America’s Second Founding
2021-07-05 · Guest: John Cribb (Author and historian) · 52:23
Abraham Lincoln and the American Civil War
Bob Zadek interviews author John Cribb about his historical novel Old Abe, focusing on Abraham Lincoln’s pivotal role in preserving and redefining the American experiment. They discuss Lincoln’s deep-seated reverence for the Declaration of Independence, the strategic nature of the Emancipation Proclamation, and the controversial suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War.
Topics: Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution, Emancipation Proclamation, Habeas Corpus, American History, Founders vs. Framers
Speakers:
- Bob Zadek – Host
- John Cribb – Author of Old Abe
Introduction [00:00]
Bob Zadek: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to The Bob Zadek Show, the longest-running live libertarian talk radio show in all of radio. The show of ideas, never once the show of attitude. And thank you so much for joining me this Independence Day morning.
You cannot study the founding era and fully understand it, and understand the wisdom of the founders in so many ways—you cannot put it all together without a study of, in general, the Civil War era and, most emphatically, most particularly, a study of our 16th president, Abraham Lincoln. You don’t see the full context of what the founders were trying to do and what they were afraid to do. You cannot understand it in full without a study of the period in general from 1861 through 1865 and continuing a bit thereafter.
Therefore, it is this morning with great pride, excitement, anticipation, that I welcome this morning’s guest, John Cribb. John is a best-selling author. He has written at least two—maybe John, you’ll correct me and there’ll be more—New York Times bestsellers: The American Patriot’s Almanac was one, and The Educated Child another. John has studied through his career as a published author and historian, he has studied the Civil War period and, most specifically, has recently published his first historical novel, Old Abe, about the four-year period—roughly four-year period between, or five-year period, roughly starting in 1861 with Abraham Lincoln becoming the elected as the 16th president of our country at the time when the Civil War was inevitable, secession was inevitable, and here was a first-term president assigned the task of nothing less than winning a Civil War, a first in American history, holding the country together, and delivering a post-Civil War country that was intact and would survive. How’s that for a rookie’s job? Well, to help us understand our 16th president, Abraham Lincoln, the thought process of this brilliant politician, student of history, Abraham Lincoln, I’m delighted to welcome John to the show. So John, welcome to the show this morning and thank you so much in advance for helping us tie the ribbon around the founding era and fully understand it with an understanding of Abraham Lincoln.
Why a Historical Novel? [01:44]
Bob Zadek: Now John, welcome. And your book is described as a historical novel. But of course, a novel presupposes or has one assume there is something fictional about it. So novel kind of doesn’t quite nail it in terms of the rich content of your book. So tell us—here you are, determined to help us understand even more about Abraham Lincoln than we might know now—tell us about the process of deciding that the vehicle you were going to use was something which falls in the category of a novel rather than a history book.
John Cribb: Sure, I’d love to. And first of all, thank you so much for having me on and happy Independence Day. I love talking about American history and Abraham Lincoln and the founding, and this is just a great day to do it. So I really appreciate your having me on, Bob.
Yeah, the book, Old Abe, it is a historical novel. But I should say it does cover the last five years of Lincoln’s life, beginning with his nomination to the presidency. And then it just follows him through his presidency and the Civil War. So you’re at his side every step of the way. And it is a book, as you say, though, that is rich in history, even though it is a novel. I spent more time than I want to admit to you researching this book. I actually got the idea for it way back in 2006, and it was published late last year. So you can do the math. My wife jokes, she says, “John, it only took four years to win the Civil War. It took you more than three times that amount of time to get this book done.”
And one reason it took so long is because I did want to make it historically accurate. So as you read through this book, every chapter has a date on the top of it. And hopefully, this is—I mean, this is the real Lincoln. He’s not chasing vampires or, you know, killing zombies. This is actually what he went through. And I did it—I chose to do it as a novel for several reasons. Number one, there are lots and lots of really fine non-fiction biographies out there about Abraham Lincoln. They say that more books have been written about Abraham Lincoln than anybody in history except Jesus Christ, and I think that may be well be true. I’ve heard estimates of 15,000 to 20,000 books written about Lincoln. Not so many novels, though. And I wanted to do this as a novel to really try to bring him to life for readers and make him a walking, talking, breathing fellow, not just that stiff image we see on the five-dollar bill or on the penny. So I hope that if people read this book, it will really help bring him alive for them. And I hope that if they read it, that it reminds them of just what an extraordinary service he performed for this country because he really was that giant hero at the center of that epic struggle to save our country when it was really falling apart, and to save our founding principles—the principles of 1776—when a lot of people were ready to cast them aside. And then, of course, he also was a hero in helping to lead the struggle to free millions of enslaved Americans. I tell people that they understand American history a lot better, and the story of American history a lot better, if they understand Lincoln’s story because in so many ways he stands center stage in that magnificent story of American history.
