Hamilton's ghost in the Gettysburg Address

Nearing the end of Ron Chernow's Hamilton led me to dip into the Federalist Papers last night. No sooner did I crack the volume and start in on No. 1, written by Hamilton, when lo, deja vu ensued. Not because I'd read the words before, though I probably have, but because I felt I was reading the Gettsyburg Address. Here's Hamilton:

After an unequivocal experience of the inefficiency of the subsisting federal government, you are called upon to deliberate on a new Constitution for the United States of America. The subject speaks its own importance; comprehending in its consequences nothing less than the existence of the UNION, the safety and welfare of the parts of which it is composed, the fate of an empire in many respects the most interesting in the world. It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind.

And Lincoln:

Obama's America, and mine

Not to be narcissistic or nuttin', but Obama's celebrated "we are..." riff at Selma, which widened the circle of national inclusion to encompass the Lost Boys of Sudan and (implicitly) undocumented immigrants crossing the Rio Grande, as well as "the Tuskeegee Airmen, Navajo code-talkers, and Japanese-Americans who fought for this country even as their own liberty had been denied," reminded me of a children's poem I wrote in the mid-nineties. It reflects a children's book canon (and a little extracurricular YA reading at the end) from the sixties and early seventies that perhaps Obama shared in part:

American Child 

I've heard a lot of stories, I'm from everywhere.

I'm Abe Lincoln splitting logs, one swing for each,

Alone, speechifying the squirrels.

I'm a redbacked Hebrew slave, gathering straw

Under a red Egyptian sun.

I'm the old slave Joe, head bending low,

Crossing cottonfields, heading home.

I'm an Indian girl, gathering berries,

Obama on kinks in the arc of history

One passage in Peter Beinart's stirring ode to Obama's gun control efforts set me thinking again about how Obama views (and frames) U.S. history:

Republicans often describe America as a country that was once pure—at its founding, before the New Deal, or before the 1960s—was sullied and now must now be redeemed. Obama, by contrast, describes America as a protracted struggle to honor our best ideals by overcoming our evil past, a struggle in which heroes often die without ever seeing their labors bear fruit. It’s no coincidence that a month after Newtown, he swore his inaugural oath on the bibles of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, and spoke of “the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall.” It’s no coincidence that he so often quotes King (who was himself quoting the abolitionist Theodore Parker) as saying, “Even though the arc of the moral universe is long, it bends toward justice.”

I would slightly edit this acute observation, altering "overcoming our evil past" to "overcoming the evils in our past" or "overcoming our more limited past."  Due in part perhaps to political necessity, Obama puts a relentlessly positive spin on the national historical saga, casting it as a tale of continual progress toward a more perfect union.  The circle of those included in the "all are created equal" widens in concentric historical ripples, "through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall." It's a presentation of American history modeled on Lincoln's concept of what Garry Wills tagged in Lincoln at Gettysburg as "continual approximation" of the ideals embedded in the Declaration of Independence.  Wills cites Lincoln setting forth that concept in the Lincoln-Douglas debates:

Abraham Lincoln: African Americans secured their own liberation

I am no Civil War historian, so I will just share the remarkable discourse below attributed to Abraham Lincoln without comment. This conversation must be well known to historians, as it appears in the biography by Lincoln's secretaries Hay and Nicolay (long the definitive Lincoln biography). While the imperative Lincoln expresses to use emancipation as a weapon of war was familiar to me, his categoric assertions below brought me up short and made me want to hit the 'share' button.

This conversation took place (assuming it is relayed accurately) in the dark days of August 1864, when Grant's assault on Lee's army was stalled with appalling slaughter, Sherman had not yet taken Atlanta, and a wave of war weariness was overcoming the electorate.  Lincoln's honest parsing of personal ambition and love of country at the outset is itself remarkable, if characteristic, but his read on the military/political/economic forces at work is even more remarkable -- at least to this moderately informed reader. The source below is Hay's short version of the ten-volume biography he wrote with Nicolay. I don't know whether the ellipses appear in the full biography.

Mr. Lincoln realized to the full the tremendous issues of the campaign. Asked in August by a friend who noted his worn looks, if he could not go away for a fortnight's rest, he replied: "I cannot fly from my thoughts—my solicitude for this great country follows me wherever I go. I do not think it is personal vanity or ambition, though I am not free from these infirmities, but I cannot but feel that the weal or woe of this great nation will be decided in November. There is no program offered by any wing of the Democratic party, but that must result in the permanent destruction of the Union."

