How did the behavior of the federal government change?
Was Abraham Lincoln's behavior consistent with "traditional" views of the relationship between the government and individuals?
Source: Thomas A. Bailey and David
M. Kennedy, eds., The American Spirit:
United States History as Seen by Contemporaries (Boston, 1998) p. 445
The most notorious [Copperhead, or Northern Democrat] was
Clement L. Vallandigham, an eloquent and outspoken critic of this “wicked and
cruel” war. He regarded it as a diabolical attempt to end slavery and
inaugurate a Republican despotism. Convicted by a military tribunal in
Cincinnati of treasonable utterances, he was banished by Lincoln to the
Confederacy. After a short stay, he made his way by ship to Canada. From there
he ran for the governorship of Ohio in 1863, and though defeated, polled a
heavy vote. Some two months before his arrest in 1863, he delivered this
flaming speech in New York to a Democratic group.
….
[The Habeas Corpus Act] authorizes the President whom the people made, whom the
people had chosen by the ballot box under the constitution and the laws, to
suspend the writ of habeas corpus all
over the United States; to say that because there is a rebellion in South
Carolina, a man shall not have the freedom of speech, freedom of press, or any
of his rights untrammeled in the state
of New York, or a thousand miles distant….
Was
it this which you were promised in 1860, in that grand [Lincoln] “Wide Awake”
campaign, when banners were borne through the streets inscribed “Free speech,
free press, and free men?” And all this has been accomplished, so far as the
forms of law go, by the Congress that has just expired. Now I repeat again that
if there is anything wanting to make up a complete and absolute despotism, as
iron and inexorable in its character as the worst despotisms of the old world,
or the most detestable of modern times, … I am unable to comprehend what it is
….
Our
fathers did not inaugurate the Revolution of 1776, they did not endure the
sufferings and privations of a seven years’ war to escape from the mild and
moderate control of a constitutional monarchy like that of England, to be at
last, in the third generation, subjected to a tyranny equal to that of any upon
the face of the globe.
1) Read the passage aloud to each
other (alternate paragraphs)
4) What would Thomas Jefferson think about this speech?
In August of 1863, shortly after the Battle of Gettysburg,
President Lincoln visited the battlefield to speak at a funeral for the
soldiers who died there. Below is the full text of his “Gettysburg Address.”
Four
score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new
nation, conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are
created equal.
Now
we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation
so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great
battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a
final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might
live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But,
in a larger sense, we can not dedicate – we can not consecrate – we can not
hallow – this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have
consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little
note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did
here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished
work which they who fought here have this far so nobly advanced. It is rather
for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from
these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave
the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead
shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new
birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the
people, shall not perish from the earth.
1) Read the passage aloud to each
other (alternate paragraphs
2) Identify terms or events you do
not understand
