"We Are Creatures of Matter Who Long to Matter": Goldstein's Mattering Map

                                                                    The Mattering Map

"The Areas of the Continents and Regions Are Determined by Estimations of the Comparative Percentage of Inhabitants" (Goldstein 2026:xiii).  SBNR on the Transcenders continent stands for "spiritual but not religious."  You can click on the image to enlarge it. 

In her new book, The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein thinks through the central paradox of the human condition, which she expresses by saying: "We are creatures of matter who long to matter."  

We are material beings governed by physical laws of nature that are indifferent to our existence--impersonal natural laws that do not care about or for us.  And yet we are obsessed with the significance or meaning of our lives as something more than mere matter that is destined by the laws of nature to disappear in death.  We want to matter in the sense that we are deserving of attention and truly deserving of all the attention that we must give to ourselves to pursue our lives.  We long to prove that we subjectively feel that we matter because we objectively do.

We have to feel that we matter if we are to feel our lives worth living.  Goldstein observes:

We don't want to live if we become convinced that we don't, can't, will never truly matter.  The paradigmatic words of the suicidally depressed are "I don't matter."  It's no accident that the URL for the US Hotline for Suicide Prevention is https://youmatter.suicidepreventionlifeline.org (2).

I have not been able to find this website.  But I have found a suicide prevention organization named "You Matter" at https://www.youmatterawareness.org. 

Previously, I have written about Goldstein's book, 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction.  In that book, she suggests that the deepest emotional attitude supporting religion is the feeling that my life has no meaning or purpose if I am not a creature of God who loves me and cares for me and will give me eternal life. I cannot bear the thought that my appearance in this universe was an accident, the product of cosmic causes that have no special purpose in mind, and that when I die, the world will go on without me. How can my life matter--really matter--if it's not all about ME? This is the thought that moves existentialist Christians who say that Darwinian science cannot explain everything if it cannot give cosmic meaning to the life of human beings as unique persons who don't want to die.

But as Goldstein indicates, this shows the Fallacy of Wishful Thinking. Wishing for something doesn't make it so, even when the wish expresses an anguished human longing. If there's no good reason to believe that it's all about ME, then my wish that it should be so is unwarranted narcissism. If I undergo an existential crisis as I seek the cosmic reason for my personal existence--why am I here? what am I here for?--there may be no reason, because it might be that my personal existence is ultimately just a contingency of the universe.

And yet, even as Goldstein reaches this conclusion, she gives her reader a novel that suggests that most human beings will never accept this, and so they will turn from reason to religion. Even those few who understand most fully the fallaciousness of the transcendent longings of human beings might feel compelled to yield to those longings by an emotional necessity that overpowers rational necessity.

FOUR CONTINENTS ON THE MATTERING MAP

In her new book, Goldstein identifies these people who rely on religious belief to demonstrate that their lives really matter as "transcenders."  But if you look at Goldstein's Mattering Map, you'll see that transcenders are one of four continents that represent the four kinds of "mattering projects."  These are four ways of answering the question--Do I matter?  The transcenders say, I matter because I matter to the spiritual presence that is the transcendent ground of the universe.  The socializers say, I matter because I matter to others.  The heroic strivers say, I matter because I can achieve a standard of excellence in my chosen area of striving.  The competitors say, I matter because I matter more than others.

Each of those four continents is divided into regions that represent subgroups within each category.  The different kinds of transcenders correspond to different religious movements, such as Christians, Muslims, and Hindus.  The socializers differ in the people they identify as the others to whom they matter: so, for example, some socializers want to matter to their friends and lovers, while others want to be famous and thus matter to many people who are not known to them.  Heroic strivers differ in their chosen areas of achievement--intellectual, artistic, athletic, and ethical.  Finally, competitors differ as to whether they compete as individuals against other individuals or as members of a social group against other groups. 

Notice that most of the transcenders continent is covered by the "Axial Age" religions identified by Karl Jaspers--the major religious traditions that originated in roughly the same period, from 800 to 200 BCE (202-206).  The "folk/traditional" category would include shamanism, the original evolutionary seed of all religious experience.

Goldstein claims that since the Axial Age, for "much of our history," almost all human beings have been transcenders.  The ancient Greek philosophers (Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle) introduced a "secular approach" to mattering, which was lost during the Middle Ages, but then renewed by modern secular philosophers such as Spinoza and Locke (204-205).

Notice that the dimensions of the four continents suggest that about one-third of human beings today are transcenders, while two-thirds are not.  And of those that are not transcenders, about half are socializers, who think they matter because they matter to others.

FOUR PEOPLE WHO MATTER

Goldstein fills in her Mattering Map with narratives of the lives of people who represent the different kinds of mattering projects.  So, for instance, the mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal is an example of a transcender.  For a long time, he worried about the insignificance of his life in the cosmos: "When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space that I occupy, and even that which I see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I know nothing and which know nothing of me, I am terrified."  But then, in one night, he had a mystical experience of being in the presence of God and Jesus Christ.  He wrote down some notes about his experience on a scrap of paper, in which he concluded: "Let me never be separated from Him.  He is only kept securely by the ways taught in the Gospel: Renunciation, total and sweet.  Complete submission to Jesus Christ and to my director.  Eternally in joy for a day's exercise on earth.  May I not forget your words.  Amen" (200-201).  From that moment, he knew that his life mattered because he mattered to God--the divine creator of the infinite immensity of spaces that had previously terrified him.

Angela Rubino is an example of a socializer who found the purpose of her life when she became a cult follower in Trump's Make America Great Again movement in 2020.  She lives in Rome, Georgia, in the congressional district represented by Majorie Taylor Greene.  Before 2020, she had never felt that she mattered as a citizen.  But then she became captivated by Donald Trump because he seemed to be speaking for her.  She became one of the leading political activists for the MAGA movement in Georgia.  She was determined to find evidence that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump through fraudulent vote counting.  She was sure that the county election board in Rome had destroyed many of the ballots cast for Trump.  So one night, she jumped into the dumpster outside the election board office.  She found two plastic bags crammed with paper shavings.  She took the bags back to her home where she tried to put the strips of paper together like a jigsaw puzzle that would show voting ballots for Trump that had been shredded.

She said that her being part of the MAGA movement made her feel "recognized and even important" for the first time in her life.  She had found her purpose.  She said that her wondering about the purpose of her life began when she was eight years old, sitting in the back seat of her mother's car on the way to a religion class.

The thought just came into my head.  I was thinking, "What are we doing this for?  What are we doing any of this for if we're just going to die?  You die, and it's over.  So, what's the point?"  I felt afraid.  Afraid to the point of not wanting to think about that anymore.

Speaking to a journalist with the Washington Post, she confessed:

Sometimes I'm like, what if I'm wrong?  It crosses my mind.  Then I ask God: If I'm doing something wrong, please give me the strength to figure it out.  Because I really want to understand what the point is.  This can't be what life is, that you get up and go to work and come home.  That as humans, we're nothing (19-20).

