Alan Keyes
Exclusive to HUMAN EVENTS: 
The National Conservative Weekly 
August 11, 2000

Yes, Let's Wear the Mantle of Lincoln 
In his speech to the Republican Convention Monday night, Gen. Colin Powell said that Governor Bush wants the Republican Party to wear the mantle of Lincoln again. Restoring the mantle of Lincoln to the Republican Party is a noble goal, and indeed an essential one. But it is not enough to adopt the slogan. 
To lead the party in the footsteps of Lincoln requires that we understand clearly and deeply the soul of Lincoln's own deepest ambition - the wellsprings of the sometimes heartbreaking, and ultimately healing, acts of political and presidential leadership that constitute the legacy of Lincoln.

What was the real purpose that animated the striving of that great man, for which he spent the last resources of his noble soul, and ultimately paid with his life?

The answer occurring readily to most Americans would probably be that Lincoln's career, and his presidency, was devoted to the task of freeing the slaves. How then are we to understand the following words, written by Lincoln during the war to one of the foremost abolitionists of the day? "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all slaves I would do it."

This quotation can seem almost scandalous in its apparent disregard for the abolitionist cause, particularly for those who are perceptive enough to realize that not all "unions" justify such devotions - the Soviets, after all, had a "union" and freely accepted the necessity of slavery in their attempt to perpetuate it. Soviet acceptance of slavery in the cause of its union was, of course, deeply wrong. Was Lincoln wrong as well?

If we wish to understand, to wear again, the mantle of Lincoln, we must follow his thought deeper, and ask what it was about the Union that could move such a man, whose deepest moral sentiments were outraged by the institution of slavery, to defer the cause of abolition if it meant allowing the end of the political union of the American republic.

At stake was the survival of a community of free men still devoted, however imperfectly, to the attempt at just self-government. Lincoln understood the Founders to have formed a Union dedicated to vindicating the possibility of such a community.

He believed that the Founders had understood that the institution of slavery, although it ultimately contradicted the principles of the republic, did not vitiate the solemn founding commitment to the pursuit of just self-government. Accordingly, Lincoln argued, the Founders had placed the institution of slavery "in the course of ultimate extinction," partly through a series of practical political concessions such as the constitutional time limit on the slave trade.

A Perpetual Struggle

Far more important, however, was the fact - as Lincoln argued in scholarly depth - that the founding generation universally understood that they were committing the country to a perpetual struggle to conform their lives and political institutions to the principles stated in the Declaration that gave birth to the Union itself. They, and Lincoln, knew that slavery could not survive such a commitment.

A Union that had formally broken its commitment to the Declaration, Lincoln believed, would no longer be the Union of the Founding. It would in fact be no less broken than the divided polity which the secession of the Southern states threatened to cause.

Preserving the Union meant preserving the national commitment to the pursuit of justice in self-government, a goal never perfectly attained, but most definitely not to be abandoned because of any dispute about the manner of its accomplishment.

This, I believe, is what Lincoln meant in the famous words at Gettysburg, when he identified the "great task remaining before us." That task, he said, was "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."

This is not statement of mere democratic sentiment, of "inclusive empowerment," or of a compassionate desire to reach out to this or that constituency. It is rather a profound articulation of Lincoln's deepest ambition- to vindicate in his time the Declaration commitment of the Founding by continuing the never-ending labor to refound the country more perfectly on the principles of that document.

On the eve of his greatest challenge, as he traveled to Washington to assume the presidency, Lincoln spoke briefly in Philadelphia's Independence Hall. His words make clear beyond the obscuring power of the superficial rhetoric at this year's Republican convention that the Declaration of Independence is the mantle of Lincoln:

"I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence. I have often pondered over the dangers which were incurred by the men who assembled here, and framed and adopted that Declaration of Independence. I have pondered over the toils that were endured by the officers and soldiers of the army who achieved that Independence.

"I have often inquired of myself what great principle or idea it was that kept this Confederacy so long together. It was not the mere matter of the separation of the Colonies from the motherland; but that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but, I hope, to the world, for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weight would be lifted from the shoulders of all men."

