Getting Right with Lincoln . . . and Black Freedom (original) (raw)
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Historian, 2019
Interview by: Tom Barber Civil War Book Review (CWBR): Today the Civil War Book Review is pleased to speak with Graham Peck Professor of History at Saint Xavier University and the author of several articles, which include "How Moderate Were the Moderates? Reconsidering the Origins of the Republican Party in Illinois" and "Abraham Lincoln and the Triumph of an Antislavery Nationalism." Today we are here to talk with him about his new book, Making an Antislavery Nation: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Battle over Freedom. Professor Peck, thank you for joining us today.
At the turn of the twentieth century, Abraham Lincoln continued to influence events as an idea. Despite his biology’s end over thirty years earlier, Lincoln’s life was far from concluded; Progressive Era Americans remembered him actively, building monuments, writing biographies, and giving speeches. And by thinking about Lincoln, the Progressives reflected on America’s present condition. Representing the promise of national unity, Lincoln served as a unifying force for the Progressives, someone accessible to Americans of all backgrounds. The conflicting elements in Lincoln’s life—the tension between his early poverty and later fame—made his memory accessible for populists and centralized industrial capitalists alike. Regardless of their particular reform positions, the Progressives united in claiming Lincoln. Indeed, Lincoln’s memory reveals that, despite its complexity, Progressivism remains a useful category for understanding America at the turn of the twentieth century. A hundred years after Lincoln’s birth, on February 12, 1909, over 10,000 Americans gathered in rural Kentucky for a common purpose. The Lincoln Birthplace Memorial cornerstone laying ceremony represented years of collaboration that involved unlikely accomplices. Drawing on the monetary contributions of thousands of people and the planning capacities of an advisory board comprised of prominent and politically divergent individuals, the Lincoln Birthplace Memorial demonstrates Progressives’ ability to find common ground. Placing a reconstruction of Lincoln’s log birth cabin inside of a neoclassical granite temple, the memorial demonstrated the connection between Lincoln and the Progressive Era’s conflicts. With the cabin gesturing to populism and the monument encapsulating industrial capitalism, the rural Kentucky shrine showed the Progressives’ tensions coexisting for single purpose. Despite its complexity, Progressivism could cohere. Important differences of opinion certainly existed, but at the turn of the twentieth century, Americans at least agreed about the some of the problems they wanted to solve. Determining the self’s relationship to society occupied Progressives of all backgrounds. The socialist writers Edward Bellamy and William Dean Howells confronted the self in their respective novels Looking Backward and The Altrurian Romances. W. E. B. DuBois and John D. Rockefeller thought about the same issue in magazine articles, novels, and autobiographies. While the socialists favored the individual’s subordination to common concerns and the so called “elitists” believed that allowing the best and brightest to achieve their full selfhood would help society, everyone recognized a similar tension. Lincoln’s memory helped the Progressives understand how seemingly incompatible visions could coexist in a single nation. The sixteenth president’s ability to simultaneously express both populist and national capitalist sensibilities in his life prefigured what Progressive Era Americans hoped would become national solidarity. At the turn of the twentieth century, Lincoln’s memory captured a generation’s concerns about their country.
Their Souls Are Marching On: What Abraham Lincoln and John Brown Have in Common
American Political Thought, 2023
This article compares Abraham Lincoln's and John Brown's justifications for violently confronting slavery during the Civil War and the raid at Harpers Ferry, respectively. Though significant differences existed between these two men, I argue that there is a surprising and often overlooked convergence. Both Brown and Lincoln rooted their opposition to slavery in their belief that it threatened the possibility of free self-government. Both concluded that violence was the only effective way to fight slavery. Finally, both argued that their violence was justified by democratic procedures and principles. In making this comparison, this article offers three contributions to the study of American political thought and political theory more broadly. First, it challenges the historical consensus that portrays these men as radically opposed exemplars. Second, it rehabilitates John Brown's political thought. Third, through the comparison, it surfaces a democratic approach to the complex relationship between violence, democracy, and racism.