Abraham Lincoln’s Radical Moderation

Radicalism is more than a packet of views or policies. The contents of the packet will change with circumstances and over time. (One reason Bordewich admires the Radical Republicans is that their views on race are so close to current mainstream attitudes; today’s radicals, valorizing group identity above all else, will likely find both the views and the politicians who held them hopelessly retrograde.) Radicalism is a disposition. The same is true of its contrary, moderation. Lincoln’s moderation was so infuriating to the Radicals because it reflected a hierarchy of values different from theirs.

The ultimate concerns for Stevens and his fellows were the liberation of the enslaved, the punishment of the enslavers, and the reorganization of southern society. The ultimate concern for Lincoln was the survival of the Union, to which he had an almost mystical attachment. The old question—was the war fought to preserve the Union or to free the slaves?—underestimates how closely the two causes were entwined in his mind. Lincoln’s goal was to uphold the kind of government under which slavery could not in the end survive. This was a government, as Lincoln said, dedicated to a proposition.

From September 1999: Lincoln’s greatest speech

In a hectoring letter written at a low point in 1863, a Radical senator insisted that Lincoln “stand firm” against conservatives in his government. It was a common complaint of the Radical Republicans that Lincoln was hesitant, easily led, timid—weak. “I hope to ‘stand firm’ enough to not go backward,” Lincoln replied, “and yet not go forward fast enough to wreck the country’s cause.” Lincoln struck this balance with unmatched skill and sensitivity.

It was a feat of leadership peculiar to self-government, captured most famously by the only 19th-century American who could rival him as a prose artist and a statesman. Frederick Douglass was an enthusiastic admirer of Lincoln, once calling him, not long after the assassination, “emphatically the black man’s president: the first to show any respect for their rights as men.” Years later, Douglass’s enthusiasm had cooled—and ripened.

From December 1866: Frederick Douglass on Reconstruction

Lincoln “was preeminently the white man’s President, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men,” Douglass now said. “Viewed from the genuine abolition ground”—the ground, that is, from which Bordewich and many of today’s historians want to judge him, and the ground from which the Radicals did judge him—“Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent.” Douglass knew, though, that Lincoln never claimed to govern as an abolitionist, and Douglass knew why. “But measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined.”

The italics are mine, but the insight belongs to Douglass. Lincoln was radical without being a Radical—and never more radical than a leader can afford to be when he leads a government of, by, and for the people.