Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

The Promise of Equality in Lincoln and in Jaffa

The Promise of Equality in Lincoln and in Jaffa Responding to an invitation to speak at an event honoring the birthday of Thomas Jefferson, Lincoln wrote on April 6, 1859, to Henry L. Pierce and others that “one would start with great confidence that he could convince any sane child that the simpler propositions of Euclid are true; but, nevertheless, he would fail, utterly, with one who should deny the definitions and axioms. The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society” (1989b, 18). Citing this passage in Crisis of the House Divided (Jaffa 1959), Harry Jaffa picked out the Euclidean cast of Lincoln’s arguments about equality, as well as the foundational depth of the moral and political commitments those arguments express. The key to Crisis of the House Divided is Jaffa’s attention to the implications of Jefferson’s claim that it is a self-evident truth that all men are created equal and to the central role that claim plays in Lincoln’s thinking. Concern with the meaning of equality outweighs every other aspect of Jaffa’s treatment of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, even the question of the future of slavery in the western territories, the ostensible subject of the 1858 debates. Jaffa’s treatment is also distinctive in that http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png American Political Thought University of Chicago Press

The Promise of Equality in Lincoln and in Jaffa

Burt, John
American Political Thought , Volume 12 (2): 17 – Mar 1, 2023
Download PDF
17 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/university-of-chicago-press/the-promise-of-equality-in-lincoln-and-in-jaffa-pkSSrFAWH3

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
University of Chicago Press
Copyright
© 2023 The Jack Miller Center. All rights reserved.
ISSN
2161-1580
eISSN
2161-1599
DOI
10.1086/724456
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Responding to an invitation to speak at an event honoring the birthday of Thomas Jefferson, Lincoln wrote on April 6, 1859, to Henry L. Pierce and others that “one would start with great confidence that he could convince any sane child that the simpler propositions of Euclid are true; but, nevertheless, he would fail, utterly, with one who should deny the definitions and axioms. The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society” (1989b, 18). Citing this passage in Crisis of the House Divided (Jaffa 1959), Harry Jaffa picked out the Euclidean cast of Lincoln’s arguments about equality, as well as the foundational depth of the moral and political commitments those arguments express. The key to Crisis of the House Divided is Jaffa’s attention to the implications of Jefferson’s claim that it is a self-evident truth that all men are created equal and to the central role that claim plays in Lincoln’s thinking. Concern with the meaning of equality outweighs every other aspect of Jaffa’s treatment of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, even the question of the future of slavery in the western territories, the ostensible subject of the 1858 debates. Jaffa’s treatment is also distinctive in that

Journal

American Political Thought – University of Chicago Press

Published: Mar 1, 2023

There are no references for this article.