THE EVOLUTION OF THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS

HON. JOHN C. RICHBERG

ROM Abraham Lincoln's entrance into public life to his sacrificial exit was probably the stormiest period of the Republic, during all of which time the slavery question was uppermost. But underlying this controversy lay the great question of State's rights, the extremists insisting that the Union was a mere confederacy of States, that the States were absolutely sovereign and any State had a right to withdraw from the Union at any time its people saw fit so to do. Lincoln was opposed both to slavery and the doctrine of State's rights, as enunciated, believing in an inseparable and indestructible Union; and it may be interesting to trace the gradual growth and strengthening of his belief which culminated in that mighty appeal to the spirit of nationality known as the Gettysburg Address.

It will be borne in mind that Lincoln had been a member of the Illinois Legislature for four successive terms and entered upon the scene of national politics in 1847, at the age of thirty-eight, as a member of Congress. Although a new member, he was not a silent member, and took part in the debates affecting the leading questions of the day. He had been practising law for some ten years, and his speeches in Congress, especially the one against granting appropriations for internal improvements on constitutional grounds, showed that he had studied the works of Kent and Storey and the leading cases of the Supreme Court of the United States, notably those delivered by Mr. Chief Justice Marshall. He had taken an active part in politics during the administration of Andrew Jackson and especially in the great controversy then raging with reference to the Charter of the United States Bank. That Charter had been upheld in 1819 by the Supreme

Court of the United States in the opinion delivered by Chief Justice Marshall in the celebrated case of M'Culloch v. State of Maryland. The question involved as to whether Congress had power to incorporate a bank, and the holding of the Court that the government of the Union is supreme within its sphere of action, and that its laws, when made in pursuance of the Constitution, are the supreme law of the land, are of course familiar to all here present.

Lincoln said, in a speech delivered in Congress, July 27, 1848:

"When the bill chartering the first Bank of the United States passed Congress, its constitutionality was questioned. Mr. Madison, then in the House of Representatives, as well as others, had opposed it on that ground. Gen. Washington, as President, was called on to approve or reject it. He sought and obtained, on the constitutional question, the separate written opinions of Jefferson, Hamilton, and Edmund Randolph, they then being respectively Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury, and Attorney-General. Hamilton's opinion was for the power; while Randolph's and Jefferson's were both against it."

In a reply to Douglas, delivered at Springfield, Illinois, June 26, 1857, he again showed how familiar he was with the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, wherein the question of the constitutionality of the Act establishing the Bank of the United States was involved; that he had not only read, but studied that decision. He said:

"Why, this same Supreme Court once decided a national bank to be constitutional; but General Jackson, as President of the United States, disregarded the decision, and vetoed a bill for a re-charter, partly on constitutional grounds, declaring that each public functionary must support the Constitution, as he understands it.' But hear the General's own words. Here they are, taken from his veto message:

""It is maintained by the advocates of the Bank, that its constitutionality, in all its features, ought to be considered as settled by precedent, and by the decision of the Supreme Court. To this conclusion I cannot assent. Mere precedent is a dangerous source of authority, and should not be regarded as deciding questions of constitutional power, except where the acquiescence of the people and the States can be considered as well settled. So far from this being the case on this subject, an argument against the bank might be based on precedent. One Congress, in 1791, decided in favor of a bank; another,

in 1811, decided against it. One Congress, in 1815, decided against a bank; another, in 1816, decided in its favor. Prior to the present Congress, therefore, the precedents drawn from that source were equal. If we resort to the States, the expressions of legislative, judicial, and executive opinions against the bank have been, probably, to those in its favor as four to one. There is nothing in precedent, therefore, which, if its authority were admitted, ought to weigh in favor of the act before me.'

"I drop the quotations merely to remark, that all there ever was, in the way of precedent, up to the Dred Scott decision, on the points therein decided, had been against that decision.

"Again and again have I heard Judge Douglas denounce that bank decision, and applaud General Jackson for disregarding it. It would be interesting for him to look over his recent speech and see how exactly his fierce philippics against us for resisting the Supreme Court decisions, fall upon his own head. It will call to mind a long and fierce political war in this country, upon an issue which, in his own language, and, of course, in his own changeless estimation, was 'a distinct issue between the friends and the enemies of the Constitution,' and in which war he fought in the ranks of the enemies of the Constitution."

