Mark and Lincoln: And Unfinished Revolution

and single-minded mobilization for the war eff ort was welcomed 
by the Union Leagues.
40
 
Th
 e German American mobilization for the Union was dis-
interested in that it did not ask for anything for itself in return 
for its support, though it did sometimes urge recognition for the 
workingman.
41
 (Northern Protestant churches gave strong support 
to the Union, but some of their leaders urged that the time had 
come for Protestantism to be recognized as the country’s offi
  cial 
religion.)
42
Th
  e national imagination pitted producers against parasites, or 
plain folk against snobs. Both Marx and Lincoln used a class-like 
language in evaluating the confl ict. Marx stressed that secession was, 
above all, the work of aristocratic slaveholders, implicitly absolving 
the plain folk of the South from responsibility. Th
  ere were clear 
majorities for secession in the representatives’ gatherings that agreed 
to the setting up of the Confederacy, with the issue of secession 
decided by special conventions in ten cases and by the legislature in 
one other. Scrutiny of these decisions—and the contrary decisions 
taken by one special convention and three legislatures—shows that 
the participants were nearly all slaveholders and considerably better 
off  than the average free citizen (only about a third of the heads of 
Southern households owned slaves). Th
  e supporters of immediate 
secession were considerably richer than those who were lukewarm 
or opposed. Put another way, those with more slaves—the main 
form of wealth—were keenest on secession.
43
40 Mark 
Neeley, 
Th
  e Union Divided, Cambridge, MA, 2002, pp. 9–12.
41  Lincoln made a friendly response to an address delivered to him by a 
torchlight procession of German Americans at Cincinnati, Ohio, on February 
12, 1861, in which he observes, “I agree with you that the workingmen are the 
basis of all governments, for the plain reason that they are the more numerous” 
but adds that “citizens of other callings than those of the mechanic” also war-
ranted attention. See “Address to Germans at Cincinnati, 12 February 1861,” 
in Basler, Abraham Lincoln: His Speeches and Writings, pp. 572–3.
42 George 
Frederickson, 
“Th
  e Coming of the Lord: Th
  e Northern Protestant 
Clergy and the Civil War Crisis,” in Religion and the American Civil War, 
Randall Miller, Harry Stout, and Charles Reagan Wilson, eds., New York 
1998, pp. 110–130.
43 Ralph 
Wooster, 
Th
  e Secession Conventions of the South, Princeton 1962, 
pp. 256–66.
introduction  27

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Lincoln claimed to fi nd a similar pattern in Washington in the 
fi rst days of the war as many deserted their posts:
It is worthy of note that while in this the government’s hour of 
trial large numbers of those in the Army and Navy, who have been 
favored with offi
  ces, [have] proved false to the hand that had pam-
pered them, not one common soldier, or common sailor, is known 
to have deserted his fl ag. Th
  e most important fact of all is the unan-
imous fi rmness of the common soldiers and common sailors…Th
 is 
is the patriotic instinct of the plain people. Th
 ey understand, 
without an argument, that destroying the government which was 
made by Washington means no good to them.
44
 
Th
  ough certainly invoking class-like qualities, at the same time 
Lincoln is certainly appealing to national sentiment, just as on the 
Confederate side there was also, very emphatically, an appeal to the 
spirit of George Washington (and Th
 omas Jeff erson) and a claim 
that the common (white) folk were the heart of the nation and that 
it was they who fi lled the fi ghting ranks of the rebel army. (Th
 is 
was true, though by the end of the extraordinarily grueling confl ict, 
Southern desertion rates were to be higher.)
THE NORTH DECIDES TO FIGHT
Lincoln was to spell out an important qualifi cation to the sweep-
ing endorsement of the right of revolution in his Mexican War 
speech, one that had a direct bearing on the South’s right to self-
determination. He declared: “Th
  e doctrine of self-government is 
right—absolutely and eternally right—but it has no just applica-
tion, as here attempted. Or perhaps I should rather say that whether 
it has such just application depends upon whether a negro is not 
or is a man. If he is not a man, why in that case, 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, is it not to that extent a total destruction 
of self-government to say that he, too, shall not govern himself ? 
44  Quoted by William Lee Miller in President Lincoln: the Duty of a 
Statesman, New York 2008, p. 106.
28  an unfinished revolution

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When the white man governs himself that is self-government, but 
when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is 
more than self-government—that is despotism. If the negro is a 
man, why then my ancient faith teaches me that ‘all men are created 
equal’ and that there can be no moral right in connection with one 
man’s making a slave of another.”
45
 
Lincoln uttered these words in Peoria in 1854 responding to the 
debate over the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the dispute over the 
right of communities in the Federal territories to establish them-
selves as newly formed states, with or without slaves. Th
 e principle 
outlined in the above passage ruled out what Marx called “settler 
sovereignty.” However attractive and compelling Lincoln’s argument 
might be, it could only be urged in favor of Unionist resistance to 
secession if the Union had itself repudiated slavery. But Lincoln 
and the majority of Republicans expressly condoned the survival of 
slavery in the Union and only opposed its extension to the Federal 
territories. 
Once elected, Lincoln’s main concern was to court the slavehold-
ing border states and make sure as few of them as possible backed 
the rebellion. His success in this became the source of his caution in 
moving against slavery. Amending the Constitution in order to out-
law slavery was anyway out of the question—it would have needed 
large qualifi ed majorities to pass in Congress and be endorsed by 
the states. Lincoln also held that the wrong of slavery was a national 
and not personal aff air, and therefore slaveholders should be com-
pensated for their loss of property. Given that the slaves of the 
South were worth more than all the machines, factories, wharves, 
railroads, and farm buildings of the North put together, any pro-
gram of emancipation was going to be very gradual. In his fi rst 
inaugural address Lincoln declares that the only major diff erence 
45  Abraham Lincoln, speech in Peoria (Illinois) on October 16, 1854. 
Available in Basler, Abraham Lincoln: His Speeches and Writings, pp. 283–325.
 
Th
 e quote from the Declaration of Independence strikes a patriotic note, 
though some might conclude that the speech also queried the break of 1776, 
given the prominence of slavery in several North American slave colonies. 
No doubt Lincoln would have insisted that the objection was not available to 
George III and his governments, since they were massively implicated in slav-
ery, and that at least the Founding Fathers were uneasy about the institution.
introduction  29

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