Cooper Union: Why it's Important

Let all who believe that "our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live, understood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now," speak as they spoke, and act as they acted upon it. This is all Republicans ask - all Republicans desire - in relation to slavery. As those fathers marked it, so let it be again marked, as an evil not to be extended, but to be tolerated and protected only because of and so far as its actual presence among us makes that toleration and protection a necessity. Let all the guarantees those fathers gave it, be, not grudgingly, but fully and fairly, maintained.
-Abraham Lincoln, Cooper Union Address 1860

In February of 1860 an attorney from Springfield Illinois, gave a most rousing speech. It was this speech that launched one mans journey toward history. This is a journey so great, so integral to the fingerprint of this nation that its telling has endured to this day, and will continue onward. It is the journey of Abraham Lincoln.

The speech he gave at Cooper Union was the speech that became the "spur in the horse," and kick started the path toward his presidential campaign. He did not declare such a path then. It was the contents of his speech and the adamant tenor in which he gave it, that caused its national reprinting and a call for his eventual nomination as the Republican candidate.

It was a speech of daring, of patriotism and of preservation. Lincoln dared to call forth the practice of slavery "evil." He dared to in turn reference those who practiced it to be associated with such an evil. He dared to halt this evil in refusing to expand slavery to future states. He was patriotic in that his arguments were based on the just interpretation of our fore fathers. His patriotism also lay in his regard for preservation; the preservation of the Union. It is in this speech that Lincoln called to stop the spread of slavery, yet he did not call the end of slavery directly. Why? In an attempt, in a diplomatic sense to preserve the nation. Slavery was a core of the South, and to remove it entirely, Lincoln knew, would result in a civil war.

Fate would have it that the civil war Lincoln sought to prevent would happen anyway. It was the South that would force his hand as President to use force to keep the nation together. Yet, why did Lincoln seek to preserve the nation be it either through his diplomacy via his speech or through means of force? Because he possessed a sense of duty. A duty to what he believed was to do the right and proper thing. The toleration and protection of Slavery in the South, yet at the same time preventing its evil from spreading was in Lincoln's sense of duty, the dirty hands that were required.

Once again Cooper Union comes into the spotlight. Tonight Newt Gingrich will - along with Mario Cuomo - discuss the future paths of our nation. But what is the cause of a debate in such a historic place? America's stability and existence today is endangered once more. The threat of collapse however, does not come from civil war but from dangers without. It is the forces that threaten us from foreign soil and the issues which are catalyst to such threats that are cause for a new debate of preservation.

Unlike the days of old however, the tone of the debate will differ. It is the evils of extremism that have replaced the evils of slavery. These evils however cannot be solely contained like that of slavery. Their spread must be stopped but they must also be stopped in whole. The means to this end have been enacted in part, by means of instilling a want for Democracy in a part of the world devoid of it. The other half lay in fighting extremism through means of force. It is through this the importance of domestic fortitude becomes apparent. The evils of war are just that; evils. Yet they are the dirty hands in which our generation faces. It is however in the knowing that the path to preservation of ourselves and others is the good and righteous thing, that I draw upon Abraham Lincoln's closing statement from his address, upon which he shouted:

"LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT."

-Matthew Brian Keller


Watch the Cooper Union Debate Webcast here 6:30pm - 8:30pm EST>>

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