Lincoln's First Inaugural

A nation is splitting, nerves are raw, and a new president steps onto the stage with a lawyer’s caution and a moral compass fixed on first principles. We take you into Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address to map the real conflict of 1861: not vague “states’ rights,” but whether slavery should expand or be contained. With the Union already cracking, Lincoln argues the Constitution ties both sides to a lawful path and that preserving the Union is not a dodge—it’s the necessary frame for any just future.

We explore how Lincoln threads a tight constitutional needle. He upholds enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Clause while urging due process so free people are not stolen into bondage. He accepts limits on federal power inside slave states, yet defends Congress’s authority to restrict slavery in the territories. Then he turns to the Supreme Court: respecting the Dred Scott judgment in the specific case but warning that a single ruling, lacking consensus and repeated affirmation, should not dictate national destiny. If vital questions are frozen by judicial decree, he argues, the people cease to be their own rulers.

To sharpen the contrast, we set Lincoln beside Alexander Stephens’s “Cornerstone” speech, where the Confederacy declares slavery its foundation and rejects the Declaration’s claim that all men are created equal. Reading both voices together removes the fog and shows the era’s clear ideological divide. Along the way, we talk practical civics: using primary sources, understanding federalism, and seeing how constitutional fidelity can hold space for moral progress. Listen to rethink 1861 with clarity, nuance, and the words of those who lived it.

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Corresponding Lesson from the Civic Literacy Curriculum

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School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership

Center for American Civics

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:46

Welcome back to Civics in a year. I am stoked today because we get to start talking about Abraham Lincoln, one of my absolutely favorite orators. I just, anytime I think about America, Abraham Lincoln pops into my head. And today, Dr. Bienberg is with us, and we are actually going to talk about Lincoln's first inaugural address in 1861. So, Dr. Bienberg, what is happening when this document is written? And what is it trying to address?

What The War Was Really About

Lincoln’s Constitution And Slavery

Dred Scott And Judicial Power

SPEAKER_01 1:19

Yeah. So it is what is happening is that the union is falling apart, just front and front and center. Several of the southern states have seceded. Others are musing about it. And so Lincoln is coming to office at arguably the most challenging moment in American political history. Right. So this is a couple years after the Dred Scott decision, which Lincoln will comment on during this. So that's obviously pretty important. And it is after the 1860 presidential election, during which, as Lincoln will point out, you know, Lincoln, and this sort of comes to the sort of what is the civil war about? And we've talked about sort of this explanation. You know, Lincoln takes the view, and I think correctly, he says explicitly, one section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended. I mean, that's the sort of the punchiest section, in a sense, of the first inaugural, right? Again, originally the Civil War is not about it is about slavery. And it is about slavery, it is about slavery, it is about slavery. But it's not about the abolition of slavery in the South where it exists. It's about whether slavery extends or doesn't extend. And Lincoln explicitly says, look, I've been giving a bunch of speeches on this effect. And then he quotes a section of the 1860 Republican Party platform where he says the rights of the states are important. We won't screw with slavery where it exists, like we just want to stop its expansion. So that is the context that Lincoln is dealing with. Both passive non-assistance, and even Wisconsin in the in what becomes Abelman v. Booth, trying actual straight-up nullification. You know, Mississippi says looking back, the government was fundamentally anti-slavery at the beginning. They point to the Northwest Territory, they point to resistance to slave states and admissions. And now they're protesting, and this faction has finally gotten real control of the government. And so they're they're angry because the slave states have basically had de facto control of the federal government for decades. And so Lincoln is the first Republican who was elected again on a platform that is critical, like openly critical of slavery. Again, not a cross-the-board abolitionist, but it's critical of slavery. And so the South is concerned that they're going to start losing, even if they work as a bloc, they're going to start losing elections and they're going to lose access to some of the things we've talked about in earlier podcasts, being able to gag the mail, for example. So Lincoln has the first inaugural address, it's pretty short, but it actually has a ton of constitutional discussion in it. Like Lincoln is, you know, Lincoln is walking through and saying the Fugitive Slave Act actually has to be enforced. You can't just ignore a chunk of the Constitution, but the Constitution also includes a due process guarantee. And so maybe we need to revise what the Fugitive Slave Act looks like to make sure that you can't just like point at a black person and say he's a slave, right? Like, no, you actually should have to do evidentiary standards and whatnot. I mean, I'm being a little glib with what this, but not that glib. But he says, like, there actually have to be constitutional ways to implement that. But he's trying to thread the needle of do I like the Fugitive Slave Act? No, but it's passed by Congress. And so I have a constitutional, you know, there's a constitutional obligation to not interfere with that. Again, he's making a federalism argument. I don't have constitutional authority. Congress doesn't have constitutional authority to interfere with slavery in the states. And then he does a little aside about the Dred Scott case. And this is a section that constitutional law professors like to think about because Lincoln says, again, trying to be both legal and moderate, says, look, the Supreme Court has made a decision in Dred Scott. I won't oppose that decision. He doesn't go through and explicitly say, but Dred Scott is still a slave. I'm not going to interfere with the result in that case. But he says, I don't consider this a binding precedent yet. Right? It's a do and he walks through his metric of like, when does a case become a precedent? It's when it's been repeated, it's when it was a consensus, it's when he gives basically a list of metrics and says the more of these metrics that hold, it's based on really strong historical evidence, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The more of these metrics that hold, the stronger case is his precedent. He says this case doesn't really have any of them. And then he goes on to say that, you know, the candid citizen, as he says, if they basically say that vital questions affecting the whole people are irrevocably fixed by the decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary legislation, litigation, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers. That eminent tribunal will basically be an oligarchy. And so he's critical of the court and its jurisprudence, but again, in a in a fairly measured way. So yeah, the first inaugural address is a magnificent document.