A lawyerly second inaugural, or a piece of the president's heart? Or both?

I am generally chary of literary analysis that finds meaning in sound -- variations of rhythm and meter, assonance and alliteration, etc. But purely by accident, while reading Ronald C. White's little ode to Lincoln's Second Inaugural in today's Times (this by a man who I see in the bio line has written a whole book about the speech), I was struck by the beauty and, as it were, aural authority of the speech's final phrasing as White quoted it:

By contrast, Lincoln disappeared in his second inaugural. The speech contains the word “I” only once. Lincoln was pointing beyond himself to the future of the American democratic experiment, “to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves; and with all nations.”

Following the qualified, conditional assertion that the nation has endured God's wrath, and the injunction to "bind up the nation's wounds," this final phrasing does, it seems to me, deliver a kind of aural balm.  It chimes internally in multiple ways: in the alliteration of "achieve and cherish," the assonance of "achieve" and "peace," the double nail-down of just and lasting, lightly punctuating the soft susseration of "cherish...peace...ourselves, nations."

Where Gore Vidal's ice melted

I knew next to nothing about Gore Vidal's personal life or public persona before I read his Times obit today. One passage in the obit jumped out at me, though, because I'd like to believe it wasn't true -- or at least, was true only in some senses. Here it is:

Television was a natural medium for Mr. Vidal, who in person was often as cool and detached as he was in his prose. “Gore is a man without an unconscious,” his friend the Italian writer Italo Calvino once said. Mr. Vidal said of himself: “I’m exactly as I appear. There is no warm, lovable person inside. Beneath my cold exterior, once you break the ice, you find cold water.”

Some comparisons are obvious...

of course, of course. But still, this echo gave me a bit of a chill.  One passage in my rebuttal of Drew Westen's attack on Obama bounced around the web quite a bit, e.g., in the LA Times online:

Sprung, blogging at Xpostfactoid, compared Obama's challengers on the left to Martin Luther King Jr.'s critics during the civil rights era. "Let's not forget that many African Americans at times regarded King as an appeasing sellout, much as many progressives now see Obama as one," Sprung wrote. "The Panthers and the Nation of Islam were more satisfying to many. King called out his adversaries, but he never shrank from engaging with them. Neither has Obama — though the results have not always been what his base could have wished."

Obama, of course, quotes King all the time, and is not shy about identifying with him or Lincoln (and damn the obvious "Mr Obama, you're no..." rejoinders).  As in Iowa yesterday:

"I think that we forget when [Martin Luther King Jr.] was alive there was nobody who was more vilified, nobody who was more controversial, nobody who was more despairing at times. There was a decade that followed the great successes of Birmingham and Selma in which he was just struggling, fighting the good fight, and scorned, and many folks angry.  But what he understood, what kept him going, was that the arc of moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.  But it doesn’t bend on its own.  It bends because all of us are putting our hand on the arc and we are bending it in that direction.  And it takes time.  And it's hard work.  And there are frustrations."

An implacable conciliator

Drew Westen's full-fronted assault on President Obama's performance, rhetoric and character riveted liberal America.  To my mind, Westen core charges have been definitively refudiated. Westen idealized and mischaracterized FDR, vastly overestimated the power of presidential rhetoric, short-changed Obama's legislative accomplishments, ignored what he actually said in his speeches and impugned his motives without any meaningful discussion or evidence.

Westen did, however, touch a  raw nerve in progressives frustrated by Obama's refusal to acknowledge that Republicans have not dealt with him in good faith, and by his endlessly proffered willingness to engage with them under the assumption that they are willing to compromise to find solutions to the country's problems. Michael Tomasky offers a more substantive critique than Westen's of this conciliatory approach to leadership.  While acknowledging a variety of possible contributory causes, Tomasky focuses on Obama's political philosophy -- which is easily verifiable in his writing, speeches and engagement with Congress:

GOP debate: Santorum misquotes Lincoln

In the GOP debate tonight, Santorum took a shot a Romney after Romney, defending the healthcare reform bill he passed in Massachusetts, asserted that the individual mandate is in accord with the Massachusetts Constitution but not with the U.S. Constitution. Santorum said, roughly, what's wrong is wrong, regardless of written law. Then: "Lincoln said, states have no right to do wrong."

