Published in The Civil War & Lincoln

A hero to many contemporary conservatives and libertarians, William Graham Sumner (who penned the phrase "the forgotten man," which was then misappropriated by FDR), takes a beating from Steve Hayward. Sumner joined the attack on Progressive Darwinists who, along with this Social Darwinist, renounced the Declaration of Independence.

Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on April 15, 147 years ago today. The event fell on Good Friday.

Jonah Goldberg proposes federalism as means of peaceful coexistence betweeen the left and right. Trouble is, it has been tried before: Stephen Douglas. The other guy eventually won. Let's stick by Abe's "tough nut to crack."

In California, among other states, the left has long been at work on "independent state grounds" laws. In this regard, opponents of abortion are misguided in their focus on Roe v. Wade, which certainly should be overturned. Overthrowing Roe would permit state legislatures to restrict abortion, but it would leave other, liberal states with abortion rights protected. For more on "independent state grounds" see this book on democracy in California and this article by Edward Erler.

The Sage of Mt. Airy has more theoretical speculations on the meanings of federalism for the right and for the left.

Of course, you say, but Harry Jaffa corrects Obama's SOTU misquotation precisely, in Charles Johnson's interview with him:

Professor Jaffa noted that this quotation leaves out a great deal. The 93-year-old Jaffa recited the full statement from Lincoln's speech, "The Nature and Objects of Government, with Special Reference to Slavery" (July 1, 1854) by memory:

"The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do, for themselves in their separate and individual capacities."

Notice the difference? The emphasis is on the need to have done, not on government doing the action. "That distinction was missing from his quotation," Jaffa explains. Yet Obama has repeatedly invoked this misleading Lincoln quotation on both the campaign trail and during his presidency.

Johnson is the go-to guy for reporting on all things Claremont, including the recent admissions scandal. He is working on more stories on the scandal, one that could result in further resignations, including that of the President, who has effectively undermined the conservative scholars at the College.

The current Republican exchanges? Besides those, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, according to the popularizing Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer. He responded to Newt Gingrich's call for Lincoln-Douglas debates against Obama. Holzer, however, reassures us that "Rather than inspiring memorable words, they proved for the most part an embarrassment." In fact, in his view, they show Lincoln's racial bigotry: 

"I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races," he declared in Charleston, Ill., to robust cheers, "nor ever have been in favor of making voters of the negroes, or jurors, or qualifying them to hold office, or having them to marry with white people." It was not the future emancipator's finest hour.

This is mediocre historian shallowness, which ignores what Lincoln might do in the future--shown clearly by the Emancipation Proclamation, his allowing blacks to fight in the Union army, and his early policies for reintegrating the South. Lincoln had no reason to speak of such civil and political equality, when most blacks were slaves. This superficiality breeds ignorant Lincoln haters and other cyncial leftists who despise their country. Though Holzer describes well the excitement of the debates, he, like most historians, simply doesn't see the principles involved. Ultimately, he does not understand the subjects as they understood themselves.

Read Harry Jaffa, author of the best book on political science since The Federalist. Crisis of the House Divided is also available via google books.  Ashbrook has a pdf as well, but I can't find it. In the meantime here are some short essays by real Lincoln scholars.

UPDATE:

Our friend Jack Pitney is skeptical of Newt's debating skills.

For Obama, America is great because of its moments of compromise--not for its uncompromising moments (Declaration of Independence, Civil War).  I guess Obama thinks the Compromise of 1850 (Fugitive Slave Act) is our grand model.  Reflect on his conclusion below:

America, after all, has always been a grand experiment in compromise.  As a democracy made up of every race and religion, where every belief and point of view is welcomed, we have put to the test time and again the proposition at the heart of our founding:  that out of many, we are one.  We've engaged in fierce and passionate debates about the issues of the day, but from slavery to war, from civil liberties to questions of economic justice, we have tried to live by the words that Jefferson once wrote:  "Every man cannot have his way in all things -- without this mutual disposition, we are disjointed individuals, but not a society." 

