The ethics of rhetoric

by Richard M. Weaver

There is quite possibly concealed here another argument from definition, expressible in the proposition that which cannot grow must perish. To fix limits for an institution with the understanding that it shall never exceed these is in effect to pass sentence of death. The slavery party seems to have apprehended early that if slavery could not wax, it would wane, and hence their support of the Mexican War and the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. Lincoln’s inflexible defense of the terms of the old Northwest Ordinance served notice that he represented the true opposition. In this way his definitive stand drew clear lines for the approaching conflict.

To gain now a clearer view of Lincoln’s mastery of this rhetoric, it will be useful to see how he used various arguments from definition within the scope of a single speech, and for this purpose we may choose the First Inaugural Address, surely from the standpoint of topical organization one of the most notable American state papers. The long political contest, in which he had displayed acumen along with tenacity, had ended in victory, and this was the juncture at which he had to lay down his policy for the American Union. For some men it would have been an occasion for description mainly; but Lincoln seems to have taken the advice he had given many years before to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield: “Passion has helped us but can do so no more.... Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason—must furnish all the materials for our future support and defense....”[92] Without being cold, the speech is severely logical, and much of the tone is contributed by the type of argument preferred.

Of the fourteen distinguishable arguments in this address, eight are arguments from definition or genus. Of the six remaining, two are from consequences, two from circumstances, one from contraries, and one from similitude. The proportion tells its own story. Now let us see how the eight are employed:

1. Argument from the nature of all government. All governments have a fundamental duty of self-preservation. “Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments.”[93] This means of course that whatever is recognized as a government has the obligation to defend itself from without and from within, and whatever menaces the government must be treated as a hostile force. This argument was offered to meet the contention of the secessionists that the Constitution nowhere authorized the Federal government to take forcible measures against the withdrawing states. Here Lincoln fell back upon the broader genus “all government.”

2. Argument from the nature of contract. Here Lincoln met the argument that the association of the states is “in the nature of a contract merely.” His answer was that the rescinding of a contract requires the assent of all parties to it. When one party alone ceases to observe it, the contract is merely violated, and violation affects the material interests of all parties. By this interpretation of the law of contract, the Southern states could not leave the Union without a general consent.

3. Argument from the nature of the American Union. Here Lincoln began with the proposition that the American Union is older than the Constitution. Now since the Constitution was formed “to make a more perfect union,” it must have had in view the “vital element of perpetuity,” since the omission of this element would have left a less perfect union than before. The intent of the Constitution was that “no State upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union.” Therefore the American Union, as an instrument of government, had in its legal nature protection against this kind of disintegration.

4. Argument from the nature of the chief magistrate’s office. Having thus defined the Union, Lincoln next looked at the duties which its nature imposed upon the chief magistrate. He defined it as “simple duty” on the chief magistrate’s part to see that the laws of this unbroken union “be faithfully executed in all the states.” Obviously the argument was to justify active measures in defense of the Union. As Lincoln conceived the definition, it was not the duty of the chief magistrate to preside over the disintegration of the Union, but to carry on the executive office just as if no possibility of disintegration threatened.

Thus far, it will be observed, the speech is a series of deductions, each one deriving from the preceding definition.

5. Argument from the nature of majority rule. This argument, with its fine axiomatic statements, was used by Lincoln to indicate how the government should proceed in cases not expressly envisaged by the Constitution. Popular government demands acquiescence by minorities in all such cases. “If the minority will not acquiesce, the majority must, or the government will cease. There is no other alternative; for continuing the government is acquiescence on one side or the other.

“If a minority in such case will secede rather than acquiesce, they make a precedent which in turn will divide and ruin them; for a minority of their own will secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such a minority.”[94] The difficulty of the Confederacy with states’ rights within its own house was to attest to the soundness of this argument.