Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T09:46:52.194Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Lincoln and Tocqueville on Democratic Leadership and Self-interest Properly Understood

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Brian Danoff
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this essay, Lincoln's ideas on democratic leadership are examined in the light of Tocqueville's political theory. In certain respects, Lincoln's words and deeds help to confirm the wisdom of Tocqueville's ideas on the role of leadership in a democracy. But in other respects, Lincoln's thought exposes the weaknesses and limitations of Tocqueville's understanding of democratic leadership. Both Tocqueville and Lincoln believed that the task of leadership was to elevate and educate the citizenry. In order to accomplish this task, they both believed that leaders should rely largely—but not exclusively—on what Tocqueville called the doctrine of self-interest properly understood. Lincoln differed from Tocqueville, however, insofar as Lincoln suggested that leaders in a democracy must remain close to the people's fundamental values and aspirations. Lincoln was such an effective democratic leader in large part because he simultaneously critiqued and embraced those aspects of the American character which worried Tocqueville. Unlike Lincoln, Tocqueville usually failed to recognize the element of mutuality which effective democratic leadership requires.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 67 , Issue 4 , Fall 2005 , pp. 687 - 719
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2005

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

The author is grateful to Bruce Miroff, the late Wilson Carey McWilliams, Dennis Bathory, Daniel Tichenor, Bruce Caswell, Daniel O'Connor, Catherine Zuckert, and the anonymous reviewers of this journal for their comments and suggestions. Earlier versions of this manuscript were presented at the annual meetings of the Western Political Science Association and the New England Political Science Association.

1. Rogin, Michael, Ronald Reagan, The Movie and Other Episodes in American Political Demonology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), p. 86.Google Scholar

2. Tocqueville, Alexis de, Democracy in America, ed. Mayer, J. P. (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), p. 12.Google Scholar

3. Jaffa, Harry, Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959), pp. 342–46.Google Scholar

4. Diggins, John, The Lost Soul of American Politics (New York: Basic Books, 1984),Google Scholar chap. 9; Danoff, Brian, “Lincoln, Machiavelli, and American Political Thought,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 30 (2000): 290–311;CrossRefGoogle ScholarSiemers, David, “Principled Pragmatism: Abraham Lincoln's Method of Political Analysis,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 34 (2004): 804–827.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. Fornieri, Joseph, Abraham Lincoln's Political Faith (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003), pp. 24–28.Google Scholar

6. Mattie, Sean, “Prerogative and the Rule of Law in John Locke and the Lincoln Presidency,” Review of Politics 67 (2005): 77–111.Google Scholar

7. Guelzo, Allen, Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999), pp. 119–20.Google Scholar

8. Miller, William Lee, Lincoln's Virtues (New York: Random House, 2002), pp. 195, 219, 225–26, 438.Google Scholar

9. Winger, Stewart, Lincoln, Religion, and Romantic Cultural Politics (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003), p. 94.Google Scholar

10. Fornieri, , Abraham Lincoln's Political Faith, p. 24.Google Scholar

11. Morel, Lucas, Lincoln's Sacred Effort (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2000), p. 1.Google Scholar

12. Democracy in America, p. 292.Google Scholar

13. Other Lincoln scholars have made references to Tocqueville, but again in a rather attenuated way. For instance, Jaffa makes three references to Tocqueville in his two masterworks on Lincoln, but the references are brief and do not deal directly with the issue of democratic leadership. See Crisis of the House Divided, pp. 79, 144;Google ScholarJaffa, , A New Birth of Freedom (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), p. 529.Google Scholar Miller briefly notes that the young Lincoln's upward mobility was partly the result of a culture that celebrated the “individualism” that Tocqueville famously described (Lincoln's Virtues, p. 23Google Scholar). Perhaps most germane to this essay, David Greenstone asserts that Lincoln had a “principled devotion to liberty and union” because “he recognized that he and others could seek success only if their society retained its integrity. As Tocqueville might have put it, Lincoln followed the dictates of an enlightened self-interest.… Lincoln's principle reflected loyalty to his society, which he valued because it permitted and encouraged him to pursue his various self-regarding motives” (The Lincoln Persuasion: Remaking American Liberalism [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993], p. 26Google Scholar). Greenstone here briefly suggests that Tocqueville's doctrine of self-interest properly understood can help us understand Lincoln's political thought. This essay can be seen in part as an elaboration on the connection that Greenstone starts to make.

