Founders' son: a life of Abraham Lincoln (original) (raw)

Lincoln and Liberty: Wisdom for the Ages

Civil War Book Review, 2015

Essays on the Lessons of Lincoln Love of Abraham Lincoln is one thing that both conservatives and liberals each share. Many today, writes Lucas E. Morel in the preface to this informative and often provocative series of essays, are overly preoccupied with the 16th president's "openness to change" (ix). But to these contributors, Lincoln was "fairly well set in terms of his political philosophy" (xii). The essays in Lincoln and Liberty: Wisdom for the Ages "seek to understand Lincoln as he understood himself and attempted to make himself clear to his day and age" (xii), and illustrate that Lincoln still has much to teach us today. Indeed, there are insights here to broaden one's understanding of Lincoln for even the most seasoned scholar.

“My Ancient Faith”: Abraham Lincoln’s Response to the Jeffersonian Problem

Polity, 2022

In this paper I consider the "Jeffersonian problem": whether one generation has the right to bind future generations to an inherited constitutional order. Thomas Jefferson's challenge rests on fundamental democratic principles of equality and consent, and therefore-while there may be substantial pragmatic reasons to be wary of his argument-any response must also remain true to those moral ideals. I argue that through the crisis of slavery and the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln was compelled to revisit the basis of the American political regime, and in doing so articulated a conception of democratic politics that answers Jefferson's challenge. He does so in two ways: first, Lincoln's political religion revives reverence for the ancestral in a democratic context; second, Lincoln's concept of rededication allows each generation to affirm that revered past while simultaneously manifesting its own sovereign power through novel applications of past principle. I conclude by arguing that the inclusion of generational obligations is essential to democratic politics and that Lincoln's approach provides the best means of doing so.

Abraham Lincoln: The Observations of John G. Nicolay and John Hay

2007

In this slim collection a distinguished editor and biographer presents eleven brief excerpts from the ten-volume Abraham Lincoln: A History, by his devoted secretaries John G. Nicolay and John Hay. The introduction, Nicolay and Hay: Court Historians, appeared in the Winter 1998 Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association. Readers of that masterful summary may have no need of this book. Burlingame displays his usual sensitivity to male relationships, comparing the affection between Lincoln and Hay to that between George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, though he errs in making Hay, an Ivy League snob, nineteen years younger than his boss; he was actually the junior by twenty-nine years. Non-specialists are apt to be misled by much of the content of the fewer than 65 pages Burlingame has cherry picked from the mammoth biography. Partly serialized in the Century Magazine, 1886-1890, and published as books in the latter year, few today, even among Lincoln specialists, have read the entire 4,709 pages. Scholarly assessments changed almost completely from the late 1880s, when James Ford Rhodes praised it, to 1939 when Allan Nevins condemned it. Burlingame argues that Carl Sandburg could not have begun his own life without it. Other biographers had to rely on it until the opening of the Lincoln papers in 1947, followed two years later by the publication of Hay's diary and Nicolay's memos of presidential conversations. Now, except for hardcore Lincoln idolaters, including the current clique of court historians, most readers will find even the brief excerpts from this panegyric hard to stomach. The contrast between Burlingame's scholarship and Nicolay and Hay's hagiography is often jarring.

The Bread She Earns With Her Own Hands: An Examination of Lincoln's Political Economy

This dissertation focuses on how Abraham Lincoln's idea of "liberty to all" affected his political thought about the intersection of government and the economy. It is a search for Lincoln's political economy. While contemporary economists focus on a single aspect of the person such as self-interest, Lincoln following thinkers such as Francis Wayland viewed economics as a moral science. I do this by examining the speeches and deeds of Abraham Lincoln. I explore topics such as what he meant by "liberty to all", his valuing of a commercial society over an agrarian one, and his understanding of the importance of free labor in terms of Lincoln's thinking on theology and natural rights. Additionally, I examine Lincoln on what the US Constitution allows the national government to do to promote economic prosperity and the role political parties play on these policies. Lastly, I consider several thinkers from the Progressive Era and how they understood Lincoln and considered themselves to be impacted by his administration. My goal is to understand not just what Lincoln was against, i.e. slavery but what Lincoln was for; free labor and what he thought the national government should do to support its cause. 1 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION His occupying the chair of state was a triumph of the good sense of mankind, and of the public conscience. This middle-class country had got a middle-class president, at last. Yes, in manners and sympathies, but not in powers, for his powers were superior. This man grew according to the need. His mind mastered the problem of the day; and as the problem grew, so did his comprehension of it. Rarely was man so fitted to the event. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Eulogy of Abraham Lincoln There is little doubt that the Civil War marks a dramatic moment in the political development of the United States and that Abraham Lincoln had much to do with these changes. Certainly, it is the end of slavery, the start of the national government exercising considerably more of its power, and the triumph of Northern free labor and capitalism. Lincoln is often appreciated as the man who insisted that the equality of "all men" in the Declaration of Independence included all men. He was also president when the national government began doing considerably more than it had previously done. The Lincoln Presidency marks the restart of national banking, along with the beginning of the transcontinental railroad, land grant colleges, the Department of Agriculture, and the homesteading act to name a few national government innovations. The sub-field of political theory, within political science, has developed a considerable amount of literature about Lincoln's dedication to the proposition that all men are created equal and his leadership in ending slavery. What has not occurred is an exploration of what these new actions of the national government, that are not related to slavery, had to do with the principle of liberty to all. In this dissertation, I seek the connection between this new role of the national government and the idea that all men are created equal and to place these notions within the American political tradition. While the actions are new, they are a long time coming. The Lincoln Presidency marks the triumph of the responsibility side of American politics that Karl

Democracy for All and All for Democracy: Lincoln as a Man of Hope

Many scholars have rightly been interested in Abraham Lincoln's thoughts on 'political religion.' His writings are glazed with his own individual religiosity---not that of any established church---making it a worthy and ambitious endeavor to pin down and articulate the components of Lincoln's conscience during the various phases of his life.