Esoteric Writing

There is a particular excitement that comes from discovering that the great questions about justice, liberty, happiness, virtue, political order, and the good life have been debated for hundreds and even thousands of years-and that those conversations remain open to us.

A careful reader looks for something requiring explanation: an apparent contradiction, an unexpected quotation, a peculiar omission, an argument that does not quite fit its surroundings, an unusual repetition, a conspicuous change in terminology, or a difference between what an author says in one place and what he says elsewhere.

In 1858, Lincoln challenged Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas for a United States Senate seat from Illinois. Their campaign included seven public debates conducted in a political environment in which racial prejudice was widespread and Douglas repeatedly attacked Lincoln and the Republicans by associating opposition to slavery with racial and social equality.

A very different example appears in the political rhetoric of Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln was therefore repeatedly forced to explain what kinds of equality he did—and did not—mean when he insisted that the Declaration of Independence applied to black Americans as well as whites.

At Charleston, Illinois, Lincoln made a statement that modern readers often find jarring. He said: "I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races." He then specifically disclaimed support for making black people voters or jurors, qualifying them to hold public office, or allowing intermarriage between whites and blacks.

A reader could stop there.

But a careful reader should pay attention not only to what Lincoln says, but also to how he says it—and to what he does not say.

Consider Lincoln's peculiar and repeated formulation: "I am not, nor ever have been, in favor…” The tenses are worth noticing. "I am not" describes Lincoln's position in the present, in 1858.

"Nor ever have been" reaches backward into the past.

With respect to the specific policies he names—voting, jury service, officeholding, and intermarriage—Lincoln therefore tells the audience what he does not presently favor and what he has never previously favored.

He does not say: "I never will be in favor."

But neither should a careful reader fail to notice the omission. Lincoln plainly understood that openly advocating full social and political equality for black Americans would carry enormous political costs in Illinois in 1858. Douglas's repeated attacks on him depended precisely upon prevailing racial attitudes.

So why does Lincoln describe his position in terms of what he is not advocating and has not advocated rather than binding himself explicitly concerning what he might support in the future?

Perhaps there is no special significance. Perhaps Lincoln simply meant exactly what his audience ordinarily understood the words to mean.

But another possibility deserves consideration: Lincoln may have been unwilling to advocate policies in 1858 that prevailing public opinion made politically impossible while simultaneously avoiding language that would bind either himself or the principle of human equality permanently against such policies in the future.

The sentence immediately following makes the interpretive problem even more interesting. Lincoln says:

"There is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality."

That statement must be taken seriously. But notice its form.

It is not stated as a principle of natural right.

And here another question becomes possible.

Lincoln was surrounded by a society in which racial prejudice itself constituted one of the greatest obstacles to the equality he was discussing. The physical difference of skin color remained constant; what gave that physical difference political significance were human opinions, customs, laws, and prejudices.

Might Lincoln's "forever" therefore contain, intentionally or not, a challenge to readers who accept the principles of the Declaration? If the obstacle to equality is rooted partly in human prejudice, must forever really mean forever?

Nothing in the passage proves that Lincoln intended this question. But a reader committed to examining the argument rather than merely recording its surface language has reason to ask it.

Lincoln then continues: "And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."

Again, the exact formulation deserves attention. Lincoln does not say here that white human beings are naturally superior to black human beings. His argument is conditional.

If the races cannot live together on terms of social and political equality; and if, consequently, there must be a superior and an inferior social-political position; then Lincoln says he favors assigning the superior position to the white race—the racial group to which he himself belongs.

At Ottawa, his formulation had been even more personal: if such a difference becomes necessary, he favors "the race to which I belong" occupying the superior position.

How might many listeners have heard those words?

A racially prejudiced listener could easily hear reassurance: Lincoln was not proposing to overturn the existing racial hierarchy. The audience reaction recorded in the debate transcript gives us reason to take that political effect seriously.

But what has Lincoln actually established?

He has not argued or even asserted that whites are wiser, more virtuous, more rational, or more fully human than blacks. He has not argued that skin color determines natural rights.

He has said, in effect, that if circumstances require one racial group to occupy a superior political position and the other an inferior one, he prefers that his own group occupy the superior position.

That proposition is different from saying that black people are naturally inferior.

The distinction becomes more important when Lincoln's words are read alongside his repeated statements concerning the Declaration of Independence.

In the very same Charleston debate, Lincoln insists that black Americans possess the natural rights identified in the Declaration. Throughout the debates, he distinguishes those natural rights from questions involving particular civil and political arrangements.

He illustrates the distinction with deliberately memorable language. Rejecting the argument that opposition to enslaving a black woman implied a desire to marry her, Lincoln says that he can simply "let her alone."

Elsewhere in the debates, he makes the underlying principle explicit: whatever inequalities might exist in other respects, a black woman is his equal in the natural right to enjoy the fruits of her own labor.

The tension deserves examination.

Lincoln was speaking to an electorate containing substantial racial prejudice. He was attempting to prevent the further extension of slavery while defending the proposition that black human beings possessed the natural rights named in the Declaration. At the same time, he publicly disclaimed several forms of civil and political equality.

What should a careful reader conclude?

Perhaps Lincoln meant exactly and completely what many listeners understood him to mean. Perhaps he was distinguishing permanent principles of natural right from particular political measures he did not then support. Perhaps he was distinguishing what justice might ultimately require from what public opinion would tolerate at that moment.

Perhaps some of the language was deliberately crafted to reassure prejudiced voters while preserving principles whose fuller implications could be pursued later. Perhaps Lincoln's own thinking continued to develop.

Or perhaps some combination of these possibilities is true.

The text does not permit us simply to declare one of these possibilities proven.

But neither does careful reading permit us to ignore the peculiarities of Lincoln's language. His tenses matter. His qualifications matter. His conditional statements matter. His distinctions between natural rights and political arrangements matter.

And his silences may matter.

Lincoln himself repeatedly emphasized the enormous power of public opinion. During the first Lincoln-Douglas debate at Ottawa on August 21, 1858, he declared that "public sentiment is everything" and argued that the person who shapes public sentiment operates at a level deeper than the person who merely enacts statutes or pronounces judicial decisions.

A statesman attempting to change public opinion therefore confronts a practical problem: How far ahead of existing opinion can he speak while retaining enough influence to move that opinion at all?

That question should be kept in mind when reading political speech—and especially when a statesman chooses his words with unusual care.

Secondary scholarship can be enormously helpful. Good historians and scholars supply context, identify connections, explain unfamiliar language, uncover relevant evidence, and alert readers to questions they might otherwise miss.

But scholarship should assist our encounter with a primary source, not replace it.

Students should learn to compare interpretations with the evidence of the text itself. Even an accomplished scholar can misunderstand a great thinker. A respected interpretation can be mistaken. New readers can notice old problems.

Waypoints therefore encourages students to approach important primary sources with both humility and independence. In one sense, we want students to read Aristotle as if no one had ever read Aristotle before.

We want them to read the Lincoln-Douglas debates as if the meaning of those debates had not already been settled for them.

That does not mean reading ignorantly. Students should benefit from everything that careful scholarship, historical context, and good teaching can provide. It means reading with fresh eyes and careful eyes-without assuming that someone else has already done all the thinking worth doing.