Four Score and Seven Years Ago [04:00]
Bob Zadek: In Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address—since I’m going to ask this question because of the calendar date, July 4th—in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, he started with “Four score and seven years ago.” That—and most school children can recite that phrase from memory. It has great meaning. It tells us so much about Lincoln, his political, his orientation, his commitment. Tell us—so I pick that to start our discussion together—do the math. Tell us why “Four score and seven years ago,” when he gave that address in Gettysburg in 1863, I believe—and tell us what the math teaches us about Lincoln and his view of American history.
John Cribb: Yeah, great, fantastic question, especially for today. Yes, “Four score and seven years ago,” which was a poetic, rather almost biblical way of saying 87 years ago. And as you say, he gave that speech in 1863, November 19th, 1863 in Gettysburg. So if you subtract 87 from 1863, that takes you straight back to 1776, the year of the founding. And Lincoln then goes on, of course, right after those opening words of “Four score and seven years ago,” he says, “Our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Well, that’s almost word for word, almost just straight out of the Declaration of Independence. That’s where he’s getting that.
It was Lincoln’s favorite founding document. He went back to it again and again, the Declaration of July 4th, 1776. On his way to Washington before he was sworn in, when he was traveling from Springfield, Illinois to Washington to become president, he stopped off in Philadelphia and gave an address at Independence Hall where he told the crowd, he said, “I’m just filled with deep emotion standing here in this place.” And he said, “I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.” That was his touchstone, his moral touchstone, politically speaking.
But that speech, the Gettysburg Address in 1863, where he goes immediately—he refers back to the Declaration of Independence—the Gettysburg Address may well be the greatest speech ever given on American soil. But he—Lincoln, in that speech, does tell you a lot about his view of America because in that speech, Lincoln is trying to tell a very, very war-weary Northern people why they’ve got to go on fighting this awful, awful war. And Lincoln knows several things when he gives that speech on that day. He knows that the United States is still a very young country, less than 100 years old at the time. And he knows that this great experiment in freedom and self-rule and democracy that the founders launched is still unproven, and it’s being tested in a very, very hard way with the Civil War. And Lincoln knows that the eyes of the world are on this country, waiting to see what’s going to happen with this war. And Lincoln knows that throughout the vast majority of history, the vast majority of people who have ever lived on this earth had to live without much freedom, very little or no freedom. They had to live under the thumb of kings or emperors or tyrants of some sort. Many had been in bondage themselves. Some historians estimate that as late as around 1800, three-quarters of the world’s population was living in bondage of some kind. They were either slaves or indentured servants or serfs or in forced labor of some kind.
So the world had not known much freedom, and the world had been waiting for centuries for a place like this, conceived in liberty and dedicated to these propositions. Remember, the United States was the first nation in history founded on the idea that people should be free and should be free to govern themselves. And so the world is watching to see what’s going to happen. And Lincoln, as much as many, many people did at the time, believed that if that war was lost, if the government failed, if the Union fractured, that that great experiment in freedom and democracy was going to be snuffed out. That the continent would—might very likely go the way of Europe. You would end up with a continent covered by several smaller countries, maybe republics in name only, but governed by kings or their equivalent. And this experiment in self-rule would be severely threatened, if not snuffed out. And it would be a severe blow to the hopes of freedom for people around the world. That’s why at the very end of that speech, the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln says they have to keep fighting on so that “government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.” He doesn’t say “from this country.” He says “from the earth.” Because he knew exactly what was at stake. As he said in another speech, he said, “America is the last best hope of earth.” So that’s what he was fighting for. And that’s what he fought for to his dying breath. And it all went back to 1776 and the founding.
