CHAPTER VIII
WHY SOCIALISTS OPPOSE “RADICAL” POLITICIANS
A “radical” politician, when he is not an utter fraud, is a well-meaning man who lacks either the courage or the insight to do well. He can see wrongs, but he cannot see rights. Or, if he can see rights, he dare not do right. Always, there is some reason why he should not do right. The people are not ready. The time is not propitious. Thus does he appease his conscience, betray his followers and destroy himself.
Abraham Lincoln, during all except the last two years of his life, was such a man. I sometimes feel that this is why so many modern “radicals” believe they are second Lincolns. They seem to remember Lincoln only as he was when he was too small for his task. Mr. Roosevelt, in particular, is suspected of harboring the belief that he is a second Lincoln. In a way and to a degree, Mr. Roosevelt is right. The ground upon which Mr. Roosevelt now stands is broadly comparable to the ground upon which Mr. Lincoln stood before he signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Mr. Lincoln hated chattel slavery, but was willing to end the war with slavery intact. Mr. Roosevelt hates the robbery of man by man, but he shrinks from trying to seize the club with which the robbery is committed. He is willing to pick at the splinters upon the club, precisely as Mr. Lincoln was long willing to content himself with efforts to restrict the evil of slavery. And, Mr. Roosevelt, picking at splinters, is no more useful in destroying poverty than was Mr. Lincoln, when he picked at the splinters of chattel slavery. The Civil War came on, in spite of all that Lincoln did, because he did no more than to temporize with the evil that was destined to cause the war. Mr. Roosevelt, even as the leader of a new political party, is doing no more than to temporize with the monstrous evil of unnecessary poverty in America.
Let us look, even more closely, into the life of Lincoln. The career of no other man of modern times is so well suited to our purpose. We want to know whether a “radical” like Roosevelt or Wilson should be more highly regarded by the people than a revolutionist like Debs or Berger. Lincoln, at different times in his life, was both a “radical” and a revolutionist. His “radical” beliefs put him into the White House. One colossal revolutionary act put him into the hearts of men. We Socialists feel that he nestles a little more closely to our hearts than he does to some others. When Lincoln ceased to temporize with chattel slavery and struck it down, he became one of us. He actually did to chattel slavery what we are trying to do to wage slavery.
The magnitude of this act, as well as the usefulness of a mere “radical” politician, may be measured by what Lincoln’s life would have been without his name at the bottom of the Emancipation Proclamation. Tradition has it that Lincoln became a radical upon the slavery question when, as a flatboatman upon the Mississippi, he saw a negress sold upon the auction block at New Orleans. Tradition has it that he said: “If I ever have a chance to hit slavery, I will hit it and hit it hard.”
The fact is that when Mr. Lincoln began to get the power to hit slavery, he did not hit it hard. He was a “radical” politician and therefore could not hit it hard. He was against slavery, but he was also against anything that would end slavery. In the phrase of our time, he wanted to “regulate” slavery. Men like John Brown and William Lloyd Garrison wanted to end slavery and advocated means that would have ended it, but Lincoln, though he hated slavery as much as they did, wanted only to restrict it. He was “radical.” Brown and Garrison were revolutionary. Lincoln meant well. Brown and Garrison were determined to do well.
But after Lincoln, even as President, had continued to temporize with slavery; after he had sent word to the Southern leaders that if they would let him write into a treaty of peace the one word “union” he would let them write all of the other words, including “slavery”—after all of this, there came a change, and Lincoln ceased to be a “radical.” Then, and not until then, did he strike the blow that in his youth he declared he would strike if ever the opportunity should come. With only the briefest words he laid the Emancipation Proclamation before his cabinet.
“I do not lay this before you for your advice,” he said, “but only for your information. I have promised my God that I will do this, and I shall do it.”
Thus spoke the revolutionist. The time for “radicalism” had passed. Slavery, during half a century of “radicalism,” had expanded. Having the power to kill chattel slavery and daring to use it, Lincoln killed chattel slavery. He put himself into the hearts of men. He wrote his name so big in history that the names of all other men since his time seem small.
Yet Lincoln, if he had been content to remain merely a “radical,” could have performed no service for his country worth while, and Fame would have missed him by many a mile. If the South had won, the North would have blamed Lincoln. If the North had won, without destroying chattel slavery, nothing would have been settled, and Lincoln would have been given the credit for settling nothing. Lincoln’s greatest opportunity to serve his country lay in doing precisely what he did, and it is to his eternal glory that he had both the understanding and the courage to do it.