THE SECOND-GREATEST SPEECH BY THE GREATEST ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ORATOR, the Cooper Union Address, was broadcast earlier today on CSPAN. Well, sort of. They actually re-aired Sam Waterston's May 5 reenactment of the speech. I wanted to go see it then, but that was my last day of Criminal Procedure, and some vague sense of responsibility bound me to stay in New Haven. So it was a great blessing to stumble upon it this afternoon. I love Waterston (now that Briscoe is gone he's the best thing about Law & Order) and I love the Cooper Union Address. Waterston gave a great performance, which though it was not necessarily how I imagine Lincoln was still quite stirring.

What makes Cooper Union such a great speech? Well, there's the methodical, lyrical and thoroughly convincing argument that the Founders supported the idea that there was not "any line dividing local from federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, properly forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in federal territory." (The same First Congress that proposed the Fifth Amendment, on which the Supreme Court relied in Dred Scott, and the Tenth Amendment, on which Stephen Douglas based his arguments, also passed an act to enforce the Northwest Ordinance, which had forbad the extension of slavery into the old Northwest Territory.)

There are other great bits too. There's an almost Chestertonian argument about the role of tradition: " I do not mean to say we are bound to follow implicitly in whatever our fathers did. To do so, would be to discard all the lights of current experience - to reject all progress - all improvement. What I do say is, that if we would supplant the opinions and policy of our fathers in any case, we should do so upon evidence so conclusive, and argument so clear, that even their great authority, fairly considered and weighed, cannot stand."

There's a good explanation of Lincoln's theory of constitutional interpretation, in which the Court is not the sole arbiter of the meaning of the Constitution but rather part of a dialogue that includes the political branches:

Perhaps you will say the Supreme Court has decided the disputed Constitutional question in your favor. Not quite so. But waiving the lawyer's distinction between dictum and decision, the Court have decided the question for you in a sort of way. The Court have substantially said, it is your Constitutional right to take slaves into the federal territories, and to hold them there as property. When I say the decision was made in a sort of way, I mean it was made in a divided Court, by a bare majority of the Judges, and they not quite agreeing with one another in the reasons for making it; that it is so made as that its avowed supporters disagree with one another about its meaning, and that it was mainly based upon a mistaken statement of fact - the statement in the opinion that "the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution."

An inspection of the Constitution will show that the right of property in a slave is not "distinctly and expressly affirmed" in it. Bear in mind, the Judges do not pledge their judicial opinion that such right is impliedly affirmed in the Constitution; but they pledge their veracity that it is "distinctly and expressly" affirmed there - "distinctly," that is, not mingled with anything else - "expressly," that is, in words meaning just that, without the aid of any inference, and susceptible of no other meaning.

If they had only pledged their judicial opinion that such right is affirmed in the instrument by implication, it would be open to others to show that neither the word "slave" nor "slavery" is to be found in the Constitution, nor the word "property" even, in any connection with language alluding to the things slave, or slavery; and that wherever in that instrument the slave is alluded to, he is called a "person;" - and wherever his master's legal right in relation to him is alluded to, it is spoken of as "service or labor which may be due," - as a debt payable in service or labor. Also, it would be open to show, by contemporaneous history, that this mode of alluding to slaves and slavery, instead of speaking of them, was employed on purpose to exclude from the Constitution the idea that there could be property in man.

To show all this, is easy and certain.

When this obvious mistake of the Judges shall be brought to their notice, is it not reasonable to expect that they will withdraw the mistaken statement, and reconsider the conclusion based upon it?

(You'll note I've just discovered how to use the "blockquote" HTML tag. Huzzah!) The best part, and the best zingers, come when Lincoln directly addresses the South, and lays out for his fellow Republicans and Northerners what was at stake in the argument. He says:

Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events.

And:

Will they [the South] be satisfied if the Territories be unconditionally surrendered to them? We know they will not. In all their present complaints against us, the Territories are scarcely mentioned. Invasions and insurrections are the rage now. Will it satisfy them, if, in the future, we have nothing to do with invasions and insurrections? We know it will not. We so know, because we know we never had anything to do with invasions and insurrections; and yet this total abstaining does not exempt us from the charge and the denunciation.

The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: We must not only let them alone, but we must somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them, is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.

These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly - done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated - we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas' new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.

And, in one of my all-time favorite English-language sentences - the one that inspired me to write, so often, to pen long-but-grammatically-correct sentences, such as this one, that drove year after year of English teachers, and later my thesis advisor, into fits:

Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored - contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man - such as a policy of "don't care" on a question about which all true men do care - such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance - such as invocations to Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington said, and undo what Washington did.

A great speech, and a great giving of that speech. One longs for the day when political speeches were buttressed by argument instead of partisan invective or empty sloganeering. (Y'know, Bush has a point when he says "Compassionate Conservatism"; but on the other hand, I really would like to "Let America Be America Again".) Ahh, well: each generation has its demagogues, I suppose. We're not sent men like Lincoln in every age. The best we can hope for, I imagine, is that we get them when we need them.