At age 28, Abraham Lincoln made a public address. A biographer, David Donald, noted, “This was the golden age of the lyceum movement, when men and women thronged lecture halls and listened for hours to speakers who might edify, enlighten or, at least, amuse them.” Writing a century ago, the poet Carl Sandburg described the theme of this long remembered and often cited 1838 Lyceum Speech as, “the spirit of violence in men overriding law and legal procedure.”
We in the U.S. live again in a time of threat, now, “societal” tension, not unlike the time of Lincoln’s speech, the then, “sectional” tensions of the approaching Civil War — and tension now for the same reason, the endurance of white supremacy.
Praising the system of government bequeathed us by the Founders, Lincoln asked, “At what point shall we expect the approach of danger?” He responded rhetorically, is there some “transatlantic” giant to “crush us at a blow” and come “take a drink from the Ohio?” No. “If destruction be our lot, we ourselves must be its author.”
For evidence Lincoln cited “disregard for law … furious passions, in lieu of sober judgment … (and) worse than savage mobs for … ministers of justice.”
Lincoln addressed the dangers posed by the existence of slavery in the U.S. — an institution, the violence of which, he said, could corrupt the government. His address was occasioned by both the mob burning-to-death in St. Louis of a man of mixed race, the murder of a local abolitionist printer by a pro-slavery mob, and the frequency of lynching.
A man of his time, Lincoln had not yet acquired more liberal views, but he was well aware that the founders of this democracy were all white men of property, most of whom owned slaves to work their lands, and who believed the purpose of women was to bear children and meet men’s personal wants.
When Clarence Thomas looks to the Founders and their beliefs as models for his court opinions, he forgets that living in their time he would have been a field hand, beaten often for not picking his quota of cotton, his wife frequently raped by his owner.
Lack of learning and vigilance, Lincoln said, could make us vulnerable to the great danger of hyper-emotionalism in politics and mob violence.
“What the Founders built must crumble save for reverence for the Constitution and laws.” Lincoln imagined an ambitious, authoritarian man rising among us. This, he said, will require “the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs.”
The 2008 presidential election of a man of color stimulated the narrow-minded mob. This persisting minority variously opposes immigration because migrants are, more often than not, persons of color; is anti-Semitic and denies the Holocaust; harkens to the fascism of the 1940s; fears their dominance of the U.S. will be broken when persons of color become a majority; and collects arms to use in assertion of political demands.
Like-minded Donald Trump, emerging as a Republican leader, provided them a rallying point and legitimized their cause with all Republican members of Congress and a majority of Republican voters.
When he lost re-election by seven million votes, Trump claimed he’d won, lost all 63 of his court challenges, persisted in his lie, engaged in illegal efforts to steal the election, and mounted an effort to storm the Capitol to reverse the certification of the vote. He knew members of the mob he intended to lead had guns and intended to hang Vice President Pence.
Trump’s extremist appointees to the Supreme Court, who lied under oath during confirmation, delighted a Republican Party that has departed its traditional conservatism in favor of designs throughout the country of undermining voting to create unchallengeable authoritarian rule.
In writing the majority opinion in the recent matter of Roe v. Wade, Judge Alito made inconsequential a host of people’s rights that appear in the Constitution. Concurring, Thomas listed other constitutional rights to be taken away — gay marriage and contraception. He wrote, “we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents.” Would that include inter-racial marriage and the right to vote?
Historically, these are not the only radically wrong justices. In Lincoln’s time the Court ruled African Americans could never be citizens of the United States.
For remedy, we must elect greater Democratic majorities to the Senate and House, to increase justices to twelve, with term limits.
Charlemont resident Carl Doerner is an author and historian currently at work on a re-examination of and challenge to the “American narrative.”