Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, Part Two: Democracy, Perfectionism and Degradation

In the antebellum South, democracy was racialized; as the vote was extened to every white man, it was granted in return for the political support of forced labor slavery. In part two of our six part episode on Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, we review this process, and the social context in which Lincoln made his emancipation decision. We probe attitudes towards democracy, the religious concept of perfectionism, and the idea of social degradation, especially in the context of slavery. We ask the question: How could so many people support an economic institution that was leading to dehumanization and social decline?

Part 2: Democracy, Perfectionism and Degradation

Audio Clips:

• Barack Obama, Speech on the Constitution, March 8, 2008: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWe7wTVbLUU

Music Clips:

• "We're Coming Father Abraam" (date unknown): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rS5fDOiQJA0
• "Tyler and Tippecanoe (1842), Sing Along with Millard Fillmore (1964): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XngBpgpAeQY
• "Draw Me Nearer," Rittersville Sunday School (1890?): https://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/search.php?nq=1&query_type=call_number&query=cylinder13081
• "Roll Jordan Roll," Fisk Jubilee Singers (1927): https://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/detail.php?query_type=mms_id&query=990025338180203776&r=2&of=2

Bibliography

• Merle Curti, The Growth of American Thought (Harper, 1951)
• Marvin Meyers, The Jacksonian Persuasion (Vintage, 1957)
• Alan Taylor, The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832 (Norton, 2013)
• Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People (1973; Yale, 2004)
• Vernon Louis Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought: Volume 2 - The Romantic Revolution in America, 1800-1860 (1927; University of Oklahoma,1987)
• Joshua Rothman, Flush Times and Fever Dreams: A Story of Capitalism and Slavery in Jacksonian America (University of Georgia, 2012)
• Richard Blackett, Building an Antislavery Wall: Black Americans in the Atlantic Abolitionist Movement, 1830-1860 (Louisiana State University Press, 1983)
• Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition and the Men who Made it (Vintage, 1973)
• Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Freedom, 1822-1832 (Harper, 1981)
• Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Democracy, 1822-1845 (Harper, 1984)