Abraham Lincoln’s “House Divided” Speech

On June 16, 1858, Abraham Lincoln won the Republican nomination for the vacant U.S. Senate seat from Illinois.  His opponent in the election would be Stephen Douglas.  Upon his nomination, Lincoln delivered the “House Divided” speech in the war of words of what would culminate in the Lincoln-Douglas debates later that year.

Lincoln’s law partner, William Herndon, reports that Lincoln composed the speech by writing out drafts on small scraps of paper which he numbered.  He then put the pieces of paper in his tall hat for safekeeping.  When he thought he had completed the speech, Lincoln assembled the pieces into their proper order and wrote out the entire speech.

The humble beginnings of the speech from a couple of scraps of paper to Lincoln’s masterpiece started with a well-known biblical quote (for a biblically literate audience) from the Gospel of Matthew 12:25: “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand.”

The topics he addressed would be the “popular sovereignty” doctrine enunciated by Douglas in the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) and the more recent Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) decision by the Supreme Court.  Kansas-Nebraska allowed for popular sovereignty, or the principle that the territories could decide whether to allow slavery.  The Dred Scott decision declared the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional because the Court decided that Congress could not regulate slavery in the new territories.  These would be the object of Lincoln’s attack on the morality of slavery and its spread in the new territories.

Lincoln opens the speech by declaring that Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act with the intention of quelling the agitation of the slavery question.  That object was a fool’s hope and the act augmented rather than soothed the sectional tensions.  Lincoln therefore predicted that, “In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed.”

After quoting Matthew, he then predicted that, “This government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free . . . . It will become all one thing, or all the other.”  Lincoln had a moral vision of self-government and slavery.  He understood that logically slavery must eventually exist everywhere or nowhere according to the popular sovereignty doctrine.  If slavery were right, then “its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new – North as well as South.”  If it were wrong, however, then, “The opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction.”

Lincoln believed that the Founding Fathers compromised temporarily with slavery to create the Union, but they thought it wrong and put it on the path to gradual extinction.  He and the Republicans wanted to restrict slavery to where it already existed and yet halt the expansion of the institution into the territories.  The Congress had the plain power to regulate the territories in Article IV, but the Kansas-Nebraska Act and Dred Scott reversed the constitutional authority to ban slavery in the territories.

Lincoln lambasted popular sovereignty as “squatter sovereignty” and nothing more than moral relativism.  He embraced the right of self-government but thought that Douglas’ version was “so perverted” that it reduced self-government to the idea that, “If any one man, choose to enslave another, no third man shall be allowed to object.”  Lincoln, like Thomas Jefferson, did not believe that one had a natural or constitutional right to do a wrong.  The foundation for republican government was rooted in natural law.  As Jefferson stated in his First Inaugural Address: “All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.”  Therefore, if popular sovereignty included the right to enslave another, the system would eventually spread throughout the Union.

Finally, Lincoln detected a conspiracy to expand slavery among Douglas, former President Franklin Pierce, Chief Justice Roger Taney, and current President James Buchanan.  Lincoln charged that they were erecting a framework and scaffolding to promote the acceptance of Dred Scott and popular sovereignty among the American people.  Buchanan, Lincoln said, “fervently exhorted the people to abide by the forthcoming decision, whatever it might be.”  Meanwhile, Douglas’ popular sovereignty doctrine worked to “educate and mold public opinion, at least Northern public opinion, not to care whether slavery is voted down or voted up.”  In other words, they plotted to erect a morally relativist republic where slavery could be decided on by a democratic vote and spread all over the Union.

Lincoln lost the election to Douglas, but the two would square off again for the presidency in 1860.  Throughout these campaigns, Lincoln consistently maintained that slavery was an evil that should be restricted to where it already existed.  Thus, his ideas accorded with those of the Founders and the natural law ideals of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, the “apple of gold” in the “picture of silver” as he would put it.

