Men of ambition and talent can no longer make their name by building the nation

Heather Cox Richardson has a good post on Abraham Lincoln’s 1838 “Lyceum Speech.” At that time, Lincoln argued that the nation’s success contained the seeds of its destruction:

He warned that the very success of the American republic threatened its continuation. “[M]en of ambition and talents” could no longer make their name by building the nation—that glory had already been won. Their ambition could not be served simply by preserving what those before them had created, so they would achieve distinction through destruction.

For such a man, Lincoln said, “Distinction will be his paramount object, and although he would as willingly, perhaps more so, acquire it by doing good as harm; yet, that opportunity being past, and nothing left to be done in the way of building up, he would set boldly to the task of pulling down.” With no dangerous foreign power to turn people’s passions against, people would turn from the project of “establishing and maintaining civil and religious liberty” and would instead turn against each other.

To preserve the nation, we needed to make reverence for the laws and our institutions the political religion of the nation. “As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and Laws, let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor…. Let reverence for the laws…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.”

I’m reminded, as I so often am, of the quote from “a Man for All Seasons” concerning respect for the law:

We need to protect and preserve our institutions.