Statesmanship and Progressive Reform: An Assessment of Herbert Croly's Abraham Lincoln

An Assessment of Herbert Croly's Abraham Lincoln

J. Alvis, J. Jividen

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781137366597
• eBook ISBN: 9781137362285
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

A critical assessment of Herbert Croly's influential account of Abraham Lincoln in his 1909 book, The Promise of American Life, which argued that Progressivism was a continuation of the spirit of Lincoln's political thought. This book argues for the first time that Croly's praise of Lincoln is highly problematic.

1

Introduction

Abstract: Here we outline the Progressive attempt to invoke the legacy of Lincoln as a model for a new kind of political leadership in America and the problems that this effort incurs. First, Croly’s account of Progressive leadership rejects what is most central to Lincoln’s statesmanship—traditional constitutionalism and rule of law. Differences over fundamental principle between Croly and Lincoln give rise to doubts about whether Lincoln would have endorsed the Progressive conception of reform at all. Besides their disagreement on the nature of leadership, Croly appears to have overlooked some of the most essential features of Lincoln’s political thought. Whereas Lincoln insists on the fundamental truth of the Declaration of Independence’s claims for natural rights and human equality in the debate over slavery, Croly calls for a wholesale revision of these principles in order to meet the demands of a modern industrial age.

Alvis, J. David and Jividen, Jason R. Statesmanship and Progressive Reform: An Assessment of Herbert Croly’s Abraham Lincoln. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. DOI: 10.1057/9781137362285.

In 2009, the United States witnessed the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln. Though now the national holiday is officially held in honor of all past presidents, February 12 was once a day solely devoted to the memory of one of our nation’s foremost statesman. As one might expect, the bicentennial commemoration of Lincoln’s birth was no exception to the general admiration of Lincoln’s presidential career. Lincoln assumed center stage again in American politics, having been selected as a model for Barack Obama’s bid to dramatically transform the landscape of American government. Launching his presidential bid from Springfield, Illinois, traveling by train to the White House in imitation of Lincoln’s 1861 inauguration, visiting the Lincoln memorial with his young daughters, launching his plans for significant economic reform from the halls of Cooper Union, Obama has invoked the image of Lincoln more than nearly any other American president.

Seeking a voice that could establish him as a unifying force for an economically troubled nation, Obama took a special interest in the bicentennial celebration of Lincoln’s birth offering a speech that would align his cause to that of Lincoln’s:

And so even as we meet here today, in a moment when we are far less divided than in Lincoln’s day, but when we are once again debating the critical issues of our time—and debating them sometimes fiercely—let us remember that we are doing so as servants of the same flag, as representatives of the same people, and as stakeholders in a common future. That is the most fitting tribute we can pay—the most lasting monument we can build—to that most remarkable of men, Abraham Lincoln.¹

Looking back a hundred years ago to the first centennial celebration of Lincoln’s birth, few would be surprised to discover that it too was a widely celebrated event at the beginning of the previous century. In Springfield, Illinois, a crowd of nearly 9,000 people gathered to celebrate this historic moment led by such notable political figures as William Jennings Bryan and Justice Learned Hand.² The event was described by one paper as perhaps the monumental event of the century:

Before an audience which taxed the capacity of the mammoth Sunday tabernacle, and which is conservatively estimated at nine-thousand, two of the greatest orators of the United States and the ambassadors of France and England paid glowing tributes to the name of the immortal Lincoln. Never in the history of this city has such a demonstration been seen of similar nature.³

Similar to Obama’s invocation of the image of Lincoln as a unifier of the nation during a difficult period of transition, the 100th-anniversary celebration of Lincoln’s birth also offered a momentous occasion for healing a nation going through troubled times. Progressive intellectuals and political reformers seized the opportunity to paint a new picture for the future with the publication of essays and works on the leadership of Lincoln by the likes of Jane Addams and Albert J Beveridge. Following this historic tribute to the image of Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt would attempt to solicit that nation’s support for dramatic political reforms in his bid for the Presidency in 1912 by utilizing the image of Lincoln for the rhetorical centerpiece of his campaign.

Given the ease with which politicians of widely disparate positions can invoke the name of Lincoln suggests that there may be more symbolism in the appeal to Lincoln than genuine agreement on content. Unlike Lincoln, many Progressives who invoked his name were sharply critical of both the constitutional foundations of American politics as well as its philosophical foundations in the natural rights doctrine. In this book, we hope to demonstrate that for the Progressives at the turn of the previous century, the invocation of Lincoln reveals much more about their inner anxieties about the future of American politics in general and their hopes for reform than a genuine regard for the historical statesmanship of Lincoln.