Declaration vs. Constitution [07:45]
Bob Zadek: What I find—what I found to be—I’m now going to speak personally—what I found to be so—well, “interesting” is almost—it’s not a deep enough word. What I found to be so important to me is that I have often felt that when elected officials take an oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution from all enemies, domestic and foreign, whatever that phrase is—I have always felt that the oath should be to the Declaration of Independence. The Constitution was an architectural plan. It did not—it was not replete with principles as the Declaration was. There is no person on earth who could not take allegiance wholeheartedly to the Declaration. It is harder to take allegiance to the Constitution because it is not a statement of principle. It is a practical political writing designed—it’s like the architectural plans for a house. There’s nothing beautiful in the plans. The carrying it out is the beauty. And there’s no principles.
So I immediately understood Lincoln’s feelings towards the Declaration in comparison to the Constitution. It was a moving moment for me when I understood that. I often have felt that if I were around during the ratification process, I would have been opposed to the ratification, strangely enough. But the Declaration—well, I understood Lincoln’s view.
The Emancipation Proclamation as a Military Tactic [10:01]
Bob Zadek: Now, Lincoln is—there’s a lot in the news these days through anything from the 1619 Project to the “woke” point of view that we were founded as a slave nation, the whole motivation of founding the country was for slavery. And since it has been expressed that Lincoln freed the slaves—that phrase is, of course, John, simplistic. Lincoln didn’t quite free the slaves. That was done by constitutional amendment. So help us understand the role in history of the Emancipation Proclamation. What was it? What did it accomplish? What were the circumstances? And help us understand more fully whether or not Lincoln did actually, quote, “free the slaves.” Put that in historical context for us, if you would.
John Cribb: Sure. I kind of like to use the term “he helped lead the effort to free the slaves” because there are, of course, many, many people involved, including many slaves themselves. And including a lot of abolitionists like the great orator Frederick Douglass and a lot of people on Capitol Hill like Charles Sumner and others who were pushing for a long time to free the slaves.
And Lincoln—it’s, as you say, very, very complicated. And there’s the whole issue of, you know, was Lincoln fighting to save the Union or was he fighting to free the slaves, or both? And the short answer to that is he started out fighting to save the Union, although he always hated slavery. But then with the Gettysburg Address, the war really becomes a dual-purpose war, both save the Union and free the slaves.
But the Emancipation Proclamation itself was what we would call today probably an executive order. They didn’t use that term back then. And of course, executive orders have become controversial today because presidents seem to be using them more and more to circumvent Congress and just kind of try to get what they want through executive orders. But it was a—that’s what they called proclamations back then, executive orders. It was a military proclamation.
Lincoln, even though he was extremely dedicated to those principles in the Declaration of Independence—that we’re all created with these rights, including liberty—and believed that that applied to everyone, black and white, he also realized that the Constitution, in effect, legalized—well, not in effect, it legalized slavery in the states. And that it gave him no power as the chief executive to simply do away with slavery at the stroke of a pen. And that’s the way he went into the Civil War. And he tried his best to avoid that war in part by assuring Southerners that he had no intention and had no power to interfere with slavery in the Southern states. If you read his first inaugural address, he speaks directly to them and says, “I’m not going to disturb slavery.”
As the war goes on, however, and once the South has rebelled, it becomes a different kettle of fish. And Lincoln comes to the view that the Constitution does give him the power as a military—as the head of the military, commander-in-chief, to use whatever much vaster powers to win a war. And since the Southerners are using slaves to help in their war effort—they weren’t arming the slaves, but they were using them to do everything from grow food to dig trenches—then the argument was, well, the Emancipation Proclamation, a military proclamation in effect from the president as the head of the military, he has the power to declare those slaves free as a means of helping to win the war.
So that’s what he does. He declares—the Emancipation Proclamation has often been noted, it really, at least immediately, freed no one because it said all people who are enslaved in areas still controlled by the South are free. So that’s why it took later on the 13th Amendment to the Constitution to really finalize it and really make it official. Lincoln was worried that after the war, that the courts—some of the courts were hostile to the idea of the federal government being able to emancipate the slaves—that it would be struck down as unconstitutional. They really wanted to get that constitutional amendment to really, really put a nail in the coffin of slavery. And so he does succeed in getting that passed through Congress, the 13th Amendment, before he dies. It’s not ratified until after he’s gone.
So the Emancipation Proclamation is still celebrated today as the freeing of the slaves. But as you say, it was a lot more complicated than that and a much longer road than simply signing a piece of paper and saying, “Okay, the slaves are free now.”
