A New Birth of Freedom

by Harry V Jaffa, Harry V. Jaffa, Ryan Williams (Editor)

When it originally appeared, A New Birth of Freedom represented a milestone in Lincoln studies, the culmination of over a half a century of study and reflection by one of America's foremost scholars of American politics. Now reissued on the centenary of Jaffa’s birth with a new foreword by the esteemed Lincoln scholar Allen Guelzo, this long-awaited sequel to Jaffa’s earlier classic, Crisis of the House Divided, offers a piercing examination of the political thought of Abraham Lincoln and the themes of self-government, equality, and statesmanship on the eve of the Civil War.

“Four decades ago, Harry Jaffa offered powerful insights on the Lincoln-Douglas debates in his Crisis of the House Divided. In this long-awaited sequel, he picks up the threads of that earlier study in this stimulating new interpretation of the showdown conflict between slavery and freedom in the election of 1860 and the secession crisis that followed. Every student of Lincoln needs to read and ponder this book.”— James M. McPherson, Princeton University

“A masterful synthesis and analysis of the contending political philosophies on the eve of the Civil War. A magisterial work that arrives after a lifetime of scholarship and reflection—and earns our gratitude as well as our respect.”— Kirkus Reviews

“The essence of Jaffa's case—meticulously laid out over nearly 500 pages—is that the Constitution is not, as Lincoln put it, a 'free love arrangement' held together by passing fancy. It is an indissoluble compact in which all men consent to be governed by majority, provided their inalienable rights are preserved.”— Bret Stephens; The Wall Street Journal

Genres: History, American History, Civil War, Politics, Biography, American, American Civil War

592 pages, Paperback

First published November 25, 2000

Reviews

[robin friedman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Philosophy As History

In 1958, Professor Harry Jaffa published "Crisis of the House Divided" which remains the definitive study of the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. "A New Birth of Freedom", published more that 40 years later, is the promised sequel to the book, and in it Professor Jaffa explores with depth the philosophical and governmental ideas that he believes underlie Lincoln's presidency, Lincoln's approach to the issue of slavery, and the Civil War and preservation of the Union.

This book is much broader in scope than Professor Jaffa's earlier book and is more engaged in the philosophical analysis of ideas than with the presentation simply of historical fact. Professor Jaffa asks at the outset what, if anything, differentiates the Southern Secession following the election of Lincoln to the Presidency from the actions of the Colonists in declaring independence from Britain in 1776. In answering this question, Professor Jaffa offers a discussion of the Jefferson-Adams election of 1800, showing how for the first time in history how a democratic society could resolve severe disagreement through the use of ballots in an election rather than through the use of bullets.

Jaffa's history has, I think, these two themes: 1.The Declaration of Independence's statement that "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal" did, indeed, apply for Jefferson and his contemporaries to all people, including the then African-American slaves. 2. The Declaration of Independence itself created a perpetual union of what had been 13 separate colonies of Britain and made the United States one country rather than a confederation of separate states.

Underlying these historical claims is a broader philosophical argument that is even more at the core of the book: Jaffa wants to reject arguments of cultural relativism, historicism, skepticism or other philosophical positions that argue against the existence of objective moral principles. He finds that Jefferson correctly viewed the language of his declaration "All men are created equal" as expressing a moral truth based upon "the law of Nature and of Nature's God." Jaffa argues for a position based upon Natural Law, in the sense that moral standards are somehow truths independent of human will or of historical circumstances. His Natural Law theory, as I find it, is drawn from an uneasy confluence of the thought of Locke, Aristotle, and the Bible.

The book is less of a chronological historical account than a textual analysis and commentary on the speeches and writings of thinkers and politicians in Civil War America. Professor Jaffa offers a paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of Lincoln's First Inaugural Address and of his July 4, 1861 message to Congress following the outbreak of hostilities. His approach is less on the pragmatic conduct of the government (although that is discussed as well) than on Lincoln as a thinker expressing what Jaffa sees as a commitment to Natural Law and the inalienable nature of the Union which Lincoln strove to preserve.

Lincoln's thought is compared and contrasted, in almost as great detail, with speeches by James Buchanan, Alexander Stephens, Jefferson Davis, Stephen Douglas and John Calhoun. These individuals are shown to reject the principles of Natural Law that Professor Jaffa finds articulated in the Declaration of Independence and by Lincoln. Their though is compared rather explicitly by Professor Jaffa to academic modernism and skepticism regarding the objective character of moral principle.