Coincidentally, I just wrote about Lincoln's First Inaugural today, noting that Lincoln not only affirmed the Southern states' right to maintain slavery undisturbed, but said that he would not object to a Constitutional amendment codifying that right.  So I looked up Santorum's cite, which is from the Lincoln-Douglas debates.  Lincoln did suggest that in an ultimate sense, the states have no right do to wrong, insofar as no one has a right to do wrong (the actual quote was with reference to Douglas: "he cannot logically say that anybody has a right to do wrong." Full context below.)  But in the very same passage, he first affirmed the Southern states' legal right under the Constitution to maintain slavery, and asserted that Republicans would not interfere with that right.

An implacable conciliator

Drew Westen's full-fronted assault on President Obama's performance, rhetoric and character riveted liberal America.  To my mind, Westen core charges have been definitively refudiated. Westen idealized and mischaracterized FDR, vastly overestimated the power of presidential rhetoric, short-changed Obama's legislative accomplishments, ignored what he actually said in his speeches and impugned his motives without any meaningful discussion or evidence.

Westen did, however, touch a  raw nerve in progressives frustrated by Obama's refusal to acknowledge that Republicans have not dealt with him in good faith, and by his endlessly proffered willingness to engage with them under the assumption that they are willing to compromise to find solutions to the country's problems. Michael Tomasky offers a more substantive critique than Westen's of this conciliatory approach to leadership.  While acknowledging a variety of possible contributory causes, Tomasky focuses on Obama's political philosophy -- which is easily verifiable in his writing, speeches and engagement with Congress:

Change you can believe in? By degrees...

Many who responded to Obama's promise of change, myself sometimes among them, are disturbed by his willingness to trim back major initiatives. A stimulus that's one third tax cuts, with aid to states and municipalities cut back. Health care reform without a public option. Financial regulatory reform that leaves "too big to fail" banks intact. An end to torture with a continued policy of preventive detention.

Against those frustrations, set Charles M. Blow's explanation for a marked uptick in conservative sentiment among the electorate:

The Obama administration’s response to the financial and automotive crises and its pursuit of a wide range of reforms is the epitome of new and untried. Major change has come much too quickly for far too many. The response: retreat to a cocoon of conservatism.

And recall Frederick Douglass's assessment of Lincoln:

Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; 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.

Obama won by raising hopes that he would "bend the arc of history" and specifically reverse this country's hard swing to the right over the past forty years. But he's spoken of that arc (in effect) mathematically, envisioning fundamental change as moving a battleship a few degrees. Let's see how things look when we've moved a ways around the bend.

Obama's "Lincoln Defense" of Geithner

As Obama continues to channel Lincoln, Timothy Geithner might take some consolation in the intense vilification suffered by Lincoln's second Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton.

George McClellan, the charismatic general who was a battlefield failure but a brilliant political infighter, blamed his drubbing by Lee in the Seven Days Battles on a lack of troops, as was his wont -- he constantly estimated Lee's troop strength at double its actual number. Stanton was his chief scapegoat, and others piled on. Doris Kearns Goodwin tells the tale in Team of Rivals:

The drumbeat began with McClellan, who told anyone who would listen that Stanton was to blame for the Peninsula defeat. "So you want to know how I feel about Stanton, & what I think of him now?" he wrote Mary Ellen in July. "I think that he is the most unmitigated scoundrel I ever knew, heard or read of; I think that...had he lived in the time of the Savior, Judas Iscariot would have remained a respected member of the fraternity of the Apostles"...

Democrats, unwilling to fault McClellan, were the loudest in their denunciations of Stanton. Spearheaded by the Blairs, conservatives charged that Stanton had abandoned both his Democratic heritage and his old friendship with McClellan...Democrat John Astor could not refrain from cursing at the mere mention of Stanton's name. "He for one believes, Strong reported, "that Stanton willfully withheld reinforcements from McClellan lest he should make himself too important, politically, by a signal victory"....

The New York Times promised not to engage in the "very fierce crusade" against Stanton, but begged the president, "if we are to have a new Secretary of War, to give us a Soldier--one who knows what war is and how it is to be carried on...If Mr. Stanton is to be removed, the country will be reassured, and the public interest greatly promoted, by making Gen. McClellan his successor. Even those who cavil at his leadership in the field, do not question his mastery in the art of war." As the weeks went by, and the pressure to replace him mounted, Stanton must have wondered how long Lincoln would continue to support him (447-48).

