We study Lincoln to see who we could be, but should also study Calhoun to see who we are
I’ve been reading podcast guest Manisha Sinha’s book The Counterrevolution of Slavery, which recounts how slaveholders spoke and acted to justify and advance their institution of slavery.
I know to expect it from having seen it before in podcast guest James Oakes’s The Ruling Race and Jenkins’ Proslavery Thought in the Old South, but I’m still shocked at how relevant their thinking is today. They treat a different institution, but the thought processes leading to their conclusions comes from the same place: resolving internal conflict, knowing they are doing something against their values that is clear to anyone outside that system.
We study Abraham Lincoln and abolitionists so we can learn what we could do and how we could think and act in difficult situations.
Regarding sustainability, polluting and depleting, which kill tens of millions of people per year, are acts that make us more like the slaveholders. There is greater value in learning about John C. Calhoun, his peers, and the rationalizations and justifications for slavery to understand who we are.
We study Lincoln to see who we could be, but should also study Calhoun to see who we are.
If you’re not familiar with his name, for reference, Calhoun said:
But I take higher ground. I hold that, in the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by colour, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding states between the two is, instead of an evil, a good—a positive good. I feel myself called upon to speak freely upon the subject, where the honour and interests of those I represent are involved.
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