What Would Lincoln Have Done?

[David Lockmiller]

(07-29-2019 06:54 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(07-28-2019 07:48 PM)L Verge Wrote:  "WHAT IF THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA HAD SIMPLY LEFT THE UNION AND DID NOT START A WAR. WHAT WOULD LINCOLN HAVE DONE?

I believe Abraham Lincoln felt that ultimate sovereignty could not be inherent in both the federal and state governments. Lincoln was faced with a threat to federal authority, and he would have reacted with force no matter what the circumstances. At that point in time saving the Union was more important to him than freeing the slaves, and he would have done what be thought best to achieve that goal. If it took war, then sobeit in his eyes.

It was Lincoln's legal opinion that the Constitution made the union of states perpetual. Thus, from a Constitutional standpoint, (in his view) the Union was unbroken and secession was blatantly illegal. And it was his clear Constitutional duty to enforce the laws of the land, by force if necessary.

Lincoln contended in a draft of his First Inaugural: "Plainly, the central idea of secession, is the essence of anarchy. A constitutional majority is the only true sovereign of a people. Whoever rejects it, does, of necessity, fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible; the rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism is all that is left.”

Complete Works Abraham Lincoln, Volume IV, p. 256 (First Inaugural Address—First Edition and Revisions, March 4, 1861).

There is also a famous quote that Lincoln made to Nicolay about the people in this contest being able to govern themselves in a democracy when a minority are able to overrule a majority. But I could not immediately find this quotation and I had to settle on the quotation above.