Read Abraham Lincoln’s “A House Divided Speech” here: http://www.constitutingamerica.org/blog/?p=4305

Tony Williams is the Program Director for the Washington-Jefferson-Madison Institute, which teaches teachers American Founding principles and documents, in Charlottesville, VA.  He is also the author of four books, including America’s Beginnings: The Dramatic Events that Shaped a Nation’s Character.

Algernon Sidney's Discourses: Virtue and Liberty

Written in argument against Filmer's Patriarcha (which argued for the divine right of kings to rule, without popular consent), Algernon Sidney's Discourses Concerning Government reviews the history, strengths and weaknesses of governments from Biblical through Greek and Roman times, to the European and English eras.   A contemporary of Sidney, Bishop Burnett, stated that Sidney "studied the history of government in all its branches, beyond any man I ever knew." [1]  Sidney's primary arguments in Discourses are: (1) political power is different from paternal power, and kings do not have an inherited or divine right to rule; (2) people have the divine (natural) right of liberty which includes the right to choose their governors; (3) a popular, republican form of government is best; (4) virtue is necessary for rulers and the populace to maintain a prosperous and free society; and (5) kings and magistrates are subject to the common law. [2] A thoughtful reading and consideration of Sidney’s writings should restore him to his rightful position alongside John Locke in the study of the principles of the American republic. The following are quotes from Sidney's Discourses on the relationship of virtue, power, and liberty.

"Machiavel, discoursing on these matters, finds virtue to be so essentially necessary to the establishment and preservation of liberty, that he thinks it impossible for a corrupted people to set up a good government, or for a tyranny to be introduced if they be virtuous; and makes this conclusion, 'That where the matter (that is, the body of the people) is not corrupted, tumults and disorders do not hurt; and where it is corrupted, good laws do no good:' which being confirmed by reason and experience, I think no wise man has ever contradicted him." II:11:104-05.

"[Rome] that city which had overthrown the greatest powers of the world must, in all appearance, have lasted for ever, if their virtue and discipline had not decayed, or their forces been turned against themselves." II:15:128.

"All things in nature have their continuance from a principle in nature suitable to their original: all tyrannies have had their beginnings from corruption. …The contrary is seen in all popular and well-mixed governments: they are ever established by wise and good men, and can never be upheld otherwise than by virtue: the worst men always conspiring against them, they must fall, if the best have not power to preserve them." II:19:146-47.

"Corruption will always reign most, where those who have the power do most favour it, where the rewards of such crimes are greatest, easiest, and most valued, and where the punishment of them is least feared. …liberty cannot be preserved, if the manners of the people are corrupted …" II:25:201.

"Like effects will ever proceed from the like causes. When vanity, luxury, and prodigality are in fashion, the desire for riches must necessarily increase in proportion to them: and when the power is in the hands of base mercenary persons, they will always (to use the courtiers phrase) make as much profit of their places as they can. Not only matters of favour, but of justice too, will be exposed to sale; and no way will be open to honors or magistracies, but by paying largely for them. He that gets an office by these means, will not execute it gratis: he thinks he may sell what he has bought: and would not have entered by corrupt ways, if he had not intended to deal corruptly." II:25:203.

"Virtue is the dictate of reason, or the remains of divine light, by which men are made beneficent and beneficial to each other. Religion proceeds from the same spring; and tends to the same end; and the good of mankind so entirely depends upon the two, that no people ever enjoyed anything worth desiring that was not the product of them; and whatsoever any have suffered that [which] deserves to be abhorred and feared, has proceeded either from the defect of these, or the wrath of God against them. If any [leader] therefore has been an enemy to virtue and religion, he must also have been an enemy to mankind, and most especially to the people under him." II:27:212.