Bob Zadek: It was a military tactic, was it not? He was hopeful that when the slaves learned that if they ran away—kind of a simplistic phrase—if they tried to escape, they would escape to freedom, they would become free. It was a way to sort of weaken and eliminate or reduce the labor force available to further the Southern military effort. So that’s why I say it was a military tactic, something far removed from the lofty goal of simply freeing the slaves, which as you said, Lincoln simply didn’t have the power to do. It was quite interesting that he obviously remained respectful to his constitutional limitations, something we would hope that future presidents would do. They sometimes don’t. So the lesson there was throughout it all, Lincoln was mindful of the fact that his power was limited by the Constitution, and the Emancipation Proclamation was a military tactic. Of course, it had loftier goals. It was a line in the sand. It was a statement of his principles. But it was, in fact, a military tactic.
John Cribb: That’s right. And it did something else, too, that people sometimes overlooked. The Emancipation Proclamation announced that—it said, “I further declare and make known that such persons of suitable condition,” meaning black people, including freed slaves, “will be received into the armed services—into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places.” This was a big step and something that black abolitionists like Frederick Douglass had been calling for for some time, would be to arm black people to fight in the Union. And it made a huge difference in the war. So the Emancipation Proclamation was a military tactic not only in that, as you say, it encouraged slaves in the South to rebel and stop aiding the Southern war effort—of course they were being forced to aid it—but it also set it up so that blacks could start fighting in the army, and they fought very valiantly and they made a very big difference in the outcome of the war.
Founders vs. Framers [15:52]
Bob Zadek: When one studies American history, specifically the founding era, when you really get into it, one can define—one can break down the participants in the founding era into two words that are sometimes, and in my judgment, inaccurately combined into one word. The two words are: you often will hear reference to the “Founders,” and you also will hear reference to the “Framers.”
If you drill down, the Founders, while it’s not precise, describe to me those—almost all men—who were around and participating in the first and second Continental Conventions in Philadelphia. They signed the Declaration of Independence. They were the proponents for independence. Those are the Founders. We know many of their names.
And then there are the Framers. The Framers were the 55 or so men, again, who met in Philadelphia in 1787 in the four and a half months between May and September to write the Constitution. And they are more precisely referred to as the Framers. They wrote—they drew the plans for the country, how we were to function as a country.
Lincoln had identified profoundly with the Founders, as you have taught us in your book, not as much with the Framers, as we said earlier in the show. And Lincoln, in his behavior and in the times during the Civil War, he demonstrated, John, as you pointed out, that the Founders, who today are criticized sometimes for being hypocrites—they were slave owners, they wrote in the Declaration, or Jefferson wrote and they adopted, “all men are created equal,” and yet they didn’t behave that way. But Lincoln and his experience in the Civil War showed that the Founders were right to bifurcate the forming, the creation of a country (step one) and the elimination of slavery (step two).
Now, what do we learn about the fact of the Civil War, and what do we learn about Lincoln in his respect for his behavior, his belief system, as we said earlier, embracing the Declaration as the more significant to him founding document? What do we learn from Lincoln’s experience about the wisdom of the Founders in not dealing with slavery during the founding era?
John Cribb: Yeah, it’s a really great question and it’s one that I think is important for people to understand because as you say, those Founders have come under a lot of criticism, especially lately, for talking a good game. The argument is, “Oh, they talked a good game. They wrote about and talked about equality and freedom, but they set up this country that institutionalized racism and slavery.” I mean, that’s kind of a modern argument now.
And Lincoln argued that the Founders knew that slavery was wrong, certainly. And even the slaveholders among them, like Thomas Jefferson, in an early draft of the Declaration of Independence, he wrote that slavery is a “cruel war against human nature itself.” Benjamin Franklin called it an “atrocious debasement of human nature.” So they knew slavery was wrong.
But Lincoln explained that they realized they could not fight a war against one of the greatest military powers on earth, Britain, set up a brand new country, launch an experiment that had never been tried before, hold 13 very different states together, and get rid of slavery all at the same time. It was simply too large a task, Lincoln said. At one point, he drew a metaphor. He said the Founders realized that slavery was like a cancer in the body politic, but if they tried to cut it out just all at once, the patient would bleed to death. That’s the way he put it.
