February 12th marks the 201st birthday of Abraham Lincoln. There is much that we can learn today from this great champion of the Constitution and of the principles of the American founding.
This is especially true today, when our founding principles are under relentless attack. Even in Lincoln’s time, these principles were “denied, and evaded, with no small show of success,” as Lincoln himself put it . Lincoln dedicated all of his public life to the preservation of these principles, and we should aspire to live up to his example.
Lincoln knew that the eternal truths of the Declaration must be guarded by the carefully balanced republic of the Constitution. His beautiful analogy for the relationship between the Declaration and the Constitution, where he likened the former to a golden apple and the latter to a “picture of silver, framed around it,” is well worth quoting: “The picture was made, not to conceal, or destroy the apple; but to adorn, and preserve it. The picture was made for the apple-not the apple for the picture.”
It fell upon Lincoln, as a matter of historical circumstance, to guide the nation through a bloody civil war to eradicate the evil of slavery and to forge the two divergent regions into “a more perfect Union.” It is easy to underestimate the gravity of the choices Lincoln had to make, treading carefully between the Scylla of letting the Union fall apart, and the Charybdis of maintaining it at the cost of the Constitutional Republic.
Lincoln wanted freedom for the slaves, but he was no progressive. He was a prudent statesman, as Allen C. Guelzo points out in a First Principles essay, and in this prudence lies the essence of his conservatism. He recognized the inherent flaws and limitations of human nature. He did not want to somehow “supersede” or “go beyond” the Constitution, as progressives do. He instead wanted to see his beloved country live up to its founding principles, while upholding the Constitution.
We are not alone in the fight to preserve the self-evident truths that are the foundations of this nation. Nor is our fight new, or unique. We are but the newest carriers of the torch of American liberty in the midst of the darkness of despotism. It is a sometimes daunting but always honorable duty, one in which we have Honest Abe as a most shining example. So let us act as he did, with the goal “that neither picture, or apple shall ever be blurred, or bruised or broken.”
Forget George Washington, James Madison, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln—nothing meaningful happened in America before 1877.
That’s the lesson North Carolina public high schools may start teaching. Under proposed changes in their high school history curriculum, the U.S. History course (which seniors take) will cover events from 1877 forward only.
It will be as if the American Founding never happened.
According to Rebecca Garland, the chief academic officer for North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, the goal of this change is to teach what students will feel connected to, “where they see the big idea, where they are able to make connections and draw relationships between parts of our history and the present day.”
By implication, nothing before 1877 has any meaning to students: the Declaration of Independence that proclaims the self evident truths of equality, natural rights, and consent of the governed; the Constitution that establishes the rule of law and the framework in which we exercise our liberty; the Civil War in which Abraham Lincoln defended the principles of the American Founding and ended the institution of slavery. These events are irrelevant for today’s students.
Early 20th century Progressives also taught that nothing before 1877 has meaning for today. In his new book We Still Hold These Truths: Rediscovering Our Principles, Reclaiming Our Future, Matthew Spalding recounts Progressives attack on America’s First Principles. The Progressives sought to remake America, so that the Declaration’s Founding Principles, the Constitution’s institutional structures, and the Civil War’s meaning as a victory for Founding principles would no longer ring true. The progressives argued that equal, natural rights were non-existent; government creates rights. They replaced representative government with the administrative, bureaucratic state.
But the Progressives are wrong.
The events of 1776, 1789, and 1865 still inspire our nation. So, for the students across U.S. who have the opportunity to study the American prior to 1877, treasure the Founding documents and learn about America’s First Principles. For you high school students in North Carolina, don’t worry, the We Still Hold These Truths study guide is coming soon.