The Perpetuation of our Political Institutions, Part IV: The Lincoln Formula, contd.

     Aside from the absence of a unifying British threat, the other major factor which Abraham Lincoln identified in his address to the Young Men’s Lyceum in Springfield, Illinois as contributing to the erosion of the American republic’s internal cohesion was the distance which was steadily increasing between the present moment of the late 1830s and the country’s glorious foundation in the 1770s and 1780s. “I do not mean to say that the scenes of the Revolution are now or ever will be entirely forgotten,” he accordingly declared, “But that, like everything else, they must fade upon the memory of the world, and grow more dim by the lapse of time.” This “fading,” Lincoln went on to explain, represented an exceptionally significant alteration to the basic makeup of contemporary American society. By the time that the Revolution had run its course, he asserted,

Nearly every adult male had been a participator in some of its scenes. The consequence was that of those scenes, in the form of a husband, a father, a son, or a brother, a living history was to be found in every family—a history bearing the indubitable testimonies of its own authenticity, in the limbs mangled, in the scars of wounds received, in the midst of the very scenes related—a history, too, that could be read and understood alike by all, the wise and the ignorant, the learned and the unlearned.

But by the late 1830s this was no longer the case. The living histories which these men had supposedly embodied,

Can be read no more forever. They were a fortress of strength; but what invading foremen could never do, the silent artillery of time has done—the leveling of its walls. They are gone. They were a forest of giant oaks; but the all-restless hurricane has swept over them, and left only here and there a lonely trunk, despoiled of its verdure, shorn of its foliage, unshading and unshaded, to murmur in a few more gentle breezes, and to combat with its mutilated limbs a few more ruder storms, then to sink and be no more.

A poetic epitaph, to be sure, for an exceptionally influential generation of Americans. But also, notwithstanding its lyricism, a very telling one as well.

    As important as it is to understand that the Founders were, to a person, as human and as fallible as anyone else – a point which this series has attempted to make time and time again – it is equally important to appreciate how and why the generations that succeeded them came to view and to remember the architects of the Revolution. Though Abraham Lincoln never gave much cause to doubt, over the course of his long public career, that he was capable of seeing people – himself included – inclusive of their faults, the passages cited above would seem to make it equally apparent that he was perhaps a bit less clear-eyed when it came to the Founding Generation. This isn’t to say that he was a doe-eyed fool when it came to the likes of Thomas Jefferson or Alexander Hamilton, or that he didn’t ever see reason to disagree with the policies which these men and their cohort variously pursued. But the language with which he collectively referred to them in his speech at the Young Men’s Lyceum was inarguably adulatory. The Founders, it seemed, were more than men is his eyes. They were, “A fortress of strength [.]” They were, “A forest of giant oaks [.]” And it was his hope, he declared, that, “They will be read of, and recounted, so long as the Bible shall be read [.]” A less grounded conception of the Founders, one would be hard-pressed to find. But this fact, upon consideration, would rather seem to validate Lincoln’s broader argument.

    The Founding Generation, he asserted – at first by their acts, and then their very existence – acted as a kind of binding agent within the fledgling American political community. “They were the pillars of the temple of liberty [,]” he affirmed. Not only did they create the basic institutions of American republicanism, but they ran them through their paces, established how and to what extent they would function, and defined the basic norms and attitudes for all those who would follow. Their collective service during the Revolution gave them the moral authority to do these things, and their longevity – as a group – ensured that their influence did not decline once the moment of the Revolution had passed. George Washington, for example, would assuredly not have enjoyed the near-universal approbation of his countrymen over the course of his two terms as President – indeed, would not have been elected to the post in the first place – had he not previously established a reputation for honesty and selflessness during his years as the commanding officer of the Continental Army. Just so, the extent to which Thomas Jefferson became the single figure who most emphatically defined American political life over the course of the 1790s and 1800s must be in large part be attributed to his association with the Declaration of Independence. There was more to both of these men than their most famous accomplishments, and they undeniably committed their share of sins. But the cultural memory of the Revolution was bound up with everything they did. So long as they continued to play a role in the public life of the American republic, the American people would continue to hang on their every word, see “the spirit of ‘76” emanating from their every action, and hold themselves to whatever standard that these men set.