Lincoln's support for his Secretary under duress is famous, and Obama probably has had it in mind while brushing off calls for Geithner's resignation. Kearns Goodwin again:

In fact, not once during the vicious public onslaught against the secretary of war did Lincoln's support for Stanton waver. During the hours he had spent each day awaiting battlefront news in the telegraph office, Lincoln had taken his own measure of his high-strung, passionate secretary of war. He concluded that Stanton's vigorous, hard-driving style was precisely what was needed at this critical juncture...

And as always, the president refused to let a subordinate take the blame for his own decisions. He insisted to Browning "that all that Stanton had done in regard to the army had been authorized by him the President. Three weeks later, Lincoln publicly defended the beleaguered Stanton before an immense Union meeting on the Capital steps...

"I believe there is no precedent for my appearing before you on this occasion," he affably began, "but it is also true that there is no precedent for your being here yourselves." Reminding his audience that he was reluctant to speak unless he might "produce some good by it," Lincoln declared that something needed to be said, and it was "not likely to be better said by some one else," for it was "a matter in which we have heard some other persons blamed for what I did myself." Addressing the charge that Stanton had withheld troops from McClellan, he explained that every possible soldier available had been sent to the general. "The Secretary of War is not to blame for not giving when he had none to give." As the applause began to mount, he continued, "I believe he his a brave and able man, and I stand here, as justice requires me to do, to take upon myself what has been charged on the Secretary of War" (453-454).

Compare Obama's defense of Geithner at another appearance for which "there is no precedent" -- a sitting President's on the Tonight Show on March 20:

MR. LENO: Now, Treasury Secretary Geithner, he seems to be taking a little bit of heat here. How is he holding up with this? He seems like a smart guy --

MR. OBAMA: He is a smart guy and he's a calm and steady guy. I don't think people fully appreciate the plate that was handed him. This guy has not just a banking crisis; he's got the worst recession since the Great Depression, he's got an auto industry on -- that has been on the verge of collapse. We've got to figure out how to coordinate with other countries internationally. He's got to deal with me; he's got to deal with Congress. And he's doing it with grace and good humor. And he understands that he's on the hot seat, but I actually think that he is taking the right steps, and we're going to have our economy back on the move.

MR. LENO: Now, see, I love that it's all his problem. (Laughter.)

MR. OBAMA: No, no, no --

MR. LENO: -- I mean, when he came in you probably said, hey, this is not a problem. Now, it's, hey, you got this, you got that, hey, good luck. (Laughter.)

MR. OBAMA: No, no, but this is the point that I made, I think two days ago, when somebody asked, well, do you have confidence in Tim Geithner. I said, look, I'm the president, so ultimately all this stuff is my responsibility. If I'm not giving him the tools that he needs to make sure that we're moving things forward, then people need to look at me.

On the AIG thing, all these contracts were written well before I took office, but ultimately I'm now the guy who's responsible to fix it. And one of the things that I'm trying to break is a pattern in Washington where everybody is always looking for somebody else to blame. And I think Geithner is doing an outstanding job. I think that we have a big mess on our hands. It's not going to be solved immediately, but it is going to get solved. And the key thing is for everybody just to stay focused on doing the job instead of trying to figure out who you can pass blame on to.

Of course, that Lincoln was right about Stanton doesn't in itself prove that Obama is right about Geithner. The devil can always quote history for his own purposes. But the country, having "taken the measure" of Obama's judgment over the course of two years, may ultimately trust his judgment of character and ability within his own cabinet. The analogy, whatever its limits, does highlight the eternal law that in a crisis, the deputy at the fulcrum of the action bears the brunt of the fury.

It must be said too that Obama fudged his "buck stops here" routine a bit. Lincoln took responsibility for a very specific decision that was being vilified - refusing to send McClellan the troops for which he begged. Obama rolled all recriminations together and took responsibility for all without specifying any single controversial decision -- such as removing from the stimulus a measure that would have precluded paying the AIG bonuses -- as his own.

Obama, drinkin' Lincoln

Obama may be taking this Lincoln thing a bit far. Today, he told George Stephanopoulos that in preparation for his inaugural address he's been reading Lincoln, and

Every time you read that second inaugural, you start getting intimidated...

Okay, so in his own terms, how does Obama frame the challenge?

And so, I think that the main task for me in an inauguration speech, and I think this is true for my presidency generally, is to try to capture as best I can the moment that we are in...