History is scattered with the stories of those who held fast to rigid ideologies and refused to listen to those who disagreed.  But those are not the Americans we remember.  We remember the Americans who put country above self, and set personal grievances aside for the greater good.  We remember the Americans who held this country together during its most difficult hours; who put aside pride and party to form a more perfect union.  

Well, out of the Compromise of 1850 we got California into the Union.

The descendants of the litigants in the great civil rights case of 1896 form a foundation.  Sweet idea, and I'm wondering whether serious tea party-style activists might follow suit by forming similar foundations devoted to ending irrational discrimination.  They might find inspiration in Jennifer Roback Morse's libertarian scholarship, which notes the City of New Orleans overriding the railway's preference for integrated seating.  (Clint Bolick has also performed great service along these lines.)  Here is another way to put natural rights-thinking to practical use.  Reading Charles Lofgren's classic work on Plessy is essential background.  The Claremont historian shows the direct ties between Plessy's arguments and the Declaration of Independence.

The Tea Party's most appealing argument is for the restoration of the principles of the Declaration of Independence in everyday life.  The fight for color-blind justice is an essential part of that argument.  Thanks to Mike in the comments.

Treppenwitz:  Here is one version of Edward Erler's argument on Plessy's persistence in our jurisprudence.

We have a new exhibit at TeachingAmericanHistory called The Civil War Sesquicentennial. We put it up today because the war began today, one hundred and fifty years ago. On the evening of April 13, 1861, The New York Times started its report with the following words: "Major Anderson has surrendered, after hard fighting, commencing at 41/2 o'clock yesterday morning, and continuing until five minutes to 1 to-day. The American flag has given place to the Palmetto of South Carolina...."

In a speech delivered in Germany to a group of Americans in the late 1870s, U.S. Grant distilled into a few sentences, according to the historian Gary Gallagher, what most loyal citizens would have said gave most meaning to their great internecine conflict:

"What saved the Union, was the coming forward of the young men of the nation.  They came from their homes and fields, as they did in the time of the Revolution, giving everything to the country.  To their devotion we owe the salvation of the Union.  The humblest soldier who carried a musket is entitled to as much credit for the results of the war as those who were in command.  So long as our young men are animated by this spirit there will be no fear for the Union."

The good news in a Pew Poll is that a majority of Americans think the Civil War is still relevant to politics today.  Unfortunately, by a margin of 48-38% Americans think that states rights, not slavery, was the principal cause of the Civil War, whose Sesquicentennial we celebrate over the next four years.  But limited government can't possibly be consistent with slavery.   It's best to argue from the principle of equality of natural rights and then proceed to the institutions that defend liberty--otherwise deviations rule. 

Lincoln made the case for a constitutionalism of natural rights yet again, 146 years ago, in his last public address, April 11, 1865, when he defended his Reconstruction policies.  There are states rights of course; but never at the ultimate cost of natural rights.

I see about three movies in movie theaters per year. Yesterday marked 1/3 of my yearly quotient. I saw "The Lincoln Lawyer," and, ironically, the most memorable part of the experience was a pre-movie trailer for another film with a Lincoln theme: "The Conspirator."

The synopsis reads:

Mary Surratt is the lone female charged as a co-conspirator in the assassination trial of Abraham Lincoln. As the whole nation turns against her, she is forced to rely on her reluctant lawyer to uncover the truth and save her life.

Director Robert Redford seems to indicate that Surratt was innocent - whether for dramatic effect or historical revision remains to be seen. While I would reserve full judgment until opening night, expect cheap shots at military tribunals and indictments of American sexism. Nonetheless, anything which begins a conversation of Lincoln cannot be all bad.

Has anyone been quoting Lincoln's First Inaugural on the secession in the Wisconsin and Indiana state legislatures?  That good ol' grit, the Sage of Mt. Airy nailed it.  Republicans, return to your roots and defend the rule of law.

