What Was Lincoln's Meaning Of Democracy
Lincoln believed in the Greek meaning of Democracy. Lincoln was a lifelong Whig, anti-Jacksonian, and anti-proslavery democratic party. To Lincoln there was a difference in definitions. This would explains why Lincoln used the word fairly seldom. Wilentz clarifies Lincoln’s usage expounding, “Democracy and not democracy . . . ‘Allow ALL the governed an equal voice in the government’. . . “And that, and that only, is self-government’” (Wilentz 53). Here we see Lincoln using terms such as “self-government, and later in his speeches phrases like “free government” or “popular government” to substitute for the word Democracy. He wanted to be clear that his beliefs were not Southern democratic values, but those from the Greeks. He believed the Souths
…show more content…
It is fallacious in postulating, as McPherson did, that Lincoln recognized the view that the Civil War was a foreign war and not a civil insurrection (McPherson 77). In veracity, Lincoln saw the South not as a foreign war, but a rebellion. John Keegan, in The American Civil War, clarifies, “The coming war would thus be a civil war, and it was quickly so called and recognized to be. . . . The matter, for the South, was simple. It would defend its borders and repel any invaders who appeared. For the North, things were not so simple. Any war would be a rebellion, a defiance of its authority which had to be defeated” (Keegan 12). South Carolina doctrine of state secession had no legal standing. The Union, under the Constitution, was an agreement among the states defining the rules under which they coexisted. Therefore; axioms that wanted to be altnerated needed consent of all members. Southern states might have claimed statutes about individual state secession was legal but the Northern states never consented. It therefore had no legal standing; there was no declaration about secession that all the states, or three-fourths of them, or two-thirds of Congress or the constitutional writers, had agreed upon. As Jefferson made the constitution for the states to unify under, so John C Calhoun and South Carolina tried to make a document that let states succeed from. However, all the
It is fallacious in postulating, as McPherson did, that Lincoln recognized the view that the Civil War was a foreign war and not a civil insurrection (McPherson 77). In veracity, Lincoln saw the South not as a foreign war, but a rebellion. John Keegan, in The American Civil War, clarifies, “The coming war would thus be a civil war, and it was quickly so called and recognized to be. . . . The matter, for the South, was simple. It would defend its borders and repel any invaders who appeared. For the North, things were not so simple. Any war would be a rebellion, a defiance of its authority which had to be defeated” (Keegan 12). South Carolina doctrine of state secession had no legal standing. The Union, under the Constitution, was an agreement among the states defining the rules under which they coexisted. Therefore; axioms that wanted to be altnerated needed consent of all members. Southern states might have claimed statutes about individual state secession was legal but the Northern states never consented. It therefore had no legal standing; there was no declaration about secession that all the states, or three-fourths of them, or two-thirds of Congress or the constitutional writers, had agreed upon. As Jefferson made the constitution for the states to unify under, so John C Calhoun and South Carolina tried to make a document that let states succeed from. However, all the