December 21, 2009
Lincoln, the Antiwar Congressman
Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, July 1st, 2009 The only time before his presidency when Abraham Lincoln held national office was a single term (1847-49) in the U.S. House of Representatives. During that time, while debating the Mexican-American War, Lincoln zealously defended the constitutional prerogative of Congress to declare war and enact legislation against a perceived usurpation of these powers by the executive branch. Between December 22, 1847, and July 27, 1848, in speeches on the House floor and in his personal letters, Lincoln argued against the right of any president to initiate a war. There are no better arguments against President Lincoln’s unconstitutional war of 1861 than his own. Congressman Lincoln addressed the subject of the Mexican-American War in three major speeches: on his “Spot Resolutions” (December 22, 1847), on war with Mexico (January 12, 1848), and on the “presidential question” (July 27, 1848). But his most insightful analysis of why the Constitution assigned the power to declare war to Congress, and Congress alone, was given in his letter of February 15, 1848, to his friend and law partner William H. Herndon. Allow the
President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he
shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you
allow him to do so, whenever, he may choose to say he
deems it necessary for such a purpose—and you allow him
to make war at pleasure. . . . The provision of the
Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress,
was dictated, as I understand it, by the following
reasons. Kings had always been involving and
impoverishing their people in wars, pretending
generally, if not always, that the good of the people
was the object. This, our Convention understood to
be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and
they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one
man should hold the power of bringing this oppression
upon us. In another letter to Herndon, dated February 1, 1848, Representative Lincoln had written about his opposition to the Mexican-American War: That vote
affirms that the war was unnecessarily and
unconstitutionally commenced by the President; and I
will stake my life, that if you had been in my place,
you would have voted just as I did . . . Richardson’s
resolutions, introduced before I made any move, or gave
any vote upon the subject, make the direct question of
the justice of the war; so that no man can be silent if
he would. You are compelled to speak; and your
only alternative is to tell the truth or tell a lie. These words could be mistaken for those of another antiwar congressman, Clement L. Vallandigham, whom President Lincoln would arrest and deport. On May 1, 1863, Vallandigham delivered a speech at Mount Vernon, Ohio, denouncing President Lincoln’s war as a wicked,
cruel, and unnecessary war . . . a war not being waged
for the preservation of the Union . . . a war for the
purpose of crushing out liberty and erecting a despotism
. . . the sooner the people inform the minions of
usurped power that they will not submit to such
restrictions upon their liberties the better . . . Representative Lincoln’s Spot Resolutions (which the House ignored and did not adopt) urged Congress to ask that the President answer his eight questions regarding the legitimacy of the war. The fifth asked Whether the
People of that settlement, or a majority of them, or any
of them, had ever, previous to the bloodshed . . .
submitted themselves to the government or laws of Texas,
or of the United States by consent, or by compulsion . .
