Lincolns House Divided - Essay Example

?Lincoln’s House Divided: Paralleling other Midwest by Taking the Point of View of an Oppressed People Midwestern literature may be somethingthat is difficult to characterize for a myriad of reasons. One such is that the region has problems with being defined because it has not had a moment or history that other regions might have. Further, another reason is that the voice of the Midwest literature is similar to other regions, therefore there is not necessarily a way to distinguish Midwestern literature from other literature. Therefore, many writers define the region through the eyes of the people. Lincoln’s Speech House Divided is similar in this way. The speech was meant to show that America needs to either become all slave or all free, but that the country cannot remain divided. Then Lincoln made these points by taking the point of the view of the African American slaves, therefore he makes his points in many of the same ways that other Midwest writers. This essay will explain how the Lincoln address parallels that of other Midwest writers, according to the literary critics. Comparing Lincoln’s Speech to Midwest Literary Critiques While Stern (1993) would argue that there is a myth of regionalism, in that the literature from the Midwest is the same as the literature from other areas, other critics feel differently about this (13). Storey (2010) also looks at Midwest literary criticism in a similar light, although he acknowledges that Midwestern literature is too diverse to really be categorized as such (194). For instance, according to Anderson (2001), Midwestern literature is notable and distinctive for the way that it uncovers the lives of the people of the region. They celebrate the place through an interpretation of the individuals who have lived in that place (11). In other words, Midwestern writers celebrate the Midwest landscape by viewing it through the eyes of the citizens of the land. This view of Midwestern literature encompasses not just the written word, but also oral tradition, which would include the oral tradition of the Native American. At the same time, according to Anderson (2001), the Midwestern literary tradition celebrates certain myths by looking at the human experience. Anderson (2001) states that one of the most enduring myths that comes from the Midwestern literary tradition is that of the self-made man, the so-called journey from the log cabin to the White House, which was enjoyed by Abraham Lincoln (13). The Midwestern people are proud of their belief that people can change and make something of themselves, no matter their circumstance at birth. This specific literary tradition is present in Abraham Lincoln’s House Divided speech. Specifically, Lincoln sought to illustrate the story of the man who can make something of himself, regardless of birth circumstances, by looking at this story through the eyes of the “Negro” slave. Lincoln made his point, even though the then-recent Supreme Court Dred Scott decision had stated that Negros cannot be free, which decision upheld, in essence, slavery and stated that slaves were not citizens of the United States and therefore would not be protected by the Constitution. However, the speech makes clear that this is an injustice to the Negro slave. The speech also makes clear that slaves, even though they are born into slavery as a consequence of the luck of their birth, should have the chance for full citizenship under the law. This is clear because Lincoln savaged the Dred Scott decision. The Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court states that no negro slave could ever be a citizen of the United States, and that no territory in the United States could exclude slavery. Lincoln stated that this decision destroyed state sovereignty, and questioned why this decision held up - “under the Dred Scott decision, ‘squatter sovereignty’ squatted out of existence, tumbled down like temporary scaffolding” (“Lincoln’s House Divided Speech, 3). He also stated, with obvious disdain, that the Dred Scott decision deprived “the Negro, in every possible event, of the benefit of the provision of the United States Constitution which declares that ‘the citizen of each state shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states’” (“Lincoln’s House Divided Speech, 4). Because he took the point of view of the slave, the speech is in line with the literary tradition cited by Anderson (2001), which is that the conditions of society and of the land itself would be explained by looking at these conditions through the eyes of its peoples (13). Ryden (1999) states that the Midwest has a kind of identity crisis. This identity crisis stems from the fact that the region has never had a defining moment, such as those that would characterize the Northeast or the South. The Northeast is defined by its colonial and Revolutionary past; the South is defined by its Dixie-antebellum past and its role in the Civil War. Although Ryden (1999) does not explicitly make this example, the West may also have a definition, which is that of the gold rush. However, the Midwest has not had that defining moment, according to Ryden (513). That said, Ryder (1999) also states that regional writers take the history of their region into their literary works, which would include defining histories which lend territorial identity to the land. Midwestern authors that write about the region therefore, according to Ryden (1999), must deal with history in a different way, which means that they must deal with the absence of history and the absence of a way to define the land and what it means (521). However, it seems that, in