So Lincoln said it was just too big a task on their hands to try to do that, to do all that and abolish slavery all at once. But he said what they could do and what they did do was lay down some principles in the Declaration of Independence that spelled the doom of slavery, and they did it on purpose. Those ideas—that statement that says that “all men are created equal” and all “endowed by their creator with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” And the declaration of those principles, coming at a time, as I say, when the vast majority of people on earth enjoyed little or no freedom, was a magnificent step forward. Because as I said, this is the first time in history that a nation was created out of this idea that people should be free and govern themselves.
So those founding principles that they put into the Declaration of Independence were a promise to future generations. And that ultimately is what the Civil War turned into, and as Lincoln saw it. It turned into a fight to redeem that promise for millions of enslaved Americans. That’s why he says in the Gettysburg Address they have to have a “new birth of freedom.” It was a rededication to the ideals in the Declaration of Independence. And Lincoln understood that those founding principles, those shining principles, they stood as beacons for the country to be moving toward, always be moving toward during the Civil War and then, of course, after Lincoln was gone, still moving toward, toward a more perfect Union. We may never perfectly get there, but the country has over the years throughout its history constantly moved toward those principles, those promises in the Declaration of Independence.
So Lincoln understood that in one sense, the founding was tragically flawed by slavery, but then in another sense, that it was this glorious beginning of this long journey, sometimes very hard journey, including the Civil War period and other times in American history. But this long journey that in the end has brought hope and freedom to millions of people, both here and around the world. And Lincoln knew that.
Redeeming the Promise of 1776 [19:29]
Bob Zadek: John, you said Lincoln knew that the founding era—I forgot your exact words—was somewhat flawed. I would kind of, and with great respect, just question whether it was flawed. You don’t do the whole thing all at once. It would have been flawed if there were no principles that “all men are created equal.” That would have made it flawed, and that would have made it less of a country people might be willing to die for. It would have been just a country. But with that principle, the founding wasn’t flawed. The fact that you can’t do everything at once—I ask anybody listening to the show, is there not things that are on your list to accomplish, whether it’s to get a degree or whatever it is? You have stuff you are determined to do but haven’t yet done. That doesn’t make you flawed. People always—and you said it yourself when you quoted Lincoln’s phrase, “a more perfect Union.” So Lincoln, I don’t think would have called the founding era flawed. It was simply less perfect. And I’m not doing wordsmithing. “Less perfect” has a much different connotation than “flawed.” So just a minor comment, just because I have such a commitment to the Declaration.
John Cribb: Yeah, and it’s a great—it’s a great comment. And I agree with you. Your words are more exact than mine. And as a matter of fact, he said—and I can’t remember the exact words he used—but he said that the fact that there was still slavery at the founding does not—did not destroy the principle at all, had no effect on the principle itself. He also, as you said, “less perfect” is probably the way he would have put it. He at one point said that only God is perfect. And he quoted the Bible where Jesus says, “As your Father in heaven is perfect, be ye also perfect.” And he said, “I don’t think that the Savior expected any human being ever to be perfect. What he expected us to do is to always be reaching toward the perfect and attain the highest degree of moral perfection that we can.”
And so the Founders did the best they could at the time. They attained the highest degree of moral perfection in the founding that they could at the time. And they took this enormous step forward. And it was less than perfect, but as Lincoln said, we’re all less than perfect. So I take your gentle correction. I think your words are more exact than mine. So I appreciate that.
The Election of 1860 [21:35]
Bob Zadek: This is Bob Zadek. I’m spending the morning speaking with John Cribb. John is a best-selling author, at least two New York Times bestsellers to his credit. Most recently, John has written Old Abe, a historical novel which is as accurate as a historical novel can be. He takes us into—he puts us on Lincoln’s side, as close to Lincoln as we could possibly imagine during the five years at the end of Lincoln’s life, during the Civil War, the most momentous period in American history. And he brings us there. We hear Lincoln’s voice, we see him act, we see him worry, we share his pain. It is a brilliant book that helps us totally understand the founding era, even though it happened four score and five years, if we want to do the start, four score and five years after the Declaration. It brings us right there at Lincoln’s side. And one cannot fully understand the founding era, the wisdom of the Founders, unless you read John’s book, Old Abe.
Now John, Lincoln had this, as I said, a rookie president, although every president is a rookie, there’s no job quite like it. So Lincoln comes into office. Now, in the election of 1860, quite interesting, he was elected to represent a new political party, the Republican Party. And the battle which gave Lincoln the nomination first and then the election has taught me so much about our political process today. It has been observed by almost everyone that the primary system we have causes candidates in a primary election to cater to the most extreme elements of his or her party, Democrat or Republican. And therefore, when they run for office, they are running as the most extreme example of their party.