It is evident that the doctrine of national unity as laid down in the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, and particularly in the opinion of Marshall, had either awakened or found a responsive chord within the keen, logical, lawyer's mind of the martyred President. How early this conviction obtained is shown in a lecture delivered at the Springfield Lyceum in 1837, where Lincoln said:

"If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide."

At Indianapolis, on his way to the Capital in 1861, referring to South Carolinians, he said:

"In their view, the Union as a family relation would seem to be no regular marriage, but rather a sort of 'free-love' arrangement, to be maintained only on 'passional attraction.''

At Trenton, New Jersey:

"I am exceedingly anxious that this Union, the Constitution and the liberties of the people shall be perpetuated in accordance with the original idea for which that struggle [the Revolution] was made."

At Philadelphia, at the "Old Independence Hall," among other things, in responding to an address of welcome:

"I can say in return, sir, that all the political sentiments I entertain have been drawn, so far as I have been able to draw them, from the sentiments which originated in and were given to the world from this hall."

In his First Inaugural Address, he said:

"I hold that, in contemplation of universal law and the Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination. Continue to execute all the express provisions of our national Constitution and the Union will endure forever-it being impossible to destroy it except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself."

On August 22, 1862, in a letter to Horace Greeley, he said:

"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that."

"What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union."

Since, then, the national spirit shown in the foregoing quotations seems to have been founded so much more on the lawyer's view of the Constitution as a sacred compact that the descendants of the framers must fulfil, rather than on a mere emotional ideal, it may be worth while to examine the language of that great decision in M'Culloch v. Maryland, referred to before, wherein is found the logic and reasoning which, harmonizing with Lincoln's fidelity to obligations and the idealism of a mighty dreamer, may have played its part in the evolution of the Gettysburg masterpiece.

Beginning with page 403, Volume 4, Wheaton's Reports, the opinion reads as follows:

"The Convention which framed the Constitution was indeed elected by the State Legislatures. But the instrument, when it came from

their hands, was a mere proposal, without obligation, or pretensions to it. It was reported to the then existing Congress of the United States, with a request that it might be submitted to a Convention of Delegates, chosen in each State by the people thereof, under the recommendation of its Legislature, for their assent and ratification.' This mode of proceeding was adopted; and by the Convention, by Congress, and by the State Legislatures, the instrument was submitted to the people. They acted upon it in the only manner in which they can act safely, effectively, and wisely, on such a subject, by assembling in Convention. It is true, they assembled in their several Statesand where else should they have assembled? No political dreamer was ever wild enough to think of breaking down the lines which separate the States, and of compounding the American people into one common mass. Of consequence, when they act, they act in their States. But the measures they adopt do not, on that account, cease to be the measures of the people themselves, or become the measures of the State governments.

"From these Conventions the Constitution derives its whole authority. The government proceeds directly from the people; is 'ordained and established' in the name of the people; and is declared to be ordained, 'in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquillity, and secure the blessings of liberty to themselves and to their posterity.' The assent of the States, in their sovereign capacity, is implied in calling a Convention, and thus submitting that instrument to the people. But the people were at perfect liberty to accept or reject it; and their act was final. It required not the affirmance, and could not be negatived, by the State governments. The Constitution, when thus adopted, was of complete obligation, and bound the State sovereignties. But when, in order to form a more perfect union,' it was deemed necessary to change this alliance into an effective government, possessing great and sovereign powers, and acting directly on the people, the necessity of referring it to the people, and of deriving its powers from them, was felt and acknowledged by all.

"The government of the Union, then (whatever may be the influence of this fact on the case), is, emphatically, and truly, a government of the people. In form and in substance it emanates from them. Its powers are granted by them, and are to be exercised directly on them, and for their benefit. But the question respecting the extent of the powers actually granted, is perpetually arising, and will probably continue to arise, as long as our system shall exist."

"If any one proposition could command the universal assent of mankind, we might expect it would be this-that the government of the Union, though limited in its powers, is supreme within its sphere of action. This would seem to result necessarily from its nature. It