Goldstein quotes this as showing the most melancholic thing about the longing to matter--we can never be sure that we have chosen the right way to make our lives matter.  But even if we can't conclusively know that we matter, we must somehow appease the longing to matter--perhaps by becoming a political cult follower--if we are to get on with our lives. 

William James is an example of a heroic striver whose striving was for intellectual achievement in philosophy and psychology.  But for many years as a young man, James could not identify the project that would make his life worth living, and consequently, he fell into long periods of persistent depression.  He suffered such a disgust for life that he would lie in bed for days contemplating suicide.  In 1860, at the age of 18, he became interested in art, and he spent a year studying with the prominent artist William Morris Hunt.  But he decided art was not his calling, declaring, "Nothing is more contemptible than a mediocre artist."  In 1861, at age 19, he entered Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard.  But after three years there, without getting a degree, he switched over to the Harvard Medical School in 1864, at age 22.  He received his medical degree in 1869, at the age of 27.  But he never practiced medicine.  And shortly after leaving the Medical School, he fell back into a severe depression, in which he felt a "horrible fear of existence" (127-132).

Finally, in 1872, at age 30, he began to teach at Harvard, first teaching comparative anatomy and physiology, and later teaching psychology and philosophy.  At that point, it seemed that he had found his life's calling, although he continued to endure occasional bouts of depression.  The publication of his book, The Principles of Psychology, in 1890 made James the founder of American psychology.  The publication of his book, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, in 1902 made him the first evolutionary psychologist of religion.  The publication of his book, Pragmatism, in 1907 made him one of the founders (along with Charles Sanders Peirce) of the pragmatist tradition of philosophy.  

These intellectual achievements arose from his conviction that he could decide what matters in life, and in that decision he could make his own life matter.  As he once said, he could "believe in my individual reality and creative power."  Or, as he said in his lecture entitled "Is Life Worth Living?": "Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact."

                                   Frank Meeink Tells His Story--From Neo-Nazi to Faithful Jew

Frank Meeink is an example of a group competitor who thought that his life mattered because he belonged to a neo-Nazi group of white supremacists who mattered more than the targeted groups--particularly, Blacks and Jews--whom he hated.  He grew up in the brutal neighborhoods of South Philadelphia, where he faced daily violence not only on the streets but in his home, where his stepfather regularly beat him and called him a retard.

Then, at age 14, spending a summer with relatives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, he came under the influence of a cousin who was a neo-Nazi skinhead, who persuaded him to join a white supremacist group.  Later, he explained:

They knew what to do and say to snag the interest of a fourteen-year-old half-Irish, half-Italian kid from Philly whose real dad was an addict, whose stepdad was an asshole, whose mom was indifferent, whose school was a war zone, and whose only real desire was never to feel like a fucking victim again: they gave a shit about me.  The Lancaster County white supremacists talked to me like they cared about what I thought and what I could become.  Then they told me I had a destiny.  They told me I could become a warrior.  They told me all I had to do was look in the mirror and see the truth: I was white and that was all that mattered. . . . For the first time in my life, I felt like I mattered (261).

By the end of the summer, he had earned the red shoelaces in his combat boots by having shed blood.  When he returned to Philadelphia, he organized his own neo-Nazi group, and he became a charismatic leader.  But at one point, he had so many warrants out on him that he was sure he would be soon arrested.  So he left Philadelphia, and eventually ended up in Springfield, Illinois, where he organized a skinhead group.  

But then, at age 17, when he was convicted of kidnapping and torturing another teenager, he was incarcerated for three years.  In jail, he became friends with two Black inmates.  When he was released, he found that he could no longer hate Blacks.

Out of prison, he was looking for jobs, but someone with his record had dismal prospects for employment.  He was so desperate that he took a job with a Jewish antique dealer in New Jersey who needed someone to move his heavy merchandise.  But when it came time to be paid, the boss was not around.  Frank assumed that the Jew was going to jew him out of his pay--because he had heard people talking about jewing as what you should expect from a Jew.  But instead, his boss paid him a little extra for his good work and offered him a full-time job.  Now Frank could no longer believe the stereotypes about Jews.

One day, Frank accidently broke a piece of valuable furniture.  He apologized for being so "stupid."  But his boss became angry that he so often called himself stupid.  He told Frank: "Listen hard to what I'm saying.  Smart people can fake being dumb, but dumb people can't fake being smart.  You are just smart.  Get used to it."

Those words had a powerful effect.  When Frank quotes these words today, he tears up.  That was the beginning of his transformation.  He explains: "When people started to talk to me like I was a fellow human, it changed everything.  We have to start talking.  It's human beings being human beings among human beings."

He became a cofounder of "Love After Hate," an organization that helps to rehabilitate people who have been members of hate groups.  An avid hockey fan and player, he organized "Harmony Through Hockey," associated with the Philadelphia Flyers, to teach kids from disadvantaged backgrounds, from different racial groups, to play together on a team.  He has also lectured widely about his life.  And he has testified before the U.S. Congress about the threats coming from white supremacist groups--particularly, the police brutality that comes from neo-Nazis who have joined police departments.  

So at that point, Frank's self-mattering came from his moral activism against racist hate groups.  He had changed his location on Goldstein's Mattering Map--moving from being a group competitor to being an ethical heroic striver.

But then another change in his sense of how his life matters came when he discovered that he was Jewish!  He talked with a rabbi who told him that Meeink was clearly an Ashkenazi Jewish name, and that Frank also looked Jewish.  Frank then discovered that his mother's maternal great-grandmother had been Jewish.  Since Jewish identity is matrilineal by Jewish law, this lineage makes Frank Jewish.

Now, after years of studying Judaism under the instruction of rabbis, Frank has become an observant Jew.  He frequently invokes Ha-Shem, which is a Hebrew word which means the Name.  This is the way observant Jews refer to God to avoid violating the divine commandment against taking God's name in vain.

Now, as Frank goes through his day, he reminds himself to STAY--"stop thinking about yourself"--and instead think about serving Ha-Shem and praying to him at least an hour and a half every day to ask for his guidance.

He has changed his position on the Mattering Map again--he is not just an ethical heroic striver but also a Jewish transcender.

DONALD TRUMP AND ABRAHAM LINCOLN ON THE MATTERING MAP 

                               Planned Kim Il Trump Statue at the Trump Presidential Library

Donald Trump is an example of an individualist competitor who thinks that his life matters only if he matters more than anyone else.  That's why he becomes so angry when someone disagrees with him, challenges him, or just doesn't profess to love him as much as he loves himself.  That's why he must hate every person who stands up to him or who does not bow down to him.  That's why he can never have any friends because friends respect one another as equals.

When Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer of The Atlantic interviewed Trump a year ago, they asked him if his second term felt different from his first.  He said it did.  "The first time, I had two things to do--run the country and survive--I had all these crooked guys.  And the second time, I run the country and the world."  A few days ago, Parker and Scherer reported that a Trump confidant had told them: "He's been talking recently about how he is the most powerful person to ever live."

