I disagree with the idea that we’re obviously more moral in a superior sense to people who lived earlier in American history. Perhaps in a “quantitative” sense. We started out in an environment more favorable to certain moral ideas, but we may have gone no further or not even as far as our predecessors in personal moral achievement/advancement. The improved environment was a result of the most recent predecessors’ moral advancement. What we do with it represents how much moral gain we can take credit for.
While there are obvious exceptions, in general, it seems to me like the equivalent of saying “I had an iPhone and they had no electricity—I’m so much more advanced!” The retort is that the end result is definitive—“we don’t own slaves, whether or not we did anything to help get to this point, we’re still more moral because of this.” That’s what I mean by quantitative: we do have better technology. And this does matter—while one of my objections is that we actually wildly misrepresent the degree of acceptance of many of these things historically, often claiming that no one even thought to question the wrongness of things that were always at some level publicly contentious (such as slavery), it certainly does affect your moral sensibility. The average person now is less likely to have developed a tolerance for brutality and oppression than the average person in a slave-holding society. That said, Thomas Jefferson himself wrote about this exact issue—how it morally perverted southern children. So some had sensitivity and awareness, but that didn’t get them very far at all in the morality of their actions. And that brings me to my main point: many of the people who can claim to be more moral, with some justification, would not be if the circumstances had been less favorable. This is true of most people, who tend to go along with things.
But we’re not just “men of our time,” either. Some people truly are more moral than their contemporaries and transcend circumstances—these are usually the same type of person in any era. The abolitionist in the 1800s would be consumed with fighting injustice today, although what types are debatable. Abolitionists overlapped a lot with women’s rights advocates, etc. They don’t need to be taught what’s wrong—they see it. When the average person claims this moral vision, I’m wary. I just don’t believe most men today are superior in judgement, moral or otherwise, to Benjamin Franklin. I most definitely don’t believe so with regard to Lincoln. They had more favorable circumstances that kept them from certain things, but I don’t believe their impulses are fundamentally different.
I just find the whole idea of clear and definite moral progress problematic and ahistorical. I don’t think we want to play this game, and I don’t think morality reverses as wildly as we think. Practices change more than fundamental beliefs. And the average public opinion does not differ as much on many things over time as is often represented. For example, what Mary Wollstonecraft said. I haven’t gotten a chance to look at the context of her statement, but it was a common argument at the time, including by her, that women were deprived of the ability to develop themselves, morally, intellectually, and otherwise, because they weren’t allowed to take on certain responsibilities, make decisions, or have the same learning experiences. And in a society with norms like that one, and particularly in a world in which most women dealt with constant pregnancy or nursing, this would indeed appear fated. An argument like that is not at all objectionable to me, nor would a weaker version that was also common, such that women were generally more emotional and personal by nature, and this tended to interfere with acquiring certain broad virtues to the highest extent. It may be incorrect and reflect a lack of awareness of social norms that shape the situation, but I don’t see it as a sign of particular immorality. I think many people would make an equivalent comment today. It’s not considered very respectable, but it’s not terribly rare to think women might be more emotional or more frequently fail to develop sufficient confidence and independence due to fate seeming against their success. And I don’t think either of these comments are immoral, even if incorrect. Many people would say that is what they had personally observed. People are regularly mistaken in what they think they have observed. The consequences of this are unfortunate, but it doesn’t strike me as inherently indicative of bad character.
Also, I disagree with that characterization of Lincoln’s views. I’ve studied him pretty carefully. In many things, he was a live and let live guy, though alert to concerns of justice. He didn’t have a busybody streak when it came to those things. I don’t think he had strong feelings that other races should be prevented from doing anything. I think it is entirely possible he was in favor of or at least wasn’t bothered by black suffrage personally at any time, and probably not very bothered by interracial marriage (he probably wasn’t in favor of it, because he saw that the family would be ostracized, but I don’t think he was upset by it). But he also knew most white people in the area did care, and so it wasn’t something he spent much time on, because it wasn’t going to happen, and he was generally focused on advocating for things that could be practically achieved. He evaluated most things politically, which at times I think was far from immoral—the situation had to reach a certain point to make certain developments wise to pursue. The key thing was that he moved in the direction of justice whenever it became clear it could be done without drastic backlash or noncompliance.
The quotes that are paraphrased in your post are often taken out of context—he was basically telling voters he wasn’t advocating for black suffrage or interracial marriage, which were unpopular, not that he had some strong personal feeling against it and would never in a million years let it happen. His words are very carefully qualified. I believe he even joked about how he wasn’t advocating for it, but he didn’t see why it was such a big deal if a black woman wanted to marry a white man, saying something like “if she can stand it!” He also joked that he’d personally follow Stephen Douglas around to make sure he didn’t marry a black a woman, since Douglas seemed so worried about what would happen if the laws changed. He seemed to find the whole debate rather annoyingly obsessive—if you are against interracial marriage, it’s not like anyone is going to make you do it! I think he also joked about this when speaking to Kentuckians, saying he had several sister-in-laws in that state, and he had no fear that they were going to run away with black men, that it was an issue just used to inflame people. (And, of course, many people today still might have a hard time adjusting to a child’s decision to marry someone of a different race, and don’t go out of their way to fight for unpopular causes.)
He by no means went out of his way to help black people (few did), but I truly don’t think he had any strong impulse to block their progress. As president, he came around to it as quickly as it was feasible—once black soldiers enlisted in the military, that was proof to him that they were capable of voting. I think he was fundamentally much more decent than most people then or now. He wasn’t a reformer on the leading edge of justice, but few are, and usually reformers only achieve their aims with the help of practical but principled politicians. Both are needed, and one is not necessarily more moral than the other.
