Right Makes Might

"I believe it can be said that by the formal test of offices held and great deeds accomplished, he was the least qualified man ever elected, perhaps ever nominated by a major party." -William Lee Miller

I just finished a most fascinating read. This book dealt primarily with Lincoln's virtues, as the title indicates. It was all about his ethics and his sense of morality and integrity. The book ends at his inauguration, so the focus is on everything leading up to his presidency. Forgive me for sounding over-dramatic, but although Lincoln was not a perfect man, I believe he may be the closest our country has ever come to a perfect politician.  

I was shocked to learn about how little actual experience Lincoln had in politics before he became president. He had only served one term in Congress several years before the presidential election. He had spent the rest of his time as a private citizen and an attorney and might have remained so if not for the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Lincoln had always been against slavery, but had considered it a tolerated evil in his country.  The Kansas-Nebraska act threatened to change slavery from a tolerated evil to a good, that was to be embraced and allowed to spread throughout the country. Such a possibility got Lincoln all fired up and anxious to get back into politics.

He gave a speech in New York that put him onto the national scene and contributed to the possibility that this country lawyer could become president. He believed that slavery was more than just a social or economic issue. He believed it to be a moral issue. He said this, regarding the Southern slave owners:

"Holding , as they do, that slavery is morally right, and socially elevating, they cannot cease to demand a full national recognition of it, as a legal right, and a social blessing."

"Nor can we justifiably withhold this, on any ground save our conviction that slavery is wrong. If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality-its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its extension-its enlargement. All they ask, we could readily grant, if we thought slavery right; all we ask, they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right, and our thinking it wrong, is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy."

He concluded his speech with these powerful words:

"...Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it."

An opinion that circulated among many Americans during Lincoln's time was this... "I don't agree with slavery, but there are those who do. Who am I to stand in the way of someone else's personal choice?" Are we not grateful that Lincoln would not allow such complacency to continue in the country he led? We owe a debt of gratitude to this president who had the moral courage to say...This is not a personal choice. This is wrong. And it eats away at the very moral foundation upon which this country was built, and it must be removed.

Was slavery the last great moral dilemma of this nation? I don't believe it was. Do moral issues circulate through our courts and legislatures today? Absolutely. Are there men and women today with the same level of moral integrity that this great president held? I absolutely believe there are. I guess the greater question is, will this nation elect, support, and uphold such a person? That I don't know. But I hope so. I most certainly hope so.

I do know that as citizens of this great nation, we can, in our small capacities and little spheres of influence do our part to uphold the ideal that, "right makes might", and "dare to do our duty as we understand it." I believe our nation will be better for it.