Wordgems - Deception

Joseph R. Fornieri, The Lincoln Forum, Lincoln Revisited (2007): Fornieri, in this collection of Lincoln essays, helps us to understand Judge Douglas’ central undergirding platform, the doctrine of “popular sovereignty,” which would allow new territories to extend or deny the institution of slavery. This precept of self-determinism is “perfectly logical,” responded Lincoln, “if there is no difference between hogs and negroes… [but the question is] whether a negro is not or is a man. If he is not a man … he who is a man may, as a matter of self-government, do just as he pleases with him. But if the negro is a man [shall he not] also govern himself? When the white man governs himself that is self-government; but when he governs himself, and also governs another man [without that other man’s consent], that is more than self-government – that is despotism.” Lincoln went on to explain how the European “Divine Right of Kings,” something from which we had recently extricated ourselves, employed, in principle, this same notion of privileged and superior certain ones ruling over a lesser class of beings. All of this violated the “ancient faith,” a term by which Lincoln referred to the precepts of the Declaration of Independence, the moral foundation of the nation, in its statements that “all men are created equal.” “No man,” Lincoln asserted, “is good enough to govern another man, without that other’s consent. I say this is the leading principle -- the sheet anchor of American republicanism.” Douglas weakly responded with a claim that God had placed Adam and Eve in the garden and had told them to make their choice – exalting “choice” as a universal trump card. Lincoln bashed this sophistry with “God did not place good and evil before man, telling him to make his choice. On the contrary, he did tell him there was one tree, of the fruit of which, he should not eat, upon the pain of certain death.” Fornieri, speaking even more plainly: “If taken to its logical conclusion, Douglas’ reading of the Bible would obliterate any firm basis for moral judgments by making them entirely relative to personal choice.” Lincoln then goes further and eviscerates notions of choice and prattle of self-government as nothing more than an undisguised policy of “self-interest” masquerading as morality. Lincoln began speaking of these issues with earnest in 1854, after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. His continued insightful commentary culminated in the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. Judge Douglas won the Illinois senate seat in ’58 – but Mr. Lincoln, his punch-and-jab speeches gaining the respect of some and the attention of all, found himself catapulted to the Presidency only two years later.