Lincoln and the Tree of Liberty
By Valerie Phillips
On my trip to Washington, D.C. this past summer I was excited about visiting the Washington Mall with its various monuments to the great people and events in the history of our nation. But I was especially looking forward to seeing the Lincoln Memorial, because Abraham Lincoln is one of the most well known and well loved of American presidents.
He was actually the first Republican president to hold office. His political views stressed the liberties and equality of rights that are reflected at the core of the Declaration of Independence in the phrase “all men are created equal.” Although Lincoln never became a member of the church he grew up in, it seems clear that his values were shaped by his Christian upbringing. He often quoted from the Bible in his speeches.
In a quote from his Peoria speech, Lincoln stated his view on slavery: “[As the Kansas-Nebraska Act has a] declared indifference – but as I must think, covert real zeal – for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate it. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world – enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites – causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty – criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest.”
As the presidential election approached in November 1860, several states spoke of seceding from the Union if Lincoln should be elected president. Shortly after his election, they did so, declaring themselves the Confederate States of America, and within six months war broke out. Lincoln's initial goal during his presidency had not been to abolish slavery but to preserve the unity of the nation. He knew that if America were divided it would be too weak to defend itself from world powers. England and France were waiting in the wings to jump in and re-colonize America. In his famous speech, A House Divided, Lincoln quoted from the Bible, saying: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” He did not believe the nation could continue as half slave and half free, but knew that it must become one or the other.
By the summer of 1862 it became clear to Lincoln that the only way to win the war was to abolish slavery entirely, so he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which took effect in January 1863. As the Union armies advanced over the next two years more than three million slaves were freed. The Civil War came to a close in the spring of 1865 with over 600,000 casualties. Prior to the Civil War the constitution had allowed for a tolerance of slavery. Lincoln brought a shift in the national thinking towards the Declaration of Independence with its focus on liberty and equality. He re-emphasized this in his Gettysburg Address when he spoke of America as “a nation conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
Over the next several years the reconstructionist amendments were introduced. The thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendments guaranteed that the "blessings of liberty" would be extended to the entire male populace, including the former slaves and their descendants. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, the Fourteenth included the Privileges or Immunities Clause, Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses, and the Fifteenth Amendment granted voting rights regardless of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
With the end of the war, a new era of freedom began for the African American people of America. No one can question that change came slowly and was hard-fought. Though voting rights were granted in 1870, it has taken many years for that freedom to evolve to the point we’ve arrived at today, with the recent election of our first African-American President. It is a testimony to that seed of freedom that was planted with the Declaration of Independence. It was another fifty years (1920) before women won the right to vote through the women's suffrage movement. It was even more years later that deaf people were allowed to vote, and later still that the Americans with Disabilities Act promised equal rights to all individuals with disabilities.
One year before his assassination in April of 1864, President Lincoln signed an act establishing Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. as the first and only liberal arts college for the deaf in the world. It was not until 1988, as a result of the Deaf President Now (DPN) protest at Gallaudet, that deaf people were given the right to self-determination and to elect their first deaf president. Jesus Christ came to set men free. Because of the Judeo-Christian values our country was founded upon, America has represented these same values in a way that no other nation has.
Galatians 3:26-29 says: “For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” When I think of The United States of America, I think of the word freedom. The Declaration of Independence states: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men were created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
I hear many today who say they do not believe these to be the founding principles of our nation because at the time the Declaration was drafted the only people with equal rights were rich white men. While this was true at the time, I still believe that the concept of freedom was a seed that was planted first in the hearts of our founding fathers and then in the documents that created the government of the United States. It is not a tree that has grown up quickly or without difficulty, but it has borne the rich fruit of liberty and equality that we value and enjoy today. No other country in the world has this kind of heritage.