Wait...what moment is it 'that we are in'? March 4, 1865:

...let us strive on to finish the work that we are in...

As Obama elaborates, it's clear that the moment that he's in -- deep -- is that damned speech...

I mean, I think that when you have a successful presidential speech of any sort, it's because that president is able to say -- is able to put their finger on here's the moment we're in. This is the crossroad that we're at. And then to project confidence that if we take the right measures that we can once again be that country, that beacon for the world.

Something like this?

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Of course, the optimism that became de rigeur for presidents along the way was not exactly Lincoln's style. I doubt Obama will be wondering aloud on Jan. 20 whether it's God will that all the wealth piled up by the credit card shall be sunk before we pull ourselves out of the financial mess "that we are in."

Friedman gets "got your back" backwards

As is his wont, Thomas Friedman today takes a useful concept and beats it to death, oversimplifying in the process.

The concept is that the single most important factor in a secretary of state's effectiveness is whether the secretary has the president's full backing:

what made [Secretary of State James A. Baker III] an effective diplomat was not only his own skills as a negotiator — a prerequisite for the job — but the fact that his boss, President George H.W. Bush, always had Baker’s back. When foreign leaders spoke with Baker, they knew that they were speaking to President Bush, and they knew that President Bush would defend Baker from domestic rivals and the machinations of foreign governments.

That backing is the most important requirement for a secretary of state to be effective. Frankly, Obama could appoint his dear mother-in-law as secretary of state, and if he let the world know she was his envoy, she would be more effective than any ex-ambassador who had no relationship with the president.

Fair enough. But most people viewing this appointment would be more worried about whether Clinton will have Obama's back than vice versa. A president can't be effective if the secretary of state --or any other top-ranking member of the foreign policy team--freelances, has her own agenda, goes rogue obviously or covertly, creates facts on the ground.

To be fair, Friedman does tack around to this point eventually. But he views it through the wrong end of the telescope:

My question is whether a President Obama and a Secretary of State Clinton, given all that has gone down between them and their staffs, can have that kind of relationship, particularly with Mrs. Clinton always thinking four to eight years ahead, and the possibility that she may run again for the presidency. I just don’t know.

Every word that is said between them in public, and every leak, will be scrutinized for what it means politically and whether there is daylight. That is not a reason not to appoint Mrs. Clinton. But it is a reason for everyone around the president-elect to take a deep breath and ask whether they are prepared to have the kind of air-tight relationship with Mrs. Clinton that is required for effective diplomacy.

Finally, to hammer his point home, Friedman gets the history underlying the political cliche of the season exactly backwards:

When it comes to appointing a secretary of state, you do not want a team of rivals.

"Team of Rivals" is of course the title of Doris Kearns Goodwin's group biography of Lincoln's chief rivals for the Republican nomination in 1860, all of whom ended up in his cabinet. Lincoln's Secretary of State, William H. Seward, was indeed in a situation closely analogous to Hillary's. The odds-on favorite for the nomination, he bitterly resented having it snatched by the less experienced but more politically nimble Lincoln. At first, he assumed -- and openly proposed to Lincoln -- that he, Seward, would effectively lead Administration policy. Lincoln swiftly disabused him of that notion -- and almost as swiftly earned his trust and admiration. Seward eventually wrote to his wife, "the president is the best of us." The bond between them became the stuff of legend.

On the other hand, another member of Lincoln's "Team," Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase, worked tirelessly to undercut Lincoln, and indeed plotted to replace him as Republican nominee in 1864. At the same time, for all the knives he tossed at Lincoln's back, he effectively financed a war of unprecedented expense.

In short, Friedman's use of the team of rivals trope tells us exactly nothing. Would Clinton be a Seward or a Chase in Obama's Cabinet? Probably neither.

From Emancipation Proclamation to Achievement Gap

Reading Doris Kearns' Goodwin's Team of Rivals, I was struck by a stray moment of insight from a slaveholding unionist during the deliberations of Lincoln's cabinet over the likely fallout from the Emancipation Proclamation. Members recognized fully that they were likely unleashing, in Gideon Welles' words, "a revolution of the social, civil and industrial habits and condition of society in the slave states." Most did not want integration and equality; Lincoln himself still clung to the dream of colonizing freed slaves in another country.