14. One measure of Lincoln's effectiveness is that he managed to win the popular vote in the 1858 Senate race; this was a stunning achievement given the wide renown of Senator Stephen Douglas. Ultimately, though, by calling Lincoln “effective” I do not primarily intend to call attention to his success in gaining votes. Instead, by calling Lincoln an effective leader, I mean to suggest that Lincoln was a great educator of his fellow citizens.

15. Tocqueville, Alexis de, Selected Letters on Politics and Society, ed. Boesche, Roger (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), p. 118Google Scholar (To Pierre-Paul Royer-Collard, August 20, 1837).

16. Democracy in America, p. 448.Google Scholar

17. Lincoln, Abraham, Speeches and Writings 1832–1858, ed. Fehrenbacher, Donald (New York: Library of America, 1989), pp. 51–52Google Scholar (Speech on the Sub-Treasury, December 26, 1839) (emphasis in original).

18. Ibid., p. 52.

19. Hamilton, , Alexander, , Jay, John, and Madison, James, The Federalist Papers (New York: Bantam, 1982), p. 316.Google Scholar

20. Lincoln, Abraham, Speeches and Writings 1859–1865, ed. Fehrenbacher, Donald (New York: Library of America, 1989), p. 11Google Scholar (February 11, 1859).

21. Ibid., pp. 504–5. (c. mid-September 1863).

22. Lincoln's emphasis on self-interest is also discussed by Guelzo, who goes so far as to argue that Lincoln's “intricate vocabulary of motives, necessity, and self-interest” echoes the utilitarianism of Bentham (Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President, p. 119Google Scholar). In contrast, Winger suggests that Lincoln is actually a staunch critic of utilitarianism who believed that “the dictates of conscience must ultimately be heeded apart from moral calculus of self-interest and personal happines” (Lincoln, Religion, and Romantic Cultural Politics, p. 10)Google Scholar (emphasis in original). I agree with Winger that Lincoln is ultimately an opponent of utilitarianism, but I think that Guelzo is right to point out that interest-based arguments are an important aspect of Lincoln's thought.

23. Speeches and Writings 1859–1865, p. 356Google Scholar (Address on Colonization to a Committee of Colored Men, August 14, 1862).

24. Democracy in America, p. 527Google Scholar (emphasis added).

25. Ibid., p. 525.

26. Ibid., p. 527.

27. Ibid., p. 525.

28. Speeches and Writings 1832–1858, p. 89Google Scholar (February 22,1842) (emphasis added).

29. Ibid., p. 402 (June 26, 1857) (emphasis added).

30. For an illuminating discussion of Lincoln's advocacy of colonization, see Fehrenbacher, Donald, Lincoln in Text and Context: Collected Essays (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1987), pp. 110–11.Google Scholar

31. Speeches and Writings 1832–1858, p. 372Google Scholar (c. July 1856).

32. Speeches and Writings 1859–1865, pp. 134–35Google Scholar (March 6, 1860).

33. Quoted in Schleifer, James, The Making of Tocqueville's Democracy in America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), pp. 242–43.Google Scholar

34. Speeches and Writings 1832–1858, p. 377Google Scholar (August 27,1856).

35. Ibid., p. 804 (October 15, 1858).

36. Ibid., p. 334 (October 16, 1854).

37. Ibid., pp. 685–86 (1858?). ‘Dr. Ross’ refers to the Revered Frederick Ross, author of the 1857 book Slavery Ordained of God. For an excellent discussion of Lincoln's views on Ross and other defenders of slavery, see Fornieri, , Abraham Lincoln's Political FaithGoogle Scholar, chap. 3.

38. For a thorough attack on the “natural limits” theory, see Jaffa, , Crisis of the House Divided, pp. 387–99.Google Scholar

39. Speeches and Writings 1832–1858, p. 359Google Scholar (Letter to George Robertson, August 15, 1855).

40. Ibid., p. 35 (January 27, 1838).

41. Ibid.

42. Ibid., p. 36.

43. On the status of reason in Lincoln's thought, I agree with Morel, who writes: “To be sure, [Lincoln] closes the Lyceum and Temperance Addresses with tributes to reason as all-powerful to solve political problems. But these statements suggest more in the way of rhetorical flourish than serious reflection on the power of reason to check or curb the public passions” (Lincoln's Sacred Effort, p. 164.Google Scholar)

