November 19, 2013 marks the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address delivered by Abraham Lincoln. It’s an amazing piece of writing–both for its powerful message and for its succinctness. It’s worth revisiting, especially in a climate in which the notion of the greater good–and even the union of our country itself–has been eroded by extremist, nihilist politicians who are not interested in improving people’s lives, or in governing at all.

Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns recently invited presidents, Congressional representatives, entertainers, news pundits and others to read the Gettysburg Address. Then, he mashed them all up into a single reading. I have a little trouble even listening to a few words from some of them, but the words they speak are important. [Some of these readers should listen more carefully to the Address, because I doubt that they embody its values. You know who you are.]

The mashup is part of an effort to commemorate the 150th anniversary by getting Americans to learn its words–and to value its message of unity and belief in the common good. The project’s organizers encourage everyday people to record their own readings of the Gettysburg Address on video, and to share them on their site, Learn the Address.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Yzi79zpqQA&feature=player_embedded

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It was in 1863, during the heat of the Civil War, that 50 counties in the western part of Virginia decided to secede from the commonwealth and form their own state called West Virginia. That was the last successful creation of a new state out of part of an existing one.

Over the past 150 since the establishment of West Virginia, various regions of other states have tried to separate themselves from a state to which they feel unfairly tied. Anyone who looks at a map of the United States can see the almost random delineation of state boundaries, and why parts of states would want to secede.

Now some citizens in the western part of Maryland want to follow what their forbears to the south in Virginia did a century and a half ago. A new group called the Western Maryland Initiative says that the western sovereigns are fed up with the liberal majority in Annapolis, the state capital. It should not be a surprise that a secession movement would start in Maryland. After all, the state is known as “America in Miniature.” It has seacoasts, mountains, prairies, a large city [Baltimore] and extensive suburbs around Baltimore and Washington, DC. In a word, it is diverse.

Some of the nation’s finest farmland is in Maryland, as well as some Rust Belt factories that are still producing necessary products. But the differences that have spurred the secessionist movement in western Maryland are not necessarily geographic or economic. What perturbs many citizens in the western part of the state is how they feel left out from much of Maryland on issues such as gun control, taxes, energy policy, gay marriage and immigration. All of these issues have been subjects of recent legislative efforts at state and federal levels. The notion of compromise is a non-starter with the western Marylanders. With secessionists, the term “final straw” comes up a lot.

The frustration of the ruralists from western Maryland should resonate clearly with “cosmopolitans” in non-rural areas of many states. Progressives in particularly are upset about how gun control laws cannot be expanded either at the federal or state level in most of America. They are also deeply perturbed by the loss of voting rights that has occurred over the past three years in over a dozen states. This is particularly harmful to those who are poor, members of minority groups, and senior citizens. Recent immigrants do not care for those who are trying to disenfranchise them from voting.

Maryland has company when it comes to modern movements to secede. Nearly a dozen counties in northern Colorado are the furthest along, with nonbinding referendums set for November ballots. Michigan cannot fully decide if it wants to be one state or two. After all, it’s already divided by Upper and Lower Michigan.

California is our largest state by population. Most Americans are aware of the differences between northern California and southern California. In the 1950s, Northern California tried to form the state of Shasta to protect its fresh water. This issue is still a hot one throughout the state, and separation and secession are continuous in policy discussions.

The historical consensus is that President Abraham Lincoln and the “unionists” did not want the country to fall apart. Their reasons were several: (a) they felt that there could be a “domino theory” once one or several states or other sub-sections of the union seceded; (b) they thought that Americans were homogeneous enough to remain under one federal government, and (c) they did not want slavery to further tear the country apart.

What is different now is that with the growth of new technology over the past thirty or forty years, we are much more aware of the presence of different factions within our country. The citizens in western Maryland have much in common with people living in the Ozarks of Missouri or Arkansas or those living in the Rocky Mountains of Idaho. And those in Baltimore share much in common with those from virtually any other metropolitan area, at least those above the Mason-Dixon Line.