Previously, I have written about Trump's grandiose narcissism and the belief of his followers that he has been chosen by God.

For Trump, his life matters because he thinks he's the most powerful person to ever live--because he thinks he runs the country and the world--and therefore he matters more than any other human being who has ever lived.

Trump often compares himself with Abraham Lincoln.  But while Lincoln was politically ambitious, his ambition was different from Trump's.  Although Goldstein never mentions Lincoln, he is a good example of a political fame-seeking socializer whose noble ambition makes Trump's juvenile craving for attention look petty by contrast. 

I have written about Lincoln's ambition and his suicidal depression when he thought that his ambitious strivings might never be fulfilled.  For example, at age 32, Lincoln was plunged into one of his deepest bouts of melancholic misery while serving as an Illinois state legislator.  He withdrew into his room in Springfield and stopped attending sessions of the Legislature.  He considered committing suicide, and his friends removed all sharp instruments from his room.  He spoke with his best friend--Joshua Speed--who later reported the conversation to William Herndon:

In the deepest of his depression, he said one day he had done nothing to make any human being remember that he had lived; and that to connect his name with the events transpiring in his day and generation, and so impress himself upon them as to link his name with something that would redound to the interest of his fellow-men, was what he desired to live for.

22 years later, shortly after Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, he reminded Speed of this earlier conversation about his ambition for doing something great so that he would be remembered forever, and he told Speed: "I believe that in this measure, my fondest hopes will be realized."

Lincoln thought his life would matter if he could link his name to the vindication of the American principle of equal liberty by the emancipation of slaves.  Trump thinks his life matters if he can exercise such absolute power over the world that everyone will be forced to pay attention to him.

THE MATTERING OF TRANSCENDERS IS SPECIAL

Goldstein does not rank any of the different kinds of mattering projects as better than the others.  And she warns against the mistake of universalizing one's own mattering project by moving from "this is what most matters to me, if I'm to matter" to "this is what ought to matter to everyone, if they're to matter."  

She does say, however, that the transcenders are special in that "there is no greater sense of mattering than that experienced by transcenders" (193).  She explains:

To be a transcender is to believe that your personal existence has a role to play in the narrative of eternity.  You would not be at all unless you had a role to play in the drama of all of existence.  There is no greater mattering that you can conceive for yourself, short of imagining that you are yourself a transcendent being existing on an exalted plane beyond other mortals--in other words, short of lunacy.  Compared to transcendent mattering, any other sense of mattering limps far behind, which again explains why psychologists keep producing data showing that the religious and spiritual report comparatively higher levels of life satisfaction (197).

What I see here is a suggestion of Goldstein's envy of the transcenders for having a greater sense of mattering than she does.  Or perhaps it's a regret that she lost the transcenders' sense of mattering when she lost her ultra-Orthodox Jewish faith at age fourteen.  As she reports in her book on Spinoza, Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity, she attended an ultra-Orthodox all-girls high school, where her favorite teacher--Mrs. Schoenfeld--warned the girls that they must never read Spinoza because he was a Jew who became an atheist.  But then as Mrs. Schoenfeld described his atheistic philosophizing and how the Jewish community in Amsterdam had excommunicated him as a heretic, Goldstein felt an attraction to him: "The thought occurred to me that he must have been a lovable man.  I sat in Mrs. Schoenfeld's class, and I felt that I loved him" (47).

Goldstein became a professional philosopher whose sense of mattering comes from her being an intellectual heroic striver who finds her life's purpose in achieving intellectual excellence.  But she still feels some faint longing for that most intense sense of mattering that she once had as an ultra-Orthodox high school girl.

She hinted this in one of her conversations with Frank Meeink:

Frank asked me once about my own Jewish faith and observance.  We were in an Uber returning from the quirky marina where his waterlogged boat is still docked.

When I come clean to him about my lack of religious belief and observance, he gave me his lopsided grin and tells me that it's all okay, but he hopes I know I'm going to hell.  (A joke.  Frank doesn't believe in hell.)

Wait a minute, I say, grinning back.  You of all people have got to believe in redemption.

"Yeah, you're right," he says.  "Me of all people.  I gotta believe in redemption even if it ends up killing me." 

Doesn't their awkward joking about believing in redemption suggest their aching longing for religious transcendence? 

In my next post, I will argue that Darwinian Lockean liberalism supports Goldstein's theory of the Mattering Instinct.

The Unitary Executive Theory Feeds the Grandiose Narcissism of Trump's Despotic Dominance

 

           Napoleon Crowns Himself Emperor with Pope Pius VII Looking On, December 2, 1804

The biographical history of the unitary executive theory is the personal history of the American presidents.  According to Steven Calabresi and Christopher Yoo (2008), all of the presidents have believed in the theory of the unitary executive, because they have all claimed that Article II of the Constitution gives them the power to remove and direct all of those officials who exercise executive power.

But no president has ever interpreted the presidential power in Article II as expansively as Donald Trump has.  Hearing about the theory of the unitary executive from his legal advisors excited Trump because he could then declare: "I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president."

The right to do whatever he wants as president!  Nothing could be more exhilarating for a man like Trump, who is unique among all the presidents in the grandiosity of his grandiose narcissistic personality.  (I have written about Trump's grandiose narcissism compared with the personalities of other presidents and chimpanzees.)

Trump is interpreting Article II as the constitutional justification for overturning the Constitution by crowning himself Emperor, just as Napoleon did.  Trump has even repeated words attributed to Napoleon when he became Emperor: "He who saves his country violates no law."  To show that he identifies this remark as Napoleon's, Trump has posted it along with a famous painting of Napoleon by Jacques-Louis David.

                                       Trump Has Posted This Screenshot on "Truth Social"

As I have argued, the proponents of the unitary executive theory are mistaken in their interpretation of the Constitution.  But their biggest mistake has been in not anticipating how their theory would feed the Napoleonic ambition for dictatorship in someone like Trump.

Steven Calabresi is one of the leading advocates of the unitary executive theory who came to regret his support for Trump's election in 2016.  In 2020, he warned that Trump was showing the traits of a fascist dictator, and he voted for Biden.  In 2021, he recommended that Trump should be impeached for inciting the January 6 insurrectionary attack on the Capitol.  In 2024, Calabresi argued that under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, Trump should be disqualified from running for president again because he had violated his oath of office by engaging in "insurrection or rebellion" against the Constitution.  But then, strangely, a few weeks later, he announced that he had changed his mind because the President was not an "officer" of the U.S. government under the 14th Amendment.  Trump should be allowed to run again, Calabresi advised, but the voters should reject him because of his fascist propensities.

In 2021, Calabresi wrote a response to Skowronek, Dearborn, and King's Phantoms of a Beleaguered Republic: The Deep State and the Unitary Executive.  They showed how Trump had used his interpretation of the unitary executive theory to move towards a presidential dictatorship unrestrained by the constitutional system of checks and balances.  Calabresi agreed that Trump's tyrannical ambition had threatened the constitutional order.  But still Calabresi insisted that this was no reason to reject the unitary executive theory.

