Robert Penn Warren on political extremism

Today is the birthday of John Brown, who was born in 1800. By coincidence, about a week and a half ago I picked up a used copy of The Legacy of the Civil War, by Robert Penn Warren. Originally subtitled Meditations on the Centennial, this is a long, elegantly written, and insightful essay on how and why the Civil War still mattered in 1961. It still works in 2023, most especially in its observations about polarization and extremism.

Early in the essay, in considering the roots of American pragmatism, which can be simultaneously cold-bloodedly ruthless and weepily sentimental, Warren suggests that the pragmatism of a Lincoln or an Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr may have originated as “a reaction” against “two types of absolutes, the collision of which was an essential part” of the origins of the war. Warren calls these the “higher law” and “legalism.”

The “higher law” pole is that of the radical abolitionists, who discovered the universal solvent of divine mandate and rejected anything bearing the taint of slavery—constitution, commerce, their fellow man, all but their righteous selves. Warren quotes representative passages of Emerson, William Lloyd Garrison, Fales Newhall, James Redpath, and others celebrating lawlessness, violence, and treason in pursuit of abolition. For “the higher-law man,” Warren writes, “in any time and place, must always be ready to burn any constitution, for he must, ultimately, deny the very concept of society.” The radical activist is so certain and sets standards so stringent that in the end “all that was left was ‘the infinitude of the individual’—with no ‘connections,’ with no relation to ‘dirty institutions,’ and ideally with none of the tarnishing affections of wives and children.”

This is Rousseau; this is warmed over American Jacobinism. Warren continues:

Not only would one dirty oneself by trying to reform the local system. One would have to deal practically and by piecemeal; one would, clearly, have to work out compromise solutions. But with slavery all was different. One could demand the total solution, the solution of absolute morality; one could achieve the apocalyptic frisson.

In addition to a divinely ordained mission, this philosophical stance grants the adherent great self-regard and a warm and satisfied conscience—but precludes actually fixing things. However:

But social problems are rarely to be solved by men totally outside of society—certainly not by men not merely outside of a particular society but outside of the very concept of society. For if all institutions are “dirty,” why really bother to reform them? Destruction is simpler, purer, more logical, and certainly more exciting. Conscience without responsibility—this is truly the last infirmity of the soul.

A recognizable type, resurgent today. Especially when striking a morally upright pose becomes an excuse to ignore specifics (in favor of the “morally true”) and intentionally escalate the debate:

Nor are all social problems best solved by an abstract commitment to virtue. Before delivering his famous speech on “The Crime Against Kansas,” Senator Sumner might have meditated on a passage from Aristotle’s Ethics, with which, in his great learning, he was certainly familiar: “In discussions on subjects of moral action, universal statements are apt to be too vague, but particular ones are more consistent with truth; for actions are conversant with particulars; and it is necessary that the statements should agree with these.” . . . But to Sumner, the angry Platonist, too many “particulars” about the situation in Kansas, or too much concern for “the practical matter,” might embarrass Truth; and might lower the rhetorical temperature.

Warren is careful, later, to note that “[i]n setting up the contrast between the ‘higher law’ and legalism, I have not intended to imply that the Civil War was ‘caused’ by the extremists on both sides. That is far too simple a notion of the cause, and far too simple a description of the situation.” But it is worth remembering that “both ‘higher law’ and legalism were reactions to a situation already in existence. But they did aggravate the situation and they did poison thinking about it.”

And that polarization—with the sanctimonious on one side and the legalists and apologists on the other—as ugly as it was, as corrupting as it was, laid the path for far worse. Writing that the hanging of John Brown was “folly” and that Brown should have been committed to an insane asylum, Warren concludes this section by noting “that a crazy man is a large-scale menace only in a crazy society.”

Food for thought—especially that chilling phrase “conscience without responsibility.” And there is much more in Warren’s essay that is worthwhile.