People love to talk about the crisis facing America today, but few take a moment to consider all of the terrible challenges that the nation has faced. Millions of Americans can remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, stagflation, the crime waves of 1970s and 1980s, and any number of other disasters. So while the rule of law is certainly on shaky footing right now, there is always reason to hope in the continuation of the American experiment.
This was Abraham Lincoln’s conclusion when he surveyed a similarly depressing scene in 1838. Much like today, Americans in Lincoln’s time were worried about a breakdown in social order. As he said in a powerful speech to young men in Springfield, Illinois:
There is, even now, something of ill-omen, amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions, in lieu of the sober judgment of Courts; and the worse than savage mobs, for the executive ministers of justice.
Lincoln’s words could be easily applied to many of the mob movements that have swept across America in the last four years. And as he argued, mob violence is a clear sign that the rule of law is fading. He thought these crimes, if left unchecked, would lead to general disregard for the government and, eventually, to chaos.
With hindsight, we know that Lincoln’s vision was spot-on. The mob violence of the 1830s eroded the authority of government, and soon after came the bloodiest war in American history. But if Lincoln’s diagnosis was correct, then what was his cure?
Lincoln thought that the only way that America’s institutions could survive is if the people developed a profound “reverence” for the law. Reverence isn’t a word that he used lightly. In fact, he spoke candidly of the need to create a “political religion” in America.
Lincoln saw that America was different than the monarchies of Europe. In Europe, the people were bound together by shared languages and cultures. Their loyalty was claimed by a human being, the king, who symbolized the unity of the people. All these bonds kept the countries of the old world from falling apart.
Americans, many of whom had emigrated from different European kingdoms, had none of those unifying traits to tie them together. What they did have was the American Revolution—but by 1838, those events were turning from memory to history. That’s why Lincoln was so intent on finding something that could possibly hold the nation together when the shared experience of the war for independence was lost.
Lincoln’s “political religion” was as simple and straightforward as it could be. As he put it:
Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap—let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs;—let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars.
It’s not clear how confident Lincoln was that his secular religion would prove powerful enough to hold the country together. As he said, “Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence.”
Other countries can rely on custom, on loyalty, on habit, but America is exceptional. It has nothing more than cold reason holding it together. In Lincoln’s day, that wasn’t enough to prevent war. As for today? That is up to us.
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