From questions of this class spring all our constitutional controversies, and we divide upon them into majorities and minorities. If the minority will not acquiesce, the majority must, or the government must cease. There is no other alternative; for continuing the government, is acquiescence on one side or the other. If a minority, in such case, will secede rather than acquiesce, they make a precedent which, in turn, will divide and ruin them; for a minority of their own will secede from them, whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such minority. For instance, why may not any portion of a new confederacy, a year or two hence, arbitrarily secede again, precisely as portions of the present Union now claim to secede from it. All who cherish disunion sentiments, are now being educated to the exact temper of doing this. Is there such perfect identity of interests among the States to compose a new Union, as to produce harmony only, and prevent renewed secession?

Plainly, the central idea of secession, is the essence of anarchy. A majority, held in restraint by constitutional checks, and limitations, and always changing easily, with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people, Whoever rejects it, does, of necessity, fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible; the rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy, or despotism in some form, is all that is left.

On starry heights
A bugle wails the long recall;
Derision stirs the deep abyss,
Heaven's ominous silence over all.
Return, return, O eager Hope,
And face man's latter fall.

We interrupt, or supplement, this Reagan moment for a review of two new works on Alexis Tocqueville, by Harvey Mansfield. Mansfield addresses Tocqueville's slighting of the Declaration of Independence:

Tocqueville was not friendly to philosophers or "theoreticians," as several letters confirm. In "Democracy in America," he ignored the political philosophy in the principles of America's founding, calling the Puritans and not, say, John Locke, America's "point of departure." He emphasized the practical work of the Constitution (based on theories, to be sure) and never even mentioned Jefferson's more theoretical and Lockean Declaration of Independence. Yet Tocqueville was interested in "theoretical consequences".... 

To this definition and endorsement of American Exceptionalism one might object, and doubters of that idea today do object, that a country maintaining slavery could not congratulate itself for being an example, let alone the exemplar, of political freedom or thoughtful choice to the rest of mankind. Tocqueville agreed, and in his letters on America after his visit he inveighed against the taint put by slavery on America's reputation around the world, particularly since other countries had already abolished it. After the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 he grew increasingly concerned; it was one thing not to abolish slavery where it was long established, quite another to extend it to new territories. This was a point made by Lincoln, but Tocqueville died in 1859 without learning of the man who would have shown him the greatness he most praised: great thought from the doer of great deeds.

But this begs the question:  Does Tocqueville's framework of aristocracy versus democracy, with equality as an historical force, provide us with the best means of understanding Lincoln?  Moreover, at least one of Tocqueville's letters testifies to his knowledge of Americans' passionate embrace of the Declaration (July 16, 1831).  Here Tocqueville recoiled at that "piece of humbug in some farce" by a lawyer making world history's "consummation in the United States, seated at the center of the universe."  Tocqueville left, "cursing the speechifier whose gab and famous national pride had dampened the vivid impressions the rest of the [Fourth of July] ceremony had made on me."  Might Tocqueville have been reminded of that lawyer and dismissed Lincoln as one of his ilk?  Did he not see the logos behind the passions?

If, as E. J. Dionne allows, "the central cause of the [Civil] war was our national disagreement over race and slavery, not states' rights or anything else," then there is no reason why we need to associate the defense of federalism with either slavery or racism.

Perhaps Mr. Dionne will soon come out in support of Randy Barnett's proposed federalism amendment.

I'm on Cozumel, an island 10 miles off the Yucatan peninsula, on the National Review post-election cruise.  I'm having a good time, listening to good speakers, meeting nice folks, and swimming a bit.

Someone just reminded me that today is the anniversary of the Gettysburg Address.  Not much needs to be said that you don't already know, but I do want to remind you of a few points: it is simple, to the point, only 32 words in it are Latin-based (the rest are Anglo-Saxon based), and without a doubt, it is the most patriotic speech in American history.