Lincoln was—got the nomination because of that dynamic. Lincoln was not a shoo-in to be the Republican nominee. And Lincoln’s nomination and election teaches us so much about election dynamics today. He was a relative unknown, although he was a skillful politician, but he was, kind of, believe it or not, audience, a moderate. Tell us about that election, if you would.
John Cribb: Yes, it was a wild and really election, of course. Lincoln, as you say, was a dark horse candidate. And he had—his name was nationally known thanks mostly to the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, because those debates were so important and engaging that newspapers all over the country had reprinted, either in part or in full, those debates. And Lincoln had done some laying of groundwork. He had gone to New York City and given a big speech at Cooper Union, and he had done a speaking tour in the East. So he wasn’t a—it wasn’t like nobody had heard of him, but he was much less known than the other leading Republican candidates.
But in May of 1860, just a week before the Republican National Convention, which was in Chicago, he was nominated by the Republicans of Illinois to be their choice for the nomination. And it’s kind of a great story. They met in a kind of a makeshift convention hall called the Wigwam, and the Republicans went out and dug up some old fence rails Lincoln had split as a young man, because you know he spent a lot of time splitting logs on the frontier to make fence rails. And they dug up a couple of them, and he and his cousin John Hanks and another guy came carrying a campaign banner held up by two of these old fence rails up to the front of the hall that said, “Abe Lincoln is the rail candidate for president in 1860.” And everybody was screaming and yelling, and they proceeded to nominate him.
And then the one week later is the national convention in Chicago. And Lincoln does not go to that; that wasn’t the custom back then. But he sends his campaign team up there. And the leading candidate, really the leading candidate, was William Henry Seward of New York, who had been governor and senator from New York. And there were others—Salmon Chase, Simon Cameron, Edward Bates—those were really the four. But William Henry Seward was the main candidate. And he was very much against slavery. And that was the—that was the Republican Party was founded largely to combat the evil of slavery. But Seward had gone so far out on the issue that a lot of Republicans were worried that he was not electable, that he would be perceived as too radical about it. And all four of those other men had done or said something along the way to make one group or another dissatisfied with them.
And Lincoln had told people, he said—and his campaign managers had thought, “Well, if Seward doesn’t get it on the first round, then we might have a chance.” And Lincoln was in Springfield the day of the convention, and he followed it closely on the telegraph wires. And the first round of balloting came in, and it was Seward got 173 and a half votes from the delegates (somebody split their vote) and Lincoln had 102. Which was a big, you know, big wide spread. But then when the second round of ballots results came in, it was Seward 184 and a half and Lincoln 181 votes. And when Lincoln looked down at that telegram and saw that, he said, “I can find no fault with this. I think they may well nominate me on the next ballot.” And they did. People began to come over to Lincoln as the moderate.
Now, in the general election, the South certainly did not view Lincoln as a moderate at all. They immediately viewed him as—a lot of them thought that he was an outright abolitionist, which he was not. But the vote—the Democrats split. They held a convention and couldn’t agree on who to nominate, and it was all about slavery. The argument was over how they were going to handle slavery. So they basically are split in half, and then there was a third party that split them even further. And so Lincoln manages to win the general election because the Democrat vote is so divided over the issue of slavery. And interestingly, Lincoln does not get one single vote in the lower South states that will someday make up the Confederacy, or shortly after make up the Confederacy. When I say he doesn’t get one single vote, I don’t mean he doesn’t get an electoral vote. He doesn’t get one single vote from anybody in the entire South. That was largely because they kept his name off the ballot. You couldn’t even vote for Abraham Lincoln in the election of 1860 if you lived in the South. But anyway, he wins. You needed 152 electoral votes to win back then, and he wins with 180 electoral votes.
And suddenly this guy that had been—he served four terms in the Illinois state legislature, only one term in Congress. He’s never run anything more than an office, a law office with two partners and some clerks. Suddenly finds himself about to be president of the United States and the country falling apart around him. And so as a moderate, he becomes perhaps—one can’t go back and do counterfactuals on history, but it’s hard to imagine any human being alive at the time who would have navigated the incredibly treacherous shoals of the country during the Civil War.