We should not "remake" the Constitution because of a once in 232 years oddball-president like Trump.  And, liberals should realize that originalists who want a unitary executive like me also want a vigorous non-delegation doctrine; an Article III administrative law judiciary; and, above all else, a government of checks and balances.  We abhor fascist as well as socialist dictators, which is why, in 2020, I voted for Joe Biden (Calabresi 2021).

Calabresi is right in saying that Congress has delegated too much of its lawmaking power to the President and administrators, and that administrative law judges should be nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate with tenure during good behavior.  But this does not solve the problem of Trump's dictatorial propensities animated by his belief that a unitary presidency means that since the president has complete control over the execution of congressional laws and court orders, the president can refuse to enforce those laws and court orders.

Calabresi is also right that Trump is "a once in 232 years oddball-president" because he's the only president who has interpreted the unitary presidency to mean that Article II allows him to become a Napoleonic dictator.  But Calabresi and the other proponents of the unitary executive theory could have predicted Trump's "oddball" presidency if they had listened to John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, and others who had warned about presidential demagogues with grandiose ambitions who would strive to become tyrants.

LINCOLN'S EGALITARIAN DOMINANCE

In 1838, in his "Young Men's Lyceum Address," delivered in Springfield, Illinois, Lincoln warned about the danger of someone like Trump who would thirst for the splendid glory that would come from becoming America's Caesaristic Dictator like Napoleon and thus destroy the American constitutional order.  The subject for his speech was "the perpetuation of our political institutions" that constitute our "political edifice of liberty and equal rights."  This had become an urgent question for Lincoln's generation--he was soon to turn 29 years old--because the generation of the American Revolution and Founding had passed away, and it was not clear that the new generation would preserve and pass on the political legacy that they had inherited.

Lincoln began by dismissing as unlikely any danger from some transatlantic military force. He insisted that all of the combined armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa under the command of a Napoleon could not succeed in conquering America.

The more likely danger to our political institutions must spring up amongst us.  "If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.  As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide."

Lincoln thought he saw a foreboding sign of possible national suicide in the "increasing disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions, in lieu of the sober judgments of Courts; and the worse than savage mobs, for the executive ministers of justice."  He then vividly described a half dozen examples of such mob violence from every part of the country, from New England to Louisiana to St. Louis.

In explaining how this "mobocratic spirit" threatens "the perpetuation of our political institutions," Lincoln sketched the political psychology of four distinct groups of Americans.  First, there's "the mob"--those many Americans who think that vigilante violence is justified if the legal institutions for law enforcement are too slow in punishing criminals.

Second, the "lawless in spirit" are those who obey the law only because they dread punishment, and therefore when they see that the lawless mobs go unpunished, the "lawless in spirit" become "lawless in practice."

Third, there are the "good men" who desire to abide by the laws, and as long as they enjoy the tranquility of a society ruled by law, they will fight in defense of their country.  But when these good men see their country become utterly lawless, so that there is no rule of law to protect their lives, their families, and their property, this weakens their attachment to their government; and they are willing to see the overthrow of their government.

Fourth, there are "the men of ambition and talents" who see the lawless violence in the country as an opportunity for them to seize power and thus satisfy their ambition for political glory.  Previously, during the revolutionary and founding period of America, these men satisfied their ambition for fame and glory by striving "to display before an admiring world, a practical demonstration of the truth of a proposition, which had hitherto been considered, at best no better, than problematical; namely, the capability of a people to govern themselves."  They succeeded, and their names have been immortalized.

But "this field of glory is harvested, and the crop is already appropriated.  But new reapers will arise, and they, too, will seek a field."  Men of ambition and talents will continue to spring up, and they will seek to gratify their ruling passion for distinction. 

The question then, is, can that gratification be found in supporting and maintaining an edifice that has been erected by others?  Most certainly it cannot.  Many great and good men sufficient qualified for any task they should undertake, may ever be found, whose ambition would aspire to nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or a presidential chair; but such belong not to the family of the lion, or the tribe of the eagle.  What! think you these places would satisfy an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon?  Never!  Towering genius disdains a beaten path.  It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.  It see no distinction in adding story to story, upon the monuments of fame, erected to the memory of others.  It denies that it is glory enough to serve under any chief.  It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious.  It thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves, or enslaving freemen.  Is it unreasonable then to expect, that some man possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time, spring up among us?  And when such a one does, it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs.

Distinction will be his paramount object; and although he would as willingly, perhaps more so, acquire it by doing good as harm; yet, that opportunity being past, and nothing left to be done in the way of building up, he would set boldly to the task of pulling down.

Notice that Lincoln divides the "men of ambition and talents" into two groups.   In one group, "many great and good men" can satisfy their political ambition by serving as a congressman, a governor, or a president.  But in the other group, are those who will not be satisfied with filling high political offices in a constitutional republic, because they belong "to the family of the lion, or the tribe of the eagle," who show the "towering genius" of an Alexnder, a Caesar, or a Napoleon.  

These three men overthrew republican governments and claimed the despotic dominance of imperial power for themselves.  Alexander subjugated all of Greece, including Athens, to the Macedonian Empire.  Julius Caesar had himself declared dictator perpetuo of Rome, with all the power of the Roman state concentrated in his person, which meant the collapse of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire.  Napoleon Bonaparte overthrew the French Republic in 1804 when he crowned himself the "Emperor of the French."  In speaking about "the family of the lion, or the tribe of the eagle," Lincoln was probably referring to Napoleon:  in designing the heraldic insignia and the official badge of the Empire, Napoleon first chose the lion, but then he changed his mind and chose an eagle with spread wings, because the eagle "affirms imperial dignity and recalls Charlemagne," while also recalling Ancient Rome (Roberts 2014: 347-48).

Napoleon's hereditary Empire was a plebiscitary dictatorship.  In the plebiscite on the establishment of the Empire, the official vote count was 3,572, 329 votes in favor to 2,579 against.

So, Lincoln was warning his audience about the danger to American political institutions of liberty coming from the imperial ambition of an American Napoleonic dictator.  And he advised them that the only way to avoid this danger was for the American People to feel a "reverence for the laws"--for the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the laws--that would become "the political religion of the nation," so that the People would never allow a man of Napoleonic ambition to claim dictatorial powers unconstrained by the rule of law.

But then some readers of Lincoln's Lyceum Speech have suspected that Edmund Wilson was right in observing "that Lincoln has projected himself into the role against which he is warning them" (Wilson 1962: 108).  After all, as I have indicated in some previous posts, Lincoln was a man of expansive ambition.  "His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest," as William Herndon said.  As a young state legislator in Illinois, he often became miserably depressed, even suicidal, because he had not yet achieved the greatness that he yearned for.  Joshua Speed--one of Lincoln's best friends--reported to Herndon:

In the deepest of his depression, he said one day he had done nothing to make any human being remember that he had lived; and that to connect his name with the events transpiring in his day and generation, and so impress himself upon them as to link his name with something that would redound to the interest of his fellow-men, was what he desired to live for (Herndon's Life, 172, 422-23).

