try obedience
to Constitution, laws
don’t you think that’d work?
On February 23, 1861, Abraham Lincoln arrived in Washington, DC for his March 4th Inaugural as President of the United States.
Meeting in Washington at the same was the Peace Conference of 1861, which according to Wikipedia, was a meeting of 131 leading American politicians in February 1861, at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., on the eve of the American Civil War. The conference’s purpose was to avoid, if possible, the secession of the eight slave states from the upper and border South that had not done so as of that date. The seven states that had already seceded did not attend.
An invitation was passed along by the Conference to meet with Mr. Lincoln and he replied that he would receive members at 9:00 p.m.
Mr. Lucius E. Chittenden, a Vermont delegate to the Conference, later wrote of that meeting:
There was only one occurrence which threatened to disturb the harmony and good humor of the reception. In reply to a complimentary remark by Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Rives had said that, although he had retired from public life, he could not decline the request of the Governor of Virginia that he should unite in this effort to save the Union. ” But,” he continued, ” the clouds that hang over it are very dark. I have no longer the courage of my younger days. I can do little — you can do much. Everything now depends upon you.”
“I cannot agree to that,” replied Mr. Lincoln. “My course is as plain as a turnpike road. It is marked out by the Constitution. I am in no doubt which way to go. Suppose now we all stop discussing and try the experiment of obedience to the Constitution and the laws. Don’t you think it would work?”
Here today on the 4th of July, 2025, 250 years after Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill and George Washington being appointed to the command of the Continental Army, we seem to have lost our way.
I found that difficult to understand as I feel that our course is as plain as a turnpike road.
It is marked out by the Constitution.
I am in no doubt which way to go.
Suppose now we all stop discussing and try the experiment of obedience to the Constitution and the laws.
As Mr. Lincoln asked, Don’t you think it would work?
Sadly, as Bruce Catton wrote, Lincoln’s path might indeed be clear—to him, at least, if not to all of his fellow countrymen—but a general appeal for obedience to the Constitution meant nothing at all, because the Constitution meant such different things to different men.
Maybe at one time, this might have been seen as part of the beauty if not majesty of the Constitution of the United States.
Not something used, as it was in 1861, to wreck it.
No Haiku For You 