The Parallel Lives

Allen Guelzo, history professor at Princeton, tells a story about Lincoln that he included in his recent book, “Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment.” 

     Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, one and a half years into the Civil War. He justified his Proclamation out of “military necessity.” Eleven states of the Union had rebelled and threatened the Federal Government’s very existence.

     Freeing slaves in the Confederacy, Lincoln argued, would harm those rebellious states’ ability to further prosecute the war against the Union. Democracy was under attack. He had to act.  

    Yet, Lincoln chose to limit his Emancipation Proclamation’s scope. 

     For example, Lincoln chose not to set the slaves free who were living in Tennessee, a Confederate state then under the Union army’s control. There was no “military necessity” there.

     In addition, Lincoln did not free slaves in Virginia’s forty-eight western counties that made up the new state of West Virginia that had chosen to remain inside the Union.

     Lincoln did not free twelve parishes in Louisiana, also under the Federal army’s control.

     Finally, Lincoln did not free slaves in the pro-slavery states that had chosen to remain within the Union: Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri.

     Some disagreed and argued that Lincoln should free all slaves wherever they lived in all states, but Lincoln refused. He dared not to step outside the Constitution and the law.  

     Salmon Chase, Lincoln’s Secretary of Treasury, was one who urged Lincoln to cast away his justification by “military necessity” and to free all slaves now.

     Lincoln replied to Salmon Chase on September 2, 1863. In his letter, Lincoln wrote,

     “The original proclamation has no constitutional or legal justification, except as a military measure. If I take the step, without the argument of military necessity, it might be politically expedient and morally right.

     “Would I not thus give up all footing upon constitution or law? Would I not thus be in the ‘boundless field of absolutism?’”

     Lincoln’s last words—“the boundless field of absolutism”—was a quote that Lincoln had lifted from one of Jefferson’s letters from the 1820’s. The word “absolutism” refers to a monarch, a king, an autocrat, or a tyrant, someone who lives outside the law, unchecked and unrestrained.

     On January 6, 2021, a guy named Kevin Seefried, then 51 years old, from Delaware, a former slave state but not one in the Confederacy, paraded a Confederate flag throughout the Capitol.

      Two years later, on February 9, 2023, U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, told Seefried that his actions that day with that flag were “shocking,” and “outrageous.”

     “McFadden criticized Seefried for jabbing the flagpole at a black U.S. Capitol Police officer.” The judge looked at Seefried and said, “I hope you realize how offensive it is.”

     Seefried was convicted on five charges, including obstruction of an official proceeding—the joint session of Congress that was working to certify the Electoral College vote that day. Judge McFadden sentenced Kevin Seefried to three years in prison. 

     Last week, I took a few days off from work and flew to Charleston, South Carolina. I wanted to see Fort Sumter, the site of the Civil War’s first battle. The ferry ride to the small island in Charleston’s harbor lasted thirty minutes. I walked about the grounds for the next forty minutes.

     A flagpole stands in the center of the island, the island’s highest point. I looked up and atop the pole I saw whipping in the wind a massive United States flag, the stars and stripes forever, hovering over Fort Sumter.