Our duty as we understand it

Sarah Muir
MSM Class of 2018

(7/2018) The presidential race of 1860 was fraught with tension and uncertainty. The country that would one day be referred to as "indivisible" was cleaved in two. North and South, Democrat and Republican, freeman and slave. Our country was holding its breath for the match to drop and the powder-keg of dissension, injustice, and anger to ignite into a Civil War.

This election had two main candidates, Senator Stephen Douglas, who was the choice of the Democratic party and ran for "conservative" southern interest (in other words, he was for southern states maintaining slavery), and a Republican lawyer named Abraham Lincoln who ran for the interest of preserving the Union and the laws under which it was founded. Tensions over the restriction and abolition of slavery were at an all-time high and the Confederate South had delivered her ultimatum: should the presidential elections pull in favor of the Republican party, they would extract themselves from the Union. War was becoming a matter of "when" not "if".

One year before Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration into his first term of presidential office in 1961, he addressed an audience at the Cooper Institute in Manhattan. In later years it would be referred to as his Cooper Union Address and it focused on slavery, the question of Constitutional Rights, and the threat of the Confederacy to separate from the Union. Lincoln tackled the subject matter with a lawyer’s logic. He appealed to both the rational and the passionate sides of his audience to cement his argument. It was a long speech, and full of sometimes difficult vocabulary (at least for me). However, I urge everyone to read it because it is a fine example of American rhetoric. I don’t think I could ever do it justice in the one thousand words allotted to me, but I do consider it to be one of the best speeches I have ever read.

In the first half of his speech, Lincoln addresses a certain statement that was made by Senator Douglas in Ohio, one that echoed a great many other southern slavery advocates: "Our fathers, when they framed the Government under which we live, understood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now." The question is whether Congress should control slavery in the territories, rather than allow it to expand or if slavery is purely a state matter. Douglas, like other Southern states that were ceded into the Union, believed that slavery should be state-regulated. The sovereignty would allow the Southern states to not only maintain the use of slaves, but allow them to cut any restrictions placed on slave trade. This would divide the country more definitely into Free-States and Slave-States. The main argument of the Democratic party was that it was not only their Constitutional right to keep their slaves as their "property", but that the Founding Fathers supported and understood this "right".

Unable to abide by this unfounded generalization, Lincoln decided to clarify the errant argument. Pulling from the political history of 21 individual framers proves that a majority of the original 39 individuals that signed the Constitution supported moves that would allow congressional restrictions on slavery and even its abolition. The Constitution does not use the words "slave" and "slavery" or use the word "property" in a way that would imply that owning a slave would be considered a right. Lincoln stated "That if we would supplant the opinions and policy of our fathers in any case, we should do so upon evidence so conclusive, and argument so clear, that even their great authority, fairly considered and weighed, cannot stand; and most surely not in a case whereof we ourselves declare they understood the question better than we." However, Lincoln recognized that proving this point to a room of people that already agree with him was not enough. Nor did he think the North yielding its territories would stop an outbreak of war. What the South wanted was for the North to recognize slavery as right; however, such a declaration would be unreasonable according to the laws upon which the country was founded.

It has been 158 years since Lincoln gave this speech, and not much has changed. We have comefarina short time, however the fractures that divide us still run deep. The political sides are even the same as they were then, Democrat versus Republican. We are quick to using the slander and stereotypes we have built about "the other side". If you watch the news for one hour, the matter of the Constitutionality of one law or another will, no doubt, arise, along with a statement of "Well, this isn’t what the founders of this nation would have wanted."This has become a readymade argument to parrot without having to support it.

Today there is a streak of irresponsibility regarding language. I’m not sure who to blame for this, or if there is any one person or thing to blame. I would love to grumpily mutter about education, however with the access we have to public libraries and the internet I suppose everything is there. Maybe the problem is there is so much of it, so much that we have condensed our understanding of the past down to bylines, click-baits, and 140 characters.

One major change is language. A few months ago, I sat down with the now managing editor, Shea Rowell. Our discussion of the newspaper eventually led to a conversation about old speeches. We agreed that the rhetoric you see in the current stock of politicians is somewhat lackluster when you compare it to the orators of the past. Today, politicians rarely write their own speeches. While they have a hand in it, something to make it their own, the rest is put there by the minds of others. Perhaps I am a bit cynical, but when I hear the speeches of today they sound disingenuous. When I hear arguments, they are as flimsy as papier-mâché, made to look like steel through loud, unsupported declarations.

Is it wrong of me to expect the people on the news or in political office to be held accountable for their words? To demand that they display their knowledge, not just their position? I don’t think it is wrong to desire this. In fact, if the state of our politicians (parties included) is reflected on myself, as well as my country, then it is my duty to demand these things. In the words of Abraham Lincoln, "...Let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it."

Read other articles by Sarah Muir