The Suspension of Habeas Corpus [25:32]
Bob Zadek: His skill as a politician in holding the country together—he took liberties, to be sure. He took certain steps which exceeded the bounds of what a president had the power to do, but he did so—and I’m a bit reluctant to say it because I don’t want to encourage any future presidents who may be listening to my show to think, “Well, the country will cut you some slack so you can run roughshod over the Constitution if you wish, so long as you’re doing it for a good reason.” I don’t want to plant any seeds in any future presidents who are listening.
But say a few words—I hate it when we start to run out of time—but say a few words on Lincoln’s decision to suspend habeas corpus. Now, for listeners who may not be familiar with the phrase, habeas corpus is a principle that goes back to the Magna Carta that basically says governments cannot—I’m simplifying it—cannot deny somebody of their liberty without a hearing and without the phrase we all know about today as “due process.” That goes back to the Magna Carta. And Lincoln suspended one of the most core founding principles. He felt it necessary. He wasn’t the first president to take steps like that. John Adams, the second president, got the Alien and Sedition Act passed, which basically said if you say nasty things about the president, you go to prison. And other presidents, Thomas Jefferson, purchased the Louisiana Purchase with no authority whatever, no presidential authority; he just did it because it was the right thing to do at the time, and it was ratified by Congress. So to put it in context, Lincoln was not the first and was not the last president to just openly take extra-constitutional steps. So tell us about Lincoln’s thought process in suspending one of our most sacred concepts, that of habeas.
John Cribb: Yes, and he did. And this is, you know, one of those areas where even a great admirers of Lincoln look at it and go, “Ooh, I wish he hadn’t—maybe wish he hadn’t gone there.” But of course, there was this horrible war going on, and he thought it was necessary. It started very early in the war when the states were really still going out of the Union, and there was a question as to whether Maryland would go out or not. Virginia went out, and then Maryland looked like it was on the verge of going out, and then of course Washington would have been surrounded. And in Maryland, there was all kinds of stuff going on. People were cutting telegraph wires, they were tearing up railroads, they were urging people into insurrection and then urging, you know, voices crying out for Maryland to leave the Union. And Lincoln felt like, “This war is going to be lost right away if I don’t bring this under control.”
So he suspends habeas, and that gets him into a fight with the Taney Court. And then throughout the war, it is just unfortunately true, there were a lot of cases of people simply being arrested and thrown into prison, mostly by military commanders. When they got into an area and as the Union armies pushed forward, people who they thought were spies or people who were trying to encourage people to revolt, they didn’t hesitate to throw them into prison.
Now, Lincoln, when he looks at the Constitution—and you know more about this than I do, Bob—but the Constitution does give the government power to suspend habeas in extreme circumstances, but doesn’t specifically say who can do it. Most people at that time had thought that was the Congress’s job. Lincoln said, “Well, no, as I read it, I can suspend habeas.” But he— I’ll give you a couple of quotes I think kind of sum up his thoughts on it. He said, “Should all the laws but one,” meaning habeas, “go unexecuted and the government itself go to pieces lest that one law be violated?” In other words, he thought, “If I don’t do this, the whole thing is going down the tubes, the whole country.” He also at one point, when he was defending this, he wrote, he said, “Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts?” which was common; when you have people, soldiers, young men, they deserted, they would shoot them. “Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert? I think that in such a case, to silence the agitator and save the boy is not only constitutional but a great mercy.”
So that was kind of his argument. And as you say, other presidents have done it, and it’s just one of these examples of power. Government has great, great power, and we always have to be suspicious of that great power, no matter who’s in the White House. Just as we have to be suspicious of, you know, companies with great power.
Bob Zadek: You’ve been listening to my conversation with John Cribb. John has published Old Abe, a historical novel putting us side-by-side with the 16th president of our country during the last five years of his life, tumultuous five years: the Civil War, the freeing of the slaves, the Civil War amendments and the like. It is a must-read. It makes history come alive and it reminds us, as it reminded Lincoln every day, of the wisdom of the Founders, of the beauty, the lyrical important beauty of the Declaration of Independence, which we happily, joyously celebrate on this July 4th every year. Thank you so much to John. Enjoy the book, my friends. It is a must-read. And please remember our Founders. Read, if you will, the first paragraph of the Declaration and enjoy the freedom that that document has given us all. Thank you so much and have a good Sunday. Have a good 4th of July week.