The negative capability of Abraham Lincoln: the first American pragmatist?

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?

Lincoln’s message - cognate with his desire for reconciliation between North and South - was one of sufferance and forbearance in the humble recognition of our own ignorance. Not surprisingly it was met with some puzzlement, though it seemed to bring an air of dignity after a drunken Andrew Johnson had got things off to a rocky start by planting a slobbering kiss on the Bible.

In a subsequent letter to Thurlow Reed Lincoln claimed that the speech was as good as he’d done, he concluded:

I believe it is not immediately popular. [Like the Gettysburg Address]. Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them. To deny it, however, in this case, is to deny that there is a God governing the world. It is a truth which I thought needed to be told; and as whatever of humiliation there is in it, falls most directly on myself, I thought others might afford for me to tell it.

That had me scurrying for my copy of The Metaphysical Club a Pulitzer Prize winning (but to me disappointing) popular history of American pragmatism. Just as ideas like freedom of conscience and of speech grew from the horrors of the Europe wide string of civil wars that followed the Reformation, so it seems that the spirit American pragmatism might have been born during the civil war. The Metaphysical Club begins with discussions of slavery and abolitionism and goes on to recount the experiences of the early pragmatists and “proto-pragmatists” trudging through the battle grounds as combatants in the civil war.

And Abraham Lincoln’s central message in the second inaugural strikes me as being of precisely the same temperament as the temperament of American pragmatism. Pragmatism looks upon the search for ultimate answers as a temptation that is at best futile and at worst mischievous. It banishes “truth” from the pantheon of philosophical concepts and plumps instead for usefulness. It calls, like Lincoln did, for a turn away from grand imaginings that one is on God’s side (or the side of truth) in favour of more modest and practical measures. A very human philosophy resigned to human inadequacies.

If Lincoln was, as he often was, morose or depressed about his lot, and about how the crowd didn’t necessarily “get” what he was on about or if they did, weren’t that happy about it, I can report with pleasure and relief there was one person who got it - who it seems to have given Lincoln succour on that day. The reporter from the New York Herald said this.

It was not strictly an inaugural address … It was more like a valedictory … Negroes ejaculated “bress de Lord” in a low murmur at the end of almost every sentence. Beyond this there was no cheering of any consequence. Even the soldiers did not hurrah much.

The great ex-slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass was nearly turned away from the reception by White House guards, but he made it in whereupon Lincoln saw him. Douglas recounted what happened then.

Recognizing me, even before I reached him, he exclaimed, so that all around could hear him, “Here comes my friend Douglass.” Taking me by the hand, he said, “I am glad to see you. I saw you in the crowd to-day, listening to my inaugural address; how did you like it?” I said, “Mr. Lincoln, I must not detain you with my poor opinion, when there are thousands waiting to shake hands with you.” “No, no,” he said, “you must stop a little, Douglass; there is no man in the country whose opinion I value more than yours. I want to know what you think of it?” I replied, “Mr. Lincoln, that was a sacred effort.” “I am glad you liked it!” he said; and I passed on, feeling that any man, however distinguished, might well regard himself honored by such expressions, from such a man.

Andrew Johnson, the drunkard southerner whom Lincoln had accepted as Vice-Presidential candidate would assume the Presidency. At the Inaugural Lincoln had pointed out Douglass to Johnson. Douglass recorded the moment.

The first expression which came to his face, and which I think was the true index of his heart, was one of bitter contempt and aversion. Seeing that I observed him, he tried to assume a more friendly appearance, but it was too late; it is useless to close the door when all within has been seen.

Apparently Lincoln’s assassin-in-waiting, John Wilkes Booth, can be seen in the picture reproduced above. Five weeks later he would achieve his goal. Johnson became President and the reconstruction of the South became an endless howl of hate and despair. I wonder what Lincoln might have thought, having pinned so much in his speech on God’s mysterious ways, having wondered aloud whether the suffering would go on “until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword”.

I guess he would have concluded the penultimate paragraph of his speech as he did in any event. But some of us might wonder. “As was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether’”.