Civil War & American History: U.S. Not More Divided Now

I have been an admirer of the Claremont Institute. The California-based think tank, founded in 1979, has in prior years done impressive work in recovering the legacy of the American founding, exploring the statesmanship of Abraham Lincoln, and dissecting the modern rise of theories about government that are fundamentally at odds with Founding principles. Conservatism owes a great debt of gratitude, in particular, to Harry Jaffa, the late Lincoln scholar and political theorist institutionally affiliated with the Claremont Institute (which was founded by some of his students).

In the early years of the modern conservative movement, Jaffa persuaded many important figures, including William F. Buckley Jr. himself, that the legacy of Lincoln was one worth claiming for the Right — at a time when this was very much in dispute. As Jaffa student and Claremont Institute fellow Glenn Ellmers puts it in his new book on Jaffa, The Soul of Politics: Harry V. Jaffa and the Fight for America, “in part through his friendship with (and constant badgering of) William F. Buckley, Jaffa was largely responsible for pulling the modern conservative movement toward a more authentically American and pro-Lincoln stance, away from the nostalgia for European throne-and-altar traditionalism or (worse) the slaveholding South.”

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Jack Butler

Jack Butler is a former submissions editor at National Review.

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I have been an admirer of the Claremont Institute. The California-based think tank, founded in 1979, has in prior years done impressive work in recovering the legacy of the American founding, exploring the statesmanship of Abraham Lincoln, and dissecting the modern rise of theories about government that are fundamentally at odds with Founding principles. Conservatism owes a great debt of gratitude, in particular, to Harry Jaffa, the late Lincoln scholar and political theorist institutionally affiliated with the Claremont Institute (which was founded by some of his students).

In the early years of the modern conservative movement, Jaffa persuaded many important figures, including William F. Buckley Jr. himself, that the legacy of Lincoln was one worth claiming for the Right — at a time when this was very much in dispute. As Jaffa student and Claremont Institute fellow Glenn Ellmers puts it in his new book on Jaffa, The Soul of Politics: Harry V. Jaffa and the Fight for America, “in part through his friendship with (and constant badgering of) William F. Buckley, Jaffa was largely responsible for pulling the modern conservative movement toward a more authentically American and pro-Lincoln stance, away from the nostalgia for European throne-and-altar traditionalism or (worse) the slaveholding South.”