Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Abraham Lincoln on Presidential Authority

"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 purpose, and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after having given him so much as you propose. If to-day he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, — 'I see no probability of the British invading us;' but he will say to you, 'Be silent: I see it, if you don't.'

"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. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood," - Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to William H. Herndon, Feb. 15, 1848.


Via Andrew Sullivan.

11 comments:

Scott said...

... he said just 13 years before invading a neighboring country.

Go figure.

Orthoprax said...

Scott,

Yeah, and he specifically had Congress meet to approve it. Further, Confederate rebels had attacked Fort Sumter thus initiating hostilities and justifying military response by the Union.

Scott said...

Lincoln knew exactly what would happen if he continued to supply Fort Sumter, which was on foreign soil. Just like other presidents since his time have staged events to entice(?) "surprise" attacks. *coughPearlHarbor*

Lincoln's goal was to start a war against a sovereign nation in order to keep them from remaining sovereign. He said so himself. The vicious attack on Sumter which resulted in exactly ZERO Union casualties) was just the means to get what he wanted.

Now sure he had congress approval, but seeing as he garnered that approval from rigging the events in such a way to gain the outcome he wanted, I'm forced to categorize him closer to Bush not further away. After all, Congress gave Bush the approval for Iraq as well based on information that may or may not have been KNOWN inaccurate. But the approval was given none the less, just as it was with "Honest" Abe.

Orthoprax said...

Scott,

Fort Sumter was federal property and Lincoln was clear that he would enforce the property rights of the government. (The Confederates had taken all the other federal forts in their territory except two others.) The Confederate government even offered to buy the federal forts but Lincoln refused because making deals with them would legitimize their government.

I don't believe Lincoln wanted a war, but neither did he want to see the creation of the Confederacy. I don't know if the Union would have gone to war if unprovoked, but the Confederates did fire the first shots.

As I see it, Lincoln was basically just letting the Confederates play their game of seccession to a point but only reacted militarily when the Confederates began to play hardball.

Orthoprax said...

The point is that nobody twisted Davis' arm to attack federal property and troops.

Scott said...

I don't see how it can be reasoned that the South wanted a war. What would the purpose of such a war be? Were they trying to take control of the North? If so why did they ever secede? They made their choice to go their way in peace and Lincoln clearly wasn't willing to oblige.

Maybe they knew the war was coming, much like the colonists knew a war was coming with Britain after they seceded, and then made war preparations and even (I think) fired some of the first shots. But there is certainly NO reason to believe that the colonists *wanted* a war with the British. They just wanted to be left alone to make their own country in this side of the Atlantic.

Lincoln was an asshole war monger, no question in my mind. And to bring this discussion back on topic to this post, look at how Lincoln is viewed today. As one of the greatest presidents ever, and consider what Bush, the newest asshole war monger, will look in a hundred years. My guess is he will be viewed similar to how Wilson (who lied us into World War I) looks now; one of the greatest evah, etc.

Orthoprax said...

Scott,

No, I don't believe the South wanted a war, but they also didn't want to respect federal property. The rest is history.

Anyway, as Lincoln said on secession: "If the United States be not a government proper, but an association of States in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a contract, be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made it? One party to a contract may violate it—break it, so to speak—but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it?"

Basically, he's saying that the States signed up to form a Union with the intent of perpetuity - as there are no written means in the Constitution as a way to legally secede. Therefore, the act of secession is illegal from the federal government's perspective and may be enforced.

Scott said...

Yeah, he also said this in 1848:

"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and to form one that suits them better. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may make their own of such territory as they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize, putting down a minority intermingling with or near them who oppose their movement."

So at one time he thought the right of secession is available to any people anywhere, but later when it suited his purpose he changed his story. Sounds like a typical politician to me.

Orthoprax said...

Scott,

"The right of revolution is never a legal right....At most, it is but a moral right, when exercised for a morally justifiable cause. When exercised without such a cause revolution is no right, but simply a wicked exercise of physical power."
- Lincoln, 1861

Scott said...

Ha, like I said when it suited his purpose he changed his story. He was all for revolution as long as it fit his moral reasoning. Since the tariffs placed on the southern states served his purpose he was more than willing to consider it just, and the south's objection to it obviously immoral. By his reasoning the American Revolution would be "illegal".

With this quote he's put himself in direct contradiction with the quote the JA posted as he's designated himself the ultimate judge on what is a "morally justifiable cause."

I mean what would be a morally unacceptable cause? Isn't that what should happen when two groups disagree? They just go their separate ways in peace? What was so immoral about the South's secession that 500,000 people had to die and most of the South's property had to be destroyed?

Orthoprax said...

Scott,

I know of no political theorist who was for revolution just for the sake of revolution except for anarchists. The point is that revolt, to be morally defensible, requires in the Lockian and Jeffersonian sense a long train of abuses against the people under rule - and I am confident that it was in this vein that Lincoln spoke of a right to revolution.

So what was it that precipitated the revolt of the South? The election of a president they didn't like and the perceived aims (abolition) they believed the federal government held.

If small groups could just secede at will when majority, democratic politics weren't to their liking then that would be precedent that minorities in the future could use until the United States was reduced to innumerable petty autocracies. This would end the great experiment for popular government.