery to their pro-choice arguments about abortion.

Douglas’s popular sovereignty doctrine was reflected in the Kansas Nebraska Act, which Douglas maneuvered through the Congress. It was a legislative victory for Douglas, yet the Act also precipitated vehement opposition, leading to the rise of Abraham Lincoln and the founding of the Republican Party. Speaking on behalf of the emerging Republican coalition, Lincoln’s arguments against Douglas expose the façade of the pro-choice position, revealing it as facially neutral but actually a form of oppression. Lincoln’s logic, we will see, applies equally against slavery then as it does against abortion now.

Lincoln destroyed popular sovereignty by exposing the contradiction at the core of the doctrine. Yes, Lincoln said, democracy involves the right to choose, but the right to choose cannot be defended without considering what is being chosen. Pro-choice, in other words, depends for its validity on the content of the choice. How, Lincoln asked, can Douglas Democrats invoke “choice” to deprive black people of their right to choose? Can popular consent legitimately take away other people’s right to consent? Lincoln insisted that it could not.
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With equal acumen, Lincoln destroyed the “positive good” defense of slavery. He compared the position of the Calhoun Democrats to a pack of wolves devouring lambs, while pretending that this was good for the lambs! Lincoln said he was weary of hearing Democrats preach about how good slavery was for the slaves. If slavery was so good, he suggested, why don’t Democrats try it on themselves by becoming slaves?

For Lincoln, slavery was a form of theft. The core of it was summarized in the phrase, “You work, I eat.” The slave owner, in other words, was a thief, stealing not only the labor but also the life of the slave. Democratic apologists for slavery were no better than facilitators and sustainers of this system of theft. Lincoln pointed out that even popular sovereignty—the supposedly moderate position of the northern Democrats—represented not just theft but perpetual theft. Lincoln accused Douglas of placing slavery “where he openly confesses he has no desire there shall ever be an end of it.”

Lincoln found this position abhorrent because he, together with his fellow Republicans, believed that slavery was morally wrong. This belief, of course, did not by itself settle the issue. Lincoln knew that the Founders had allowed slavery in the southern states in order to have a union. He believed that no matter how much he abhorred slavery, it was not within his power or the power of Congress to nullify that original pact. In other words, the federal government was constitutionally prohibited from regulating slavery in the southern states.

The Constitution, however, said nothing about new territories that were coming into the union. Lincoln argued that therefore Congress had every right, and full power, to keep slavery out of these new territories. Lincoln’s position was that, within the parameters established by the Constitution, the evil of slavery should be restricted and contained. His opponents, on the other hand, wanted slavery to continue and expand. As Lincoln neatly summarized the difference, one side believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong and ought to be restricted.

FRUITS OF ONE’S LABOR

By contrast with the Democrats, Lincoln defended the free labor system. Such a system, he contended, not only protected liberty, it was also just. People have a right to the fruits of their labor. Once again, Lincoln spoke in simple terms that everyone could understand. “I always thought the man who made the corn should eat the corn.” The hand that
produces bread, Lincoln said, has the right to put that bread into its own mouth. No other man has a claim on that bread, and no other man can justly take away the fruits of another man’s labor.

Lincoln combined his condemnation of slavery with a defense of free labor and earned achievement. He articulated, for his time and ours, the core principle of the Republican Party. Republicans, Lincoln said, were the party of entrepreneurship. Lincoln understood that nothing has raised the American standard of living more than new inventions and innovations. When we contemplate how people’s lives have been improved from a slew of new inventions, from the steam engine to the iPhone, I don’t see how anyone can disagree with Lincoln about this.

In a speech on patents and copyrights, Lincoln defended the patent laws as adding the fuel of interest to the fire of innovation. In other words, people are more likely to build new things that benefit others and raise the overall standard of society when they get to own and benefit from their creations. Lincoln celebrated the American system of “discoveries, inventions and improvements.” Minerals, he pointed out, have long subsisted under the earth’s surface. They lay idle, however, until someone figured out how to get them out and harness them to productive use.

Republicans, according to Lincoln, are not just the party of entrepreneurship and invention; they are also the party of the little guy making his way up the ladder. Sure, that guy may have to start out working for another. But, Lincoln insisted, he must do so as a free man, on terms to which he gave consent. In time, Lincoln hoped, men could free themselves from dependence and work for themselves. And if they were successful, perhaps they would be able to hire others to work for them. This, Lincoln said, is the free labor system, offering what Lincoln termed equal chances in the race of life.

