On Nov. 19, 1863, at the dedication of the
military cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, President
Abraham Lincoln spoke these words:

Four score and seven years ago our
fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation,
conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition
that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war,
testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived
and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great
battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a
portion of that field, as a final resting place for
those who here gave their lives that that nation might
live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should
do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not
dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow —
this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who
struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor
power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor
long remember what we say here, but it can never forget
what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to
be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who
fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is
rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task
remaining before us — that from these honored dead we
take increased devotion to that cause for which they
gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here
highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in
vain — 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.

It’s curious that he took the phrase “that
all men are created equal” from the second paragraph of
the Declaration of Independence, but stopped there rather
than continue with the words, “Governments are instituted
among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of
the governed — That whenever any Form of Government
becomes destructive of those ends, it is the Right of the
People to alter or abolish it and institute a new
Government.”

The Civil War was not fought to create “a
new birth of freedom,” as Lincoln suggested. Nor did it
create a “government of the people, by the people and for
the people.” It did quite the opposite.

As H.L. Menken later wrote about the
Gettysburg Address in “Smart Set” in 1920:

[I]t is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination — “that government of the people, by the people, for the people,” should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in that battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves. What was the practical effect of the battle of Gettysburg? What else than the destruction of the old sovereignty of the States, i.e., of the people of the States? The Confederates went into battle free; they came out with their freedom subject to the supervision and veto of the rest of the country — and for nearly twenty years that veto was so effective that they enjoyed scarcely more liberty, in the political sense, than so many convicts in the penitentiary.

The states that left the Union to join the Confederacy did so in the true sense of the Jeffersonian principle of self-government, as stated in the Declaration. Lincoln’s invasion of the Confederate States stood that idea on its head.

The threat of secession was a check on federal power that both New England and Southern states invoked between the ratification of the Constitution and beginning of the Civil War. It was generally understood that, because the Constitution was silent on the issue, secession was a viable alternative to checking federal power. In fact, when during the Constitutional Convention a proposal was made to allow the federal government to suppress a seceding state, James Madison proclaimed: “A Union of the States containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force against a State, would look more like a declaration of war, than an infliction of punishment, and would be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound.” The proposal was removed.

Lincoln’s claims in his address “that government of the people, by the people, for the people ” would somehow “perish from the earth” if the Union lost the war was hogwash. Representative democracy would have continued in the Union and in the Confederacy regardless of the outcome. And remember, neither side entered the war over the issue of slavery. Lincoln’s stated purpose for invading the Confederacy was “preserving the Union.”

Finally, the final outcome of the Civil War did not usher in “a new birth of freedom.” It did quite the opposite. It consolidated federal power, neutered the 9th and 10th Amendments and gave birth to the fascist system and the imperial presidency under which we now suffer.

References: History.com
“The Real Lincoln,” by Thomas J. DiLorenzo
“The Civil War,” by Bruce Catton

This entry was posted in History Lesson of the Month.