Mark and Lincoln: And Unfinished Revolution

between the sections was with reference not to slavery as such but 
to its expansion. 
 Many US historians treat the Northern decision to go to war 
in a fatalistic way, echoing Lincoln’s own later phrase: “And the 
war came.”
46
 Th
  e Unionist cause—US or American nationalism—is 
simply taken for granted as an absolute value needing no further 
explanation or justifi cation. However, Sean Wilentz adopts a bolder 
line, taking his cue from the Lincoln’s fi rst inaugural address: 
Above and beyond the slavery issue, Lincoln unfl inchingly 
defended certain basic ideals of freedom and democratic self-
government, which he asserted he had been elected to vindicate. 
Th
  ere was, he said, a single “substantial dispute” in the sectional 
crisis: “one section of our country believes that slavery is right and 
ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong and 
ought not to be extended.” Th
  ere could be no doubt about where 
Lincoln stood, and where his administration would stand, on that 
fundamental moral question.
47
 
46 Th
  e phrase “And the war came” occurs in Lincoln’s second inaugural 
address (reprinted in this volume). It has been adopted for many valuable 
accounts, but its implicit denial of Northern agency fails to acknowledge the 
emergence of a new nationalism or to pinpoint the Union’s legitimacy defi cit 
in 1861–2 and hence a vital factor impelling the president to remedy it. See 
Kenneth Stampp, And the War Came, Baton Rouge 1970; Daniel Crofts, ”And 
the War Came,” in A Companion to the Civil War and Reconstruction, Lacy Ford, 
ed., pp. 183–200; James McPherson, “And the War Came,” in Th is Mighty 
Scourge: Perspectives on the Civil War, Oxford 2007, pp. 3–20, 17. Th
 e legiti-
macy defi cit was the more damaging in that abolitionists and Radicals, who 
might have been the warmest supporters of the administration, felt it keenly. It 
was alleviated by the Emancipation Proclamation but not fully dispelled until 
1865, as we will see.
47 Sean 
Wilentz, 
Th
  e Rise of American Democracy, New York 2005, p. 783. 
Wilentz proceeds from these remarks to this conclusion: “Th
  e only just and 
legitimate way to settle the matter [the diff erence over slavery extension], 
Lincoln insisted…was through a deliberate democratic decision made by the 
citizenry” (p. 763). A riposte to this is suggested by Louis Menand’s observa-
tion: “Th
  e Civil War was a vindication, as Lincoln had hoped it would be, of 
the American experiment. Except for one thing, which is that people who live 
in democratic societies are not supposed to settle their disagreements by killing 
one another.” Louis Menand, Th e Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America, 
New York 2001, p. x. Th
  is important book, together with Drew Gilpin Faust’s 
Th
  e Republic of Suff ering, New York 2007, prompts the thought that the massive 
30  an unfinished revolution

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But Lincoln’s formula was deliberately circumscribed to allow agree-
ment to disagree, and not to challenge slavery as such. If slavery 
really was a moral outrage—and if it disqualifi ed sovereign right, 
as Lincoln himself had declared in Peoria in 1854—then he should 
have said that slavery was “wrong and ought to be abolished.” In the 
absence of any action against slavery—even something very gradual 
like a “Free Womb” law—the war policy of the Union, measured 
against Lincoln’s own statements, suff ered a yawning legitimacy 
defi cit. As to whether there could be doubt about where Lincoln 
stood, it is a simple fact that many of his contemporaries, espe-
cially the Radicals and abolitionists, did indeed doubt him and his 
administration. Marx, for his part, was aware of the problem, and 
troubled by it, but prepared to place a wager that the North would 
be forced to take revolutionary antislavery measures.
During the secession crisis Lincoln refused to compromise an 
iota of his stand against any expansion of slavery, something that 
could not be said of other Republican leaders once thought to be 
more radical than Lincoln (notably Seward). But he was prepared 
indefi nitely to extend or perpetuate the compromise that he had 
made. He supported a proposed new amendment—it would have 
been the Th
  irteenth—to declare the future of slavery in the various 
states to be wholly the concern of those states forevermore, and 
no business of the Federal authorities. In February and March the 
proposed amendment received the necessary qualifi ed majority in 
Congress and the approval of several Northern states, as well as 
Lincoln’s approval. But it was then overtaken by the logic of seces-
sion and the fi ring on Fort Sumter.
48
If the new president could not come out more clearly against 
slavery, then he could not challenge the South’s “right to revolu-
tion.” Lincoln declared himself satisfi ed that the Union cause 
and his oath of offi
  ce were fully self-suffi
  cient and amply justifi ed 
resistance to rebellion. To underline that secession was rebellion, 
bloodletting of the war weakened the justifi cations  off ered for it. Of course, 
those who went to war on both sides made poor guesses as to its duration, and 
this ignorance was itself a very signifi cant cause of the war. 
48 William Freehling,  Th e South Vs. the South: How Anti-Confederate 
Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War, Oxford 2001, p. 39; and Michael 
Vorenberg, Final Freedom, Cambridge 2001, pp. 18–22.
introduction  31

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