Lincoln and the Cause of Freedom

In his “Lincoln Without Rhetoric” in the August 24, 1965 issue of national review, Frank Meyer has achieved something that is, so far as I can recall, absolutely without precedent: he has written a critical essay on Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War without mentioning or even alluding to the subject of slavery. I respect his bold rejection of received opinion about Lincoln, but I believe his conclusions are based upon mistakes and omissions as to facts, and upon inferences from the present that give erroneous impressions of the past. Most important, his strange silence about the central cause of the war, represents a default of his own deepest conviction, so often and so eloquently affirmed, of the absolute value of human freedom.

Meyer charges Lincoln with responsibility for the weakening, if not the destruction of the “Constitution in its original form.” Essential to that Constitution, says Meyer, was “what has usually been called ‘checks and balances,’ but is more accurately designated as the setting up of a state of tension between all the political centers of power so that effective final power rests in none of them.” That this was the conception of the Founding Fathers, Meyer will undoubtedly argue, with supporting evidence, in his forthcoming book. He certainly has his work cut out for him. At the very least, and as a starting point, he must discredit the arguments of Hamilton and Madison in the Federalist papers, as authority for the meaning of the original Constitution. From the point of view of these Fathers, it was the Articles of Confederation in which the political centers were so disposed that effective final power was not to be found. It was above all to remedy that deficiency that the Constitutional Convention was called.

HV

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Harry V. Jaffa

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In his “Lincoln Without Rhetoric” in the August 24, 1965 issue of national review, Frank Meyer has achieved something that is, so far as I can recall, absolutely without precedent: he has written a critical essay on Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War without mentioning or even alluding to the subject of slavery. I respect his bold rejection of received opinion about Lincoln, but I believe his conclusions are based upon mistakes and omissions as to facts, and upon inferences from the present that give erroneous impressions of the past. Most important, his strange silence about the central cause of the war, represents a default of his own deepest conviction, so often and so eloquently affirmed, of the absolute value of human freedom.

Meyer charges Lincoln with responsibility for the weakening, if not the destruction of the “Constitution in its original form.” Essential to that Constitution, says Meyer, was “what has usually been called ‘checks and balances,’ but is more accurately designated as the setting up of a state of tension between all the political centers of power so that effective final power rests in none of them.” That this was the conception of the Founding Fathers, Meyer will undoubtedly argue, with supporting evidence, in his forthcoming book. He certainly has his work cut out for him. At the very least, and as a starting point, he must discredit the arguments of Hamilton and Madison in the Federalist papers, as authority for the meaning of the original Constitution. From the point of view of these Fathers, it was the Articles of Confederation in which the political centers were so disposed that effective final power was not to be found. It was above all to remedy that deficiency that the Constitutional Convention was called.