2005 Abbeville Institute Summer School

"Rethinking Lincoln: The Myth, The Symbol, The Legacy"

The Young-Sanders Center, Franklin, Louisiana

July 7 - 12, 2005

When 15 states seceded from the Soviet Union, it was a little over 70 years old. This was about the same age as the American Union when, in 1861, eleven states voted to secede and form a federation of their own. But, whereas the rulers of what Reagan called Athe evil empire@ negotiated a peaceful dissolution, Lincoln launched the bloodiest war of the 19^th century to create a centralized monopoly on coercion in the territory of the former union. Adjusted for today=s population, the war would have yielded more than 5 million battle deaths and some 10 million or so wounded and maimed. And this does not include the civilian casualties from starvation and disease caused by the administration's decision to turn war against civilians. 

History has been written in such a way that Americans have never had to confront the stark immorality of this barbarism.  Moreover, the war transformed  America from the federative polity of the Framers--rooted in State and local sovereignty--into the vast centralized empire we have today. The fundamental postulate of most American historiography after 1865 is that the Union should have been preserved at all cost. This fundamental control belief shapes our understanding not only of events after 1865 but of the Founding as well. The Founding has to be understood as the founding of what was destined to be, and could have only become, a centralized unitary state. This "nationalist" understanding constrains not only our understanding of the past but also what public policy options are open to us today.

But the 19th century French Revolutionary nationalism that Lincoln forged, with a Bismarkian policy of blood and iron, no longer has the authority for us it once had. Since World War II, supra national and subnational organizations of all kinds have been making claims on the allegiances of our political elites and of those they rule. The 19th century nationalism that Lincoln established by violence--though still powerful--is beginning to appear as an artifact like the hoop skirts and top hats of his time. And so is the Lincoln legend which has served to legitimate the artifact. At a time when Democrats are entertaining thoughts about Ablue@ states seceding from Ared@, it is fitting to begin a thoughtful examination of the Lincolnian myths and symbols that have both legitimated this transformation to empire and have hidden from view the federative polity of the Framers that was misplaced, but might still, in some new form, be regained.

There were 52 participants in the summer school. The J. Y. Sanders Foundation of New Orleans provided scholarships for 30 students, graduate and undergraduate. Those receiving scholarships represented a variety of disciplines and schools, including New York University, University of Virginia, University of South Carolina, University of Georgia, Kentucky Weslyean University, Lee University, Baylor University, Emory University, Patrick Henry College, Loyola University at New Orleans, Louisiana State University, and Deep Springs, Nevada.

Prof. William Wilson showed how the Lincoln myth has become the American version of Rousseau's civil religion whose articles of faith cannot be publicly challenged. He then explored the ways in which Faulkner's writings were designed to subvert that faith. Donald Livingston exploded the twin pillars of the Lincoln myth: (1) that secession was treason and, consequently, that Lincoln was simply enforcing the law; and (2) that the war was a holy crusade to abolish slavery. Livingston argued that a peacefully negotiated division of the Union was the morally best solution to all the problems confronting Americans in 1860. However, American historiography after 1865 is based on the postulate that the Union should have been preserved at all cost. Rejecting this moral postulate would make possible a radical inversion of our understanding of American history and identity, issuing in a quite different order of heroes and villains, and bringing into view a new range of policy options.

Clyde Wilson argued that we should speak of the Lincoln "fable" rather than "myth." A myth is a collective symbolic understanding of a people's past that occurs spontaneously over time. A fable is constructed by certain people to achieve a certain purpose. At his death Lincoln was not a popular or beloved figure even in the North. The Lincoln fable was constructed immediately as a means to keep the Republican Party in power. Wilson next explained the historic role of the Republican Party in creating the present system of State capitalism where big business and finance seek to use the coercive power of government and its regulations to live off the production of society.

Joseph Stromberg explored the question of whether the Lincoln administration was guilty of war crimes as understood by international legal custom at the time. He next laid out the Hegelian justifications for Lincoln's war that became part of the framework of later progressive thought, and legitimates the current American project of a global democratic revolution. Roger Busbice examined the important role that Marxist and socialist immigrants, from the failed European revolutions of 1848, played in Lincoln's rise to power and the continuing influence of Marxist thought in the Lincoln legacy.

Marco Bassani, from the University of Milan, brought a European perspective to the understanding of Lincoln's war to suppress secession. European modernity created the unitary state with its monopoly on coercion in a territory. The American Revolution resisted the importation of that system to North America by Britain. Centralists such as Hamilton, Webster, and Clay later sought to impose it, but were defeated by Jeffersonians. So successful were the Jeffersonians that by 1860 the scope of the central government had actually shrunk from what it had been in 1800. Bassani showed that Lincoln's war destroyed this Jeffersonian alternative and brought the European unitary state system to America in full force.

Scott Trask gave two lectures from his path breaking and forthcoming book on Northern resistance to Lincoln's war to prevent secession. Trask documented the scope of the resistance (around a third of the North were strongly opposed to the war and another third were indifferent), and the reign of terror that was necessary to suppress it.

Thomas DiLorenzo, author of the best selling The Real Lincoln, A New Look at His Agenda and an Unnecessary War, argued that Lincoln's agenda was, from the beginning of his career, the mercantilist agenda of Hamilton and Clay, namely to use the coercive mechanism of government, rather than the market, to gain wealth for certain groups. In Lincoln's case, it was the Northern manufacturing interest and especially the railroads. Southerners were oppressed by this system and feared that further implementation of it would reduce them to a colonial economy of the North which in fact it did. DiLorenzo next lectured on the topic of his forthcoming book, namely the political uses of the Lincoln legend from shortly after his death to the present.