"Racism, racism, fight, fight, fight/Workers of the world unite"--a Communist leafleteer provided some zest for the Glenn Beck rally and handed out fliers to bemused participants.  In my mere 20 minutes at the rally (I had a lunch engagement) I heard little from the stage and saw less, save the apparently middle to upper-middle class crowd, very thick just NE of the Lincoln Memorial.  I have no way of estimating its overall size, except to observe that where I was it was denser than, say, the Fourth of July crowd.  I did hear numerous complaints about the sound and the lack of a view, as many people left, but maybe the audience further back had better sound and perspective on the stage.

In case someone else hasn't made this obvious point, I note that the Lincoln Memorial unites the Beck crowd, the counter-rally, and the original civil rights March on Washington through its presentation of simple justice.  After all, it was Lincoln who defined slavery as "you work, I eat."  That was at the heart of his attacks on slavery in the 1850s, and it is the moral precept that condemns slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and compulsory redistribution of wealth today.  And it is the logical deduction from the proposition that all men are created equal.  The Communists and others who don't share American principles would have a different view of the matter. 

UPDATE:

On the methodology of counting crowds:  Consider this photo analysis.  That's fine as far as it goes, but this is like taking roll at the start of class and ignoring all the students who sneak out (and others who come in later).  As I came in, around 11 a.m., I saw innumerable folks leaving, some complaining they could not see or hear.  Others may have found the heat too hard to take.  Yet they should count as attendees, too.  Many more people were coming in than leaving.  So the count needs to take into consideration the total numbers who were there throughout the day--not just a static snapshot of the event.  Maybe some (overly clever) social scientist (a new-bred economist) has devised a methodology for doing this.  So my total count would exceed the static count at the crowd's greatest size by a considerable factor.

Two distinguished scholars explore its original meaning. First, poitical scientist Edward Erler: 

Most revealing, however, was Senator Howard's contention that "every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States." Almost everyone certainly would have understood "natural law" to refer to the social compact basis of citizenship, the basis for citizenship adumbrated in the Declaration of Independence.

The argument of the Declaration grounded citizenship in consent. The natural law argument of the Declaration was a repudiation of the notion of birthright citizenship that had been the basis of British citizenship (i.e., being a British "subject") ever since it was first articulated in Calvin's Case in 1608.

Next, law professor John Eastman:

Such a claim of birthright citizenship traces its roots not to the republicanism of the American Founding, grounded as it was in the consent of the governed, but to the feudalism of medieval England, grounded in the notion that a subject owed perpetual allegiance and fealty to his sover­eign.[33] 

So is "Born in the U.S.A." an anti-American song?  No, as long as we agree through democratic republican principles.  "All men are created equal" means that Americans are free to determine their destiny through proper means--not through the aristocratic principles that underlie birthright citizenship.  In the current debate over illegal immigration, the true egalitarians here, the believers in the Declaration of Independence, are not the "birthers."  This nation long ago stopped recognizing "squatter rights." 

UPDATE:  See at least this earlier post on the 14th amendment, with Richard Adams' comments.

WaPo notes the attraction of Colonial Willliamsburg for Tea Party adherents and other anti-liberals who are inspired by the Constitution and seek guidance from the founding.  Obviously, they won't find what they are seeking in historical exhibits, however well done.  Of course, the Federalist Papers and other founding documents are on-line, but they require mentors for more than a superficial understanding.  Popularly written commentaries, websites, and media appearances can help, but nothing replaces an inspiring teacher.

Why not a consortium of trusted, thoughtful conservatives who can teach the founding to thirsty citizens?  The project will need to extend to every major and medium population center and require years of involvement.  The Ashbrook Center, Hillsdale College, and the Claremont Institute can offer resources, and numerous other think-tanks and scholarly centers can contribute to these "Committees of Correspondence" as well.   Maybe these fine institutions should just continue doing what they have been doing and not adjust their programs to the instant situation.  But it would be a shame to waste this constitutonal crisis.

Accumulating Lincoln quotations, Tony Blankley spotlights Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan's dismissal of the inalienable rights of the Declaration of Independence for understanding the Constitution.  Will indignant Republican Senators rally around the principles of their Founder?   Alas, what makes one think they will this time? 

