This 4th of July, I want to highlight Lincoln’s Electric Cord Speech. As we explore this historic address, we will also dive into the issue of presidential immunity and how it contrasts with Lincoln’s vision of patriotism.
Pay careful attention to the end of this speech. Ask yourself how Lincoln describes patriotism? He links patriotism with people who love liberty and believe in the concept of all men being created equal.
Presidential Immunity and Lincoln’s Concept of Patriotism
Lincoln’s Electric Cord Speech emphasizes the principles of equality and freedom, which directly contrasts with the concept of presidential immunity. This raises the question: does presidential immunity undermine the founding ideal of equality before the law?
The very crimes that would lead to many of us getting arrested, will be alright for future presidents based on the recent supreme court ruling. This goes against key ideals of the founding, especially the concept of equality before the law. As you listen to the end of the speech you will see Lincoln is talking of those in his time whose ancestors didn’t fight in the Revolutionary War and whose ancestors were not there for the founding. He describes them as patriots based on their appreciation of or even allegiance to founding ideals. There are individuals in this country today, who have not been here long, who fit Lincoln’s description of patriotism better than some judges and some other top officials. Patriotic people give their allegiance to principles over individuals.
Here is the speech:
“Now, it happens that we meet together once every year, sometime about the 4th of July, for some reason or other. These 4th of July gatherings I suppose have their uses. If you will indulge me, I will state what I suppose to be some of them.
We are now a mighty nation, we are thirty—or about thirty millions of people, and we own and inhabit about one-fifteenth part of the dry land of the whole earth. We run our memory back over the pages of history for about eighty-two years and we discover that we were then a very small people in point of numbers, vastly inferior to what we are now, with a vastly less extent of country,—with vastly less of everything we deem desirable among men,—we look upon the change as exceedingly advantageous to us and to our posterity, and we fix upon something that happened away back, as in some way or other being connected with this rise of prosperity. We find a race of men living in that day whom we claim as our fathers and grandfathers; they were iron men, they fought for the principle that they were contending for; and we understood that by what they then did it has followed that the degree of prosperity that we now enjoy has come to us. We hold this annual celebration to remind ourselves of all the good done in this process of time of how it was done and who did it, and how we are historically connected with it; and we go from these meetings in better humor with ourselves—we feel more attached the one to the other, and more firmly bound to the country we inhabit.
In every way we are better men in the age, and race, and country in which we live for these celebrations. But after we have done all this we have not yet reached the whole. There is something else connected with it. We have besides these men—descended by blood from our ancestors—among us perhaps half our people who are not descendants at all of these men, they are men who have come from Europe—German, Irish, French and Scandinavian—men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things. If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence they find that those old men say that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration, (loud and long continued applause) and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.”
Speech Ends
In Lincoln’s Electric Cord Speech, he describes patriots as those who love freedom and equality under the law. He is indicating that appreciation of the line in the Declaration of Independence, “all men are created equal” is a cord that unites patriotic people everywhere. Be wary of those who claim patriotism means something other than appreciation of America’s founding ideals and a commitment to preserve them. Washington warned us in his farewell address to “guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.” These words are as true today as any other time. Patriotism is about allegiance to the constitution and allegiance to founding enlightenment ideals including; separation of powers, federalism, equality of the law, reason, freedom of speech, press, and religion. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp
Lincoln’s Electric Cord Speech honors the patriotic values of liberty and equality under the law. The idea of presidential immunity goes against these ideals. We would be wise to reflect often on Lincoln’s words.
Leave a Reply