Journalists and historians have now grown fond of asking if the American Founders anticipated the rise of someone like Donald Trump. The ratification debates over the federal constitution in 1787-88 certainly contained warnings about demagogues and the dangers of consolidated executive power.
But one of the most perceptive and prescient treatments of the Trump/MAGA phenomenon was penned decades later by a young Abraham Lincoln. The rail-splitter’s Lyceum Address delivered in Springfield, Illinois in 1838 sheds considerable light on our current political predicament. The promising Whig state legislator did not forecast the political rise of an unscrupulous New York real estate developer, but he did describe with considerable insight the circumstances and attitudes that could set the stage for the appearance of such a figure.
The immediate historical context for Lincoln’s remarks was the murder of Abolitionist editor, Elijah Lovejoy, by a violent mob in Alton, Illinois. Disturbing by itself, Lincoln believed that the horrific incident reflected a more general lawlessness that had dire political consequences. The gradual passing of the Revolutionary generation in his day contributed to Lincoln’s worries about mob violence and anarchic forces. That heroic generation had served as a powerful leaven in the American lump. Lincoln held that the central “proposition” of the American Revolution had been the capability of the American people to govern themselves. Such self-government would be impossible, however, without respect for constitutional guardrails, due process, and the rule of law.
Instead, Lincoln saw many of his contemporaries—the post-Revolutionary generation—indulging their passions. The institutional and cultural props that had been constructed by the founding generation were now “decayed and crumbl[ing] away,” he lamented. The Revolutionary leaders had been ambitious men but theirs was a lofty, principled ambition that sought primarily to construct a stable constitutional order.
Lincoln now foresaw a new generation of leaders who would “thirst and burn for distinction” but who lacked the noble values of the Founders. Using an agricultural metaphor, Lincoln described these emergent leaders as seeking to plow a “new field.” Would such men “maintain an edifice that has been erected by others?” Lincoln’s sobering answer was “most certainly” not. The old, virtuous approach would not satisfy a new Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, or Napoleon. Instead, such a leader will “set boldly to the task of tearing down.”
Just as Never-Trumpers are today accused of “Trump derangement syndrome,” Lincoln was also suspected of exaggerating the threat. He replied: “I hope I am over wary; but if I am not, there is, even now, something of ill-omen, amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions, in lieu of the sober judgment of Courts.”
Lincoln’s description of ruthless leaders in his address closely resembles most portraits of Trump and his MAGA supporters. Trump’s response to losing the 2020 election and, more recently, the manic first weeks of his second term in office readily spring to mind. When it became clear that he had narrowly lost to Joe Biden in the fall of 2020, Trump fabricated far-fetched claims of a stolen election, claims that on January 6, 2021, became more than simply rhetorical. Although his legal challenges to the voting returns failed consistently in the courts, he encouraged a lawless mob to march on the Capitol and disrupt the constitutional process. Chants of “Hang Mike Pence!” recall the sort of lynch-law that Lincoln decried in his address. On that fateful day, what Lincoln had termed the “mobocratic spirit” nearly prevailed.
In the immediate wake of the violent assault, the Senate’s Republican majority had the opportunity to adhere to Lincoln’s principles, hold Trump accountable and prevent him from returning to power. Instead, the party of Lincoln mostly folded. Citing the criminal legal process as an appropriate alternative avenue, Republican leaders such as Sen. Mitch McConnell chose not to vote to convict the impeached president. Subsequently, a glacial-paced legal process and an unusually expansive interpretation of presidential immunity concocted by a sympathetic Supreme Court majority helped clear the way for Trump’s return.Â
In these early days of Trump’s second term, one recognizes the catastrophic consequences of unpunished lawlessness. Again, in his Lyceum Address, Lincoln observed that when “perpetrators of such [lawless] acts go unpunished, the lawless in spirit are encouraged to become lawless in practice.” As Lincoln concluded, “with [such] impunity; depend on it, this Government cannot last.”Â
Thus far, Lincoln’s party shows few signs of repudiating the big lie of a “fixed” 2020 election or opposing his blanket pardons of violent seditionists. The ultimate test will come if President Trump should decide to disobey a federal court order. If that should happen, we cannot claim that our sixteenth president hadn’t warned us.
Gillis J. Harp is the author most recently, of Protestants and American Conservatism: A Short History (Oxford University Press, 2019).