. The sixth inquired “Whether the People of that settlement, did, or did not, flee from the approach of the United States Army, leaving unprotected their homes and their growing crops . . . ” These two, in particular, expressed Lincoln’s moral outrage at the apparent violation of civilians’ democratic rights and the safety of their persons and property—an outrage Lincoln would abandon while conducting his own war. Lincoln’s most important antiwar speech, on war with Mexico, was more partisan, attacking the motivation and emotional stability of President James K. Polk. It alienated his constituents back home, ensuring Lincoln would not be elected to a second term. His criticisms of President Polk, however, are directly applicable to his own behavior as president: I carefully
examined the President’s messages, to ascertain what he
himself had said and proved upon the point. The
result of this examination was to make the impression,
that taking for true, all the President states as facts,
he falls far short of proving his justification; and
that the President would have gone farther with his
proof, if it had not been for the small matter that the
truth would not permit him. . . . [L]et the
President answer the interrogatories, I proposed, as
before mentioned, or some other similar ones. Let
him answer, fully, fairly, and candidly. Let him
answer with facts, and not with arguments . . . But if
he can not, or will not do this—if on any pretense, or
no pretense, he shall refuse or omit it, then I shall be
fully convinced, of what I more than suspect already,
that he is deeply conscious of being in the wrong—that
he feels the blood of this war, like the blood of Abel,
is crying to Heaven against him. . . . [H]e plunged
into it, and has swept on and on, till, disappointed in
his calculations . . . he now finds himself, he knows
not where. How like the half insane mumbling of a
fever-dream, is the whole war part of his message. . . . [T]he
president is, in no wise, satisfied with his own
position . . . His mind, tasked beyond its power, is
running hither and thither, like some tortured creature,
on a burning surface, finding no position, on which it
can settle down, and be at ease. [The
President] is a bewildered, confounded, and miserably
perplexed man. God grant he may be able to show,
there is not something about his conscience, more
painful than all his mental perplexity. Congressman Lincoln then asks his colleagues in the House of Representatives what is to be done with the population inhabiting territory captured by the U.S. Army. “I suppose no one will say we should kill the people, or drive them out, or make slaves of them, or even confiscate their property.” Yet these are the very policies President Lincoln would support and laud General Sherman, among others, for implementing. In his official report dated January 31, 1864, Sherman declared, Next year
their lands will be taken, for in war, we can take them,
and rightfully too, and in another year they may beg in
vain for their lives . . . Many, many peoples with less
pertinacity have been wiped out of national existence .
. . to the petulant and persistent secessionists, why,
death is a mercy, and the quicker he or she is disposed
of the better. On July 26, 1864, President Lincoln commended Sherman for his conduct in warfare: “My profoundest thanks to you and your whole Army for the present campaign so far.” Approval was not restricted to private correspondence. On September 3, 1864, President Lincoln issued two proclamations: One praised Sherman; the other mandated public celebrations in his honor. Lincoln’s “Executive Order of Thanks to William T. Sherman and Others” declared: The national
thanks are herewith tendered by the President to Major
General William T. Sherman, and the gallant officers and
soldiers of his command before Atlanta, for the
distinguished ability, courage, and perseverance
displayed in the campaign in Georgia, which, under
Divine favor, has resulted in the capture of the City of
Atlanta. The marches, battles, sieges, and other
military operations that have signalized this campaign
must render it famous in the annals of war, and have
entitled those who have participated therein to the
applause and thanks of the nation. The second presidential proclamation, “Executive Order for Celebration of Victories in Atlanta, Georgia, and Mobile, Alabama,” proclaimed That on
Wednesday, the 7th day of September, commencing at the
hour of twelve o’clock noon, there shall be fired a
salute of one hundred guns at the Arsenal at Washington,
and at New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore,
Pittsburg, Newport, Ky., and St. Louis, and at New
Orleans, Mobile, Pensacola, Hilton Head & Newberne, the
day after the receipt of the order, for the brilliant
achievements of the army under the command of Major
General Sherman, in the State of Georgia, and the
capture of Atlanta. The Secretary of War shall
issue directions for the execution of this order. In criticizing Polk’s war with Mexico, Representative Lincoln displayed prescience with words that indict the proclamations of President Lincoln and all those trusting to
escape scrutiny, by fixing the public gaze upon the
exceeding brightness of military glory—that attractive
rainbow, that rises in showers of blood—that serpent’s
eye, that charms to destroy. As an antiwar politician, Lincoln returned to the question of civilians in a speech on the “Presidential question”: The marching
[of] an army into the midst of a peaceful . . .
settlement, frightening the inhabitants away, leaving
their growing crops, and other property to destruction,
to you may appear a perfectly amiable, peaceful,
unprovoking procedure; but it does not appear so to us.