"If vice and corruption prevail, liberty cannot subsist; but if virtue have the advantage, arbitrary power cannot be established." II:30:241-242. [Copied by Thomas Jefferson into his Commonplace Book]

---

[1] Algernon Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government (London: A. Millar, London, 1751),  "Memoirs of Algernon Sidney, Esq.", xxviii (Sidney's father was a scholar in his own right, and maintained an extraordinary library containing several thousand volumes, including philosophical, political, historical and religious writings, ancient access from his early years.  West, xxviii (cited below)

[2]  Algernon Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government, Thomas G. West, ed. (Liberty Fund, Inc., Indianapolis, 1996), Introduction xix.

Law and Freedom

The following quotes are from: John Locke, “Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent, and End of Civil-Government,” Two Treatises of Government (Awnsham & John Churchill, London, 1698).

"Wherever Law ends, Tyranny begins." (Chapter 18, sec. 202)

“[The positive laws of commonwealths often are ...] the fancies and intricate contrivances of men, following contrary and hidden interests put into words; for so truly are a great part of the municipal laws of countries, which are only so far right, as they are founded on the law of nature.” (Chapter 2, sec. 12)

"And that all men may be restrained from invading others' rights, and from doing hurt to one another, and the law of nature be observed, which willeth the peace and preservation of all mankind, the execution of the law of nature is in that state, put into every man's hands, whereby everyone has a right to punish the transgressors of that law to such a degree, as may hinder its violation." (Chapter 2, sec. 7)

"Law, in its proper Notion, is the Direction of a free and intelligent Agent to his proper Interest." (Chapter 6, sec. 57)

“The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom: For in all the states of created beings capable of laws, where there is no law, there is no freedom.” (Chapter 6, sec. 57)

"A man may owe honour and respect to an ancient or wise man; defence to his child or friend; relief and support to the distressed; and gratitude to a benefactor, to such a degree, that all he has, all he can do, cannot sufficiently pay it; but all these give no authority, no right to anyone of making laws over him from whom they are owing." (Chapter 6, sec. 70)

 "These are the bounds, which the trust that is put in them by the society, and the law of God and Nature, have set to the legislative power of every commonwealth. First, they are to govern by promulgated established laws, not to be varied in particular cases, but to have one rule for rich and poor, for the favourite at court, and the countryman at plough. Secondly, these laws also ought to be designed for no other end ultimately than the good of the people." (Chapter 11, sec. 142)

Abigail to John Adams March 31, 1776

"I wish you would ever write me a Letter half as long as I write you; and tell me if you may where your Fleet are gone? What sort of Defence Virginia can make against our common Enemy? Whether it is so situated as to make an able Defence? Are not the Gentry Lords and the common people vassals, are they not like the uncivilized Natives Britain represents us to be? I hope their Rifle Men who have shown themselves very savage and even Blood thirsty; are not a specimen of the Generality of the people.

I am willing to allow the Colony great merit for having produced a Washington but they have been shamefully duped by a Dunmore.

I have sometimes been ready to think that the passion for Liberty cannot be Equally Strong in the Breasts of those who have been accustomed to deprive their fellow Creatures of theirs. Of this I am certain that it is not founded upon that generous and Christian principal of doing to others as we would that others should do unto us. Do not you want to see Boston; I am fearful of the small pox, or I should have been in before this time. I got Mr. Crane to go to our House and see what state it was in. I find it has been occupied by one of the Doctors of a Regiment, very dirty, but no other damage has been done to it. The few things which were left in it are all gone. Crane has the key which he never delivered up. I have wrote to him for it and am determined to get it cleaned as soon as possible and shut it up. I look upon it a new acquisition of property, a property which one month ago I did not value at a single Shilling, and could with pleasure have seen it in flames.

The Town in General is left in a better state than we expected, more owing to a precipitate flight than any Regard to the inhabitants, tho some individuals discovered a sense of honour and justice and have left the rent of the Houses in which they were, for the owners and the furniture unhurt, or if damaged sufficient to make it good. Others have committed abominable Ravages. The Mansion House of your President [John Hancock] is safe and the furniture unhurt whilst both the House and Furniture of the Solicitor General [Samuel Quincy] have fallen a prey to their own merciless party. Surely the very Fiends feel a Reverential awe for Virtue and patriotism, whilst they Detest the parricide and traitor.