22 years later, shortly after Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation, he reminded Speed of this earlier conversation about his ambition for doing something great so that he would be remembered forever, and he told Speed: "I believe that in this measure, my fondest hopes will be realized."

And, indeed, anyone who has ever visited the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, with the imposing statue of Lincoln and the Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural Address carved into the marble walls, will have to wonder whether Lincoln foresaw this--the mythic grandeur of the Lincoln story--as the only way to satisfy his restless ambition.  Does this mean that he was moved by the Napoleonic ambition for glory, that he belonged to "the family of the lion, or the tribe of the eagle," against which he warned his audience in 1838 in Springfield?

But while Napoleon's ambition could only be satisfied by crowning himself an Imperial Dictator and thus overturning the French Republic, we might argue that Lincoln's ambition did not require that he become a lawless dictator and thus overturn America's Constitutional Republic.  Rather, his ambition was "to link his name with something that would redound to the interest of his fellow-men," which he did by saving the Union, emancipating slaves, and securing for America a "new birth of freedom."

And yet, many historians and law professors have said that Lincoln really did become a presidential dictator in the Civil War by acting outside the laws to prosecute the war (Arnhart 2016: 254-262).  The most commonly noted example of Lincoln's assumption of dictatorial powers outside the law was his suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and his defying a judicial order from Chief Justice Roger Taney declaring that such suspension of the writ was unconstitutional.  Suspension of the writ of habeas corpus is in effect a suspension of the most basic rights of individuals because it allows the government to arrest and detain individuals without the government giving any legal justification for this to a court of law.

But there is a good argument for saying that Lincoln never became a dictator because he acted within the constitutional framework of government, so that he was subject to the checks and balances coming from the Congress, the courts, and popular elections.  We can see that this was true for his suspension of the writ of habeas corpus if we study the case carefully enough to see exactly what happened, particularly in the case of John Merryman that provoked Chief Justice Taney.

After the election of Lincoln on November 6, 1860, the Southern states began debating secession from the Union.  South Carolina was the first to secede on December 20, 1860.  When the war began with the attack of South Carolina on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, seven states had seceded.  Virginia seceded on April 17.

When the war started, the U.S. Congress was out of session; and the military situation made it too dangerous for the Congress to come back into session.  So Lincoln had to take command in the war without congressional authorization. 

Washington, DC, was threatened by Confederate armies, disloyal state militias, irregular combatants, and disloyal civilians.  To secure the Capital, Lincoln ordered Union troops to proceed to Washington through Maryland, which was a border state that was deeply divided over the war.  Mobs in Maryland had attacked Union troops.  Bridges and railway lines had been destroyed.  And telegraph lines to the Capital had been cut.  On April 27, 1861, Lincoln issued an order to General Winfield Scott, the Commanding General of the Army, delegating authority to suspend habeas corpus to protect the movement of troops through Maryland. 

John Merryman, a resident of Baltimore, was suspected by military authorities of being involved with a militia group that had destroyed some bridges and railway lines.  At about 2:00 A.M., on Saturday, May 25, 1861, federal military authorities arrested him in his home, and he was locked up at Fort McHenry.  The next day--Sunday, May 26, 1861--Merryman's lawyers presented his habeas corpus petition to Chief Justice Roger Taney at his home in Washington.  Later that same day, Taney issued an ex parte order directing General George Cadwalader, who had command over the military district that included Fort McHenry, to appear the next day before Taney in a Baltimore court room, to explain the legal basis for Merryman's military detention, and to produce John Merryman at that hearing (Ex parte Merryman 17 F. Cas. 144 [C.C.D. Md. 1861] [No. 9487] [Taney, C.J.]).

The next day--Monday, May 27--Taney appeared at the designated Baltimore court room.  Cadwalader did not attend the hearing.  Instead, he sent his aide, Colonel R. M. Lee, who presented a written response from Cadwalader, who made four points.  First, the arrest of Merryman had not been made with his knowledge.  Rather, General William Keim had ordered Col. Samuel Yohe to make the arrest.  Second, Merryman was charged with various acts of treason in supporting the present rebellion against the government.  Third, the president had duly authorized his commanders to suspend the writ of habeas corpus.  Fourth, he requested that the Chief Justice postpone further action on this case until Cadwalader could receive instructions from the President as to how he should proceed.

Since Cadwalader had not produced the body of Merryman as instructed in his order, Taney issued an attachment for contempt of court against Cadwalader, which was to be delivered the next day by a U.S. Marshal.  The next day, the marshal reported back to Taney that when he arrived at Fort McHenry, he sent in his name at the outer gate, but a messenger came back to say that there was no answer to his request, and so he was not permitted to enter the gate.

Taney told the marshal that he had the power to summon a posse comitatus to help him seize Cadwalader and return him for punishment by fine and imprisonment.  But Taney observed, "the power refusing obedience was so notoriously superior to any the marshal could command," the marshal was excused from doing anything more.

Taney then delivered his opinion orally--that the President did not have the constitutional power to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, and therefore that Merryman is entitled to be set at liberty.  Taney elaborated his opinion in writing for delivery to the President, which was filed on June 1, 1861.

Taney cited the one clause in the Constitution that allows for the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus: "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it" (Art. I, section 9, clause 2).  Taney argued that this had always been understood as a power belonging to the Congress rather than the President.  And the fact that this clause appears in the Legislative Article I, along with other congressional powers, should make it clear that this is a congressional power.

Moreover, Taney insisted that since the Congress had not suspended the writ, and since the President has a constitutional duty to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed," it is the President's duty "to come in aid of the judicial authority, if it shall be resisted by a force too strong to be overcome without the assistance of the Executive arm."  And so the President should assist the court in enforcing the writ of habeas corpus in the case of Merryman so that he can be released from detention.

Taney then concluded:

In such a case, my duty was too plain to be mistaken.  I have exercised all the power which the Constitution and laws confer on me, but that power has been resisted by a force too strong for me to overcome.  It is possible that the officer who has incurred this grave responsibility, may have misunderstood his instructions, and exceeded the authority intended to be given him.  I shall, therefore, order all the proceedings in this case, with my opinion, to be filed and under seal, to the President of the United States.  It will then remain for that high officer in fulfilment of his constitutional obligation, to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed," to determine what measures he will take to cause the civil process of the United States to be respected and enforced.

Lincoln's response to Taney came a month later in his Special Message to Congress of July 4, 1861.  This message was to a special session of Congress called by the President, the first meeting of the Congress since the start of the war in April.

Lincoln argued that the clause in the Constitution allowing the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus "when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it" does not specify that this power belongs only to the Congress.  And the fact that it's designed for violent emergencies--"rebellion or invasion"--that might prevent the Congress from meeting, as was the case in April, it should be evident that often only the President will be in a position to act quickly to suspend the writ if the public safety requires this.  Thus, the Constitution allows either the President or the Congress to suspend the writ if the public safety requires this in a time of rebellion or invasion.

