Lincoln's a guide because in 1854 he revived his political career over a moral question, slavery, and transformed the country. At a time when the mainstream political parties were accommodating slavery, Lincoln declared that slavery was evil and he wanted to stop its extension. Of course he had a lot of company, including abolitionists. But his focus was mainstream politics. Lincoln took an outsider, radical movement that was based on a simple principle, All men are created equal, and gave it political standing. The newly-formed Republican Party won the presidency in 1860, thanks to Lincoln.
Today the political mainstream is corrupted by its thorough endorsement of Israeli apartheid, an accommodation that is destroying my country's foreign policy in the Middle East. Many, many outsiders in American political life are opposed to this policy: but how will we have an effect? Especially when we are tarred with the friends-of-terrorists brush.
Lincoln was also tarred with the terrorism brush. He had to deal with his own version of Hamas: John Brown.
Today Brown is widely considered a heroic martyr. The leader of violent resistance to slavery culminating in the revolt in Harper's Ferry, Virginia, in October 1859 that killed 15 people, including two of his sons, Brown was hanged for treason by the federal government in late 1859. Now he is honored in song, monuments and novels. Yes, there is criticism of his use of violence, and of his role in starting the Civil War. But his image is generally heroic.
In the months after his death, Brown became a big problem for Lincoln in the presidential year of 1860. The south tried to hang Brown's revolutionary violence on Lincoln's "Black Republicans."
Like John Brown, Lincoln believed slavery was "a great
moral, social and political evil." Indeed the party had formed around
this position. Lincoln had come out of political retirement over the issue, and a popular movement had gathered around him because people wanted to deal with the issue at last. The historic moment had arrived for America. "We can no more avoid
[this question] than a man can live without eating," said Lincoln.
Southern politicians said that Lincoln intended the violent overthrow the slave power. But Lincoln said he was against violence; and "by necessity," was for abiding slavery in the Southern States; after all, slavery was guaranteed by the Constitution. He was only against slavery's extension.
Lincoln distanced himself from John Brown in February-March 1860, in important speeches
introducing himself to the East Coast audiences. He sought a political solution. He wanted to preserve a union with slave states in it–you don't attack snakes in a bed with children lying in it, he said, they could bite. He said that slaves had refused to join Brown. He said that Brown was as crazy as the man who'd tried to assassinate Napoleon: "An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people till he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate them."
In New Haven, he cried that John Brown was not a Republican: "You have never implicated a single Republican in that Harper's Ferry enterprise."
Yet at the same time, Lincoln did not completely distance himself from Brown, in part surely because Brown was heroic to abolitionists, who were part of his base. Just like the leftwing antiwar vote is Obama's base. And Lincoln said, warningly, to those who would use John Brown against his political movement:
Consider the wisdom in those statements. You cannot destroy this feeling against slavery. And if you do so by discrediting its political channels, then what will be the result: More John Browns!
The analogy here is nearly perfect to Hamas and the anti-apartheid movement in Palestine. Those who hate oppression in the occupied territories want to overcome it by political means. But what if those political means are suppressed and frustrated again and again? What if the ballot box is rejected? Will there be more or fewer Hamas's? More.
"I think it is important that this matter should be taken up in
earnest, and really settled," Lincoln said. "And one way to bring about
a true settlement of the question is to understand its true magnitude…. We
think that a respect for ourselves, a regard for future generations and
for the God that made us, require that we put down this wrong where our
votes will properly reach it."
Lincoln failed; votes couldn't reach slavery. Soon after Lincoln's election,
the southern states, which saw Lincoln's election as a sectional
victory that would lead to "irrepressible conflict" with the south, seceded from the
union. And war came: a terrible war, with tremendous bloodshed, and
lasting wounds. And yes, also: the emancipation of the slaves.
Alright, Obama claims Lincoln as role model. What is the lesson here from Lincoln to Obama?
I think a grim one. Today the U.S. is just as implicated in Israeli oppression as the north was in southern slavery then; and the situation wants a political solution. But that political solution has been deferred again and again, and as a result, violent forces have a great deal of power, on both sides. There are many many John Browns operating in that region, people who brood on oppression and commit themselves to action.
The lesson is earnest, but cool, political engagement, to try and channel the deep feelings that give rise to John Brown/Hamas, without causing people to resort to nukes. I think Obama gets this.
The correction of the American accommodation of slavery was extremely bloody. Let us hope that the U.S. can modify its politics now, to recognize the magnitude of this moral, social, and political evil, before apartheid and Israeli obduracy create even more violence. Let us get our political channels to work–let the media here reflect what world media are showing, let our politicians express compassion for the true victims of the situation. That is the only way to defuse the human feeling that gives rise to John Browns.
