Evaluating conspiracy: narrative, argument, and ideology in Lincoln's "House Divided" speech.

• Author: Pfau, Michael William
• Position: Abraham Lincoln

Each day in the United States and around the world, conspiracy theories of all stripes gain ground with audiences (Goldberg, 2001). This situation is serious because, although some conspiracy theories are ludicrous or even laughable, others can have detrimental consequences: undermining confidence in government, contributing to extreme cynicism about the business and corporate sectors, and fueling dangerous extremist movements. Still others, however, may contain a grain of truth and help unmask the machinations of the powerful. Whatever the merits of the specific case, it is evident that, now more than ever, we need a way to adjudicate the conspiratorial interpretations that increasingly populate our political discourse. Despite the ubiquity of conspiracy theories and the stakes involved, however, citizens lack means by which to separate true from false, probable from improbable, because scholars of rhetoric and argumentation are uncertain how to evaluate conspiracy theories.

Indeed, argumentation scholars have had great difficulty assimilating conspiracy arguments into the traditional evaluative apparatuses. Part of the problem has been the lingering presumption that these arguments are irrational and false. Within what might be called the "paranoid style" paradigm, the "argument" form of conspiracy discourse is dismissed as a form of "rationalistic" camouflage for a fundamentally irrational claim, belief in which indicates a "political pathology" characterized by, among other things, "distorted judgment" (Hofstadter, 1965, pp. 5-6, 36-38). Insofar as they were understood to "prove" propositions that were fundamentally false, conspiracy arguments posed an intriguing challenge, and several early studies emphasized the slippery and deceitful character of paranoid rhetoric (Sanders & Newman, 1971; Smith, 1977). Subsequent scholarship took a different tack, suggesting that conspiracy arguments function through a compelling narrative form rather than a simple assemblage of claims and proofs (Davis, 1969, pp. 4-5, 72; Zarefsky, 1990, p. 103). Consistent with this theoretical reorientation were new evaluative criteria such as narrative fidelity and narrative coherence (Fisher, 1987, pp. 47-49, 75-76). But critics of the narrative approach have argued that such evaluative criteria lack sufficient rigor (Warnick, 1987). Thus, some scholars have advocated a return to more traditional, formalistic evaluative criteria in order to determine whether conspiracy arguments are sufficient to prove the existence of the conspiracy (Young, Launer, & Austin, 1990).

In sum, despite a crucial need to evaluate conspiracy theories, our scholarship remains entangled among the often dissonant assumptions and methods of the paranoid style, argument theory, and narrative theory. The resulting impasse is especially troubling in light of growing recognition that some conspiracy arguments inhabiting the "mainstream" of political discourse deserve more careful attention than conspiracies in the paranoid style (Goodnight & Poulakos, 1981; Pfau, 2005; Zarefsky, 1990), and that conspiracy theories can represent a populist critique of power relations (Fenster, 1999, pp. 52-74). Currently, however, such potentially empowering arguments exist in a sort of limbo: problematic to dismiss offhandedly as paranoid fantasy, yet extremely difficult or impossible to validate. In response to this impasse, this essay proposes a strategy of evaluation that reflects the unique character of conspiracy arguments, that is, their unique burden to prove the existence of machinations that necessarily are difficult or impossible to perceive. Under such circumstances, that traditional criteria of argumentative rationality may be inappropriate should not deter us from developing evaluative strategies that are comparative, contextual, and ideological in nature. Such strategies may not offer simple or easily generalizable judgments but, insofar as they better reflect both the logical complexities and particular ideological sensitivities of conspiracy discourse, they may best distinguish theories that are possible or probable from those that strain credulity or distort judgment.