I feel very differently at the approach of spring to what I did a month ago. We knew not then whether we could plant or sow with safety, whether when we had toiled we could reap the fruits of our own industry, whether we could rest in our own Cottages, or whether we should not be driven from the sea coasts to seek shelter in the wilderness, but now we feel as if we might sit under our own vine and eat the good of the land.

I feel a 'gaieti de Coar' to which before I was a stranger. I think the Sun looks brighter, the Birds sing more melodiously, and Nature puts on a more cheerful countenance. We feel a temporary peace, and the poor fugitives are returning to their deserted habitations.

Though we felicitate ourselves, we sympathize with those who are trembling least the Lot of Boston should be theirs. But they cannot be in similar circumstances unless pusillanimity and cowardice should take possession of them. They have time and warning given them to see the Evil and shun it.-I long to hear that you have declared an independency-and by the way in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.

That your Sex are Naturally Tyrannical is a Truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute, but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give up the harsh title of Master for the more tender and endearing one of Friend. Why then, not put it out of the power of the vicious and the Lawless to use us with cruelty and indignity with impunity. Men of Sense in all Ages abhor those customs which treat us only as the vassals of your Sex. Regard us then as Beings placed by providence under your protection and in imitation of the Supreme Being make use of that power only for our happiness."

[spelling modernized]

Thomas Jefferson’s Misunderstood “Letter to the Danbury Baptists”

On January 1, 1802, President Thomas Jefferson received a thirteen-foot mammoth cheese weighing some 1,200 pounds.  It was delivered by dissenting Baptist minister and long-time advocate of religious liberty, Reverend John Leland, who then preached a sermon to the president and members of Congress at the Capitol two days later.  Jefferson took the opportunity to compose a letter to the Danbury Baptists on the relationship between government and religion that would shape the course of twentieth-century jurisprudence.

Jefferson had been a staunch supporter of disestablishment and freedom of conscience for decades.   His Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom failed to pass in his home state in 1779, but it would eventually be adopted in 1786 as the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom.  It combined the principles of disestablishment of the official Anglican Church and defended religious liberty as a natural right.  It read:

That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burdened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities. 

In his Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson reaffirmed these principles while answering a series of queries to a European audience.  Jefferson again averred that religious liberty was a natural right that was free of coercion by the state particularly in a republic rooted upon popular sovereignty.  “Our rulers can have authority over such natural rights,” he wrote, “only as we have submitted to them.  The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit.”  The government, he states, cannot impose restrictions or civil liabilities upon the governed for their religious opinions.  “We are answerable for them to our God.” 

Although he was in Paris when the Constitutional Convention was held and the new Constitution ratified, Jefferson kept abreast of events in his country and consistently prodded his friend, James Madison, to include a Bill of Rights to protect the inalienable rights of mankind.  Eventually, Madison would introduce amendments in the First Congress and secure their passage, including the First Amendment, which read, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

The First Amendment was meant as a limit on the national Congress only.  Madison wanted limits on the states but they were rejected.  State limitations on religious liberty and establishment persisted after the First Amendment was adopted.  Religious tests for office remained in place in most states, and Connecticut (1818) and Massachusetts (1833) did not disestablish their official state churches until decades after.  The Supreme Court reinforced the idea that the Bill of Rights did not apply to the states but rather only to the national government in Barron v. Baltimore (1833).

In the 1800 Election, Federalists attacked Jefferson for atheism and warned their followers to hide their Bibles should Jefferson be elected.  While Jefferson certainly had heterodox personal religious views, and he broke with the precedent of Presidents Washington and Adams regarding the constitutionality of issuing days of thanksgiving or fasts, he did not keep religion out of the public square.

