The Road Not Taken: Lincoln and the Moral Psychology of Peaceful Abolition

• In Event: Moral Psychology in American Political Thought

Abstract

Slavery was abolished in the United States through a deadly civil war. It is impossible to prove that slavery could have been peacefully abolished in the U.S. But it is also impossible to understand Abraham Lincoln’s commitment to popular self-government without recognizing his conviction that slavery could have been, and ought to have been, abolished peacefully, gradually, and democratically. Asking how Lincoln believed that slavery could have been peacefully abolished (though with enormous difficulty) directs us in turn to ask how he understood the moral psychology of slavery, antislavery, and majority rule. In a perfect democracy, where everyone subject to the laws had an equal share in making them, justice would align comfortably with self-interest. But in the actual circumstances of Lincoln’s America, abolishing slavery peacefully would require persuading a majority of white citizens to cast politically costly and risky votes against an injustice whose principal victims were persons other than themselves. In contrast to those abolitionists who grounded their antislavery hopes on religious conversion, Lincoln believed that most human beings acted self-interestedly most of the time. Lincoln’s aim was to transform white Americans’ understanding of what was or was not genuinely in their political and economic self-interest. How he believed this could be accomplished is the focus of this paper.

Author

• James H. Read, St. John's University/ College of Saint Benedict