Liberalism, Republicanism, and Communal Freedom in American Political Thought

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

This panel explores the interconnection between liberalism, republicanism, and ideals of freedom in American political thought. With respect to APSA 2024’s theme “Democracy: Retrenchment, Renovation, Reimagination,” collectively the papers address both past and present threats to American democracy (slavery, the politics of rumor and innuendo), and past and present efforts to renew American democracy’s promise.

Susan McWilliams Barndt’s paper “A Tale of Two Liberalisms: Desegregating American Political Thought” argues that American political thought is defined not by one but by two liberal traditions: Enlightenment, individualist liberalism of the kind central to Louis Hartz’s The Liberal Tradition in America, and what Barnt calls Exodus liberalism, whereby freedom is only collectively achieved and sustained, an understanding of freedom expressed primarily (though not exclusively) in African-American political thought. By appreciating the complex interplay between these two liberal traditions, we can better understand the nature of, and the possibilities for, American liberalism and American Politics.

James Read’s paper “Not Handmaidens but Equal Partners: Majority Rule and Natural Rights in Lincoln’s Political Thought” examines the interplay between Lincoln’s commitments to both the individual natural rights promised in the Declaration of Independence (“all men are created equal”) and to perpetuating communal self-government, grounded in the practice of majority rule (“government of the people, by the people, for the people”). Lincoln recognized that majorities could act unjustly; thus natural rights serve as moral compass for government based on majority rule. But he also recognized that the guidance provided by natural rights was often unclear, and sometimes contradictory on critically important points – like Thomas Jefferson’s “wolf by the ears” dilemma, whereby the enslaved person’s natural right to liberty conflicted with the slave owner’s natural right to self-preservation. Lincoln depended upon the practice of deliberate, constitutionally-channeled majority rule to adjudicate cases where the philosophy of natural rights provided unclear or contradictory guidance. Thus for Lincoln, majority rule was not merely the handmaiden of natural rights but an equal partner, with a distinct, complementary mission.


Robinson Woodward-Burns paper, “Lincoln, Douglass, Fugitive Slave Law, and Constitutional Evil” argues that constitutions, framed through compromise, bind subjects to compromised, unjust provisions. The problem of constitutional evil, per Mark Graber, arises when subjects are asked to obey unjust practices not clearly authorized by constitutional text or history. The 1850 Fugitive Slave Act presents such a problem. The Fugitive Slave Clause, drafted through bisectional compromise, endorsed the return of fugitive slaves, a moral evil. But the Clause did not clearly authorize the 1850 Act’s enforcement provisions, at least according to antislavery thinkers. Chief among these thinkers were Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, the latter a former fugitive from slavery. Lincoln and Douglass disagreed on whether the Clause and 1850 Act bound Northern citizens and officeholders. Douglass’ skeptical reading of the Clause and broad reading of natural law authorized citizen resistance to the 1850 Act. Lincoln held lawmakers were oath-bound to the Clause and to slaveholder’s unjust but constitutional right to recapture fugitives under the 1850 Act, at least until the Civil War. Both saw that the framers intended the Clause authorize recapture, but Douglass as an orator hewed to the natural law against the 1850 Act and Lincoln as a representative hewed to the positive law under the 1850 Act. This article considers Douglass and the Lincoln on the 1850 Act, taking them as “representative men,” per Emerson’s term, who confronted the fundamental constitutional problem of the 1850s.


David Siemers’s “Calumny! The Politics of Rumor, Innuendo, and Allegations of Crime” takes as its theme the threat posed to republican self-government by public accusations of criminal behavior of a kind that are designed, not to be adjudicated in a court of law, but to discredit opponents politically and to erode trust in the political and legal system as a whole. Niccolo Machiavelli, in his Discourses on Livy, described calumny as a grave danger to republics, because no institutional process exists to impartially evaluate the truth or falseness of the charges. Calumnies stoke suspicions, not only against individuals, but also against the republic’s institutions as a whole. Though the word “calumny” is today hardly on the radar screen of anyone except scholars of Machiavelli’s political thought, David’s paper will argue that the political phenomenon to which “calumny” refers is of enormous contemporary importance, it has become increasingly widespread, and it poses significant risks to the stability of our democracy.

Sub Unit

• Division 56: American Political Thought

Individual Presentations

• A Tale of Two Liberalisms: Desegregating American Political Thought - Susan McWilliams, Pomona College

• Majority Rule and Natural Rights in Lincoln’s Political Thought - James H. Read, St. John's University/ College of Saint Benedict

• Lincoln, Douglass, Fugitive Slave Law, and Constitutional Evil - Robinson Woodward-Burns, Howard University

• Calumny! The Politics of Rumor, Innuendo, and Allegations of Crime - David Siemers, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh

Chair

• James H. Read St. John's University/ College of Saint Benedict

Discussants

• Michelle Schwarze University of Wisconsin, Madison

• Luke Mayville Boise State University