A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War.  By Harry V. Jaffa.  New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2000.  Pp. xiv, 548.

As the long-awaited sequel to Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, Harry Jaffa’s A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War seeks to pick up where the first ended. Jaffa continues his rabid defense of Abraham Lincoln and his policies by directly linking Lincoln’s political thought to that of the Founding Fathers. Jaffa focuses his work on the period between the Lincoln-Douglas debates and the Gettysburg Address.

For Jaffa, Abraham Lincoln’s philosophical thought comes directly from Thomas Jefferson and is best espoused in the Declaration of Independence. This belief in natural rights philosophy and natural philosophy are the foundation of Lincoln’s ideas in which the union of America is grounded in human equality and the sovereignty of the people. To properly discuss these ideas, the author has spent a considerable amount of time discussing Jefferson’s thought in relation to his time period, along with discussing British constitutional law and ideas of Plato and Aristotle. The author also draws a link between the issues at play in the election of 1800 and the election of 1860. The victory of the Democratic Republicans over the Federalist espoused the idea of the people’s sovereignty as one party moved into power as another left, without any type of revolutionary action on the part of the losing side. Revolution, as a practice, was not needed because the act had been replaced with voting power. If the minority won however, revolution might be necessary, as tyranny would have ruled the voting process. The opposite was true in 186, as the minority attempted to take control and have their way.

Jaffa continues his work with a discussion of the differences in ideas of Jefferson Davis, James Buchanan, and Alexander Stephens with those of Lincoln. These three men held tighter to the beliefs of states’ rights and John C. Calhoun’s philosophical doctrines. Lincoln’s ideas admitted revolution as needed in cases of tyranny, but the ballot box, such as in the election of 1800, made up the new revolutionary style in which the public’s will was followed. The secession principles of Calhoun were at odds with this, as he believed in the right of the states, and not of the individual, to make decisions. Calhoun derived this compact theory of sovereignty from James Madison and was at complete odds with Lincoln’s ideas of natural rights.

Paramount to Jaffa’s interpretations is Lincoln’s speeches and written words. The author spends a great deal of time discussing and dissecting these pieces, even breaking down Lincoln’s first inaugural address paragraph by paragraph. Jaffa concludes that Lincoln was justified in his actions of prosecuting the war in order to save the principles of natural law, the founders, and the Union. In doing all of this, Jaffa seeks to bring Lincoln and his ideas into twentieth century and push back against a perceived view of relativism, which would be at odds with the Founding Fathers.

The work itself makes for very cerebral reading and may require several reads in order to fully grasp Jaffa’s work. Lengthy discussions of political and philosophical theory go back and forth between opposing sides and sometimes contradict what the author is trying to say. American political history, British constitutional history, ancient and modern philosophy, and modern understandings of Lincoln and his thoughts combine to make heavy reading. It is necessary for the reader to have a grounding in each of these. Stylistically, the work suffers from repetition and gross overuse of large block quotes. At times, it runs close to being a shameless hagiography as Jaffa concludes that society “must take up the weapons of truth and go forth to battle once again for the cause of Father Abraham, of Union, and of Freedom, as in the olden times.” (471) This being said, the author raises some interesting points and ideas and adds to the extensive work on Lincoln. The length and depth of the work requires a more proper read than can be given here.

Texas Christian University                                                                                    Blake Hill

A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War.  By Harry V. Jaffa.  Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2000.  549pp.

            Following many years after the author’s noteworthy work Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debate, the political theorist Harry V. Jaffa offers a second installment to his trenchant examination of the thought and ideas of Abraham Lincoln, with A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War.  Jaffa focuses his analysis on the period subsequent to the Lincoln-Douglas debates and leading up to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.  Yet in order to fully appreciate the import of Lincoln’s political thought during this time, the philosophic antecedents that shaped Lincoln’s ideas, as well as the intellectual climate surrounding Lincoln, must be fully explored.  Thus, Jaffa devotes a considerable portion of the text to careful interpretations of the writings and speeches of Thomas Jefferson, John C. Calhoun, James Buchanan, Alexander Stephens, Jefferson Davis, and, of course, Abraham Lincoln.  For Jaffa, Lincoln was above all a great thinker.  The author’s painstaking deliberation over Lincoln’s First Inaugural speech and Lincoln’s special message to Congress on July 4, 1861, lends credence to Jaffa’s assertion of the preeminent intellectualism of Lincoln.  In short, Jaffa’s purpose involves elevating Lincoln to the stature of a leading Western political philosopher while rescuing Lincoln from historical revisionists seeking to characterize Lincoln as a mere political opportunist.