There are fascinating discussions of Shakespeare's histories, Aristotle, and, particularly the "Federalist" and the works of Thomas Jefferson. In contrast to many modern historians, Jaffa sees Lincoln in the Gettysburg address as reaffirming the position of Thomas Jefferson rather than as effecting a change in the nature of the American ideal.

This is a difficult, thoughtful, challenging book. It is more of value for its philosophical outlook and challenge than for any addition to the store of historical knowledge. For those who want to think about the philosophical bases for our institutions, this book is highly worthwhile. It is a different sort of successor, but a worthy successor, to Professor Jaffa's study of the Lincoln-Douglas debates.

Robin Friedman

[Nathan Albright · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is somewhat melancholy that this ended up being the last book by the author and that he did not live long enough to finish writing about the second half of Lincoln's presidency and the rhetoric of his later speeches.  Yet if this was to be the last work that Jaffa lived to complete, it is a masterful work that combines his interests in theology, political science, and literary criticism.  Over and over again in this book, Jaffa contrasts the politics of Lincoln with those of his contemporaries, and not only finds Lincoln to be superior (as we would expect), but also finds some surprising resonances with others and shows the way that being a popular leader requires both leading one's people but not going too far ahead of them.  The author forthrightly admits the racism of the times and shows how it was that Lincoln, who appears not to have been particularly prejudiced by the standards of his time, had to continually fight against the accusation that he was trying to push for full equality for blacks to a people that was not ready to entertain that thought, much less act on it.  In some ways the tragedy of Lincoln's time is not too distant from that of our own.

This book is nearly 500 pages long and divided into seven very large chapters.  The preface clearly defines the scope of the book and its aim to talk about the political philosophy of Lincoln as president.  After that the author compares the election of 1800 and 1860 to show how it was that a free people vindicated their worth as a free people by accepting the verdict of ballots and not resorting to bullets (1).  This leads to a look at the relationship between the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address while critiquing revisionist historians (2).  AFter that the author discusses the divided American mind on the eve of the Civil War by giving a close Straussian analysis of the contemporary speeches and writings of James Buchanan, Jefferson Davis, and Alexander Stephens during the secession winter (3).  After that there are two chapters that give a lengthy exegesis of Lincoln's first inaugural address and the prudence and moderation but also firmness that went into writing it despite the likely suspicion that Lincoln had that its mild sentiments would not be responded to positively by the Confederacy (4, 5).  After that the author discusses Lincoln's address to Congress on July 4, 1861 on why the Union must be preserved.  The book then ends with a discussion of slavery, secession, and the political teaching of John C. Calhoun (7) before an epilogue covers Douglas' "Dividing Line" essay of 1859, as well as notes, an index, and information about the author.

By and large, Jaffa succeeds wonderfully at showing how Lincoln was able in his writing and speaking, especially after 1854, to point out eloquently that the principles of the American founding and the universal claims upon the freedom of mankind that we claimed for ourselves required granting those freedoms to others.  If we have still not reached the level of attaining the respect for others that the Declaration of Independence claims, at least Lincoln provided a moral example of how we could do better for others to follow.  This book also shows the tragedy of Taney having been an anti-slavery man in his youth but becoming a professional hypocrite to defend the slave power, for Alexander Stephens forthrightly claiming the racist foundation of the Confederate States of America while being the most moderate political position that one could find in the South at the time that was accepted by the people of the time and place.  Over and over again the author points to the tragedy of Calhounian influence on the politics of the South and the way that people were poisoned to think so much of their freedom but not to care about the freedom of those whom they exploited.  A massive work and one that is heavy with the weight of the burden of history, this is a work that deserves to be read by all who would wish to understand the politics of the Civil War and its continuing influence on us to this day.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dense and extremely demanding, but well-worth the effort. Jaffa's learning is immense, his prose elegant, and his political science brilliant. An unparalleled work of bold sagacity that will challenge and enlighten every serious read.

[alex angelosanto · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's not perfect, and it is pretty long, but it is probably the best attempt to understand the mind and personal philosophy of Lincoln. Along with its prequel, Crisis of a House Divided, It's a masterpiece of scholarship and any reader of Lincoln or American history should spend time with it.