I disagree with the idea that we’re obviously more moral in a superior sense to people who lived earlier in American history. Perhaps in a “quantitative” sense. We started out in an environment more favorable to certain moral ideas, but we may have gone no further or not even as far as our predecessors in personal moral achievement/advancement. The improved environment was a result of the most recent predecessors’ moral advancement. What we do with it represents how much moral gain we can take credit for.
While there are obvious exceptions, in general, it seems to me like the equivalent of saying “I had an iPhone and they had no electricity—I’m so much more advanced!” The retort is that the end result is definitive—“we don’t own slaves, whether or not we did anything to help get to this point, we’re still more moral because of this.” That’s what I mean by quantitative: we do have better technology. And this does matter—while one of my objections is that we actually wildly misrepresent the degree of acceptance of many of these things historically, often claiming that no one even thought to question the wrongness of things that were always at some level publicly contentious (such as slavery), it certainly does affect your moral sensibility. The average person now is less likely to have developed a tolerance for brutality and oppression than the average person in a slave-holding society. That said, Thomas Jefferson himself wrote about this exact issue—how it morally perverted southern children. So some had sensitivity and awareness, but that didn’t get them very far at all in the morality of their actions. And that brings me to my main point: many of the people who can claim to be more moral, with some justification, would not be if the circumstances had been less favorable. This is true of most people, who tend to go along with things.
But we’re not just “men of our time,” either. Some people truly are more moral than their contemporaries and transcend circumstances—these are usually the same type of person in any era. The abolitionist in the 1800s would be consumed with fighting injustice today, although what types are debatable. Abolitionists overlapped a lot with women’s rights advocates, etc. They don’t need to be taught what’s wrong—they see it. When the average person claims this moral vision, I’m wary. I just don’t believe most men today are superior in judgement, moral or otherwise, to Benjamin Franklin. I most definitely don’t believe so with regard to Lincoln. They had more favorable circumstances that kept them from certain things, but I don’t believe their impulses are fundamentally different.
I just find the whole idea of clear and definite moral progress problematic and ahistorical. I don’t think we want to play this game, and I don’t think morality reverses as wildly as we think. Practices change more than fundamental beliefs. And the average public opinion does not differ as much on many things over time as is often represented. For example, what Mary Wollstonecraft said. I haven’t gotten a chance to look at the context of her statement, but it was a common argument at the time, including by her, that women were deprived of the ability to develop themselves, morally, intellectually, and otherwise, because they weren’t allowed to take on certain responsibilities, make decisions, or have the same learning experiences. And in a society with norms like that one, and particularly in a world in which most women dealt with constant pregnancy or nursing, this would indeed appear fated. An argument like that is not at all objectionable to me, nor would a weaker version that was also common, such that women were generally more emotional and personal by nature, and this tended to interfere with acquiring certain broad virtues to the highest extent. It may be incorrect and reflect a lack of awareness of social norms that shape the situation, but I don’t see it as a sign of particular immorality. I think many people would make an equivalent comment today. It’s not considered very respectable, but it’s not terribly rare to think women might be more emotional or more frequently fail to develop sufficient confidence and independence due to fate seeming against their success. And I don’t think either of these comments are immoral, even if incorrect. Many people would say that is what they had personally observed. People are regularly mistaken in what they think they have observed. The consequences of this are unfortunate, but it doesn’t strike me as inherently indicative of bad character.
Also, I disagree with that characterization of Lincoln’s views. I’ve studied him pretty carefully. In many things, he was a live and let live guy, though alert to concerns of justice. He didn’t have a busybody streak when it came to those things. I don’t think he had strong feelings that other races should be prevented from doing anything. I think it is entirely possible he was in favor of or at least wasn’t bothered by black suffrage personally at any time, and probably not very bothered by interracial marriage (he probably wasn’t in favor of it, because he saw that the family would be ostracized, but I don’t think he was upset by it). But he also knew most white people in the area did care, and so it wasn’t something he spent much time on, because it wasn’t going to happen, and he was generally focused on advocating for things that could be practically achieved. He evaluated most things politically, which at times I think was far from immoral—the situation had to reach a certain point to make certain developments wise to pursue. The key thing was that he moved in the direction of justice whenever it became clear it could be done without drastic backlash or noncompliance.
The quotes that are paraphrased in your post are often taken out of context—he was basically telling voters he wasn’t advocating for black suffrage or interracial marriage, which were unpopular, not that he had some strong personal feeling against it and would never in a million years let it happen. His words are very carefully qualified. I believe he even joked about how he wasn’t advocating for it, but he didn’t see why it was such a big deal if a black woman wanted to marry a white man, saying something like “if she can stand it!” He also joked that he’d personally follow Stephen Douglas around to make sure he didn’t marry a black a woman, since Douglas seemed so worried about what would happen if the laws changed. He seemed to find the whole debate rather annoyingly obsessive—if you are against interracial marriage, it’s not like anyone is going to make you do it! I think he also joked about this when speaking to Kentuckians, saying he had several sister-in-laws in that state, and he had no fear that they were going to run away with black men, that it was an issue just used to inflame people. (And, of course, many people today still might have a hard time adjusting to a child’s decision to marry someone of a different race, and don’t go out of their way to fight for unpopular causes.)
He by no means went out of his way to help black people (few did), but I truly don’t think he had any strong impulse to block their progress. As president, he came around to it as quickly as it was feasible—once black soldiers enlisted in the military, that was proof to him that they were capable of voting. I think he was fundamentally much more decent than most people then or now. He wasn’t a reformer on the leading edge of justice, but few are, and usually reformers only achieve their aims with the help of practical but principled politicians. Both are needed, and one is not necessarily more moral than the other.