            Jaffa, as a student and former assistant to the conservative political theorist Leo Strauss, seeks to approach seriously Lincoln’s ideas inherent in his speeches, with a firm belief in absolute truths, a moral and virtuous political order, and a palpable disdain for the relativism of modernity.  More specifically, as Lincoln himself admitted, the philosophical ideas of Jefferson, best encapsulated in the Declaration of Independence, constitute the heart of any understanding of Lincoln’s political thought.  Jaffa looks back to Jefferson’s ideas, expressed in the Declaration of Independence, as well as A Summary View of the Rights of British America, in order to ground Lincoln’s thought within the concepts of natural right and natural law.  Furthermore, for the author, these concepts, as delineated in the Declaration of Independence, and secured within a compact theory of government, define and embody the American polity.  Lincoln, following Jefferson, extols a union founded in the principle of universal equality of humanity, a concept intrinsic to natural right and natural law, and grounded in the sovereignty of the people. 

            The author deepens the close relationship of Jefferson and Lincoln by drawing a comparison between the election of 1800 and the election of 1860.  At issue is the historic precedent set in the 1800 election that transformed the idea of revolution (as prescribed in the Declaration of Independence) by battle to revolution (as prescribed by the U.S. Constitution) by ballot.  That is, the Democrat-Republican victory over the Federalists illustrated the rational expression of the sovereignty of the American people and a peaceful solution to legitimate political grievances held by an electoral majority.  The election of 1860, and more importantly the secessionist movement that followed, embodied an illegitimate consequence.  Lincoln’s election by the people signified the moral right of revolution by ballot while simultaneously justifying “the right of the majority to suppress the rebellion against its legitimate authority.” (9)  Lincoln’s political thought, steeped in Jeffersonian concepts of natural rights, equality, and revolution against tyranny, forged an understanding of secession distinctly at odds with notions of secession propagated by John C. Calhoun and later Southern leaders.  Jaffa undertakes careful readings of the speeches and writings of Calhoun, Jefferson Davis, and Alexander Stephens, in order to demonstrate the insufficiency of moral and rational grounds for their political positions.  In turn, Jaffa highlights Lincoln’s correlation with a correct understanding of the founding principles of the American political regime.

            This cogent, demanding book delves deep into constitutional history (both U.S. and British), political philosophy (both ancient and modern), and twentieth century political and historical understandings of the Declaration of Independence and Abraham Lincoln.  For Jaffa, the modernist eschewing of absolute truth and the embracing of relativism, contradicts the Founding Fathers and the political thought of Lincoln.  The author rails against the historical revisionism of Lincoln and the “presentism” inherent in the works of contemporary historians.  Unfortunately, Jaffa’s approach to Lincoln runs close to hagiography.  Typical of Straussian scholarship, Lincoln, and especially the Founders, are viewed through an intellectual prism that elevates the individual to Herculean status.  Furthermore, the “esoteric” reading of political texts espoused by such political theorists (emphasizing what is not said, or left out, by the statesman) lends itself to controversy, multiple interpretation or speculation.  Nevertheless, Jaffa succeeds again in this work in demonstrating Lincoln’s deep intellectual depth and a continuity with the political and philosophical traditions of the American regime.

Bryan Cupp

A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War.  By Harry V. Jaffa.  (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2000.  Pp. 548.  Cloth.)

