An Abraham Lincoln quote going around Facebook:

[xiphias]

So, my father-in-law posted the following quote from Abraham Lincoln to his Facebook page:


I'm always skeptical about quotes from famous people that seem way, way too modern, so I looked it up.

Yup, it's accurate, and, in context, it's not too far off of what it looks like on its own. Oh, it doesn't mean that Lincoln would have been singing The Internationale or anything -- it's definitely pro-capitalist -- but pro-small-business-capitalism-open-to-everyone. Let me give the longer quote in a bit more context. It's right at the end of his speech:
Most of the speech is, of course, about the Southern rebellion. But right near the end, he ties it into a larger point: that the South is making an attack on general freedom -- and that economic freedom is inherently tied to political freedom:

It continues to develop that the insurrection is largely, if not exclusively, a war upon the first principle of popular government--the rights of the people. Conclusive evidence of this is found in the most grave and maturely considered public documents, as well as in the general tone of the insurgents. In those documents we find the abridgment of the existing right of suffrage and the denial to the people of all right to participate in the selection of public officers except the legislative boldly advocated, with labored arguments to prove that large control of the people in government is the source of all political evil. Monarchy itself is sometimes hinted at as a possible refuge from the power of the people.

In my present position I could scarcely be justified were I to omit raising a warning voice against this approach of returning despotism.

It is not needed nor fitting here that a general argument should be made in favor of popular institutions, but there is one point, with its connections, not so hackneyed as most others, to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor in the structure of government. It is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital; that nobody labors unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it induces him to labor. This assumed, it is next considered whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own consent, or buy them and drive them to it without their consent. Having proceeded so far, it is naturally concluded that all laborers are either hired laborers or what we call slaves. And further, it is assumed that whoever is once a hired laborer is fixed in that condition for life.

Now there is no such relation between capital and labor as assumed, nor is there any such thing as a free man being fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer. Both these assumptions are false, and all inferences from them are groundless.

Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. Nor is it denied that there is, and probably always will be, a relation between labor and capital producing mutual benefits. The error is in assuming that the whole labor of community exists within that relation. A few men own capital, and that few avoid labor themselves, and with their capital hire or buy another few to labor for them. A large majority belong to neither class--neither work for others nor have others working for them. In most of the Southern States a majority of the whole people of all colors are neither slaves nor masters, while in the Northern a large majority are neither hirers nor hired. Men, with their families--wives, sons, and daughters--work for themselves on their farms, in their houses, and in their shops, taking the whole product to themselves, and asking no favors of capital on the one hand nor of hired laborers or slaves on the other. It is not forgotten that a considerable number of persons mingle their own labor with capital; that is, they labor with their own hands and also buy or hire others to labor for them; but this is only a mixed and not a distinct class. No principle stated is disturbed by the existence of this mixed class.

Again, as has already been said, there is not of necessity any such thing as the free hired laborer being fixed to that condition for life. Many independent men everywhere in these States a few years back in their lives were hired laborers. The prudent, penniless beginner in the world labors for wages awhile, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land for himself, then labors on his own account another while, and at length hires another new beginner to help him. This is the just and generous and prosperous system which opens the way to all, gives hope to all, and consequent energy and progress and improvement of condition to all. No men living are more worthy to be trusted than those who toil up from poverty; none less inclined to take or touch aught which they have not honestly earned. Let them beware of surrendering a political power which they already possess, and which if surrendered will surely be used to close the door of advancement against such as they and to fix new disabilities and burdens upon them till all of liberty shall be lost.

Interesting, isn't it? Reading between the lines, one could say that this argument says that the concentration of capital into a small class of people is tantamount to slavery itself...

This is clearly a pro-small-business position, one which recognizes the importance of economic justice to social mobility, and social mobility to a workable democracy.

Comments

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

In his Timeline 191/Southern Victory series, Harry Turtledove has the CSA as having won the original Civil War, becoming a separate nation, and Lincoln not getting shot, but damn near run out of town on a rail with the rest of his party ... then he splits off from his party to found a Socialist Party in the USA.

And he uses a number of these quotes from Lincoln to support it.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

. . . yeah, there are some of Turtledove's alt-histories that I really have problems with . . .

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

Is this one of them specifically? Mind you, the CSA gets its comeuppence, eventually.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's almost impossible to imagine a contemporary politician uttering anything as intelligent, as closely reasoned or as well-expressed as this.

Somewhere along the line our expectations of political discourse have taken a nose-dive.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Sidetrack: Is there any AH which includes the southern states just letting the matter of slavery drift for another decade or two?

Confederate Reckoning has details about how the decision to secede was made, and it looks to me as though if the matter had been put to an honest vote among all the white men in the states which became the Confederacy, secession would not have happened when it did, and perhaps not ever.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I have another Lincoln quote that might interest you.

I respect the man who properly named these villains land sharks. They are like the wretched ghouls who follow a ship and fatten on its offal.

The land, the earth, God gave to man for his home, sustenance and support, should never be the possession of any man, corporation, society or unfriendly government, any more than the air or water -- if as much. An individual or company, or enterprise, acquiring land should hold no more than is required for their home and sustenance, and never more than they have in actual use in the prudent management of their legitimate business, and this much should not be permitted when it creates an exclusive monopoly. All that is not so used should be held for the free use of every family to make homesteads and to hold them so long as they are so occupied.

The idle talk of foolish men, that is so common now, will find its way against it, with whatever force it may possess, and as strongly promoted and carried on as it can be by land monopolists, grasping landlords and the titled and untitled senseless enemies of mankind everywhere.

On the other questions there is ample room for reform when the time comes; but now it would be folly to think we could take more than we have in hand. But when slavery is over and settled, men should never rest content while oppression, wrongs and iniquities are enforced against them.

From: A letter written to a Mr. Gridley, of the firm of Davis, Lincoln and Gridley, Attorneys, Bloomington, IL. Reprinted from: Abraham Lincoln and the Men of His Time by Robert Browne.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

I'm always skeptical about quotes from famous people that seem way, way too modern, so I looked it up.

What made it seem too modern to you? By 1861, the labor movement had been going on for a few decades--not so much in the US at that time, because so much of the country was agricultural, but I'm not a bit surprised that Lincoln would be aware of what had been going on in the UK in the 1850s. People in mill towns were talking about "wage slavery," objecting to exploitation by the owners of big factories, and trying to organize unions.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Well, I guess I was thrown because I thought of Das Kapital as much later in the century -- maybe like the 1880s or so -- but it WAS written only six years after this speech, and The Communist Manifesto was written in 1848.

I just hadn't realized how early the concepts of "labor vs. capital" had entered into the political vocabulary and discourse. I mean, I don't really REALIZE that, by the Civil War, the Industrial Revolution had already happened in the rest of the world. I don't really realize that the Waltham Watch Factory had been running for seven years at the time of this speech.

Somehow, I just put "the Industrial Revolution" with "Meiji Japan" and "Sherlock Holmes."

My sense of history is at least half a century off.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

You might like Mrs. Gaskell.

[bill_sheehan.livejournal.com]

The Industrial Revolution changed a lot. The idea of working for another in one's youth, saving a little of one's pay aside, and eventually going into business for oneself and continuing the cycle by hiring another person is still very much part of the American mythos, but the Industrial Revolution changed all that. The mill-worker will never be able to buy a mill of his own from his wages.

I have one sibling who is an entrepreneur. He works as an entertainer in London.

The rest of us are, in Lincoln's words, hired laborers, fixed to that condition for life.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

You've inspired me (http://peristaltor.livejournal.com/208745.html). I hope you don't mind.