In his First Inaugural Address, Jefferson appealed to the unity of Americans centered on the principles of a natural rights republic.  He included freedom of religion as one of the “essential principles of our government.”  Moreover, he finished the address with a prayerful supplication.  “May that infinite power which rules the destinies of the universe lead our councils to what is best, and give them a favorable issue for your peace and prosperity.”

Jefferson made many other prayerful statements in his official capacity as President of the United States.  For example, in his First Annual Message to Congress, Jefferson stated:

While we devoutly return thanks to the beneficient Being who has been pleased to breathe into them the spirit of conciliation and forgiveness, we are bound with peculiar gratitude to be thankful to him that our own peace has been preserved through so perilous a season, and ourselves permitted quietly to cultivate the earth and to practice and improve those arts which tend to increase our comforts.

In his Letter to the Danbury Baptists, Jefferson reiterated his belief in religious liberty free of government interference by supporting the Danbury Baptists who were suffering under establishment in Connecticut.  “Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions,” he wrote.

While Jefferson personally opposed state establishments of religion, and had been the father of disestablishment in Virginia, he respected American constitutionalism.  He recognized that neither he nor Congress had no authority over religious policies of the states, which had their own constitutions and bills of rights.  Even though he saw the natural right of religious liberty violated by any establishment, he firmly respected the federal relationship between the national government and the states.  The view is analogous to Abraham Lincoln’s constitutional belief that while he thought slavery violated natural rights and the principles of the Declaration of Independence, it was an issue that was left to the states, and the president had no authority over slavery.

This helps us understand the rest of the letter in which he wrote about the constitutional limits the First Amendment imposed on Congress: “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.”  This metaphor has been (mis)used by the Supreme Court in the Everson (1947) case and subsequent jurisprudence on issues of school prayer and Bible readings as to read that there should be no religion in the public square.  It also helped “incorporate” the Bill of Rights and apply them to the states contrary to the original intention of the founders.  Moreover, Jefferson explicitly recognized the Establishment Clause as a limitation on the national Congress not local schools or state governments.

Finally, Jefferson encourages the states to imitate the national Congress and follow the principle of disestablishment in order to protect natural rights.  “Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.”

The Supreme Court unfortunately "cherry-picked" a quote from a letter of a president to a congregation.  They could easily have used one of the letters that George Washington wrote to the congregations or from his official Farewell Address in which he states that religion is essential to virtue, morality, and self-government.  Instead, the Court decided to pull out a quote which best suited their needs or desires.

In 1800, Jefferson wrote to Benjamin Rush, “I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”  Indeed, he was following this promise when he defended religious liberty, promoted disestablishment, and respected constitutionalism in his Letter to the Danbury Baptists.  

Tony Williams is the Program Director of the Washington, Jefferson & Madison Institute in Charlottesville, Virginia.  He has written four books and teaches history in Williamsburg, VA. 

Conscience is the Most Sacred of Property: James Madison’s Essay on Property

By: Tony Williams

On January 24, 1774, James Madison wrote to a college friend praising the Boston Tea Party, which had occurred only weeks before.  He praised the Boston patriots for their boldness in “defending liberty and property.”  Equating political and civil liberty, he warned that if the Church of England had established itself as the official religion of all the colonies, then “slavery and subjection might and would have been gradually insinuated among us.”

         Madison had in mind the religious tyranny that he was then witnessing in Virginia.  In an adjacent county to his home, a half dozen itinerant Baptist ministers were in jail for preaching the Gospel to all who would listen, even from their jail cells.  Baptists and other dissenting Christians had suffered horrific violations of their religious liberty when they were horsewhipped on stage or violently driven out of towns for preaching without a license.  Madison lamented that a “diabolical Hell-conceived principle of persecution rages,” and asked his friend to “pray for liberty of conscience to revive among us.”  

