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Abraham Lincoln's Cooper Union Address

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Abraham Lincoln's Cooper Union Address FF oo rr TT hh ee PP ee oo pp ll ee A NEWSLETTER OF THE ABRAHAM LINCOLN ASSOCIATION VOLUME 16 NUMBER 1 SPRING 2014 SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS WWW.ABRAHAMLINCOLNASSOCIATION.ORG Abraham Lincoln’s Cooper Union Address By Richard Brookhiser gines, are greater than anything that was available to Lincoln. Yet two of Lincoln’s mistakes are little known today—which sug- gests a narrowness of modern scholarship. The first half of the Cooper Union Address was a response to a speech by Stephen Douglas. Campaigning for a fellow Democ- rat in Ohio in September 1859, Douglas had said, “our fathers, when they framed the government under which we live, under- stood this question just as well, and even Richard Brookhiser is a biographer of the Found- better, than we do now.” “This question” ing Fathers (most recently author of James Madi- was whether the federal government could son, from Basic Books). His next book, also from restrict the expansion of slavery into the Basic, is Founders’ Son: A Life of Abraham Lin- territories. Douglas argued that federal con- coln, due out in October. It tells Lincoln’s story trol would violate the principle of self- as a lifelong engagement with the founders— government; each territory’s inhabitants Washington, Paine, Jefferson and their great — should decide for themselves whether to documents—the Declaration of Independence, the allow slavery or not. Lincoln at Cooper Un- Photograph of Abraham Lincoln taken in New Northwest Ordinance, the Constitution—and York City by Mathew Brady on February 27, shows how America’s greatest generation made ion agreed with Douglas that “our fathers” 1860, the day of Lincoln’s Cooper Union Address its greatest man. In the course of his writing he knew best what America’s founding princi- found that Lincoln made three mistakes in the ples were, but he proposed to show that they members of Congress were also delegates to Cooper Union Address in his discussion of the agreed with him—that the federal govern- the Convention and shuttled between New signers of the Constitution and their views of ment could, and should, limit slavery’s ex- York and Philadelphia to tend to both duties. slavery. One mistake is known, from his corre- pansion. Lincoln said that three of them, William spondence, and was corrected when the Address Blount, William Few, and Abraham Bald- was printed as a pamphlet. But two seem to be Lincoln defined “our fathers [who] framed win, had supported the Ordinance and signed unknown—he put one framer in Congress after he had retired, and he quoted a bogus letter by the government under which we live” as the the Constitution—“thus showing that, in George Washington. 39 men who signed the Constitution. He their understanding, no line dividing local _________________________ examined their careers for occasions when from federal authority…forbade the Federal as lawmakers they had to decide “this ques- Government to control as to slavery in fed- In the Cooper Union Address, February 27, tion.” He concluded that 23 of the 39 had eral territory.” But Lincoln was wrong 1860, Lincoln gave the most elaborate state- been in a position to vote or act on the ex- about Abraham Baldwin. When Baldwin, a ment of his conviction that the Republican pansion of slavery, and that 21—“a clear Georgian, got to Philadelphia in June he policy of considering slavery an evil that majority”—had chosen to restrict it, either stayed put and thus was absent when Con- should be contained and ultimately extin- by forbidding it or placing limits on it. “As gress passed the Northwest Ordinance. guished was also the policy of the founding those fathers marked it, so let it be again When the Cooper Union Address was pub- fathers. Lincoln spent half of his ninety marked, as an evil not to be extended….” lished as a campaign pamphlet in September minute oration laying out this case, and 1860, this mistake was corrected. when the Address was published in Septem- His first mistake came in his discussion of ber it was accompanied by more than two the Northwest Ordinance, which organized Two other mistakes slipped through, how- dozen footnotes buttressing it. the territory that would become Ohio, Indi- ever. The first concerned the law establish- ana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin (plus ing the Mississippi Territory in 1798. The But Lincoln made three mistakes about the a slice of Minnesota). The Northwest Ordi- original Mississippi Territory covered what founding fathers when he gave his speech. nance was older than the Constitution: the is now southern Mississippi and Alabama, They did not weaken his argument, but they one-house Congress