Lincoln's argument to Congress was persuasive enough that the Congress did not act to revoke his suspension of the writ.  A year later, the Congress enacted a law for the congressional suspension of the writ.

It has been common for scholars to say that Lincoln ignored or defied a judicial order from Taney to release John Merryman, and that this may be the only time that any president has refused to obey a direct judicial order of this kind.  This then would be a clear case of a president acting as a dictator in assuming power beyond or against the Constitution and the laws.

But this is a mistake.  Yes, Lincoln and Taney did disagree in their interpretation of the constitutional clause on suspending the writ.  Lincoln thought the Constitution allowed either the President or the Congress to suspend the writ under the specified circumstances--when the "public safety" requires it in response to "rebellion or invasion."  While Taney thought this power was reserved only to the Congress.

And yet it is a mistake to say that Lincoln ignored or defied Taney's judicial order to release Merryman.  This is a mistake because Taney's written opinion was not a judicial order for Lincoln (or anyone else) to do anything.  As Taney's opinion makes clear--particularly, in the last paragraph--he was recommending that Lincoln reconsider his suspension of the writ in the light of Taney's objections.  Taney directed the court's clerk to transmit a copy of his opinion to the President, but he did not order the President to do anything (Tillman 2016).

Taney's opinion of June 1st and Lincoln's Message to Congress of July 4th were both widely published in newspapers, which stimulated a prolonged public debate over the constitutionality of Lincoln's suspension.  And throughout that debate, Lincoln insisted that he was acting within the bounds of the Constitution and the laws, and therefore he was not acting as a lawless dictator.  At no point did Lincoln say that he had the dictatorial power to ignore or defy a judicial order from the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.  (See Lincoln 1953: vol. 4, 426-441, 531-532; vol. 6: 262-269, 302-303, 428-429; vol. 8; 52, 100; Lincoln 1989: 250-261, 268-269, 455, 467, 501, 635-636, 641).

Now we are waiting to see if Trump will do what Lincoln never did--openly defy the courts in assuming dictatorial powers outside the Constitution that give him despotic dominance.

I will take that up next in my fourth (and final!) post on Trump's unitary executive theory, which will include a list of references for all four posts.

REFERENCE

Tillman, S. B. 2016. "Ex parte Merryman: Myth, History, and Scholarship." Military Law Review 224: 481-540.

The Desire for Status Ranking (2)

3. STATUS RANKING AS A HUMAN UNIVERSAL
Status striving is a universal human desire (Anderson, Hildreth, and Howland 2015; Barkow 1989; Brown 1991).  In every human society, human beings seek high rank.  They want people to look up to them and defer to them.  And they try hard to avoid disrepute, dishonor, and disgrace.

There's an obvious objection to this claim--that for most of human history, human beings lived in nomadic foraging bands that were so egalitarian that they did not recognize any status distinctions.  But as I have indicated previously (here), even the most egalitarian hunter-gatherers show respect for those individuals with superior skills or knowledge, who can become informal leaders; and although foragers punish people for trying to become dominant over others, the need for such punishment shows that status-striving individuals do exist, and they must be monitored.  In his often cited article on foraging bands as "egalitarian societies," anthropologist James Woodburn observed that "people are well aware of the possibility that individuals or groups within their own egalitarian societies may try to acquire more wealth, to assert more power, or to claim more status than other people, and are vigilant to prevent or limit this" (1982, 432).  Foragers recognize some people as leaders, but only as long as they don't act like bosses.

Status hierarchies form quickly.  In one study of 59 three-person groups of individuals who had previously been unknown to one another, who were given 45 minutes to carry out a task, a clear ranking of the three people into high, medium, and low status emerged within 1 minute for half of the groups and within 13 minutes for the other half.  The high status individuals were identified as those who initiated action more frequently, who were the center of the discussions, and who were evaluated by the others as contributing the best ideas and guidance to the group in executing its task (Fisek and Ofshe 1970).


4. STATUS RANKING AMONG INFANTS AND CHILDREN
Psychologists studying infants (11-16 months old) in infant daycare centers have seen dominance structures with high, mid, and low rank subgroups.  The dominant individuals were the center of attention who were imitated by the others (Russon and Waite 1991). Studies of schoolchildren have shown that beginning in the first grade the children can generally agree on which children are the "toughest" and the "smartest," and they show somewhat lower levels of agreement on which children are the "nicest" and have the "most friends" (Omark and Edelman 1975).


5. THE EMOTIONS OF STATUS STRIVING AND REPUTATION: PRIDE AND SHAME
In his first political campaign statement, announcing his run for the state legislature, Lincoln said that his "peculiar ambition" was "that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem."  He would feel pride in being esteemed by his fellow citizens and shame if he were to lose that esteem.

For most human beings, the emotions of pride and shame motivate them to become valuable to their fellow group members.  These emotions can be seen as evolved traits of the human mind favored by natural selection because they solve a major adaptive problem faced by our ancient hominid ancestors. Our foraging ancestors lived in a harsh world with high rates of starvation, disease, injury, and attacks from predatory animals and other humans.  In such a dangerous world, our ancestors needed the help of others in their group to secure their survival and reproduction.  To persuade others to help them, individuals had to make themselves valued and respected by others in their group.  Pride could have evolved to guide individuals towards behavior that would win valuation and respect from others.  Shame could have evolved to deter individuals from behavior that would provoke scorn and disrespect from others.

This evolutionary theory of pride and shame as universal traits of our evolved human nature generates some testable predictions.  Shame should track the threat of social devaluation, so that individuals feel more shame for traits or actions that are more negatively evaluated by others.  Pride should track the reward of social praise, so that individuals feel more pride for traits or actions that are more positively evaluated by others.  Furthermore, this experience of shame and pride should be expressed universally across different cultures.

Some recent cross-cultural research by Daniel Sznycer and his colleagues has confirmed these predictions (Sznycer 2019; Sznycer et al. 2016, 2017, 2018).  For their study of shame, hundreds of people in the United States, India, and Israel were recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk--a crowdsourcing internet marketplace--to fill out a survey questionnaire.  The researchers created 29 scenarios in which someone's actions, traits, or situation might elicit social disapproval.  They divided the participants into two groups--the "audience" group and the "shame" group.  Those in the audience group were asked to react to 29 scenarios involving a third-party individual.  Here are four examples.  "He stole goods from a shop owned by his neighbor."  "He is not generous with others."  "He is not very smart."  "He hosts his extended family for a holiday meal, but he burns the food."  The participants were asked to "indicate how you would view someone of your same sex and age if they were in those situations."  They indicated their reactions on a scale ranging from 1 (I wouldn't view them negatively at all) to; 7 (I'd view them very negatively).  Thus, they provided a measure of how much they would disapprove of someone in such a scenario.