    Even those among the Founding Generation whose accomplishments were less public or less obvious befitted from their association with the Revolution and its immediate aftermath. James Madison, for example, while deservedly lauded by later historians and scholars for his efforts during the Philadelphia Convention (1787) and the role which he played in the passage of the Bill of Rights, was not someone possessed of particularly heroic credentials at the time of his election to the office of President in 1808. The proceedings of the aforementioned convention were at that point still secret, as was his co-authorship of the accompanying Federalist Papers. And while he had a decent record of public service under his belt, between Virginia’s General Assembly, the Continental Congress, and the Jefferson State Department, these experiences could hardly have compared to the epoch-making accomplishments of men like Jefferson and Washington. What Madison did have going for him, however, was his close association with the aforementioned Jefferson. Having been a political ally and a personal confidant since as early as the late 1770s, Madison arguably rose to a position of prominence in Virginia in the first place as a direct result of Jefferson’s influence. He also helped co-found what would at length become the Democratic-Republican Party with Jefferson, functioned as one of its most ardent supporters in the United States Congress, and served for the length of Jefferson’s two terms in office as his Secretary of State. During this latter period, to be sure, Madison was personally responsible for overseeing a number of diplomatic initiatives of tremendous importance to the peace and prosperity of the nascent American republic, the Louisiana Purchase (1803) being far from the least of them. But when it came time for Jefferson to retire from politics at the end of his second term in 1808, it was not necessarily Madison’s individual accomplishments which won him his party’s nomination for President. The more doctrinaire Democratic-Republicans favored fellow Virginian James Monroe, while the pro-commerce northern wing backed the candidacy of New York’s long-serving governor, George Clinton. But Madison was the one known to have worked closely with a great hero of the Revolution. And as Jefferson continued to exert a tremendous amount of influence over the Democratic-Republicans and the American public alike, it was his chosen protégé, Madison, who ultimately received the nomination.

    The later ascent of the aforementioned Monroe to the office of President in 1816 illustrates this same dynamic more clearly still. While the basic circumstances of Monroe’s presidency were undisputedly affected to a large extent by the recent conclusion of the War of 1812, his selection as the Democratic-Republican nominee for President arguably had more to do with the broad outlines of his life and career up to that point in time. His resume, to be sure, was more impressive than Madison’s had been some eight years prior. Between his entree into politics in the 1780s and his election to the office of President in 1816, Monroe had served as a Delegate to the Continental Congress, a United States Senator, Governor of Virginia, Minister to France and to the United Kingdom, Secretary of State, and Secretary of War. But the career of his principal rival for the Democratic-Republican nomination was similarly illustrious. Virginia-born and Georgia-raised, William H. Crawford (1772-1834) had served as a Senator, been the United States Minister to France, succeeded Monroe as Madison’s Secretary of War, and served out the end of Madison’s term as his final Secretary of the Treasury. He was also substantially younger than Monroe, and well-regarded by the leaders of the Democratic-Republican Party. Why, then, was it ultimately Monroe who succeeded? Monroe, who had no interest in legal theory and only became a lawyer because he thought it would be the easiest path to wealth and influence? Monroe, who had always been more politician than statesmen, and who subscribed to no particular political philosophy? There are many potential answers to this question, having to do with domestic politics, internal party politics, the influence of foreign policy, and just plain luck. But one which ought not to be discounted – ephemeral though it might seem – is that Monroe, unlike Crawford, had taken part in the Revolution.

    James Monroe might not have been a political theorist by any stretch. He may not have written any treatises of significance or delivered any orations that served to rally his otherwise dispirited countrymen at a key moment in their shared history. But he had, indisputably, participated in the Revolution itself. And he was, unquestionably, part of a cohort of Revolutionary leaders whose influence over the politics and administration of the nascent American republic in the earliest years of its existence was both obvious and substantial. During the Revolutionary War, Monroe dropped out of Virginia’s vaunted College of William & Mary to join the 3^rd Virginia Regiment of the Continental Army, and between his concomitant enlistment in the opening months of 1776 – before American independence had even formally been declared – and his mustering out in 1778, he participated in numerous pivotal engagements. He served under Washington during the New York and New Jersey campaign, even accompanying the Commander-in-Chief during his famous crossing of the Delaware River on the day after Christmas in 1776, spent the brutal winter of 1777/78 at Valley Forge during the Philadelphia campaign, and fought at the heat-scorched Battle of Monmouth in the summer of 1778. And while, despairing of a promotion in an army overstaffed with ambitious young officers, he opted at this point to cut his service short and begin his study of the law under fellow Virginian Thomas Jefferson, he still managed to make a meaningful contribution to the war effort when, as a colonel in the Virginia militia, he established a messenger network to help coordinate activities between the armed forces of his home state and those of its sister states and the Continental Congress.