44. Speeches and Writings 1832–1858, p. 315Google Scholar (Speech on the Kansas-Nebraska Act, October 16, 1854).

45. Speeches and Writings 1859–1865, p. 98Google Scholar (September 30, 1859).

46. Hofstadter, Richard, The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948), p. 105.Google Scholar

47. Speeches and Writings 1832–1858, p. 806Google Scholar (October 15,1858). Lincoln made similar arguments in speeches at Peoria, Kalamazoo, Cincinnati, and New Haven. See Speeches and Writings 1832–1858, pp. 331, 379;Google ScholarSpeeches and Writings 1859–1865, pp. 85–6, 145.Google ScholarBoritt, Gabor (Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream [Memphis: Memphis State University Press, 1978])Google Scholar notes that Lincoln made arguments against slavery expansion on the grounds that the territories needed to remain free for the interest of white upward mobility. However, Boritt suggests that this “was not a major ingredient of [Lincoln's] argument, however important it might have been to his Illinoisans” (p. 164). I think that Boritt goes too far in downplaying the significance of Lincoln's interest-based argument. I agree with Boritt that in Lincoln's view, slavery should be opposed above all because it is simply immoral. However, Lincoln knew that as a democratic leader his task was to educate and elevate his audience. By starting with what is base, and with what is common – that is, by starting with the interest-based argument – Lincoln sought to hold the attention of his entire audience, so that he could then try to elevate gradually his audience. As Jaffa puts it, “Men may be led toward higher purposes of which they are scarcely conscious, if those who hold these purposes first show concern for and an ability to gratify their less noble demands” (Crisis of the House Divided, p. 199Google Scholar).

48. Fitzhugh, George, Cannibals All! Or, Slaves without Masters (Cambridge, MA: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 1960), p. 199.Google Scholar

49. Speeches and Writings 1859–1865, p. 97.Google Scholar

50. Democracy in America, pp. 344, 346–47Google Scholar. As Eric Foner demonstrates, the Republican Party offered a similar cultural critique of the South. See Foner, , Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970),Google Scholar especially chaps. 1 and 2.

51. Speeches and Writings 1832–1858, pp. 331–32Google Scholar (Speech on the Kansas-Nebraska Act, October 16, 1854). Lincoln made essentially the same argument at Kalamazoo. See Speeches and Writings 1832–1858, p. 379.Google Scholar

52. For an excellent discussion of the concept of the Slave Power, see Foner, , Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men, pp. 87–102.Google Scholar Foner notes that Salman P. Chase argued in 1845 that as a result of the three-fifths clause, “an aristocracy of slaveholders” had seized control of the federal government (p. 89).

53. Speeches and Writings 1859–1865, p. 135Google Scholar (March 6, 1860) (emphasis added).

54. Speeches and Writings 1832–1858, p. 414 (c. late December 1857).Google Scholar

55. Ibid., p. 339 (Speech on the Kansas-Nebraska Act, October 16, 1854).

56. Lincoln recognized that another way to try to justify slavery is to argue that African-Americans are not human beings at all. Lincoln, argued, though that to assert this is to engage in what one might call bad faith, for white people who are honest with themselves all recognize the humanity of African-Americans. At Peoria, Lincoln brilliantly detailed a number of ways in which Southerners implicitly conceded the humanity of their slaves. See Speeches and Writings 1832–1858, pp. 326–27.Google Scholar

57. Ibid., p. 494 (c. August 1858).

58. Speeches and Writings 1859–1865, p. 27Google Scholar (Letter to Samuel Galloway, July 28, 1859).

59. Speeches and Writings 1832–1858, p. 585Google Scholar (Speech at Edwardsvile, September 11, 1858) (emphasis in original).

60. Cf. Winger, , Lincoln, Religion, and Romantic Cultural Politics, p. 137;Google ScholarJaffa, , Crisis of the House Divided, p. 205;Google ScholarMiller, , Lincoln's Virtues, p. 279.Google Scholar

61. Speeches and Writings 1832–1858, p. 315.Google Scholar

62. Ibid., p. 303 (1854?).

63. Democracy in America, p. 526.Google Scholar

64. Speeches and Writings 1832–1858, p. 334, 346.Google Scholar

65. Richter, Melvin, “The Uses of Theory: Tocqueville's Adaptation of Montesquieu,” in Essays in Theory and History: An Approach to the Social Sciences (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), p. 97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Cf. Boesche, Roger, The Strange Liberalism of Alexis de Tocqueville (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), p. 195.Google Scholar