It is a bummer Jaffa didn't live long enough to finish his series on Lincoln but the two he's given us have more than enough in them for us to mull over for some time to come

[Todd · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is no better authority for understanding the genesis of the civil war and the interplay of slavery and the founding of the United States than this outstanding text. Today, this history has been deeply buried under propagated falsehoods such as the 1619 Project, which perform a great disservice to the American people.

Jaffa’s outstanding analysis lays bare that the United States was not founded on the basis of slavery; that “all men are created equal” was the essential foundation of the Union; and that Jefferson, Madison and others did all that they could to disentangle the United States from the scourge of slavery forced upon the Colonies by Great Britain.

And perhaps most importantly, the genius of Abraham Lincoln, and the great good fortune that he was President at precisely the right time, leaps from the pages of Jaffa’s essential analysis. Lincoln did what perhaps no one else could, and he based it all on the dual notions that “all men are created equal” and that without adherence to the Constitution the United States could not survive. Lincoln was, and likely will forever be, the greatest leader the United States shall ever possess.

[Jerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

The myth that those who govern are, or may be, of a nature superior to those they govern is the root of tyranny.

This is an amazing summary of Lincoln’s sources among the Founders (mostly Jefferson and Madison) for his convictions about not just the inherent wrongness of slavery but also that the Founders meant the Constitution to end slavery in the United States.

It also provides a detailed overview of both John Calhoun’s and Stephen Douglass’s defenses of slavery. Douglass is mostly unknown today except as the generic foil to Lincoln in the run up to the 1860 election, but Calhoun’s political theory is perniciously still influential. Ultimately, however, Calhoun’s theory has no foundation.

The truths enshrined in the Declaration are no more dependent upon their recognition for their truthfulness than the truths about the relationship of the three sides of the triangle.

And it is an analysis of the arguments and methods Lincoln used to ensure that slavery would not extend into the territories or be expanded in the existing slave states, even after both the Dred Scot Supreme Court Decision and the attempt by some of the slave states to unilaterally leave the Union.

Throughout, Jaffa provides both an analysis of how pro-slavery and anti-slavery arguments played to their 1850-60 audiences and their older philosophical roots from Socrates and Aristotle through Locke and Hobbes.

The book also covers the time period between Lincoln returning to politics and the start of the Civil War. This combination of topics makes for a very dense work; it takes longer to read a page of this than just about any other historical work this side of Victor Davis Hanson.

Among other arguments, Lincoln specifically uses the argument I suspected in an earlier blog post about secession, that the Constitution’s requirement that the Federal government’s duty to guarantee a republican form of government is a bar to unilateral secession.

Jaffa also goes into a lot more detail about what I’d noticed in Douglass’s biography. Douglass’s examples of revolutionary-era complaints about the British forcing slavery on British America has nothing to do with popular sovereignty and everything to do with even slave-holding states in the 18th century viewing slavery as an unmitigated evil.

Lincoln comes across as a very outspoken outsider. He states the obvious that the beltway class tries hard to ignore, such as how much slave-holders despised slave dealers, or the very obvious right, which he repeated almost as a slogan, of every man to eat the bread which his own hand earns.

Like other outspoken outsiders, he was sabotaged by the beltway class.

It is impossible to grasp the full measure of the difficulties Lincoln faced without grasping the extent to which Buchanan had effectively cooperated with the Southern disunionists.

Lincoln noted the extent of the entrenched government’s cooperation with the slave states in his message to Congress of July 4, 1861.

“A disproportionate share of the Federal muskets and rifles had somehow found their way into these States, and had been seized to be used against the Government.”

The book is filled with bits like that, from the use of “Fido” as common dog name originating from Lincoln’s Latin name for his own dog, to Roger Taney’s 1818 anti-slavery rant in a Maryland courtroom. The main thrust of the book, however, is to examine the…

validity of Lincoln’s assertion that the United States was founded upon and dedicated to “an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times.” To ask if such an assertion is credible or not, so far from being a meaningless question [as some modern political philosophers argue] s the question that must be answered above all others if meaning is to be found in the work fo the Founding Fathers and in the lives and deaths of those who, with Lincoln, kept that work from perishing.

Calhoun’s political theory is an attempt to rewrite the philosophy of the Founders without the “timeless” proposition “that all men are created equal”. He attempts to replace it with a scientific foundation rather than a religious one. But such attempts seem always destined to fail in evil ways.

