The ethics of rhetoric

by Richard M. Weaver

6. Argument from the nature of the sovereignty of the people. Here Lincoln conceded the right of the whole people to change its government by constitutional reform or by revolutionary action. But he saw this right vested in the people as a whole, and he insisted that any change be carried out by the modes prescribed. The institutions of the country were finally the creations of the sovereign will of the people. But until a will on this issue was properly expressed, the government had a commission to endure as before.

7. Second argument from the nature of the office of chief magistrate. This argument followed the preceding because Lincoln had to make it clear that whereas the people, as the source of sovereign power, had the right to alter or abolish their government, the chief magistrate, as an elected servant, had no such right. He was chosen to conduct the government then in existence. “His duty is to administer the present government as it came into his hands, and to transmit it, unimpaired by him, to his successor.”[95]

8. Second argument from the nature of the sovereignty of the people. In this Lincoln reminds his audience that the American government does not give its officials much power to do mischief, and that it provides a return of power to the people at short intervals. In effect, the argument defines the American type of government and a tyranny as incompatible from the fact that the governors are up for review by the people at regular periods.

It can hardly be overlooked that this concentration upon definition produces a strongly legalistic speech, if we may conceive law as a process of defining actions. Every important policy of which explanation is made is referred to some widely accepted American political theory. It has been said that Lincoln’s advantage over his opponent Jefferson Davis lay in a flexible-minded pragmatism capable of dealing with issues on their own terms, unhampered by metaphysical abstractions. There may be an element of truth in this if reference is made to the more confined and superficial matters—to procedural and administrative detail. But one would go far to find a speech more respectful toward the established principles of American government—to defined and agreed upon things—than the First Inaugural Address.

Although no other speech by Lincoln exhibits so high a proportion of arguments from definition, the First Message to Congress (July 4, 1861) makes a noteworthy use of this source. The withdrawal of still other states from the Union, the Confederate capture of Fort Sumter, and ensuing military events compelled Lincoln to develop more fully his anti-secessionist doctrine. This he did in a passage remarkable for its treatment of the age-old problem of freedom and authority. What had to be made determinate, as he saw it, was the nature of free government.

And this issue embraces more than the fate of these United States. It presents to the whole family of man the question of whether a constitutional republic or democracy—a government of the people by the same people—can or cannot maintain its territorial integrity against its own domestic foes. It presents the question whether discontented individuals, too few in numbers to control administration according to organic law in any case, can always, upon the pretenses made in this case, or on any other pretenses, or arbitrarily without any pretense, break up their government, and thus practically put an end to free government upon the earth. It forces us to ask: “Is there, in all republics, this inherent and fatal weakness?” “Must a government, of necessity, be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?”[96]

Then looking at the doctrine of secession as a question of the whole and its parts, he went on to say:

This relative matter of national power and State rights, as a principle, is no other than the principle of generality and locality. Whatever concerns the whole should be confined to the whole—to the General Government; while whatever concerns only the State should be left exclusively to the State. This is all there is of original principle about it. Whether the National Constitution in defining boundaries between the two has applied the principle with exact accuracy is not to be questioned. We are all bound by that defining without question.[97]

One further argument, occurring in a later speech, deserves special attention because of the clear way in which it reveals Lincoln’s method. When he delivered his Second Annual Message to Congress on December 1, 1862, he devoted himself primarily to the subject of compensated emancipation of the slaves. This was a critical moment of the war for the people of the border states, who were not fully committed either way, and who were sensitive on the subject of slavery. Lincoln hoped to gain the great political and military advantage of their adherence. The way in which he approaches the subject should be of the highest interest to students of rhetoric, for the opening part of the speech is virtually a copybook exercise in definition. There he faces the question of what constitutes a nation. “A nation may be said to consist of its territory, its people, and its laws.” Here we see in scholarly order the genus particularized by the differentiae. Next he enters into a critical discussion of the differentiae. The notion may strike us as curious, but Lincoln proceeds to cite the territory as the enduring part. “The territory is the only part which is of a certain durability. ‘One generation passeth away and another cometh, but the earth abideth forever.’ It is of the first importance to duly consider and estimate this ever-enduring part.”[98] Now, Lincoln goes on to say, our present strife arises “not from our permanent part, not from the land we inhabit, not from our national homestead.” It is rather the case that “Our strife pertains to ourselves—to the passing generations of men; and it can without convulsion be hushed forever with the passing of one generation.”[99] The present generation will soon disappear, and our laws can be modified by our will. Therefore he offers a plan whereby all owners will be indemnified and all slaves will be free by the year 1900.

Seen in another way, what Lincoln here does is define “nation” and then divide the differentiae into the permanent and the transitory; finally he accommodates his measure both to the permanent part (a territory to be wholly free after 1900) and the transitory part (present men and institutions, which are to be “paid off”).