The young Madison believed that religious liberty was an essential right of mankind.  Educated at Princeton under the tutelage of Rev. John Witherspoon, he was imbued with the ideas of religious and political liberty from the Scottish Enlightenment.  Madison told his friend, “That liberal catholic and equitable way of thinking as to the rights of conscience, which is one of the characteristics of a free people.”

Following the revolution of 1776, Madison would be at the center of the struggle over religious establishment a decade later when Virginian legislators took up the issue of Patrick Henry’s bill for a general assessment for religion.  After some brilliant politics that delayed the consideration of the bill and pushed Henry into the governorship, Madison led the forces of disestablishment with his 1785 “Memorial and Remonstrance” against religious taxes.  He wrote, “The religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate.  This right is in its nature an unalienable right.”  Madison continued, stating that, “It is unalienable also, because what is here a right towards men, is a duty towards the Creator.”  That duty is built into the fabric of human nature and precedes the claims of civil society.  “We maintain therefore that in matters of religion, no man’s right is abridged by the institution of civil society and that religion is wholly exempt from its cognizance.”  If there is a sense here of separation of church and state, Madison’s understanding is that the government must not interfere with the inalienable rights of liberty of conscience.

In the First Congress, Madison fulfilled the promise of the Federalists to ratify amendments to the Constitution protecting essential liberties though not altering the structure of the government.  The First Amendment reflected decades of Madison’s serious thought and work protecting religious liberty.  Although Madison wanted the Bill of Rights applied to the states, he lost the debate, and the First Amendment specifically limited the power of Congress to establish an official national church or to interfere with freedom of conscience.  “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”  He had been at the forefront of the twin goals of disestablishment and religious liberty as a natural right in Virginia during the American Revolution and now at the national level during the founding of the American republic.

In 1791 and 1792, Madison wrote a series of essays on the principles of republican government for Philip Freneau’s highly partisan National Gazette.  On March 29, 1792, Madison published his “On Property” essay, which posited a new understanding of a property in natural rights.  Madison writes that property is much more than merely land or wealth, and “embraces every thing to which a man may attach a value and have a right.”  In this sense, every person “has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.”  The most essential right in human nature is religious liberty, in Madison’s estimation.  “He has a peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them.”  He sums up his thinking about property by stating, “In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.”  

Madison then brilliantly explored the very purpose of republican self-government to protect the inalienable rights of mankind, striking another Lockean chord.  “Government is instituted to protect property of every sort,” he writes, “This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own.”  For Madison, it was a moral principle that the government must act justly and fulfill its purposes.  His social compact thinking mirrored that of the Declaration of Independence.  He wrote:

More sparingly should this praise be allowed to a government, where a man’s religious rights are violated by penalties, or fettered by tests, or taxed by a hierarchy.  Conscience is the most sacred of all property; other property depending in part of positive law, the exercise of that, being a natural and unalienable right . . . [There is] no title to invade a man’s conscience which is more sacred than his castle, or to withhold from it that debt of protection, for which the public faith is pledged, by the very nature and original conditions of the social pact.

            Madison averred that the United States government was not a government that violated the sacred rights of mankind.  Indeed, it was instituted to protect those rights.  “If there be a government then which prides itself in maintaining the inviolability of property . . . and yet directly violates the property which individuals have in their opinions, their religion, their persons, and their faculties . . . that such a government is not a pattern for the United States.”  Madison finished his essay with more conditional logic, stating that if the new republic wished to be known for wise and just government, it would “respect the rights of property, and the property in rights.” 

           James Madison spent a lifetime thinking about the natural right of religious liberty and in public service doggedly working to protect it at the state and national level from government intrusion.  The current administration shows either a willful ignorance or a remarkable disregard for Madison’s career-long defense of freedom of conscience to so openly and blatantly violate the property rights that Roman Catholics and other religious people have in their conscience.  Thus, we are reminded of the importance of studying history and the Constitution that we may understand American founding principles and firmly stand united against any violations of religious and civil liberty by the government. 