66. Selected Letters on Politics and Society, p. 118Google Scholar (To Pierre-Paul Royer-Collard, August 20, 1837).

67. Burns, James McGregor, Leadership (New York: Harper and Row, 1978), pp. 4, 455, 452, 46, 462.Google Scholar

68. Tocqueville, , Democracy in America, pp. 754, 755 (Appendix III: Speech in the Chamber of Deputies, 01. 27, 1848).Google Scholar

69. Selected Letters on Politics and Society, p. 376Google Scholar (To Arthur de Gobineau, September 16, 1858).

70. Zetterbaum, Marvin, “Alexis de Tocqueville,” in The History of Political Philosophy, ed. Strauss, Leo and Cropsey, Joseph (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), p. 777.Google Scholar

71. Selected Letters on Politics and Society, pp. 346–47Google Scholar (To Arthur de Gobineau, January 24, 1857).

72. Ibid., p. 130 (Letter to Gustave de Beaumont, April 22, 1838).

73. Quoted in Pierson, George Wilson, Tocqueville in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), p. 347 (emphasis added).Google Scholar

74. Selected Letters on Politics and Society, p. 347Google Scholar (To Arthur de Gobineau, January 24, 1857).

75. Quoted in Lively, Jack, The Social and Political Thought of Alexis de Tocqueville (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), p. 187.Google Scholar

76. Democracy in America, p. 701.Google Scholar

77. See Tocqueville, , Democracy in America, p. 512.Google Scholar As Richard W. Krouse usefully puts it, for Tocqueville, “Interest [in America] becomes, as it were, the mechanism of its own…self-transcendence. … In this way democratic man becomes more than mere bourgeois: he becomes, in part and on occasion, a genuinely public-spirited republican citizen as well.” See Krouse, , “Classical Images of Democracy in America: Madison and Tocqueville,” in Democratic Theory and Practice, ed. Duncan, Graeme Campbell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 74.Google Scholar

78. Speeches and Writings 1832–1858, p. 302 (1854?)Google Scholar.

79. Herndon is quoted in Greenstone, , The Lincoln Persuasion, p. 12.Google Scholar Greenstone is one commentator who has noted that Lincoln himself publicly admitted his ambition: “Lincoln readily acknowledged,” writes Greenstone, “the importance of his own and other people's self-regarding, ulterior motives” (p. 12).

80. Speeches and Writings 1832–1858, p. 827 (October 30, 1858).Google Scholar

81. Ibid., p. 488 (c. August 1858).

82. Quoted in Yarbrough, Jean, American Virtues: Thomas Jefferson on the Character of a Tree People (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998), p. 146.Google Scholar

83. Speeches and Writings 1832–1858, p. 81.Google Scholar

84. Ibid., p. 83.

85. Ibid. For a study of the role of friendship in Lincoln's own life,Donald, David Herbert, We Are Lincoln Men: Abraham Lincoln and His Friends (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003).Google Scholar

86. This is a point that Miroff, Bruce (Icons of Democracy: American Leaders as Heroes, Aristocrats, Dissenters, and Democrats [New York: Basic Books, 1993])Google Scholar has emphasized. As Miroff puts it, Lincoln “began from the premise of mutuality, always regarding ordinary citizens as capable of everything that he himself had achieved” (p. 123).

87. Democracy in America, p. 433.Google Scholar

88. Speeches and Writings 1859–1865, p. 56Google Scholar(Speech at Columbus, , 09 16, 1859).Google Scholar

89. Speeches and Writings 1832–1858, p. 555Google Scholar (August 27,1858).

90. Ibid., pp. 555–56.

91. Ibid., p. 763 (Sixth Lincoln-Douglas Debate, Quincy, October 13, 1858).

92. Speeches and Writings 1859–1865, p. 28Google Scholar (Notes for Speeches, c. 09 1859).

93. Ibid., p. 434 (January 26, 1863).

94. Speeches and Writings 1832–1858, p. 384Google Scholar(On Douglas, Stephen, c. 12 1856).Google Scholar

95. Democracy in America, p. 532.Google Scholar

96. Ibid., pp. 533, 534.

97. Speeches and Writings 1859–1865, p. 92.Google Scholar Similarly, Lincoln suggested that “the mineral resources” of the territories “ought to be developed as rapidly as possible.” Ibid., p. 396 (Annual Message to Congress, 12 1, 1862).

98. Speeches and Writings 1832–1858, p. 337Google Scholar (Speech on the Kansas-Nebraska Act, October 16, 1854) (emphasis added).

