Lincoln's Morality

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The Difference Between White and Wrong: A Suggestive Essay on Lincoln’s Use of the Term “Morality” From the youngest age, Lincoln entered a world deeply embroiled with moral conflicts. Born in Kentucky and moving to Indiana at the age of seven, Lincoln was exposed to both sides of perhaps the most significant problem of the nineteenth century, slavery. Lincoln’s Christian ancestry no doubt made slavery a moral issue. Yet another moral conflict of Lincoln’s is one of uneducated versus educated. Lincoln’s parents could never read. Therefore, after meeting literate people, Lincoln discovered a contrast between the educated and the ignorant. All of these different conflicts had a strong influence on Lincoln’s vision of morality, creating a conception …show more content…

Once he started to consider national political issues, Lincoln realized that religion was not suitable as the only basis for preventing the spread of slavery into federal territories, because the southern slave states were also deeply religious. Therefore, Lincoln had to rely on something other than religion. He chose logic. Many of Lincoln’s speeches are full of deductive reasoning and syllogisms, and his apprehension to slavery is another example of calculating morality with logic. Using the word morality in the context of slavery, Lincoln was possibly able to convey his belief that slavery was not only morally wrong, but logically wrong. This thought follows a syllogism. Since Lincoln believed that proper morality was necessarily infused with some sort of calculated reason, and that slavery was morally wrong, then slavery must be not only morally wrong but logically wrong as well. This rationale allows Lincoln to condemn the system of slavery using reason-based morality, whose authority transcends …show more content…

Despite what he says jokingly in his New Haven Speech on March 6,1860, he believes that in order for a government to function properly, it has to be moral to a certain extent. Of course, this is where Lincoln’s desire for rational morality becomes important. Whereas Lincoln believes that morality belongs in politics, he asks that any morality involved in politics be insulated from any impassioned impulses. This principle can be seen in a fragment of one of Lincoln’s speeches regarding Douglas’ support of the Lecompton Constitution. He recognizes the probability of an unfair vote for the Lecompton Constitution in Kansas, and that Republicans should, because of logical and traditional morality, vote against the Lecompton Constitution. Of course, he then normatively states that if the Lecompton Constitution is fair and just to the people of Kansas, then Republicans should support it. This statement illustrates his conception of morality’s insulation from simple partisan politics, because it is so deeply rooted in reason and tradition. Even though some might describe this as simply partisan politics, Lincoln’s use of the term morality expresses how urgently he feels about the issue of slavery in federal territories and the possibility of slavery even coming around and infecting states deemed

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