Attorney General Edward Bates, a Missouri slaveholder, favored forced resettlement; he believed that "amalgamation" would bring "degradation and demoralization of the white race." There was an absurdist loop in his thinking: he thought that whites would be degraded by contact with blacks because they had degraded blacks. But he recognized the the full force of his society's assault on their slaves' humanity. There's a rather extraordinary sociological insight (or was it common amongst slaveholders?) at the core of his Catch-22:

Although he conceded that 'among our colored people who have been long free, there are many who are intelligent and well advanced in arts and knowledge,' he could not imagine former slaves, 'fresh from the plantations of the South, where they have been long degraded by the total abolition of the family relation, shrouded in artificial darkness, and studiously kept in ignorance,' living on an equal footing with whites (p. 466; my emphasis).

Exacerbated by 100 further years of brutal discrimination, that "total abolition of the family relation" still takes its toll. What Stanton and his ilk did not foresee was the remarkable extent to which African Americans would embrace core American ideals and repeatedly hold the country to its founding promises (Lincoln, a fact-driven leader if there ever was one, did later get some inkling through his encounters with Fredrick Douglas and other black leaders). To revel for a moment in the obvious, here's the thread of that black buy-in/black indictment from Frederick Douglass through Martin Luther King and Barack Obama:

Frederick Douglass, Rochester New York, July 4, 1852:

Fellow citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?....

I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me by asking me to speak today?

Martin Luther King, Lincoln Memorial, August 28, 1963:

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now.

Barack Obama, Philadelphia, March 18, 2008:

"We the people, in order to form a more perfect union."

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America's improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution - a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part - through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

Lincoln, as Garry Wills shows in Lincoln at Gettysburg, was a leader in casting the Declaration of Independence's "We hold these truths..." credo as a blueprint for a work in progress, an ideal always to be aspired to and progressively fulfilled. He didn't invent this conception --indeed, it's there in Douglass' 1852 speech above -- but he framed it memorably, and repeatedly, and committed the nation to it in blood, and so recast the country's self-conception. And so the threads still run parallel: black leaders continue to hold us to that ideal, and black families struggle with the brutal sabotage of it acknowledged by Stanton.

A knowing tribute to Lincoln

Obama is understood to have a bit of a fascination with that prior state legislator from Illinois, Lincoln. Allusions and the occasional fleeting impersonation are peppered through Obama's speeches and stagings. Perhaps that's why, while reading through Obama's June 30 speech on patriotism, I was struck by a little cold-eyed, split-second qualification to a paragraph's paean to Lincoln. Here it is:

Abraham Lincoln did not simply win a war or hold the Union together. In his unwillingness to demonize those against whom he fought; in his refusal to succumb to either the hatred or self-righteousness that war can unleash; in his ultimate insistence that in the aftermath of war the nation would no longer remain half slave and half free; and his trust in the better angels of our nature - he displayed the wisdom and courage that sets a standard for patriotism (my emphasis).

Lincoln's ultimate insistence was long in coming. At the outset of his term, he insisted he was not out to take away anyone's slaves; he famously said that if he could preserve the union by preserving slavery, he would do it; he took the nation through two years of war before issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. To me, that adjectival toss-in suggests that nuance is reflex to Obama.

In that nuance I hear Frederick Douglass, who took Lincoln's full measure, catalogued all his betrayals (from one point of view) of black people, and somehow, in his Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln , folded a clear-eyed and pained recitation of those betrayals into one of the most moving orations ever spoken in tribute to a fellow human being:

Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; 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.

As a way to celebrate the 4th, no one could do better than read this speech of Douglass's, delivered at the unveiling of The Freedman's Monument in memory of Lincoln in Washington, D. C. in April 1876. His pain in acknowledging that Lincoln "was preeminently the white man's Pesident, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men" is palpable, but it's only prelude to his appreciation of the man's transcendence of his own prejudices and smaller concerns. Douglass eulogizes Lincoln in words as purged of anger as those of Lincoln himself, in his second inaugural address:

Though high in position, the humblest could approach him and feel at home in his presence. Though deep, he was transparent; though strong, he was gentle; though decided and pronounce in his convictions, he was tolerant towards those who differed from him, and patient under reproaches. Even those who only knew him through his public utterance obtained a tolerably clear idea of his character and personality. The image of the man went out with his words, and those who read them knew him.

To give way for a moment to Obama's own conceit: is it too much to hope that we can look back some day and say something similar about him?