Among the most influential intellectuals of the Progressive era and the founder of The New Republic, Herbert Croly offers an extensive reflection on the underlying reasons for invoking the image of Lincoln during a time of reform. For Croly, Lincoln is a distinctive statesman in American history whose career points both to the opportunities and the limitations inherent in the American political tradition. Croly’s 1909 book, The Promise of American Life, was his most ambitious in that he attempted to provide a coherent explanation for the seemingly disparate reforms that had been pedaled under the label of Progressivism. Unlike many reformers who hoped to achieve certain limited reforms by tinkering with specific institutional or electoral elements at the state and federal levels of government, Croly wants to offer his fellow reformers a broader intellectual understanding of reform that would truly transform the landscape of American democracy. The key to Croly’s plan in the Promise of American Life was to convert America’s unanimous, but, in his view, inchoate reverence for Lincoln into a common understanding of the need for dramatic departures from the reigning doctrines of the American political tradition that would then lead to a genuine emulation of Lincoln. By offering a critique of the failures of the American political tradition during the slavery crisis, Croly hopes to provide the Progressive Movement with a clear picture of how to reform American politics so that a place can be made for such statesmen in the future.⁴

When Herbert Croly published his work, The Promise of American Life, in 1909, a major reform movement in American politics appeared to be already underway. A substantial portion of the American electorate feared that the control of industrial capital of the nation had become dangerously concentrated in the hands of a few corporate titans who were positioned to stifle competition and assume permanent control over the country’s economic resources.⁵ Croly’s work was not among those that advocated for particular reforms or attempted to appeal to public sentiment in favor of some particular regulatory policy. “To stand for a program of reform,” Croly declares, “has become one of the recognized roads to popularity. The political leaders with the largest personal following are some kind of reformers.”⁶ On the contrary, it was the “popularity” of the reform efforts of the twentieth century that led Croly to think that the movement’s prospects for genuine improvement were dubious. Croly believes that reforms spurred by public opinion will naturally devolve into some quick fix of the economic and political problems facing American democracy such as the debates over bimetallism at the end of the previous century.⁷ Simple solutions often appeal to the American electorate because they were easy to digest and they tended to vindicate the public’s belief that their hardships were the result of some perversion of their democratic system of government. Croly, on the other hand, believes that these political discontents underlying the reform movement in the twentieth century are really the consequences of an archaic understanding of democratic politics inherited from the Founding.

Croly’s reservation about the popularity of reform movements during this period reflects his central criticism of the American political tradition as a whole. Most Americans, argues Croly, tend to assume that democracy is purely a matter of popular sovereignty; every act of legislation or public policy ultimately owes whatever virtues contained therein to the consent of the governed. According to this view, democratic decision-making amounts to nothing more than the process of legislators enacting public opinion into law. While such a conception of democratic politics does contain a partial truth, Croly thinks that such a simple understanding obscures the much more complicated reality of political life. An efficient regulation of the national economy, he believes, could not be achieved if political officials were the sole means by which popular will was translated into political power. Instead, Croly argues that effective public policy necessitates a give and take between knowledgeable rulers and a well-intentioned, but often uninformed public. Heretofore, fortuitous economic circumstances have kept the nation from having to wrestle with the limitations within its unsophisticated understanding of politics and decision-making, but, with the rise of a complex modern industry and the demise of the prospects for economic entrepreneurship, Croly thinks that the time is ripe for dramatic reform. The demand for reform itself, in Croly’s mind, demands a thorough re-evaluation of the country’s most fundamental political axioms.

Croly particularly admires public figures that approach these concerns pragmatically. Purportedly, Croly was the inspiration behind Theodore Roosevelt’s “New Nationalism.”⁸ Whether or not this was in fact true, Roosevelt’s campaign for reform as leader of the Progressive Party in 1912 neatly embodies the kind of political change advocated by Croly. Martin Sklar summarizes the central tenet of Roosevelt and the Progressive Party in the following way:

Roosevelt held that state power properly followed economic development, specifically, that in the American historical context, the functions and the scope of the national government’s power had grown, and must grow, in proportion as “the business of the country has become national in character.” The extension of government power was necessary both as a check against concentrated corporate power and as a means of thereby protecting and expanding the people’s liberties as producers, consumers, individuals, and citizens. The American people were therefore “right in demanding that New Nationalism, without which we cannot hope to deal with new problems.” Although “overcentralization” should be avoided, he argued, “a broad and far reaching nationalism” was needed that put “national need before sectional or personal advantage’ and that put an end to “the impotence which springs from the overdivision of governmental powers.” Traditional federalism and checks and balances should not be allowed to become a screen for special privilege or a bulwark against democracy. “The National Government belongs to the whole of the American people, and where the whole of the American people are interested, that interest can be guarded effectively only by the National Government.”⁹

Roosevelt’s “New Nationalism” sought a middle ground between those who advocated socialism and those who favored corporate capitalism. As Sklar explains:

It was, in his thinking, the pro-democratic and socially just alternative to the anti-democratic and socially unjust characteristics of a corporate capitalism left less subject to public control; it was, also, the alternative to socialism, that is, to the elimination of private property in large-scale enterprise and its replacement by state ownership.¹⁰

For Croly as well, both socialism and capitalism constitute the kind of doctrinaire approach to politics that Progressives should seek to avoid. Instead, Croly prefers a certain type of pragmatic statesmanship that permits a flexible accommodation of policy making to the reality of economic development. Both Roosevelt and Croly find such a model of statesmanship in the legacy of Abraham Lincoln. According to Croly...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Introduction
• 2  Reconciling Nationalism and Democracy
• 3  The Demise of the Ante-Bellum Parties
• 4  The Need for Statesmanship
• 5  Crolys Lincoln and Pragmatic Statesmanship
• 6  Assessing Crolys Appeal to Lincoln
• 7  Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index