Both the federal government and the states are ill-equipped to deal with these differences. In a hypothetical world, we would have governmental units that include rural areas but not metropolitan ones. And we would have metropolitan governments without rural ones. These would not only be geographic or economic different; they would be culturally and politically separate. It’s nice to muse about this, but it’s hard to think of a practical way to restructure the country to reflect these differences. It seems that Lincoln and his progressive contemporaries had the right idea about working to keep the country together. The alternative to unity (wholesale secession) might even be a less desirable choice for conservatives among us. If we are going to achieve unity, the kind for which Lincoln wished, liberals and conservatives must join together to reconstitute a modern unity.

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In a refreshing and somewhat unusual statement following President Obama’s State of the Union address, Missouri Congressman Lacy Clay said, “Tonight’s speech demonstrated President Obama’s positive vision, and reminded me of Presidents Bill Clinton and Franklin Roosevelt.” In recent years, Democrats have been hesitant to reference Franklin Roosevelt, the icon of the social and economic safety nets that are fundamental to protecting the needs of the least fortunate among us. Congressman Clay was willing to do it.

Perhaps more remarkable and encouraging was Clay’s citing of President Bill Clinton. Nearly twelve years removed from his last day in office, more and more people are becoming aware of the many accomplishments that he had during his eight years as president. It didn’t hurt that he was followed by George W. Bush who lowered the bar for all. Still, it takes quite a bit of commitment and courage to honor him. After all, he is the only president other than Andrew Johnson in 1867 who was impeached. In many ways his name has been associated with scandal rather than social and economic progress. But Congressman Clay and others have been able to see his many accomplishments and to give them their appropriate respect.

It has been easier for Republicans. They seem to have no trouble embellishing their so-called heroes with accolades, most particularly Ronald Reagan and Abraham Lincoln. The big difference between what the Democrats and the Republicans do is that the Democrats actually believe much of what they say about their historic heroes. The Republicans tend to luxuriate in the names Lincoln and Reagan while in many regards, particularly with Lincoln, they distort the truth.

Abraham Lincoln was known as the Great Emancipator. While there is indeed some question as to his timing with regard to liberating the slaves, he stood foursquare behind the idea of, first, ending the expansion of slavery and, second, negotiating a way for southerners to free their slaves. He was even willing to make a financial settlement with them (technically called compensated emancipation). Very few in the Confederacy had interest in negotiating with the Northerners who they saw as imperialistic and arrogant. They preferred to take out their rifles to fight a war that, while fruitless, was characterized by remarkable bravery on both sides, with each side having its fair share of victories.

The idea of today’s Republicans worshiping Lincoln is in many ways ludicrous. Think of what Lincoln favored that are presently  anathema to Republicans:

1. He believed in the supremacy of the federal government over the states. Had he not, he would not have reluctantly supported the War Between the States.

2. He favored a robust program of capital investment in the country’s infrastructure. He played a key role in planning and implementing the transcontinental railroad. Today’s Republicans support virtually no infrastructure development, unless it is a bridge to nowhere.

3. Lincoln initiated the program of Land Grant Colleges. He believed in broadening higher education opportunities to as many interested and deserving students as possible. He saw this as a government responsibility. In 1862, he signed a law offering federal lands to each state to help establish public colleges for working-class Americans. This stands in contrast to many of today’s Republicans who are quick to cut funding to higher education (as well as all other levels of schooling). Because part of today’s Republicans’ mantra is economic privatization, their priorities in education are private schools include so-called for-profit college, as well as vouchers to provide economic independence for many elementary and secondary schools.

Today’s Republicans also tend to think that Ronald Reagan walked on water. Yes, he talked a good game about opposing tax increases, but when federal deficits occurred or were on the horizon as has been the case over the past ten years, he was quick to support taxes (or revenue enhancers) in order prevent the deficit from getting out of hand.

And while Reagan was partisan; he was not acrimonious. He knew that real cooperation (a word that currently is held in favor with Republicans) meant compromise (a word held in disdain by Republicans). One reason why the federal government was productive at times during the Reagan Administration is because he developed a very affable working relationship with Tip O’Neill, the speaker of the House. They frequently disagreed during the day, but in the evenings they socialized and frequently worked out differences. Even though President Barack Obama tries to engage Republicans in collaboration, the GOP seems to offer only idle words with few actual deeds.

So along with Republic myths about topics such as job creation through reducing taxes for the wealthy, they re-write history with their favorite heroes. Democrats don’t always tell the truth, but they tend to not tell bald-faced lies. It would strengthen our two-party system if Republicans were a little more comfortable with the truth.