Blankley:   "Without those rights, the body of law is a corpse - a soulless, purposeless, manipulable, disposable, dead, material thing. If Ms. Kagan does not know that, then she knows nothing of our law."  Again, the same condemnation can be made of politicians of all parties.  Moreover, does any law school teach the proper respect for the Declaration of Independence?  In that sense, former Harvard Law Dean Kagan has a bipartisan following.

Here's a poignant cinematic reminder of an earlier Brit's Lincolnian devotion to American principles.  (Charles Laughton's Ruggles is a British servant won by a Westerner in a poker game abroad.)  

In "The Gaza Blockade and International Law" University of Chicago law professor Eric Posner (WSJ subscriber only) notes the precedent for Israel's blockade of Gaza in the American Civil War--the Union's seizing of Confederate ships on the high seas.  Israel does not recognize Gaza's sovereignty.  "... Israel's legal position is reasonable, and it has precedent.  During the U.S. Civil War, the Union claimed to blockade the Confederacy while at the same time maintaining that the Confederacy was not a sovereign state but an agent of insurrection."  A closely divided Supreme Court approved the seizures, suggesting "a certain latitude for countries to use blockades against internal as well as external enemies." 

In an important sense, the criticism of Israel is a criticism of past American practice as well.  In looking to our self-interest in the Middle East, Americans should recall our own history.

David Upham of the University of Dallas Politics Department sets us straight on the alleged curricular mayhem by the Texas Board of Education on the teaching of history in public schools.  Upham wrote in the Wall Street Journal:  "The board did not excise Thomas Jefferson, downplay constitutional religious freedom, or minimize the role of women and minorities. On the contrary, the curriculum is replete with specific references to Jefferson, religious freedom, the civil rights movement, and the achievements and struggles of women and minorities."  Upham speaks both as a scholar, whose dissertation was on the 14th amendment, and an attorney with significant private practice.  See him interviewed here.  The proposed revisions can be found here, in the last section on the page.

A relatively sober example of the criticism can be found here.  It was amusing to read how "Justice Hugo Black of the Supreme Court dug [the expression "separation of church and state"] out of history's dustbin in 1947."  Of course that now in some circles sacred expression was a slogan of the anti-Catholic Ku Klux Klan, to which Black had belonged.  The history and law are well-related in Philip Hamburger's magisterial Separation of Church and State. 

Today is the 145 anniversary of the death of Abraham Lincoln, who was assassinated on Good Friday, April 14, 1865.  (Interesting that he spent Good Friday attending a comedy.)

In their zeal to find a cause of unjust big government, some conservatives turn against Abraham Lincoln.   Lincoln scholar Allen Guelzo shows why this makes no sense.  Guelzo notes how government and its expense shrank after the extraordinary circumstances of the Civil War.  Of course if one thinks rebellion and secession (let alone slavery) can possibly be principles of constitutional government, then all bets are off.

Such seekers of the cause of our current discontents would be better off blaming either George Washington (which would show the absurdity of their historical understanding) or, actually on-target, the bipartisan duo of Progressives Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.  Read political scientists Sidney Milkis and RJ Pestritto, who know well the Progressive roots of current government.  (RJ, I'm told, has been featured on Glen Beck's program, which I've never seen.)

The often astute Jeff Rosen eggs on Obama's confrontation with the Supreme Court, outlining a Court-bashing strategy Obama can use to his advantage.  (Given Axelrod's interest in Lincoln's political savvy, I'm sure something similar has occurred to him and has put it in play.)  The trouble is, Obama's manner of unleashing his attack, at the SOTU, made him look like a schoolyard bully, not a TR with the bully pulpit. 

If the Dems use the Slaughter House Rules to get Obamacare through, this Court-confronting strategy might help delegitimize an opinion declaring the desperate tactic unconstitutional.  Hence the short as well as long-term importance of the current wave of Mrs. Clarence (Virginia) Thomas-bashing.  But the left needs to silence more than her for the proposed Rosen strategy to work.