Lincoln’s House Divided speech, Lincoln was not necessarily struggling with the need to define a region that had never had a defining moment, because his speech seeks to cast a defining moment to the region. That defining moment that Lincoln capitalized upon was that much of the region was anti-slavery, and this, in and of itself, gives definition to the region. Further, the region would also be, perhaps paradoxically, be known by the defining moment of the Dred Scott decision. Therefore, Lincoln was attempting to establish that the nation should follow the precedent of the Midwestern States, which means that he is invoking the history of the Midwest as being a pantheon of free states, while also talking about the defining moment of a case which deprived the slave of ever being a citizen. He specifically notes Illinois as being a free state, which is a Midwestern State, but many of the other states in the Midwest were also free, and it was clear in his address that he thought that the other states should follow suit. In these ways, Lincoln was defying the conventional wisdom that the Midwest was a land devoid of history or definition, as he sought to bring both history and definition to the area in these two ways. The focus that Watts (2009) takes is that of displacement, economic powerlessness and marginality (860). These have been experienced by the individuals at the heart of three of the books of which he writes. For instance, Willa Cathers writes about Bohemian, Czech and central European immigrant groups, while other writers, including Sandra Cisneros, write about Hispanic and African-American groups in cities like Chicago (863-864). He also talks about Philip Joseph’s book which addresses marginalism by looking at groups, including Midwestern farmers, who are in opposition to cosmopolitanism and capitalism, which makes them like a proletariat in this way. In other words, this group of writers seeks to define the Midwest by looking at the Midwest through the eyes of the marginalized and the oppressed (861-862). This has a natural parallel with Lincoln’s speech House Divided, because this speech, as noted above, is a speech which attempts to take the perspective of the African-American slave, which is, perhaps, the most economically powerless group in the Midwest. While these other writers attempt to define the Midwest by groups which include immigrants and farmers, who are displaced and economically powerless, thus defining the Midwestern experience by these groups and voices, Lincoln does the same in his speech by focusing upon the African American experience – again, this is made obvious by his disdain for the fact that the Dred Scott decision deprived the negro slave of the privileges and immunities afforded all men under the United States Constitution (“Lincoln’s House Divided Speech,” p. 4). That said, even though Lincoln sought to focus his speech upon the perils of slavery, the gist of his speech was that the nation had to choose what kind of nation it should be - a nation of free men completely, or a nation of slaves completely. Lincoln evidently sought to clarify his position on this choice through this speech, by showing the importance that the oppressed slaves become free men and have a chance at citizenship. Therefore, Lincoln frames his argument in the language of the oppressed, which is similar to Midwestern writers cited by Watts (2009), who attempt to frame arguments regarding Midwestern society through the eyes of the oppressed. Conclusion The literary criticism listed above has a common theme, that being that the Midwest identity is sometimes difficult to discern because of the fact that the region has not had defining historical moments. Such historical moments have been had in other regions, as the Northeast has its identity defined by the Revolutionary War and colonialism, while the South has had its region defined by the Civil War. The Midwest, argue these critics, does not have the same degree of definition, therefore the literary writers regarding the region must find definition in other ways, although Stern (1993) argues that the Midwestern literature is a kind of misnomer, as the literature that comes from the Midwest is not appreciably different from literature from other regions. For Watts (2009), the definition of the region comes through the eyes of the oppressed peoples of the region. Anderson (2001) concurs that the Midwest may be defined by its peoples and its stories, whether these stories are coming from Mark Twain or by another writer who views the Midwest through the myth of the self-made man. In this, the literary criticism has much in common with Lincolns’ House Divided speech, in that this speech seeks to frame the overall argument – that the nation must become either all slave or all free, preferably all free, by looking through the eyes of the African-American slave. Works Cited Anderson, Philip. Dictionary of Midwestern Literature. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001. “Lincoln’s ‘House Divided’ Speech. Available at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2934t.html Ryden, Kent. “Writing the Midwest: History, Literature and Regional Identity.” Geographical Review 89.4 (1999): 511-532. Stern, Frederick. “Exploring the Midwestern Literary Imagination.” In Noe, Marcia. Exploring the Midwestern Literary Imagination. New York: The Whitston Publishing Co., 1993. Storey, Mark. “Country Matters: Rural Fiction, Urban Modernity, and the Problem of American Regionalism.” Nineteenth-Century Literature 65.2(2010): 192-213. Watts, Edward. “Re-Centering the Center.” American Literary History 21.4 (2009): 859-868. Read More