In the shame group, participants were asked to indicate how much shame they would feel if they the individual in the 29 scenarios.  For example, "you stole goods from a shop owned by your neighbor," or "you are not generous with others."  They ranked their shame on a scale from 1 (no shame at all) to 7 (a lot of shame).

The prediction was that the intensity of shame elicited by a scenario would track the intensity of social disapproval elicited by that scenario.  This prediction was confirmed both within each of the three cultures and across those cultures.  Scenarios that aroused great disapproval by society induced great shame in individuals when they thought of themselves as displaying those scenarios.  And the pattern of disapproval and shame was generally the same in the United States as in India and Israel.

There were some cultural differences, however.  Some scenarios elicited more disapproval in India than in the United States--for example, marrying someone without consulting your parents, and addressing your father by his first name.  And some scenarios elicited more disapproval in the United States than in India--for example, yelling at your maid, and telling your sibling that their daughter should whiten her skin.

What this shows is that there will be both universal patterns in what is regarded as shameful and some cultural variation corresponding to the local social ecology.  This is dramatically illustrated in the debate over slavery in the United States before and during the Civil War.  Some Southerners did not regard slave-owning as shameful, but as Lincoln pointed out, slave-trading was scorned as a dishonorable activity--gentlemen would refuse to shake hands with slave dealers.  To justify slavery, some of the proslavery advocates were forced to make the implausible argument that slavery was a "positive good" for both the master and the slave, and so Harriett Beecher Stowe's depiction of the cruelty of slavery in Uncle Tom's Cabin was simply false.

If slavery was good for the slaves, then one might have expected that they would be willing to fight in the Civil War as Confederate soldiers.  The Confederate Congress repeatedly rejected black enlistment until March 13, 1865, when in desperation to find soldiers they passed a law authorizing black men to enlist, but with the stipulation that there would be no emancipation of slaves who fought in the Confederate army.  Active fighting ended less than 3 weeks later, and there is no record of any black units in the Confederate Army.  Four days after this law was enacted, Lincoln spoke about this before a regiment of Union soldiers from Indiana:

"The great question with them was, whether the negro, being put into the army, would fight for them.  I do not know, and therefore cannot decide. (Laughter.) They ought to know better than we.  I have in my lifetime heard many arguments why the negroes ought to be slaves; but if they fight for those who would keep them in slavery it will be a better argument than any I have yet heard. (Laughter and applause.) He who will fight for that ought to be a slave. (Applause.) . . . While I have often said that all men ought to be free, yet I would allow those colored persons to be slaves who want to be; and next to them those white persons who argue in favor of making other people slaves. (Applause.)  I am in favor of giving an opportunity to such white men to try it on for themselves. (Applause.) . . . " (CW, 8:361-62)

It is laughable and shameful to suggest that slaves would fight for their own enslavement, and that white men defend slavery as a positive good for others but not for themselves.

After Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation, black men were recruited into the Union Army.  By the end of the war, there were 179,000 black soldiers (10% of the Union Army) and 19,000 in the Navy.  16 black soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor.  Frederick Douglass actively recruited black men with the argument that such honorable service in war would prove that they had earned their citizenship.

Lincoln took pride in launching this campaign for emancipation.  Indeed, as he told Joshua Speed, in proclaiming the Emancipation Proclamation, he thought he had finally achieved what he had long yearned for--to do something great for his fellow men, so that he would be remembered forever.

This emotion of pride can be explained as part of our evolved human nature.  Using the same method that they employed in their study of shame, Sznycer and his colleagues have surveyed thousands of people in 16 nations and 10 small-scale societies scattered around the world, presenting them with scenarios and asking them either how praiseworthy the circumstances of those scenarios might be or how proud they would be as the individual in those scenarios (Sznycer et al. 2017, 2018).  So, for example, some participants were asked to rate the praiseworthiness of three scenarios: "He keeps his promises."  "He is smart."  "He is a productive worker, and can keep his children healthy and well fed."  Others were asked to rate how proud of themselves they would be in three scenarios: "You keep your promises." "You are smart."  "You are a productive worker, and can keep your children healthy and well fed."  They found that the intensity of the pride that individuals anticipate for a potential action or trait tracks the magnitude of the approval or respect they would expect to receive from the people in their society.

This confirms the prediction of evolutionary psychology that pride has evolved by natural selection as an adaptive solution to the problem of how individuals secure the help of others in their group, because pride motivates people to do what wins the esteem of others, and thus makes it likely that others will act for the good of those they esteem.

For Lincoln, that meant that his proud pursuit of a praiseworthy deed like the Emancipation Proclamation was rewarded with the prestige of being the Great Emancipator.


REFERENCES

Anderson, C., J. A. D. Hildreth, and L. Howland. 2015. "Is the Desire for Status a Fundamental Human Motive? A Review of the Empirical Literature." Psychological Bulletin 141: 574-601.

Barkow, Jerome. 1989.  Darwin, Sex, and Status: Biological Approaches to Mind and Culture. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Brown, Donald E. 1991. Human Universals. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Fisek, M. H., and R. Ofshe. 1970. "The Process of Status Evolution." Sociometry 33: 327-46.

Omark, Donald R., and Murray S. Edelman. 1975. "A Comparison of Status Hierarchies in Young Children: An Ethological Approach." Social Science Information 14 (5): 87-107.

Russon, A. E., and B. E. Waite. 1991. "Patterns of Dominance and Initiation in an Infant Peer Group." Ethology and Sociobiology 12: 55-73.

Sznycer, Daniel. 2019. "Forms and Functions of the Self-Conscious Emotions." Trends in Cognitive Sciences 23: 143-57.

Sznycer, Daniel, et al. 2016. "Shame Closely Tracks the Threat of Devaluation by Others, Even Across Cultures." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113 (10): 2625-2630.

Sznycer, Daniel, et al. 2017. "Cross-Cultural Regularities in the Cognitive Architecture of Pride." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114 (8): 1874-1879.

Sznycer, Daniel, et al. 2018. "Invariances in the Architecture of Pride Across Small-Scale Societies." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115 (33): 8322-8327.

Woodburn, James. 1982. "Egalitarian Societies." Man 27: 431-451.

The Evolutionary Science of Abraham Lincoln's Ambition and Depression

Some years ago, I wrote a paper on "Biopolitical Science," which defended a theoretical analysis of the political behavior of political animals through three levels of deep history--the universal history of the species, the cultural history of the group, and the individual history of political actors within the group.  To illustrate this, I tried to show how such a science could deepen our understanding of one of the crucial turns in American political history--Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863.  We would need an evolutionary historical narrative moving through the natural history of slavery, the cultural history of slavery in America, and the biographical history of Lincoln as the political leader who won his glory in becoming the Great Emancipator.  (I have written some posts on this here and here.)

At the level of biographical history, I spoke about Lincoln's practical judgement or prudence in deciding whether, when, and how to issue his order of emancipation.  But a full biopolitical account of Lincoln's judgment would require an evolutionary explanation of his individual personality rooted in the emerging biological science of animal political personalities (the topic of some posts here, here, and here.)

