Comparing the Views of Plato and Abraham Lincoln on the Civil War

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Comparing the Views of Plato and Abraham Lincoln on the Civil War

Lincoln believed that a system of government divided among itself was doomed for collapse; "a house divided cannot stand." This philosophy earliest roots are evident in Plato's masterpiece, The Republic. Socrates states that perfection, which he refers to as justice, in a governed body is harmony among all classes of people-"The rebellious part is by nature the whole of vice."1 In order for the United States to survive as a nation, the government had to remain Federal. The southern establishment had to be brought back into the Union, or it had to be destroyed.2Although Socrates would agree with Lincoln's motives for preserving the Union, he would not believe his means to do so were just.

Lincoln believed that the existing Federal government was the unity that would hold the nation together through trials yet unseen. "Isn't to produce justice [perfection] to establish?a natural relation of control, one by the other?"3 Southern statesmen would surely have disagreed with Plato on this point, stating that justice is upholding the rights of individual states, which to them represented the individual person. The growing power of a centralized government threatened thier concept of idividual freedoms. This argument may have had some validity to an America just emerging from revolution against a tyrannical government. The truth of the matter was however, that the United States Federal Government, analogous to Socrates' guardian class, had the sole purpose of providing welfare and security to all citizens regardless of geographic location. Plato said, "the action that destroys?harmony is unjust, the belief that oversees it [is] ignorance."4 The southern grievance wa...

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...n: Houghton Mifflin, 1998.

Grimsley, Mark. Gestures of Mercy, Pillars of Fire, in Major Problems in the Civil War and Reconsrtuction, 2nd ed., edited by Michael Perman. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998.

Lincoln, Abraham. "Lincoln Explains His 'Paramount Object' of Saving the Union, August 1862," in Major Problems in the Civil War and Reconsrtuction, 2nd ed., edited by Michael Perman. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998.

Plato, The Republic. In Classics of Moral and Political Theory, 2nd ed., edited by Michael L. Morgan. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1996.

Sherman, William. "General William T. Sherman Explains How the War Has Changed, September 1864," in Major Problems in the Civil War and Reconsrtuction, 2nd ed., edited by Michael Perman. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998.

The Civil War. Produced and Directed by Ken Burns. 13hr. 30min. KET, 1990. Broadcast.

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