99. Speeches and Writings 1859–1865, p. 58Google Scholar (Speech at Columbus, September 16, 1859). Lincoln also brilliantly criticized the materialism of American culture (and, in particular, the materialism of the “Young America” movement) in his Lecture on Discoveries and Inventions. For an excellent discussion of the Lecture, see Winger, , Lincoln, Religion, and Romantic Cultural Politics, chap. 1.Google Scholar

100. Lincoln would have likely agreed with Martin Diamond's claim that, “Those who wish to improve American life—specifically, those who would improve the relationship between ethics and politics in America—must base such improvement upon the American foundation.& [I]f the aim is improvement, it must be improvement that accepts the limits imposed by the ‘genius’ of the particular political order; it must be improvement that makes America her better self, but still her own self.” See Diamond, , “Ethics and Politics: The American Way,” in The Moral Foundations of the American Republic, ed. Horwitz, Robert (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1986), p. 95.Google Scholar

101. Democracy in America, pp. 198, 200.Google Scholar

102. Ibid., p. 264.

103. Ibid., p. 267.

104. Tocqueville writes that lawyers and judges constitute an “aristocratic body that can check the people's movements” (Democracy in America, p. 275).Google Scholar Tocqueville's discussion of lawyers and judges is thus clearly in tension with Sheldon Wolin's claim that Tocqueville “broke with the long-standing tradition in political thinking that saw no remedies to democracy's ills except from some wise and disinterested ‘outside’ agent who could somehow dilute a democratic system with a ‘mixture’ of non- or antidemocratic principles.” See Wolin, , Tocqueville Between Two Worlds: The Making of a Political and Theoretical Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 194.Google Scholar

105. Burns, Leadership, pp. 19, 18Google Scholar (emphasis in original).

106. Quoted in Pierson, , Tocqueville in America, 674.Google Scholar Specifically, Tocqueville believed that Washington bravely resisted the public's desire to join France in its war against England. See Democracy in America, p. 229.Google Scholar

107. Democracy in America, p. 258.Google Scholar I borrow the term “moral courage” from Yarbrough's discussion of Thomas Jefferson. Yarbrough argues that when Jefferson discusses the virtues necessary for the republican statesman, Jefferson is “conspicuously silent about [the virtue of] moral courage.& Jefferson's faith in the capacity of the people to govern themselves prevents him from recognizing that here will always be occasions when the statesman must resist popular opinion” (American Virtues, p.144).Google Scholar

108. Tocqueville's rejection of mutuality is evident not only in his theory of leadership, but also in his own practice of leadership. Tocqueville wrote that when he ran for office after the 1848 Revolution, “[e]ach little town had its club, and each club asked the candidates to give an account of their views and acts and imposed formulations of policy on them. I refused to answer any of these insolent questions.” See Tocqueville, , Recollections: The French Revolution of 1848, ed. Mayer, J. P. (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1987), p. 88.Google Scholar With his refusal to even engage in dialogue with his fellow citizens, we can see that while Tocqueville may have emphasized moral courage in his understanding of leadership, he did not emphasize closeness to the people.

109. Democracy in America, p. 449Google Scholar (emphasis added).

110. Ibid., p. 258.

111. Quoted in Pierson, , Tocqueville in America, p. 608.Google Scholar

112. Speeches and Writings 1832–1858, p. 5Google Scholar (March 9, 1832).

113. Ibid., p. 525 (First Lincoln-Douglas Debate, Ottawa, August 21, 1858).

114. Crisis's of the House Divided, especially p. 377.Google Scholar

115. Democracy in America, p. 257.Google Scholar

116. McPherson, James, Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 52.Google Scholar

117. Speeches and Writings 1832–1858, p. 397.Google Scholar

118. Lincoln, Religion, and Romantic Cultural Politics, p. 148.Google Scholar

119. Quoted in Hofstadter, , The American Political Tradition, p. 150.Google Scholar

120. Speeches and Writings 1832–1858, p. 316Google Scholar (Speech on the Kansas-Nebraska Act, October 16, 1854).

121. The phrase “dogma of the sovereignty of the people” first appears in Vol. 1, Chap. 4, of Democracy in America (p. 58).Google Scholar Tocqueville is not explicitly critical of the “dogma” in this chapter, but later in the book he implies that the dogma can lead to the “tyranny of the majority.”

122. Democracy in America, p. 250.Google Scholar

123. Ibid.

124. Speeches and Writings 1859–1865, p. 220Google Scholar (First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861).