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These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people.
 —Abraham Lincoln, from his first speech as an Illinois state legislator, 1837

Everyone now is more or less a Socialist. 
—Charles Dana, managing editor of the New York Tribune, and Lincoln’s assistant secretary of war, 1848

The workingmen of Europe feel sure that, as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so the American Antislavery War will do for the working classes. They consider it an earnest of the epoch to come that it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world. 
—Karl Marx and the First International Workingmen’s Association to Lincoln, 1864

These quotations begin a chapter in John Nichols new book, The “S” Word: A Short History of an American Tradition—Socialism. He wrote The “S” Word in response to Newt Gingrich’s comment, in 2010, that “the socialist infiltration of American government and media is even more disturbing than the threats from foreign terrorists.”

Although both Republicans and Democrats pretend that socialism is a foreign idea antithetical to the “American Way,” Nichols argues that socialism has a long, proud history in America. He writes about Tom Paine who admired early socialists, Horace Greeley who employed Karl Marx as a correspondent for the New York Tribune, and Helen Keller who was an avowed socialist. But one fascinating chapter, reprinted in full at the International Socialist Review, reveals that Republican president Abraham Lincoln had not only immersed himself in the ideas of European Utopian Socialists, and German Communists, but spoke about them publicly.

Lincoln was an avid reader of newspapers, especially of the New York Tribune, which was the great Republican paper of the day. It took a strong stand against slavery in the south. But it also had forceful opinions on the relationship between Labor and Capital, arguing that “Labor needs not to combat but to command Capital.” Greeley wanted to “expose the crimes whereby wealth is amassed and luxury enjoyed.”  Nichols writes:

Greeley welcomed the disapproval of those who championed free markets over the interests of the working class, a class he recognized as including both the oppressed slaves of the south and the degraded industrial laborers of the north.

Greeley and Lincoln would hardly recognize the Republican Party of today whose policies are set by free market, trickle down economists and corporate CEOs.

In Lincoln’s first State of the Union address given before Congress, December 3, 1861, he focused on the grave dangers of the Civil War, a conflict which was tearing the union apart. According to Nichols, he saw the war as an attack on democracy itself, that is, on rule by the majority of the people rather than by an oligarchy. He quotes Lincoln:

It continues to develop that the insurrection is largely, if not exclusively, a war upon the first principle of popular government—the rights of the people. Conclusive evidence of this is found in the most grave and maturely considered public documents, as well as in the general tone of the insurgents. In those documents we find the abridgment of the existing right of suffrage and the denial to the people of all right to participate in the selection of public officers except the legislative boldly advocated, with labored arguments to prove that large control of the people in government is the source of all political evil. Monarchy itself is sometimes hinted at as a possible refuge from the power of the people.

Nichols writes that after Lincoln addressed the challenges of the war, he also spoke of another, perhaps deeper, division. He wanted to speak about the danger of government favoring the interests of capital over labor. In doing so he presented the radical analysis of Marx and others of his time.

It is not needed, nor fitting here [in discussing the Civil War] that a general argument should be made in favor of popular institutions; but there is one point, with its connections, not so hackneyed as most others, to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effect to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor, in the structure of government. It is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital; that nobody labors unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it induces him to labor. This assumed, it is next considered whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own consent, or buy them, and drive them to it without their consent. Having proceeded thus far, it is naturally concluded that all laborers are either hired laborers or what we call slaves. And further, it is assumed that whoever is once a hired laborer is fixed in that condition for life.

Now, there is no such relation between capital and labor as assumed, nor is there any such thing as a free man being fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer. Both these assumptions are false, and all inferences from them are groundless.

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights.

It goes without saying that we have the same problems today that we had in Lincoln’s day. The difference is that Capital, (i.e. corporations/banks and investment firms) is far more powerful today than it was 150 years ago. The news media presents the main conflict in the United States as a partisan one, between the Democratic and Republican parties. But as the Occupy movement has correctly identified, the real conflict is between Wall Street and Main Street, between the 1% and the 99%, and between a corrupt government system and those of us it should be serving. What Lincoln, a Republican, can teach us is not to shy away from socialist analysis or naming class warfare as the single most important issue in the United States today—because it is.

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