So to call such an act, to us appears no other than a
naked, impudent absurdity, and we speak accordingly. The policy so eloquently condemned here is the very policy pursued by President Lincoln between 1861 and 1865. As General Sherman described it in an official correspondence dated December 24, 1864, “We are not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war, as well as their organized armies.” After Sherman completed his destructive March to the Sea known as the Savannah Campaign, which culminated in the occupation of that city, he received another laudatory note from President Lincoln (December 26, 1864): Many, many
thanks for your Christmas gift, the capture of Savannah.
When you were about leaving Atlanta for the Atlantic
coast, I was anxious, if not fearful; but feeling that
you were the better judge, and remembering that “nothing
risked, nothing gained,” I did not interfere. Now,
the undertaking being a success, the honor is all yours
. . . Please make my grateful acknowledgments to your
whole army, officers, and men. In January 1865, Sherman boasted: I estimate the
damage done to the State of Georgia [alone] . . . at
$100,000,000; at least $20,000,000 of which has inured
to our advantage, and the remainder is simple waste and
destruction. Seventeen years earlier, in his speech on the presidential question, Lincoln had declared to the war hawks in Congress that the
distinction between the cause of the President in
beginning the war, and the cause of the country after it
was begun, is a distinction which you can not perceive.
To you the President, and the country, seems to be all
one. You are interested to see no distinction
between them; and I venture to suggest that possibly
your interest blinds you a little. As president, Lincoln implied (if not insisted) that in wartime the cause of the president and the country are one. So to an inquiry from the House of Representatives as to the unlawful arrests of city officials in Baltimore, he wrote on July 27, 1861, that, In answer to
the resolution of the House of Representatives of the
24th instant, asking the grounds, reasons, and evidence
upon which the police commissioners of Baltimore were
arrested, and are now detained as prisoners at Fort
McHenry, I have to state that it is judged to be
incompatible with the public interest at this time to
furnish the information called for by the resolution. Continuing on the presidential question, Congressman Lincoln opposed what he perceived as threats by the president to advance executive authority by usurping powers of the legislature: [T]hat the
constitution gives the President a negative on
legislation, all know: but that this negative should be
so combined with platforms, and other appliances, as to
enable him, and in fact, almost impel him, to take the
whole of legislation into his own hands, is what we
object to . . . To thus transfer legislation, is clearly
to take it from those who understand, with minuteness,
the interest of the people, and give it to one who does
not, and cannot so well understand it. That is exactly how President Lincoln governed—by usurping the powers of the legislature. Pro-Lincoln scholars acknowledge this. James G. Randall wrote that “It thus appears that the President, while greatly enlarging his executive powers, seized also legislative and judicial functions as well . . . ” Clinton Rossiter concurred, writing that [Lincoln] was
allowed to proceed without external check to a series of
unusual measures which he alone deemed necessary to lay
the rebellion. Unlike Cincinnatus, this great
constitutional dictator was self-appointed. Of Lincoln’s executive acts, he added: “This amazing disregard for the words of the Constitution . . . was considered by nobody as legal.” This unconstitutional expansion of the powers and prerogatives of the executive office by President Lincoln was for the express purpose of prosecuting a war to advance his economic agenda. The result was death, corruption, and war profiteering. Over 600,000 Americans were killed as the federal government was transformed, according to Lincoln’s attorney general Edward Bates, into a bloated bureaucracy of institutionalized corruption. Lincoln’s friends and cronies did quite well. The war assured the
fortunes of a dynasty of American families . . .
Brewsters, Bushnells, Olcotts, Harkers, Harrisons,
Trowbridges, Langworthys, Reids, Ogdens, Bradfords,
Noyeses, Brooks, Cornells, and dozens of others . . . This series of tragedies brought forth by President
Lincoln proved the wisdom and insight of Representative
Lincoln, who, in a speech on June 20, 1848, observed: ““I say there are
few stronger cases in this world of ‘burthen to the
many, and benefits to the few’ . . . than the presidency
itself . . .” Joseph E. Fallon writes from Rye, New Yorkspan>. |