Equality Claimed, Equality Denied

SPEAKER_00 6:27

So you kind of talked about like the ideas of slavery and like what is the federal government's job and what is not. What other ideas or tensions in this document tell us something important about how American democracy was working at the time?

Please Don’t Shatter The Union

Teaching With Primary Sources

SPEAKER_01 6:42

So I actually think that another way that we can think about this is to look at what is, you could almost say, the Confederate inaugural address, which is Alexander Stevens' cornerstone speech, where he lays out and says, okay, so like why are we seceding? And in a sense, there's not that much difference between Lincoln and Lincoln and Stevens in terms of what they think the American Republic stands for, what its ideas are about. Stevens says explicitly, we are seceding over slavery. The cornerstone of our new republic is that we are rejecting the ideals of the Declaration of Independence. Lincoln and Crew keep saying all men are created equal. They have, you know, political, you know, that's a they keep saying that. They think that that means everybody has natural rights to political equality or political participation with certainly if they're citizens. We don't think that. We we think that's a mistake. We think that's they they have very derisive lines. We think this is like airy philosophy and ethereal. And so the founders were a mistake. Like following the founders is a mistake. Whereas Lincoln very much in this document and you know, test speeches he's giving in the lead up to it, like the Cooper Union address, or or while he's on, you know, on the on the circuit, making it to Washington, D.C., he's saying, like, no, in fact, the founders were not saints, but they did a pretty good job, and like they didn't have a problem banning slavery with the Northwest Ordinance. Maybe we should go back to their rules. So, so yeah, the the inaugural address is very much Lincoln trying to say, look, I might will do my best to follow the Constitution and follow with the principles of the Declaration of Independence. That's what I campaigned on. That's what you elected me to do. Are you really going to destroy Southerners? Are you really going to destroy the Union because you lost one election and we haven't even done anything yet? We haven't done anything yet. And the we have pledged to basically go back to the ancient, horrible way that it was five years ago where we restricted slavery's expansion in the territories.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

So would the cornerstone speech be a good pairing? Like if if there is an educator listening to this, would those two be, you know, the first inaugural and then the cornerstone speech a good pairing for comparing and contrasting different ideas at the time?

Lincoln’s Oath And Fidelity

SPEAKER_01 9:05

Yeah, they're a great way to do it. And in fact, that's why obligatory plug. Maybe you were anticipating this. One of the sections of our civic literacy curriculum is basically pairing, not pairing, because it's more than one, but Lincoln's first inaugural and the cornerstone and the party platforms and a couple of the secession declarations, and they're all edited down to be like two or three pages each to basically show like what is the civil war about? Like, why are they actually fighting from the voices of the participants? And they broadly have a consensus on what the fight is about. The Southerners tend to be, you know, this the second wave, you can make a you can make a an a case, I don't think it's a super strong case, that the second wave of seceding states are because they have a federalism plane because they don't want to be forced to fight another state. I think still basically about slavery, but the South is concerned that they're not going to get the perks that they've had and the expansion that they've gotten used to. And the North says, yeah, we're not going to give you that, but we're not stopping it where it exists. Because, again, at least in the short, in the short to medium term, because there's a constitutional problem with it. So yeah, going back to the primary sources, I think, makes that pretty clear what the Civil War actually, what the causes were, at least at the at least for the certainly the first wave states, and what Lincoln is trying to achieve and what Lincoln is not trying to achieve. Lincoln again recognizes he has taken an oath of office to the country and and to the constitution, which doesn't just mean his policy preferences, which is something that will come back up when we talk about how he deals with issues like habeas corpus and emancipation proclamation. I don't think Lincoln always gets every constitutional argument right, but he is deeply, deeply, deeply committed to constitutional fidelity. And that comes across really clearly in that first inaugural.

SPEAKER_00 11:02

Dr. Bienberg, thank you. And I will link the civic literacy curriculum lesson. And yes, I was leading there because I really appreciate the ability, again, when we're asked historical questions, to go back and look at primary sources and look at what the people of the time were saying. So, Dr. Beinberg, thank you very much.