    Thereafter – between 1778 and 1816 – Monroe maintained and reinforced his relationship with Jefferson and befriended fellow Jefferson protégé James Madison, all while serving in a variety of prominent public offices. In 1788, he was chosen as a delegate to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, in the 1790s he became one of the most prominent early members of the Democratic-Republicans, during the election of 1800 he threw his weight as Governor of Virginia behind the candidacy of his mentor Jefferson, and in 1803 he helped negotiate the purchase by the United States of the French Territory of Louisiana. In 1808, it was true, he briefly competed with Madison for the Democratic-Republican nomination for President, but Madison’s victory ultimately opened the door for a resumption of the friendship, the elevation of Monroe – by now an experienced diplomat with a proven record of success – as Secretary of State, and his own eventual succession to the presidency. And while there were a number of accomplishments upon which the voting public could have based their decision to support his candidacy for the highest office in the land, his unshakable status as a member of the Founding Generation was doubtless weighed on their minds in turn. The man had served under Washington, after all, and fought at Monmouth, and Brandywine, and Trenton. Artist John Trumbull (1756-1843) even went so far as to include Monroe in the painting of Trenton’s aftermath which he began work on in 1786. And in the years that followed, he added Jefferson to his list of key personal associates. He studied under him, supported him, befriended who he was told to befriend. By 1816, Monroe was accordingly in the enviable position of being able to claim both the departed Washington and the still-living Jefferson as his colleagues and contemporaries. Few other Democratic-Republicans could argue anything close. His election, therefore, while most definitely reflecting the particular circumstances and developments of American domestic politics in the late 1810s, also represented yet another opportunity whereby the American people could register their respect and admiration for the entire Revolutionary cohort.

    None of this is to say, mind you, that proximity to the Revolution was the only trait that mattered in the context of public service during the early existence of the United States of America. Indeed, it should be stated in no uncertain terms that this was emphatically not the case. Jefferson was not elected in 1800 over rival candidate John Adams because Jefferson possessed superior bona fides as a Founder. Nor was Madison elected in 1808 solely because of his association with Jefferson. Nor was Monroe elected in 1816 solely because of his war service and his connections to his Virginian predecessors. Other more specific factors played a far more consequential role in seeing each of these men elected to the highest office in the land. That being said, in light of the emotional weight with which the American public invested the Founding Generation even as early as the 1790s – in the form of Fourth of July celebrations, testimonial dinners, and laudatory biographies – it would nevertheless seem to follow that the ability of a candidate for public office to claim an association with the Founders and/or the Founding might potentially have made all the difference between victory and defeat. It need not even had been a spoken thing. The Democratic-Republicans who ended up supporting Monroe’s candidacy need not have drawn any explicit connections between their favored nominee and the key names and events of the American republic’s gloried past. And the voters need not have based their choice solely on Monroe having been wounded at Trenton or studied the law under Jefferson. Other factors, as aforementioned, had a much larger role to play. But if the final choice was a close one, and it seemed as though the contest might as soon go one way as another, would it not have been strange for the American people, even as late as the 1810s, to decide against a candidate for office whose record of public service had its origins in 1776?      

    Monroe’s candidacy, of course, represented probably the last time that the American people would be faced with such a choice. In the presidential election of 1824, none of the men who ultimately received some share of the Electoral Vote could rightfully claimed to have been members of the Founding Generation. Though the eventual victor, John Quincy Adams (1767-1848), had served between 1781 and 1783 as the personal secretary to Francis Dana (1743-1811), the first American Minister to Russia, he had been a child during the Revolution, and could scarcely boast of any significant accomplishments. The same could be said of the man who won the popular vote, one Andrew Jackson (1767-1845). The same age as Adams, Jackson had acted alongside his brother as a courier with the North Carolina militia beginning in the summer of 1780. But while the events that followed were certainly dramatic – his capture, his punishment by British soldiers, his near-death from smallpox, and his being orphaned at the age of fourteen – he was far more famous for his actions during the Battle of Louisiana (1815) and the First Seminole War (1816-1818) than for anything he might have accomplished during the Revolutionary War. That this was the case – that the American people were now in the position of nominating and electing men whose connections to the Founding were increasingly tenuous – would accordingly seem to mark out 1824 as a significant point of transition in American socio-cultural history. Prior to this point, some member or other of the Founding Generation had continuously occupied the office of President from the time of its inception in 1789. And after this point, no member of the Founding Generation would hold such high office ever again. 

    Numerous Founders had already died by the time of Monroe’s election in 1816, to be sure, and many more would die by the time of Lincoln’s address to the Young Men’s Lyceum. Benjamin Franklin was among the first to go, passing away in the spring of 1790 at the age of eighty-four. Washington followed in 1799, not long after the end of his second term as President. Then came Hamilton in 1804, perhaps the most famous victim ever of American dueling culture, while Jefferson and Adams died within hours of each other on July 4^th, 1826. By the late 1830s, there were virtually none of them left. Madison was among the last, surviving until the summer of 1836. But by that point, the Founders had already more or less faded from the living memory of their countrymen. John Quincy Adams was the first President who might fairly be described as “post-Revolutionary” in the most meaningful sense of the term, though he had served as Secretary of State in the cabinet of President Monroe. But then came the aforementioned Jackson, who connection to the Founders and the Founding was even less substantial. And then followed Martin Van Buren (1782-1862), who was the first chief executive of the United States to be born after the declaration of American independence. Some men still lived, it was true, who had served in the Continental Army, or who had represented their state in the Continental Congress. But by this late date, the political class of the contemporary American republic had more or less drained of its revolutionary element.