UPDATE:  See Matt Franck's demolition of Rosen.

Here is Mac Owens on YouTube (this is big-time stuff, Mac!) talking about Lincoln as a war president.  Probably some of the best stuff out there on the topic, yet, if any one of you decide to attack Mac (or Lincoln), I sure would like to see how your dogs of war fare against this Silver Starred Marine.

In a Tocquevillean reflection on the flattening of American religion, Ross Douthat concludes:

Most religious believers will never be great mystics, of course, and the American way of faith is kinder than many earlier eras to those of us who won't. But maybe it's become too kind, and too accommodating. Even ordinary belief -- the kind that seeks epiphanies between deadlines, and struggles even with the meager self-discipline required to get through Lent -- depends on extraordinary examples, whether they're embedded in our communities or cloistered in the great silence of a monastery. Without them, faith can become just another form of worldliness, therapeutic rather than transcendent, and shorn of any claim to stand in judgment over our everyday choices and concerns.

Without them, too, we give up on what's supposed to be the deep promise of religious practice: that at any time, in any place, it's possible to encounter the divine, the revolutionary and the impossible -- and have your life completely shattered and remade.

A good Lenten practice (for believer and non-believer alike) might be to reread Tocqueville on religion and Solzhentisyn, among others.  And, with Douthat, tunafish sandwiches for lunch.

And in the spirit of democratized Americanized religion, this looks like appropriate reading too, Robert Alter, Pen of Iron:  American Prose and the King James Bible, reviewed by Stephen Miller.  Alter's editions of Old Testament books and his biblical interpretations are spectacular.

With this head in the print edition of the WaPo, Michael Gerson's column scorns Glenn Beck's attack on Theodore Roosevelt for his Progressive policies.  The former Bush 43 speechwriter should have followed the lead of our Roger Beckett. 

In his "New Nationalism" speech at John Brown's home in Bloody Kansas, Roosevelt sees progress in history as arising from "this conflict between the men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess."  

Gerson objects that conservatives should no more go after TR than they should denounce Lincoln.  TR claims the legacy of Lincoln.  But Lincoln viewed human history as strangers becoming friends, not one of class conflict.  Moreover, TR pushed centralizartion of power far further than circumstances justified:  "The right to regulate the use of wealth in the public interest is universally admitted. Let us admit also the right to regulate the terms and conditions of labor, which is the chief element of wealth, directly in the interest of the common good."  Even Gerson has to allow that TR's "progressivism could sound a bit like socialism." 

In claiming TR as a forefather of "reform conservatism" Gerson simply shows his allegiance to big-government conservatism and his lack of understanding of founding principles.  His speeches for "W" cited the Declaration of Independence often but without understanding the limited government principles within his founding document.

Glenn Beck's mentor on Progressivism, RJ Pestritto, has written these books so you can decide.

Not every complaint about fairness is really a protest against injustice; and not every complaint about injustice can be satisfied without running some risk that its real motive is the will to power. "Inequality is certainly never to be embraced for its own sake," Lincoln admitted. But that was no sanction for "the pernicious principle . . . that no one shall have any, for fear all shall not have some." Two hundred and one years after Lincoln's birth, it might be well to remind ourselves that the real enemy of both fairness and justice is not weakness of will or an unwillingness to bear "shared sacrifice," but the seeping gas of power.

He lets us know that he admires Abraham Lincoln, yet his speeches could not be more different from Lincoln's in respect to argument. Lincoln used argument to transcend momentary feelings. Obama avoids it by recourse to vacuous words like "change" and"hope," never saying toward what or for what.

That is among George Washington's pleas in the first Thanksgiving proclamation (coincidentally, also for Thursday, Nov. 26).  We should thank Almighty God for, among several other carefully chosen blessings, "the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted...."   That would include the Federalist Papers.  Read President Lincoln's proclamation as well.   We should not forget that our now traditional Thanksgiving holiday as the last Thursday in November was finally set during the Civil War.  These proclamations constitute core elements of the American civil religion, which reflects and enhances our religious liberty. 