“That human beings belong to God,” writes Jaffa, “has as its correlate that they do not belong to anyone else.” Without that belonging, rulers always seem to find that human beings belong to the state.

Calhoun believed that philosophy and science, represented in part by his own person, had progressed to a higher level than in the generation of the Founding Fathers.

All that Calhoun had to say, “as many since him have discovered, was that his political science was more scientific than what preceded it” and the proposition that all men are created equal became anachronistic. It was what politicians wanted to hear.

Man is necessarily a social animal, he argued, and is naturally formed in the political state. Thus it follows that freedom resides in communities—that is, in governments—rather than in individuals. This allowed Jefferson Davis, for example, to argue that the people in the Declaration (much as later Democrats would argue about the people in the Bill of Rights) are not individuals but the states.

Self government is human government by majority rule. Douglas, like Jefferson Davis, located the right of majority rule in communities, while ignoring the question of why the majority has this right. Lincoln, like Madison and Jefferson, saw that the political rights of majorities are preceded by the equal natural rights of individuals and by the agreement of individuals to form a community for the better protection of those rights.

Like some deranged Douglas Adams, Calhoun managed to convince his fellow Democrats that black is white, and hundreds of thousands of soldiers were killed at the next zebra crossing. Jaffa argues that the effects are still felt today, when…

The essence of the new Liberalism was to make each human being, as far as possible, a universal tyrant within his own world, commanding all the pleasures possible in that world, and emancipated from everything except those limits upon his power that Science had not yet conquered. Thus would the return to a Garden of Eden—but one in which there would be no forbidden fruit—be accomplished.

This book is as much about the fundamental truth underlying the Declaration of Independence as it is about Lincoln. Ultimately, the Civil War was between two conflicting philosophies, one that believed in that proposition, and one that believed the proposition to be in error.

Other animals are either carnivorous or herbivorous, and they hunt or graze according to their nature. But human beings are allowed by their nature to make choices, and the quality of those choices determines the quality of their lives.

[John Minster · Rating 5 out of 5]

"A New Birth of Freedom" is nothing less than a full blown philosophical treatise. Jaffa offers compelling interpretations of Lincoln, Jefferson, Madison, and Calhoun among others, in a book that discussez in depth nearly all of the foundational political thought from the country's birth through the Civil War, with much of it of.course maintaing relevance today. Jaffa's focus on natural rights, natural law, compact theory and the true nature of republican government culminate in an incredibly detailed, meticulous, thoughtful book.

Make no mistake, "A New Birth of Freedom" is dense and demanding, but it is nevertheless undoubtedly worth examination.

[Mac · Rating 5 out of 5]

Over forty years after brilliantly examining the philosophical underpinnings of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Harry Jaffa returned to Lincoln with A New Birth of Freedom. If anything, this book is even deeper and more compelling. Jaffa states in the introduction that the hefty tome is essentially a commentary on the Gettysburg Address. But to discuss the ideas behind the Gettysburg Address, he has to talk about Lincoln's first inaugural address and his address to Congress on the 4th of July, 1861. And to discuss those addresses, he has to dig into the Declaration of Independence and the writings of Jefferson and Madison. And to discuss them, he has to go back to Aristotle. And so on and so on.

The most powerful part of Jaffa's argument to me is that he grounds it in universal, natural rights ("that all men are created equal"). He accepts no moral relativism and witheringly criticizes those who would apply different standards to different times. (Former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court William Rehnquist is among those whom Jaffa singles out.) In this spirit he points out the flaws in the arguments of various opponents of these ideas, from Stephen A. Douglas to Jefferson Davis to, in particular, John C. Calhoun.

From what I have read, Jaffa's own political views were quite conservative. To me, this snuck through in one or two side comments that jarred with the overall tone of the book. If I recall correctly, one was a jab at the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision in a footnote. There were also quite a few comments about communism. (Though this book came out in 2000, I have to imagine that much of the gestation period was during the Cold War.) Interestingly, Jaffa also quotes a lot from the Christian New Testament to illustrate or justify his points. I say interestingly because, to the best of my knowledge, Jaffa was Jewish.