Tony Williams is the Program Director for the Washington-Jefferson-Madison Institute in Charlottesville, VA, and the author of four books including, America’s Beginnings: The Dramatic Events that Shaped a Nation’s Character.   

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics & American Republican Government

After George Washington was sworn-in as the first president of the new American republic on April 30, 1789, he delivered his First Inaugural Address to the people’s representatives in Congress.  He started the speech with his characteristic humility, stating that although he wished to retire to Mount Vernon and did not have the requisite skill to govern a country, he was nevertheless answering the call of his country.  The address struck a distinctly Aristotelian chord in Washington’s wishes for his country.

In his Nicomachean Ethics, the ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle, describes his understanding of the basic nature of man.  Humans are rational creatures, he maintains, and must use that reason to exercise self-restraint over their passions.  That same rationality allows humans to be ethical, choosing between good and evil, right and wrong. Over time, these decisions become habits of vice or virtue that shape character.

Since the end of human life is happiness, Aristotle holds that true happiness is rooted in the well-ordered, good, and virtuous life. Self-government becomes possible when each individual literally governs himself and controls his passions.  It is a liberty governed by natural law.

Aristotle’s ethics laid the foundation of his political views.  He held that man is a political animal who finds his highest end in civil society.  The goal of the art of politics is to promote human happiness through just governance.  Because of the fact that politics deals with truths that are not always absolute or clearly discoverable by reason, the rightly-ordered state allows rational citizens to deliberate and attempt to persuade each other through rhetoric based upon right principles.

When attempting to measure the relative influence of any particular philosopher on the American founders, it is sometimes more subtle than adding up references in an index or looking at the personal libraries of the founders.  It is clear that Aristotle’s ethical and political views profoundly shaped the founders’ understanding of the nature of man and government.

Aristotle’s political philosophy was plainly evident in the new republican state constitutions.  The 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights stated in Article XV that, “No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.”  The 1780 Massachusetts Constitution argued in Aristotelian terms that, “Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people.”  The Northwest Ordinance later established schools because, “Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind.”  Republican self-government was founded upon a virtuous citizenry.

Coming back to President Washington’s First Inaugural, we see that he was expressing several Aristotelian sentiments.  Washington stated that, “There is no truth more thoroughly established than that there exists in the economy and course of nature an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness.”  Besides this essential ethical chord, he also struck another about the purposes of government made up of virtuous citizens.  He asked that God, the providential author of their rights, might “consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the People of the United States, a Government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes.”  Washington closely tied the virtue of American citizens to the success of the new republic, alluding to American exceptionalism and the idea of a “city upon a hill.”  If the Americans were virtuous, their republic would succeed; if they practiced fall, it would crumble.  He averred that,

The foundation of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality . . . . we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained: and since the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered, perhaps, as deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.

Washington finished the speech by neatly summarizing Aristotelian purposes of government.  Reason and deliberation would furnish the Americans with tranquility and happiness in just and wise government.  God had blessed the American People with “opportunities for deliberating in perfect tranquility, and dispositions for deciding with unparalleled unanimity on a form of government for the security of their union, and the advancement of their happiness, so his divine blessing may be equally conspicuous in the enlarged views, the temperate consultations, and the wise measures on which the success of this Government must depend.”

In his Farewell Address, Washington gave his advice to his country for their future success with their republican experiment in liberty.  He told them in Aristotelian terms that religion and morality were indispensable supports for “the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity.”  The great duties of man were the “great pillars of human happiness.”  He clearly and strongly believed in Aristotle’s idea that virtue was necessary for self-government.  “Tis substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.”  Aristotle’s vision of a well-ordered republic of free, virtuous individuals shaped the founding and should inform our discussion of the duties of citizens today.  

Tony Williams is the Program Director of the Washington, Jefferson & Madison Institute in Charlottesville, Virginia.  He has written four books and teaches history in Williamsburg, VA.