American patriots aren’t what they used to be. Thomas Jefferson’s position on slavery was as complicated as it was unfortunate. George Washington, too, was tainted by slavery, but revelations about his unrepentant elitism have done little to enhance his reputation. For all of Benjamin Franklin’s contributions to the republic, he was also flawed. He loved his wife, but had you been his neighbor in Philadelphia he probably would have loved your wife as well. Only Abraham Lincoln remains.
American schoolchildren grow up well versed in the Lincoln mythology of the honest storekeeper walking miles to return a few overcharged pennies, the country lawyer working long hours for humble clients. The entire weight of the Lincoln folklore rests on the singular, if simple, premise that he was a good person. But as Thomas L. Carson, a philosopher at Loyola University Chicago, asks in Lincoln’s Ethics, is any of this true?
Finding an answer is more than an academic exercise. In our modern political environment, in which candidates’ moral codes are as important as their policy positions, exploring the place of ethics in politics, even in a 19th-century context, is crucial. Politicians on both the right and left continue to lay claim to Lincoln and his legacy. Their ideal, however, is no more nuanced than the stick figure portrayed in grade-school pageants.
Carson comes to Lincoln from a more complex, and certainly more interesting, perspective. His Lincoln was never naturally virtuous. Indeed, there was much to criticize about the fierce, even cruel, young candidate who openly mocked his political opponents. His cold demeanor strained his most intimate personal relationships. Most damning, he was steadfast in his defense of white privilege. From this beginning, however, came a gracious statesman and committed abolitionist.
Carson follows this evolution in a two-part work he describes as applied moral philosophy. He opens with an investigation of Lincoln’s long list of potential moral sins. His slow embrace of abolition, support of the Fugitive Slave Law, and interest in resettling American blacks in Africa — led critics to question Lincoln’s ethical foundation. In the book’s second half, Carson turns to Lincoln’s character. He judges the rail-splitter’s admirable qualities — kindness, humor, generosity, and, most notably, mercy — against his personal failings as husband, father, and son. The most important work in this section, if not in the entire book, is Carson’s examination of Lincoln’s views on slavery and race.
The author emerges from this analysis convinced that, if anything, the Lincoln mythology understates his goodness. Against each line of potential criticism, Carson offers a spirited defense. The president’s political style led many Lincoln scholars to label him a pragmatist, but Carson’s Lincoln was a utilitarian. The two philosophies share some common ground, but where pragmatism is concerned with the practical significance of action, utilitarianism is a moral calculus. The moral rightness of any individual action depends on the probable consequences of that action. For Carson, then, some of Lincoln’s most questionable policies — his early concessions to slaveholders, suspension of habeas corpus, limited emancipation of slaves — were morally justifiable because of the eventual positive results of the Civil War.
Many of Lincoln’s decisions had negative consequences, to be sure, but his greatest ethical achievement was his occasional consent to a limited evil to prevent the greater horror of a Confederate victory. It was Lincoln’s utilitarianism, Carson insists, that gave him the tools needed to balance the changing objectives and mounting casualties of the conflict with the competing theories of justified war and the political realities of life in a divided America. To examine his moral world is to expose the murky terrain of war, the demands of political expediency, and the ethical compromises that are seldom anticipated but always required.
In the preface, Carson admits to great admiration for Lincoln. No fault there; Lincoln is as close to a patron saint as this nation can claim. Recent discussions about his sexuality, personal relationships, and mental health have only increased our fascination.
Let’s look at this admiration more closely. Much Lincoln scholarship rests on what the historian Sean Wilentz labeled the “two Lincolns” mythology. The legend takes a frontier figure, who reflects the attitudes and prejudices of his day, and sets him in motion on a spiritual journey. A growing sectional crisis prompts him to enter the political arena, where, moved by the dignity of ordinary black Americans, he becomes an abolitionist. His assassination completes the transformation as Lincoln transcends everyday politics on his way to a more virtuous world.
Carson’s ethical Lincoln occupies a special position outside the messy world of traditional politics. But reinterpreting ordinary political operations as idealism not only skews our understanding of history but also distorts our view of workable party politics. Lincoln the legend hovers above the civic realm because he appears as a political man for all seasons. He was a “Black Republican” committed to ending slavery, a representative of oppressed peoples everywhere, and most powerfully, a martyr. His critics used much less flattering labels, of course — bumbler, racist, tyrant. And those descriptions were at times also true, or at least true enough. As Wilentz points out, however, terms not often associated with Lincoln are “politician” and “opportunist.”
Why not? For much of his career in politics, Lincoln was a partisan player for the Whig Party. When the Whigs dissolved, he joined cause with the Republicans but also a loose confederation of pro-Union Democrats. He did so because they shared not his ethics but his understanding of politics. In contemporary parlance, ethics and politics are closely linked, but this was not always so. In his classic work on Lincoln’s statesmanship, the historian David Herbert Donald argued that Lincoln navigated the sectional crisis because he out-politicked his opponents.
Lincoln did not court favor with the press, have many friends on Capitol Hill, or, despite his public pronouncements, have wide appeal among the general public. He succeeded because he was a political operator. He was a realist who knew when, where, and how to spend his political capital, and he proved adept at working the levers of the patronage system to silence political foes and encourage compliant allies. To color Lincoln as a politician seems almost vulgar, but only if we subscribe to the Lincoln mythology.
Our myth-making tendencies toward Lincoln have contemporary significance. As America enters another election cycle, we want to hear candidates confirm national greatness while offering a counternarrative to politics as usual. Further, we demand that our politicians hit the stage ready-made. Looking at Lincoln’s ethics challenges both expectations. He didn’t care about the doctrinal purity of his supporters or his detractors. As he searched for a way out of the Civil War, expediency trumped dogma. Today, any evolution in political thought is taken as evidence of weakness. Holding fast to one’s ethical positions, even if creative political gymnastics are required to do so, stands as proof of ideological commitment. Lincoln would surely be puzzled by those priorities.
Just as significant, however, is how we see the process. Utilitarianism gave Lincoln a framework to judge competing moral claims, but the philosophy was his guide, not his method. It was not powerful rhetoric or strong ethics that ended the sectional crisis. It was politics well played.