A New Birth of Freedom is not a book that can be read quickly (at least in my experience). Fortunately, though the chapters are long, it is generally divided into shorter sections that can be read and pondered in a sitting. There is much to digest here, and it is well worth the effort.

In the introduction to this book, Jaffa announces that he plans a follow-up volume to discuss the development of Lincoln's ideas in the later part of the Civil War. Sadly, though he lived well into his nineties, he never published this work. I have recently seen that one of his students tried to pick up the pieces to complete Jaffa's ideas. I am curious enough to seek that book out as well.

[Mike Horne · Rating 4 out of 5]

For the past 18 years I have been asking my students this question: In what manner and to what extent is it legal (constitutional?) for a state to secede from the Union? We then read Dred Scott, House Divided Speech, South Carolina Declaration of Causes for Secession, Lincoln's First Inaugural, Jefferson Davis's speech to the Confederate Congress, and Lincoln's July 4, 1861 Speech. Wow! This book does exactly the same thing. I had read Jaffa's The House Divided, and have been meaning to read this book.

That being said it was like slogging through molasses to get through this book. And I really love the topic! Jaffa is as slippery as Lincoln. He is a polemicist! I did not always follow him (I am sure that is my bad), but I don't trust him. He is trying to make Lincoln's Gettysburg Address part and parcel of the American Gospel (the Declaration and the Constitution). His villain is John C. Calhoun (my favorite professor--Ross Lence, was a Calhoun expert). I regret that I don't know enough to tell if he was giving him a fair shake.

Still Jaffa does an amazing job of writing commentary (his model is Aquinas's commentary on Aristotle's Ethics.

If you make it through this book, read Willmore Kendall's Basic Symbols of the American Political Tradition. He argues that the Gettysburg is the derailment of the American political tradition.

Here is the crux of Lincoln's argument (which I think is wrong).

"They invented an ingenious sophism, which, if conceded, was followed by perfectly logical steps through all the incidents to the complete destruction of the Union. The sophism itself is that any State of the Union may consistently with the National Constitution, and therefore lawfully and peacefully , withdraw from the Union without the consent of the Union or of any other State. . . (p.366)

This sophism derives much, perhaps the whole, of its currency from the assumption that there is some omnipotent and sacred supremacy pertaining to a State--to each State of our Federal Union. Our States have neither more nor less power than that reserved to them in the Union by the Constitution, no one of them ever having been a State out of the Union. The original ones passed into the Union even before they cast off their British colonial dependence, and the new ones each came into the Union directly from a condition of dependence, excepting Texas; and even Texas, in its temporary independence, was never designated a State. The new ones only took the designation of States on coming into the Union, while that name was first adopted for the old ones in and by the Declaration of Independence." (p. 368)

[Don Incognito · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read only part of this book--the chapter "Slavery, Succession and State Rights." This chapter discusses John C. Calhoun, and attempts to refute his two claims or theories: that all men are *not* created equal as the Declaration of Independence claims they are (the former was used to defend slavery), and the "concurrent majority" theory (used to justify states' right to secede from the Union). The criticisms of concurrent majority theory seem reasonable.

I was looking here for refutation of author Thomas Dilorenzo's defense of the South and of secession (in his book The Real Lincoln), based on a recommendation of this book by the Claremont Institute as an overall answer to Dilorenzo. In particular, I was looking for refutation of these two claims from Dilorenzo: that states individually ratified the Constitution and therefore had a right to withdraw their ratification; and that if the thirteen colonies seceded from Great Britain, why couldn't states secede from the Union?
I didn't really find what I was looking for in this chapter of A New Birth of Freedom, and will have to read the entire book. Which is somewhat daunting, because it is denser and far more overtly philosophical than The Real Lincoln.

Jaffa states, "Calhoun's theory ...den[ied:] any rational ground to the formation of governments[.:]" Having not read the works of Calhoun yet, I don't know whether that's true; but Edmund Burke, arguably the philosophical father of conservatism, seemed to know that the formation of government *isn't* entirely rational; it's organic, in the sense of resulting from traditions and ideas accreted over long periods of time.

This book, at least the sections on Calhoun, presume that the reader is already familiar with Calhoun's thought; so I think I'll put it aside and read Calhoun instead.

[Theodore Hasse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read it quite a while ago. After visiting Gettysburg and reading Killer Angels by Michael Shaara I am inspired now to read it again.

[Frank R · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant. Fascinating.