A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War (with New Foreword)Rowman & Littlefield, 2018 M09 1 - 620 pages When it originally appeared, A New Birth of Freedom represented a milestone in Lincoln studies, the culmination of over a half a century of study and reflection by one of America's foremost scholars of American politics. Now reissued on the centenary of Jaffa’s birth with a new foreword by the esteemed Lincoln scholar Allen Guelzo, this long-awaited sequel to Jaffa’s earlier classic, Crisis of the House Divided, offers a piercing examination of the political thought of Abraham Lincoln and the themes of self-government, equality, and statesmanship on the eve of the Civil War. “Four decades ago, Harry Jaffa offered powerful insights on the Lincoln-Douglas debates in his Crisis of the House Divided. In this long-awaited sequel, he picks up the threads of that earlier study in this stimulating new interpretation of the showdown conflict between slavery and freedom in the election of 1860 and the secession crisis that followed. Every student of Lincoln needs to read and ponder this book.”— James M. McPherson, Princeton University “A masterful synthesis and analysis of the contending political philosophies on the eve of the Civil War. A magisterial work that arrives after a lifetime of scholarship and reflection—and earns our gratitude as well as our respect.”— Kirkus Reviews “The essence of Jaffa's case—meticulously laid out over nearly 500 pages—is that the Constitution is not, as Lincoln put it, a 'free love arrangement' held together by passing fancy. It is an indissoluble compact in which all men consent to be governed by majority, provided their inalienable rights are preserved.”— Bret Stephens; The Wall Street Journal |
From inside the book
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Page xiii
... moral order or the moral order makes the people.”6 That sort of eureka was unusual for a student of political science in the 1940s, but it would have sounded downright bizarre to the historians and biographers of Lincoln of those times ...
... moral order or the moral order makes the people.”6 That sort of eureka was unusual for a student of political science in the 1940s, but it would have sounded downright bizarre to the historians and biographers of Lincoln of those times ...
Page xiv
... moral realities, and while he was not a moral absolutist in the mold of Charles Finney or William Lloyd Garrison, he did believe that certain principles were simply nonnegotiable. The first was that the foundation of a free society was ...
... moral realities, and while he was not a moral absolutist in the mold of Charles Finney or William Lloyd Garrison, he did believe that certain principles were simply nonnegotiable. The first was that the foundation of a free society was ...
Page xxi
... moral relativism. As so many revolts do, Romanticism clothed itself in the costume of what it deemed an unjustly ... morality governed by prudence is largely beyond the ken of our latter-day abolitionist historians. For them, prudential ...
... moral relativism. As so many revolts do, Romanticism clothed itself in the costume of what it deemed an unjustly ... morality governed by prudence is largely beyond the ken of our latter-day abolitionist historians. For them, prudential ...
Page xxv
... moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the ...
... moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the ...
Page xxvi
... morality is the antithesis of the morality implied by Kant's doctrine of the categorical imperative.” Unhappily, it not only informed Taney's reasoning in Dred Scott, but “is assumed to the true moral doctrine by many present-day ...
... morality is the antithesis of the morality implied by Kant's doctrine of the categorical imperative.” Unhappily, it not only informed Taney's reasoning in Dred Scott, but “is assumed to the true moral doctrine by many present-day ...
Contents
1 | |
73 | |
Chapter 3 The Divided American Mind on the Eve of Conflict James Buchanan Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens Survey the Crisis | 153 |
Chapter 4 The Mind of Lincolns Inaugural and the Argument and Action of the Debate That Shaped ItI | 237 |
Chapter 5 The Mind of Lincolns Inaugural and the Argument and Action of the Debate That Shaped ItII | 285 |
Chapter 6 July 4 1861 Lincoln Tells Why the Union Must Be Preserved | 357 |
Chapter 7 Slavery Secession and State Rights The Political Teaching of John C Calhoun | 403 |
Appendix The Dividing Line between Federal and Local Authority Popular Sovereignty in the TerritoriesA Commentary | 473 |
Notes | 489 |
Index | 539 |
About the Author | 551 |
Other editions - View all
A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War Harry V. Jaffa Limited preview - 2000 |
A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War Harry V. Jaffa Limited preview - 2004 |
A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War Harry V. Jaffa No preview available - 2018 |
Common terms and phrases
Abraham Lincoln according Alexander Stephens American Revolution antislavery appeal argument Aristotle Articles Articles of Confederation assertion authority Becker become believed British Buchanan Calhoun cause citizens civil claim colonies common compact concurrent majority Confederate Congress consent constitutional right constitutionalism created equal crisis Davis debates Declaration of Independence denied despotism divine right doctrine Douglas Douglas’s Dred Scott election electoral ernment fact federal Federalist Federalist Papers Founding freedom fugitive slave Gettysburg Address God’s human idea inaugural individual institutions interest Jaffa Jefferson Jefferson Davis justice laws of nature liberty Madison majority rule man’s means ment mind moral nation natural rights nature’s Negroes opinion party popular sovereignty president principles proposition proslavery question race ratified reason republican right of revolution secede secession Senate slavery social society South Carolina Southern speech Stephens stitution Summary View Taney Taney’s territories theory tion truth tyranny Union United Virginia vote