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DRED SCOTT DECISION, CA. DECEMBER 1856
The Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision of March 6, 1857—authorizing the nationalizing of slavery and ruling that blacks could never be American citizens—dominated much of Lincoln’s oratory for the next several years. As this early fragment indicates—it was written at the end of 1856 or, at latest, January 1857—he was developing arguments in opposition even before the Court rendered its decision.
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• Many creative writers have long held that
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politics and prose do not intersect. They believe that a pure writer’s political beliefs have no place in his or her fiction. This belief has long served to leech the life’s blood out of much of American fiction and to marginalize some of our potentially greatest writers. This footnote to modern education is brought to mind when I am faced with the extraordinary prose of our sixteenth president. Abraham Lincoln was, of course, not a novelist. He wrote speeches that moved a nation past its inner contradictions toward an ideal state (a state that we have yet to attain). He stirred the democratic spirit and shook the moral underpinnings of Americans by speaking to them in simple and irrefutable terms that changed the direction of our polity. In his work, which often began with notes and fragments, such as this piece on the Dred Scott decision, he literally re-created a nation out of words: the greatest achievement that any writer can hope for. As I have said, Mr. Lincoln’s speeches were not novels. They weren’t fiction but they were stories still and all. He created, in his speechifying, a possible world that was both potential and dream. He made a world out of Americans’ imaginations and created the possibility for change. As a novelist and storyteller in this world today, I am more affected by this towering historical figure of true literature than by all the classes and strictures of myriad creative writing teachers. Abraham Lincoln teaches us that truth can be held in language and that that truth, properly maintained and cared for, can make the mighty out of the meek and the righteous out of a reprobate nation. What better, what more important story is there to be told? 䉳
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What would be the effect of this, if it should ever be the creed of a dominant party in the nation? Let us analyse, and consider it. that whatever It affirms thatever decision the Supreme Court may decide as to the Constitutional restrictions on the power of a teritorial Legislature, in regard to slavery in the teritory, must be obeyed, and enforced by all the departments of the federal government. constitutional Now, if this is sound, as to this particular question, it is equally sound of all constitutional questions; so that the proposition substantially is “Whatever decision the Supreme Court makes on any constitutional question, must be obeyed, and enforced by all the departments of the federal government.” Again, it is not the full scope of this creed, that if the Supreme Court, having the particular question before them, shall decide that Dred Scott is a slave, the executive department must enforce the decision against Dred Scott. If this were it’s full scope, it is presumed, no one would controvert its correctness. But in this narrow scope, there is no room for the Legislative department to enforce the decision; while the creed affirms that all the departments must enforce it. The creed, then, has a broader scope; and what is it? It is this; that
so soon as the Supreme Court decides that Dred Scott is a slave, the whole community must decide that not only Dred Scott, but that all persons in like condition, are rightfully slaves
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An excerpt from
In Lincoln’s H and: His Original Manusc ripts with Commentary by Distinguished Americans Edited by Harold Holzer and Joshua Wolf Shenk Foreword by James H. Billington Excerpted from In Lincoln’s Hand: His Original Manuscripts with Commentary by Distinguished Americans edited by Harold Holzer and Joshua Wolf Shenk. Foreword by James H. Billington. Copyright © 2008 by Harold Holzer, Joshua Wolf Shenk and James H. Billington. Excerpted by permission of Bantam Dell, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons AttributionNoncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
A free excerpt courtesy of Bantam Dell
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