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more than that: how could Lincoln end the war without freeing the slaves?
It would be terrible." I knew what he meant. It is simply wrong, that prin–
ciple of "You work-I'll eat." Still, slavery is not the only wrong, nor is
equality the only thing that's right. There is Law, and Lincoln broke it.
My students began the course with a na'ive admiration of Lincoln, an
admiration shared, it seems, by more of their countrymen every day; but
this admiration coexisted with ignorance of most of Lincoln's political
views and choices. One might expect that, on discovering Lincoln broke
the law, contemporary Lincoln fans would respond with world-weary
sighs: "Ah! What president doesn't break the law?" After all, democ–
racy's memory for political details runs very short, and for the last ten
years all of us have been told by the political cognoscenti that breaking
the law is no big deal, that "everybody does it," especially presidents.
Indeed, one might even expect that, compared to Clinton's, Lincoln's
infractions would strike most people, including college freshmen, as
minor. How can hesitant abrogation of the Constitution in order to save
the Union measure up to wholesale indifference to law-and even to the
meaning of "is"-in pursuit of petty, private vices?
Yet the young men and women who composed my class did not sigh or
sniff at Lincoln's actions. They could not. They-like many of their fellow
Americans-had already put their trust in Lincoln as a man who, as they
saw it, had died to make men free. They, unlike most of their countrymen,
had also come to admire Lincoln's deep love for the Constitution and the
laws, and his earnest, life-long effort to preserve them. And they had grown
to relish his ability to embody noble thoughts in noble words, words that
moved their own souls, too. When they saw that Lincoln's love of freedom
and equality, the principles of the American regime, conflicted with his love
of the laws of that regime-when they saw him with heavy heart and much
misgiving sacrifice the latter for the former-they did not fall into cynicism
or indifference. Rather, they learned from Lincoln a lesson appropriate to
our current crisis and those to come: that there is much that is very good
in America, and much good that America has to offer to "all men, in all
lands everywhere"-but that even when a man seeks to do as much good
and as little harm as possible, he may still do much harm nonetheless, Cer–
tainly I could not have taught them this on my own. While I am pretty
good with grammar and rhetoric, I could never rival Lincoln on tragedy
and nobility. Lincoln is one of the indispensable teachers for our time; he
reminds us what we are fighting for and the worthiness-and difficulty–
of such a fight. And so, as was only fitting and proper, even in my rather
pedantic course, teaching Lincoln somehow became Lincoln teaching.