of the Articles of Con- minus the Gulf Coast (then still owned by show how hard it was—especially for a busy federation, meeting at Fraunces’ Tavern in Spain). The settlements that existed there politician—to do research in the 1850s. Our New York, passed it in July 1787, as the had slavery since colonial times, and Con- historical resources, from the published pa- Constitutional Convention was meeting in pers of the founders to internet search en- Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Several (continued on page 2) 2 A NEWSLETTER OF THE ABRAHAM LINCOLN ASSOCIATION FOR THE PEOPLE (continued from page 1) bull’s speech, or from his own reading in the anti-slavery press. Interestingly, Dr. gress did nothing to change that status Seary also found articles in two anti- quo. It did, however, forbid the importa- Lincoln newspapers, the Boston Post and tion of slaves from abroad (this was at a the Columbian Register (New Haven), time when the slave trade was still legal). which questioned the letter’s authenticity after Lincoln had been elected president. Lincoln said that three “fathers” serving in Congress approved this bill, with that re- Lincoln’s mistakes in the Cooper Union striction—John Langdon, Abraham Bald- Address were minor and did not under- win, and George Read. He was right about mine his argument. Abraham Baldwin Baldwin this time, but George Read was spent eighteen years in the new post- not in Congress in 1798. After serving as Constitution Congress (ten in the House, The Great Hall of The Cooper Union Institute (now a senator from Delaware beginning in eight in the Senate), during which he voted the Cooper Union) has stood for more than a cen- 1789, he had gone home to be chief justice to restrict slavery three times. George tury as a bastion of free speech and a witness to the of the state supreme court in 1793 and died Read was a senator in 1789, and thus one flow of American history and ideas. five years later. of the “fathers” who confirmed the North- west Ordinance that George Washington expenditure of time which I can not be- Lincoln’s second mistake concerned signed into law. And Washington, besides stow upon it,” he wrote (Lincoln to George Washington. Washington ap- signing that historic bill, wrote several Charles C. Nott 5/31/60). So Charles C. peared in Lincoln’s list of the 21 “fathers” authentic letters deploring slavery. The Nott and Cephas Brainerd, two young Re- because of an act he took in his first year footnotes to the Cooper Union Address publican lawyers in New York, had to do as president: in August 1789 he signed a quoted one of them: “there is no man liv- his research over again to compile the bill unanimously passed by the new Con- ing who wishes more sincerely than I do to pamphlet’s footnotes (Lincoln looked over gress confirming the Northwest Ordi- see a plan adopted for the abolition of their work and approved it). Nott and nance. But at Cooper Union Lincoln also it” (Washington to Robert Morris, April Brainerd caught the Baldwin error, but let cited a letter Washington wrote Lafayette 12, 1786). Washington put his convictions the wrong Read and the bogus Washington in 1798 that praised the Northwest Ordi- into practice in 1799 when he freed his letter through. nance as “a wise measure.” slaves in his will. We have less excuse. Lincoln’s correspon- But the letter is bogus. Washington did These fly-specks on one of the rhetorical dence with Nott about publishing the ad- write Lafayette in 1798, congratulating and political monuments of Lincoln’s ca- dress is in the Collected Works of Abra- him on his release from an Austrian jail reer highlight the difficulty of doing re- ham Lincoln, and in it the two men hash where he had been held as a prisoner of search in one’s spare time, especially with out the Baldwin problem but the Collected war. In this letter Washington made some the spottier records and cruder facilities of Works makes no mention of the other mis- comments on current American politics the mid-nineteenth century. Lincoln takes. I discovered them almost by but said nothing about the Northwest Ordi- owned a set of Elliot’s Debates, an 1836 chance. I found that George Read had not nance. collection of documents concerning the been in Congress in 1798 by looking him writing and ratifying of the Constitution. up to see which house of Congress he sat How did Lincoln go astray? There was a The state library in Springfield owned a in. I was suspicious of the Washington Read in Congress in 1798, who approved copy of James Madison’s Papers, pub- letter because I had written three books the bill organizing the Mississippi Terri- lished in 1840, which included his copious about him and I did not recognize it. I did tory—Jacob Read, senator from South notes on the Constitutional Convention.
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