UPDATE:

Here's President Obama's proclamation.  It presents a misleading view of Lincoln's proclamation.  Obama claims that "President Abraham Lincoln ... established our annual Thanksgiving Day to help mend a fractured Nation in the midst of civil war."  Actually, the mending to be done was through a Union victory--the statesmanlike application of military force to suppress the unconstitutional rebellion.  For example, the proclamation recognized the temptations a divided nation offered to ambitious foreign powers.  I'm thankful he didn't change the tradition of Presidential Proclamations' echoing of the last words of the Constitution, specifying the date in Declaration of Independence years as well as in the Christian calendar.

University of Maryland students take up their school President's challenge and write a local history of slavery and its role in its founding.  This is a serious work (only 48 pp, rtwt), with wonderful graphics, full of information and sober insights:  The Declaration did have a great influence on freeing slaves.  Did you know, though, that free blacks could not own dogs, but that they did own slaves? 

The students conclude that their University had antebellum roots in both slavery and free labor policies.  After the Civil War state segregation policies thwarted national policy, which was color-blind:

The final essay covers Sherman's march to the sea after Atlanta, Hood's failed attempt to get Sherman to follow him west after Atlanta by threatening Nashville, and Sherman's final campaign in the Carolinas.

Of course, some folks think this would have been a good outcome, but it is likely that a Confederate nation would have continued to fight against the United States for control of the western territories. In other words, a negotiated peace would not have led to peace. Besides, the slave empire would have turned its attention south to Mexico and the Caribbean.

By the way, aren't the names of those rivers in Georgia cool? Oostanaula, Etowah, and of course, Chattahoochee, brought to the attention of non-Georgians by Alan Jackson. Cherokee names, no?

The idea is to keep it simple while at the same time trying to show how campaigns were planned and executed to achieve strategic and political goals. For far too long, Civil War military history has focused on individual battles without providing the necessary context.

The most recent essay is here. It covers the Virginia Overland Campaign of spring and summer 1864. Next week, Ben will post the essay on the Petersburg siege and Appomattox.

I have two more to complete: The Atlanta Campaign and then one that looks at Sherman's march to the sea and the Carolinas Campaign and also Hood's attempted counteroffensive into Tennessee, culminating in the destruction of his army at Nashville.

I hope folks read these, but the fact is I just enjoy writing them.

Ask Northerners the cause of the war, and the answer often is a single word: slavery. In many places in the South, the answers can vary: states' rights, freedom, political and economic power.

As students across the region begin springtime Civil War lessons, historians say the election of Barack Obama as the first African American president offers an unprecedented opportunity to break through stereotypes and view the era in broader ways....

There is little disagreement among professional historians that the South's effort to maintain the institution of slavery was the central reason that 11 Southern states seceded from the Union and civil war erupted. Today's textbooks have largely caught up with this view. But that doesn't necessarily translate to the classroom.

Even from this journalistic account, it seems pretty clear that the misleading equation of slavery with race or racism is behind the "stereotypes." It's also clear that no one seems to take seriously that slavery violates the central American founding principle of equality. Affirming human equality is the common cause behind a war to prevent secession that became a war to free the slaves. That was Lincoln's explanation, from the First Inaugural through his Second Inaugural. Equality is a principle of limited government, whose protection of liberty allows the fulfillment of human happiness. Ending slavery is the minimal condition for self-government.

While the journalist recounts a clever Simpsons episode, no where does she see fit to quote the 16th president of the United States in the year of the Bicentennial of his birth. But that can be a story for another time.

This is the PDF version of our recent issue of On Principle, devoted entirely to Abraham Lincoln. There are ten pretty good essays by people you know and the artwork is by our own Chris Burkett. You can also access the individual essays at our main site. I hope you like it.