This evaluative strategy will emerge through consideration of the prominent and controversial "slave power" conspiracy theory expressed in Abraham Lincoln's famous "House Divided" speech. This theory, positing the overwhelming influence of slaveholders in the early republic, was so popular in the antebellum North of the 1850s that it was instrumental in bringing the fledgling Republican Party to power in 1860 (Foner, 1970, pp. 73-102). Although it represents a relatively respectable conspiracy theory, and Lincoln a relatively respectable conspiracy rhetor, both speech and speaker have been widely condemned. Revisionist historians and others criticize Lincoln as one of a generation of politicians whose irresponsible demagoguery and scare tactics helped to bring about the Civil War (Craven, 1939, pp. 63-64, 95- 96; Nevins, 1950, pp. 14-15; Randall, 1945, p. 50, 1947, pp. 39, 46, 50). Historians also have discredited Lincoln's slave power theory, often employing the language of rationalistic argument to do so. Roy Basler (1939) characterizes it as a "distortion of truth" (p. 180), Avery Craven (1942) calls it an "extreme partisan appeal to unfounded fears" (p. 392), J. G. Randall says it is "fanciful" and "unjustified" (1945, pp. 102-103; 1947, p. 21), and Allen Nevins (1950) calls it "unfounded" and an "absurd bogey" (p. 362). M. E. Bradford, perhaps the harshest critic, dutifully exposes Lincoln's alleged use of fallacious reasoning, in particular the ad hominem, false dilemma and post hoc fallacies (1979, p. 18; 1988, pp. 187, 204). Even the more evenhanded Robert Johannsen (1991) points out that the conspiracy argument in "House Divided" is based on analogy with "no evidence" (p. 75), calls it "a neat, simplistic, and emotionally charged stratagem" (p. 86), and says that Lincoln "employed his best doomsday rhetoric to alarm his audiences" (p. 89). Although not all historians and critics are as condemnatory (Fehrenbacher, 1960, p. 628; Jaffa, 1959, pp. 75, 86, 89; Left, 1983, pp. 15-18), certainly this conspiracy theory has been controversial especially insofar as it allegedly fails to meet standards of good argumentation.

This essay will reevaluate Lincoln's conspiracy theory in "House Divided" for the purpose of developing viable evaluative strategies for conspiracy arguments. First, close reading of the speech and promising approaches from narrative and argumentation theory are applied in order to develop a comparative and contextual evaluative strategy that may help to separate the probable from the improbable. Second, the concept of ideology is deployed in order to investigate both the place of conspiracy discourse within particular political and ideological contexts and the unspoken evaluative criteria by which conspiracy theories often are adjudicated. Throughout, Lincoln's theory will be evaluated from the contemporaneous perspective of 1858.

EVALUATING CONSPIRACY AS NARRATIVE AND ARGUMENT

The importance of the conspiracy theory to "House Divided" is immediately evident in its organization: The relevant section comprises 72% of the speech (Fehrenbacher, 1960, p. 631). Any conspiracy discourse will possess characteristics that might provide evaluative purchase. The conspiracy theory in "House Divided" is particularly complex, but its related narrative and argumentative characteristics are most prominent. Accordingly, this section will apply relevant components of narrative and argument theory in order to evaluate the conspiracy theory that animates the speech.

Conspiracy Theory as Narrative

Several scholars have noted the relevance of narrative to conspiracy discourse (Davis, 1969, pp. 4-5, 72; Hofstadter, 1965, p. 6; Zarefsky, 1990, p. 103), and Lincoln's theory can be approached as a story of conspiracy. Lincoln (1953a) begins:

Let any one who doubts, carefully contemplate that now almost complete legal combination-piece of machinery so to speak-compounded of the Nebraska doctrine, and the Dred Scott decision. Let him consider not only what work the machinery is adapted to do, and how well adapted; but also, let him study the history of its construction, and trace, if he can, or rather fail, if he can, to trace the evidences of design, and concert of action, among its chief bosses, from the beginning. (p. 462)

The conspiracy section purports to connect the Nebraska bill, the Dred Scott decision and a future Dred Scott II decision via a complex linkage of acts, motives and concert that are said to comprise a piece of machinery to nationalize slavery. The Nebraska bill, including its popular sovereignty component, is alleged to have sufficed to carry the 1856 election for the Democrats but, by subordinating the territory's power to exclude slavery to the Constitution, also to have created a "niche" for Dred Scott, which subsequently rendered popular sovereignty null and void by ruling that a territory cannot exclude slavery. Further, the conspiracy section warns that "niches" in Dred Scott create an opening for a Dred Scott II that would enable slavery to be taken not only to the territories but to the free states as well.

Michael Leffs (1983) account divides this conspiracy narrative into "three different movements [reflecting temporal progression] within the larger structure of this section ... The first subsection narrates past events, the second is grounded in the present, and the third predicts future events" (p. 10). The first section narrates events from the Kansas-Nebraska Act to Douglas' efforts against the Lecompton Constitution. The Kansas-Nebraska Act, opening "all the national territory to slavery," is described as the "first point gained" (Lincoln, 1953a, p. 462). The popular ("squatter") sovereignty doctrine associated with this Act, although supposedly...