Two of the most prominent features of Lincoln's personality were ambition and depression.  The testimonial evidence for these traits--both from those who knew him and from Lincoln himself--is collected in Michael Burlingame's The Inner World of Abraham Lincoln.

William Herndon--Lincoln's law partner and the author of one of the best biographies of Lincoln--described Lincoln as "inordinately ambitious," "a man totally swallowed up in his ambitions," and even "the most ambitious man in the world."  He observed Lincoln's "general greed for office" and his "burning and his consuming ambition."  He declared: "any man who thinks Lincoln calmly sat down and gathered his robes about him, waiting for the people to call him, has a very erroneous knowledge of Lincoln.  He was always calculating, and always planning ahead.  His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest" (Herndon's Life of Lincoln, 114, 172, 304, 340, 422-23, 486).

Lincoln grew up in an impoverished family in isolated rural areas of Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois.  His father was illiterate.  But the people who knew the young Abe could see that he was determined to rise, to make something of himself, to achieve something great with his life.  To prepare himself for that, he had to educate himself, and people noticed that he was remarkably studious in his reading and writing.  Working for Josiah Crawford in 1825, when he was 16, Abe told him: "I'll study and get ready, and then the chance will come."  At age 20, he wrote into a friend's copybook: "Good boys who to their books apply / Will make great men by and by."  Another friend recalled that "Abe was just awful hungry to be somebody."

Ward Hill Lamon was a lawyer who travelled with Lincoln on the legal circuit in central Illinois, going from one courthouse to another.  Lamon said that Lincoln repeatedly told him that from a young age, he had foreseen that he would be President someday.  Years later, during the Civil War, Lincoln told Lamon: "You know better than any man living that from my boyhood up my ambition was to be President."

In his first race for public office, a seat in the Illinois legislature, the 23-year-old Lincoln was candid about his ambition in his public announcement of his candidacy to the voters of Sangamon County:

"Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition.  Whether it be true or not, I can say for one that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem.  How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition is yet to be developed.  I am young and unknown to many of you.  I was born and have ever remained in the most humble walks of life.  My case is thrown exclusively upon the independent voters of this county, and if elected they will have conferred a favor upon me, for which I shall be unremitting in my labors to compensate.  But if the good people in their wisdom shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have been too familiar with disappointments to be very much chagrined" (Collected Works, 1:8-9).

He lost this election in 1832, but two years later, he won this state legislative seat; and he held this seat for four terms.  In the legislature, he was best known for advancing an extensive plan for internal improvements--building railroads, roads, bridges, and canals to foster economic growth.  But then when a major recession hit the state in 1837, the state's debt became unsustainable, and the expense of the infrastructure projects seemed excessive.  Lincoln struggled to defend his unpopular projects.  The work on the half-finished railroads, canals, bridges, and roads was halted, and Lincoln was blamed for the failure.

At the same time as these political setbacks, Lincoln faced a crisis in his personal life when he broke off his engagement to Mary Todd on New Year's Day 1841, because he had begun to doubt his love for this often tempestuous and irritable young woman.  At this point, at age 32, he was plunged into one of his deepest bouts of melancholic misery.

He withdrew into his room in Springfield and stopped attending sessions of the Legislature.  He considered committing suicide, and his friends removed all sharp instruments from his room.  He spoke with his best friend--Joshua Speed--who later reported the conversation to Herndon:

"In the deepest of his depression, he said one day he had done nothing to make any human being remember that he had lived; and that to connect his name with the events transpiring in his day and generation, and so impress himself upon them as to link his name with something that would redound to the interest of his fellow-men, was what he desired to live for" (Herndon's Life, 172, 422-23; Wilson and Davis, Herndon's Informants, 196-97).

22 years later, shortly after Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation, he reminded Speed of this earlier conversation about his ambition for doing something great so that he would be remembered forever, and he told Speed: "I believe that in this measure, my fondest hopes will be realized."

And yet, as long as the outcome of the Civil War was in doubt, Lincoln could not be sure that his grand ambition would be fulfilled, and he was still often thrown into episodes of depression.  His friends used the word "melancholy" for his predisposition to depression.  Herndon said "his melancholy dript from him as he walked."  Henry Whitney, speaking of his travels with Lincoln on the legal circuit in the 1850s, said that "no element of Mr. Lincoln's character was so marked, obvious and ingrained as his mysterious and profound melancholy."  Whenever he was informed of some especially bloody battle in the war, when tens of thousands were killed, he would walk around the White House groaning in agony, wringing his hands, and telling people he was ready to hang himself.  He was particularly prone to despair when he learned of Union defeats.  After Joseph Hooker's defeat at Chancellorsville, he cried out to his Secretary of War Stanton: "My God! Stanton, our cause is lost! We are ruined--we are ruined; and such a fearful loss of life!  My God! this is more than I can endure! . . . Defeated again, and so many of our noble countrymen killed! What will the people say?"

Some of the people who saw this life-long propensity to depression thought it might be an inherited temperament passed through his family.  Others thought it must have shown the damage from great losses early in his life--particularly, the many deaths of those he loved.  His infant brother died when he was 2 years old.  His mother died when he was 9 years old.  His sister died when he was 18.  At age 26, his beloved friend Ann Rutledge died.  At age 40, his son Eddie died.  At age 53, his son Willie died.

Burlingame makes a good argument for the thought that the most important cause of Lincoln's depression was his mother's death, in that all the later deaths and disappointments--including the casualties in the Civil War--that threw him into deep despair reawakened memories of losing his mother at age 9.  Lincoln's gloomy fascination with poetry about the deaths of all those we love provides some evidence for this.  For example, he greatly admired and often quoted Oliver Wendell Holmes's "The Last Leaf," which was concerned with the death of loved ones.  Here's his favorite stanza:

The mossy marbles rest
On lips that he has pressed
  In their bloom;
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
  On the tomb.

Lincoln said: "For pure pathos, in my judgment, there is nothing finer than those six lines in the English language!"  Friends said that when he recited these lines, tears would come to his eyes.

Beginning with Herndon's Life of Lincoln, historians have employed "psychobiography" in trying to explain Lincoln's psychic propensities to ambition and depression.  Now, the theoretical and empirical research in evolutionary psychology can deepen this understanding of Lincoln's personality as part of a biopolitical science of leadership.

To be continued . . .


REFERENCES

Arnhart, Larry. 2012. "Biopolitical Science." In Evolution and Morality, eds. James E. Fleming and Sanford Levinson, 221-265. New York: New York University Press.

Burlingame, Michael. 1997. The Inner World of Abraham Lincoln. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Herndon, William, and Jesse Weik. 1983 (orig. 1892). Herndon's Life of Lincoln, ed. Paul M. Angle. New York: Da Capo Press.

Lincoln, Abraham. 1953. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 8 vols., ed. Roy Basler. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Wilson, Douglas L., and Rodney O. Davis, eds. 1998. Herndon's Informants: Letters, Interviews, and Statements about Abraham Lincoln.  Urbana: University of Illinois Press.