Lincoln never defended rich people. His Republican Party was not the party of the 1 percent. Rather, Lincoln defended upward mobility—the right to try one’s chances at moving up the ladder, at getting rich.
Lincoln’s Republican Party sought to remove government obstacles to that process. In his time the main such obstacle was slavery. Slavery, Lincoln knew, hurt the value of people’s work because it placed them in competition with slaves who worked for nothing.

Today’s Republicans make a similar point about illegal immigrant labor. Illegal immigrants don’t have to pay taxes. For this and other reasons, they can price their labor markedly below that of citizens. Consequently, illegal immigration harms the upward mobility of American workers.

Today’s Democrats howl that such rhetoric is racist, but since there is no implication of racial inferiority, the charge is baseless. Democrats make it only because they derive political benefits from illegal immigration. In reality, the GOP is right that illegal immigration has held back the standard of living of many American workers, making it difficult for them to achieve the upward mobility that Lincoln knew epitomized the American dream.

For Democrats—then as now—these concepts of upward mobility and getting rich through one’s own efforts were anathema! The Democratic Party, then as now, is all about confiscating the fruits of other people’s labor. Consequently, Democrats in the North and the South attacked Lincoln with all the political weapons they could muster.

These Democrats, led by Douglas, accused Lincoln of seeking to destroy slavery in the South and of being a covert believer in equal rights for blacks, the black right to vote, and also miscegenation or the right of blacks to intermarry with whites. These—especially the miscegenation accusation—were incendiary charges in the mid-nineteenth century.

Interestingly, while Democrats in 1860 said Lincoln wanted to free all their slaves, today’s progressive Democrats today make exactly the opposite accusation charge—they claim Lincoln did not really care about slavery and fought the Civil War for reasons other than emancipation. They point to a famous letter to Horace Greeley in which Lincoln said his overriding goal was to save the union, not end slavery, and if he could save the union without freeing a single slave he would do it.

ARTFUL EVASIONS

So who is right, the old Democrats or the new ones? Actually, the Democrats of 1860 were closer to the mark than the Democrats of today. Lincoln did in fact believe not merely in ending slavery but also in extending the vote and equal rights to blacks. He also seems to have had no objection whatever to racial intermarriage.

Still, Lincoln realized that he could not admit to holding these positions in public. For Lincoln to make the election of 1860 about issues like the black vote or miscegenation—opposed by wide majorities of Americans of all political stripes—would be to assure his political defeat. If the Democrats defeated the Republicans in 1860, the South would not have seceded and American slavery would have continued.

Thus we have from Lincoln artfully evasive statements like, “I do not understand that because I do not want a Negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife.” Also, in response to Democratic proclamations of the inferiority of the black man, “If God gave him but little, that little let him enjoy.”

Lincoln is nowhere saying that blacks are inferior. He is not saying he rejects the idea of blacks marrying whites. He is simply refusing to go there. He is keeping the debate where it ought to be, on the simple question of whether people should be permitted to steal other people’s life and labor by enslaving them. Of the black woman he says, “In her natural right to eat the bread she earns with her own hands without asking leave of anyone else, she is my equal and the equal of all others.”
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So today’s Democrats who fault Lincoln for his unenlightened views about blacks are being disingenuous. Lincoln’s views were not unenlightened. Rather, in statesmanlike fashion, Lincoln was simply refusing to admit his desire to do things that
he could not in any case do
. He was also refusing to let Democrats like Douglas change the subject from the extension of slavery—the main divide between the parties—to other peripheral subjects.

Similarly, when Lincoln insisted the Civil War was about the union, not about slavery, this is understood by competent historians to reflect Lincoln’s determination to keep border states—Maryland, Delaware,
Kentucky, and Missouri—within the union. These states had slavery, and if Lincoln framed the war as one to end slavery, the border states would have seceded. If they seceded, Lincoln believed the union cause was lost. Once again, Lincoln acted in statesmanlike fashion to hold the border states, and he was successful in doing so, thus shortening the war and ending slavery more quickly.

The Democrats of the mid-nineteenth century didn’t just castigate the Republicans; at times, they physically assaulted them. A dramatic example occurred in 1856 when Republican senator Charles Sumner gave an especially stern denunciation of slavery on the floor of the U.S. Senate. In response, Democratic congressman Preston Brooks walked up to Sumner and struck him repeatedly with his cane.

Sumner was seriously injured and his health suffered for the rest of his life. This Democratic outrage helped persuade many Americans that there was no way to rationally resolve the slavery issue with pro-slavery Democrats.
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