A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War is Harry V. Jaffa’s long-awaited sequel to Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, published in 1959 when the author was forty years old.  Now in his eighties, the current Henry Salvatori Professor of Political Philosophy Emeritus at Claremont McKenna College and Claremont Graduate University has devoted most of his professional life to the study and defense of Abraham Lincoln’s political principles.  In his first book on Lincoln’s politics, Jaffa defended Lincoln against the critics who accused him of unnecessarily stirring public passion during his famous debates with Stephen Arnold Douglas and inciting a needless war.  In A New Birth of Freedom, Jaffa continues his defense of Lincoln against both his contemporary and modern opponents and illustrates that Lincoln’s political philosophy was true to the doctrines espoused by the Founding Fathers, namely Thomas Jefferson.

Jaffa introduces A New Birth of Freedom as “a commentary on the Gettysburg Address,” but surprisingly, Lincoln’s famous 19 November 1863 speech receives relatively little press as Jaffa sees it as “a speech within a drama” (p. xi).  Jaffa spends the majority of his book deconstructing a number of Lincoln speeches in order to test their logic, verify their philosophical truth, and illustrate their relationship to the ideas of the Founding Fathers.  In doing so, Jaffa hopes “to promote a climate of opinion in which the alienation from the principles of the Founding Fathers may be overcome, so that we may once again understand the true measure of Lincoln’s greatness and through him repossess our inheritance of the genuine blessings of liberty” (p. xiv).  Unfortunately, his efforts to relate Lincoln’s philosophy to that of the Founding Fathers necessitates an awkward literary construction as the reader lurches from the election of 1800 to the election of 1860, from the Declaration of Independence to the Gettysburg Address, and from the political ideologies of the antebellum period to the philosophy of Lincoln.  Moreover, Jaffa’s classical references, philosophical advertences, and Shakespearean allusions will likely perplex lay readers.   

Despite its somewhat clumsy construction and haughty language, the core of A New Birth of Freedom is solid.  In summary, the book posits that there are certain objective truths concerning the human condition that the founders of the American Republic adhered to in 1776, the most important one being the premise “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  The founders understood these rights to be antecedent to political and governmental constructions, and they recognized the conflict that existed between slavery and the principles of these natural laws; however, they compromised on the issue of slavery out of necessity and subsequently endeavored to extinguish the peculiar institution.  The secessionist impulse and secularized state-rights, pro-slavery philosophies of men like John Caldwell Calhoun, Jefferson Davis, and Alexander Hamilton Stephens threatened to derail these efforts and supersede natural law with the oppressive rule of the “concurrent majority,” thereby threatening the foundations of republican government (p. 433).  Jaffa contends that Lincoln correctly and justifiably elected to employ reasoned argument and force of arms to prevent the abandonment of these fundamental moral principles and save the Union.  In a provocative twist, Jaffa goes on to affirm that these same principles are threatened today by self-proclaimed intellectuals who reject natural law in favor of relativism, historicism, positivism, and nihilism, and he calls upon his readers to “take up the weapons of truth and go forth to battle once again for the cause of Father Abraham, of Union, and of Freedom, as in the olden time” (p. 471).

Reading Harry Jaffa’s A New Birth of Freedom is a very demanding cerebral exercise, and the book is most certainly meant for a sophisticated audience.  Almost excessively daunting and at times repetitious, finishing A New Birth of Freedom is well worth the effort, for those who are able to grapple successfully with the complex ideas set forth in the work—this will probably require more than one thorough reading—will reap all the benefits of an intellectual conversation concerning the tribulations and potentialities of constitutional government.  The depth of this work is simply impossible to summarize in a review of this size, and readers would be better served by analyzing their own copy of the book and experiencing for themselves the genius of Jaffa rather than relying on someone else’s interpretation of his masterpiece.  In the Preface, Jaffa promises that A New Birth of Freedom “will be followed by a concluding volume on the triumph and tragedy of the war years,” and while the prospect of another Jaffa book on Lincoln is very exciting, if somewhat intimidating, one can only hope that it will not take another forty years to write it as it is unlikely that Jaffa will be in any condition to publish when he is over one-hundred-and-twenty years old (p. xiv).

Jason Mann Frawley

Texas Christian University