    The result? It was as Lincoln said, by and large. The memory of the Revolution remained, and would remain, to be read, he hoped, “So long as the Bible shall be read [.]” But the Founders themselves were no longer there to offer their judgement. They had shaped the country, guided it, kept it on a certain path. But they were gone now, nearly to a man, and their successors did not always seem inclined to closely follow their example. The 1820s and 1830s were particularly tumultuous in this respect. At around the same time that Andrew Jackson became the dominant figure in contemporary American political life, many of the norms and mores that had previously been established under the auspices of the Founders began to rapidly drop away. In the name of “democracy,” property qualification on the franchise were steadily abolished, state legislatures turned over the choice of presidential electors to the people, and the office of President came to dominate the internal power dynamic of the federal government. And while Jackson and his supporters claimed that their goal was only to further advance the principles that had been set forth earlier in the century by Thomas Jefferson and his Democratic-Republicans, the likes of Jefferson and his surviving contemporaries were often startled and dismayed by what they witnessed of the Jacksonian era and its immediate antecedents.

    Speaking to the implications which he perceived in the circumstances of the Missouri Compromise (1820), for example, an aged Jefferson lamented in a letter to Maine Senator John Holmes (1773-1843) that,

This momentous question, like a firebell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union […] It is hushed indeed for the moment. But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. A geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper.

By willingly embracing sectionalism as a driving force in the federal political sphere, Jefferson believed that the party which he had helped found some thirty years prior had more or less made inevitable the disintegration of the American republic. His protégé and successor, James Madison, expressed a similar sense of dismay in the aftermath of the Nullification Crisis in 1833. In a letter to Virginia Senator William Cabell Rives (1793-1868) dated to March of that year, the former President expressed his ardent disagreement with the position adopted by the government of South Carolina. Speaking specifically of the connection between the doctrines of nullification and secession, he wrote that,

One thing at least seems to be too clear to be questioned, that whilst a State remains within the Union it cannot withdraw its citizens from the operation of the Constitution & laws of the Union. In the event of an actual secession without the Consent of the Co States, the course to be pursued by these involves questions painful in the discussion of them. God grant that the menacing appearances, which obtruded it may not be followed by positive occurrences requiring the more painful task of deciding them [.]

Granted, the aforementioned Jackson had gone to significant lengths in 1832 to ensure that South Carolina did not attempt to separate itself from the larger American republic in the name of affirming the principle of nullification. That being said, nullification – by which a state attempts to assert its inalienable sovereignty in order to nullify a federal statute which it feels is obnoxious – was a concept very much in keeping with the tenor of the Jacksonian era.

    Jackson’s Democratic Party – formed in the aftermath of his loss to John Quincy Adams in 1824 – had loudly encouraged people to take power into their own hands, assert their political prerogatives against entrenched elites, and deny the legitimacy of those who lacked a popular mandate. And what were the South Carolina “Nullifiers” – led by none other than Jackson’s former Vice President, John C. Calhoun (1782-1850) – trying to do but assert their populist prerogatives against those of the contemporary Washington elite? Jackson may have denied the soundness of state sovereignty as South Carolina attempted to apply it in 1832, but the perpetrators were only seeking to apply a set of principles of which he had previously been the most ardent expounder. When Madison expressed his horror and dismay at some of the questions which the Nullifiers had raised, he was therefore arguably showing his discomfort with the essential character of political culture in contemporary America. Among the last of the Founding Generation who yet still drew breath, Madison thus lived long enough to effectively validate one of the essential claims which Abraham Lincoln would make in his speech to the Young Men’s Lyceum. Therein, Lincoln poignantly observed that the Founders, though once, “A forest of giant oaks [,]” had since been swept away by, “The all-restless hurricane” of time. And while, in their waning years, they might still attempt, “To combat with […] mutilated limbs a few more of the ruder storms,” they were ultimately doomed to, “Sink and be no more.” Events like the Missouri Compromise and the Nullification Crisis might well have been those “ruder storms,” which the likes of Jefferson and Madison had, in their mounting infirmity, feebly tried to resist. But it had been of little use in 1820 or in 1832, respectively. And it was doubly so at the time that Lincoln was speaking in 1838. The affection which the American people harbored for the Founders would remain in some form for centuries to come. But their influence? Their guidance? Their ability to restrain the excesses of their countrymen? That had well and truly faded into nothingness.