Vessel of the Declaration

Lest there be any confusion, Lincoln went on to make clear that the Union was worth saving as the vessel of the Declaration, or not at all:

"Now, my friends, can this country be saved upon that basis? If it can, I will consider myself one of the happiest men in the world, if I can help to save it. If it cannot be saved upon that principle, it will be truly awful. But if this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle, I was about to say I would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it."

To save the Union on the basis of the Declaration, Lincoln knew, required that slavery be returned to its condition at the Founding --namely, that it be put firmly on the course of ultimate extinction. The delay in its extinction might be painfully long. But if it was necessary to endure that delay rather than admit that we could not govern ourselves under the principles of the Declaration, Lincoln was prepared to do so. What he would never do, and would die rather than accept, was to repudiate the goal of ultimately attaining justice.

The essence of Lincoln's statesmanship was to strive to find the most prudent, charitable and edifying way to encourage his fellow citizens in the South to accept that the eventual elimination of slavery was inevitable if the American Republic was to remain worthy of the blood of patriots, and the civic labor of citizens. It was this intention that the defenders of the peculiar institution understood him to have, and which they chose to make war rather than accept.

The resolve to evoke from his fellow citizens their assent to the eventual triumph of justice was Lincoln's greatest ambition, and his failure to do it without war was his greatest sorrow.

In our time, the mantle - the burden - of the Declaration remains the source of what must be our own greatest ambition. The Republican Party must indeed reclaim the mantle of Lincoln - we must highly resolve, as Lincoln said, to lead the nation to a renewed determination to seek justice according to the principles of the Declaration.

We must, with Lincoln, seek this justice not through partisan triumph or vindictive assault on the motivations of those who disagree. We must edify, lead, and convert our fellow citizens, so that it is the entire American people which rededicates itself to justice, not a faction or momentary coalition.

It is essential that we understand for ourselves and for those we must convince precisely where compromise is possible, and where it is not. The American political order is based on the truth that our rights come from God, and must be secured by respect for the authority of God. As creatures of God, as our Declaration says, we are all equal. Accordingly, we must be treated by each other and by our government, with the dignity and respect that befits this condition. On this principle of moral equality there can be no fundamental compromise.

Issues that raise the fundamental question of the source of our rights and our dignity are Declaration issues, and each of them places before the entire nation the question once again whether we will remain highly resolved to pursue justice. Abortion, the replacement of merit based opportunity with racially based preferences, tax slavery of the income tax, the suppression of the right to maintain citizen armament sufficient to prevent our government from tyrannizing us, and the intervention by the state in the God-given responsibility of parents to raise and educate their children -these issues all raise the fundamental questions of the Declaration: Where do my rights come from? Where do my duties come from? Am I free to choose injustice? Is our government our instrument in the execution of our duties to God, or is it our master?

The Republican Party need not demand that the country accept immediately the full application of Declaration principles to these and all Declaration issues. But it cannot permit itself to forget that its paramount goal - the reason for its existence - is to be a political instrument for the ambition of the American people to vindicate the promise of the Founding, and to seek the justice of the Declaration on each of these issues.

Does the mantle of Lincoln leave room for compassion? Indeed. None of us can know how that great heart must have broken with compassion as he struggled to bring a stubborn people to see the happiness that would be theirs if they would but turn again toward justice. If we imitate his principled resolve today, we will as well find ourselves imitating his compassion - his great love - for his fellow citizens. I invite those who doubt that the mantle of Lincoln's principled resolve is woven from true love of his brother, or who think to imitate him today would be a failure in charity, to reflect on the tragic closing lines of his First Inaugural, spoken on the brink of the war he wanted so desperately to avoid:

"We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

He had done all that he could to touch them, and to call them back to the high road of American principle. To do more - to accept their insistence that he abandon the Declaration - would have been to kill the Union with his own hands, and he knew it.

Republicans today do not face a challenge as severe, intractable, or bitter as did Lincoln. But if we fail to raise the banner of principle in the spirit of Lincoln, and instead encourage our fellow citizens to believe that they can abandon the Declaration and still preserve the Republic, we will have done to this great party what Lincoln would have died, did die, rather than do to his country.