Books: Harry V. Jaffa’s A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War

Harry Jaffa is many things: a former speechwriter for Barry Goldwater, a critic of William Rehnquist, a disciple of Leo Strauss, a crusader for Truth with a capital T. Fermented together, these elements produce a defense of Abraham Lincoln and the Union that is remarkable for intellectual consistency. More important, Jaffa's book is remarkable for timeliness. Jaffa calls on Americans, and particularly American historians, to return to the doctrine of reason, natural rights, and the Declaration of Independence. We must not, argues Jaffa, topple images of old American heroes in the way that the Russians toppled statues of Lenin. Americans have a political and ethical tradition worthy of devotion and capable of guiding us in present storms. To use a metaphor that is only slightly overwrought, to drink from Jaffa's chalice is to be reborn in the spirit of Abraham Lincoln and natural rights. Not all American historians will like this wine, but a sip of tradition reminds us of what we have in common and what we oppose.

Jaffa's book is not just a tribute to Lincoln, whom Jaffa calls"the greatest enemy to tyranny the world has ever known." (p. 141) It is an old-fashioned history of Western Civilization, from Moses on Mt. Sinai to the Civil War. Though it took eighteen centuries after Jesus for popular sovereignty to triumph over the divine right of kings, it takes only 471 pages for Jaffa to discuss the progress of popular sovereignty via Rome, Dante, Shakespeare, the presidential election of 1800, and the emergence of Lincoln. One may object to Jaffa's liberal arts approach to history, yet one must admire the learning and logical skill that Jaffa displays.

On each step of Jaffa's intellectual march toward the Civil War appear not the blind historical forces of Hegel but the sentient forces of reason. For Jaffa, American history represents the consummation of reason, though reason gets some help from Julius Caesar (who made Rome into an empire in which universal citizenship could flourish), the Hebrews (who gave the Romans a universal God); and the Greeks (who gave us all an understanding of the good). At last history culminates in the principles of popular sovereignty, natural rights, and the United States. Indeed, one might see the birth of the United States-or the"new birth" that occurred with the Civil War-as the death of history, since, for Jaffa, no further progress seems necessary or possible once natural rights and republican government are guaranteed. Make no mistake: Jaffa is a conservative.

But there are alternative paths in history, paths of error. One pied piper of error was John Calhoun. In his plan for a concurrent majority as well as in his defense of states' rights and slavery, asserts Jaffa, Calhoun partook in the Holy Alliance's reaction against the French Revolution (curiously, Jaffa also attributes Calhoun's ideas to the influence of Rousseau, though Calhoun did not understand Rousseau). All of Calhoun's political principles stood or fell on the idea that humans are not created equal, an idea that most of the founders abhorred. For Calhoun, historical rights, not natural rights, were the basis for legitimate government; thus the minority of slaveholding states, with their historic right to preserve their peculiar institution, were to be given veto power over the will of the non-slaveholding majority. But Calhoun's logic, Jaffa tells us, actually denied any legitimacy to government whatsoever. Calhoun's government would be nothing more than the instrument of the strong to control the weak, the protector of history's white lotto winners from its black lotto losers, who would never, ever be allowed to graduate from the great"school" of slavery.

Equally important as a prophet of illegitimate government was Chief Justice Roger Taney. In Dred Scott, Taney wrote that the founders had never recognized blacks as citizens, despite the fact that this same Taney had argued precisely the opposite in the trial of abolitionist Jacob Gruber in 1818. When Taney, in order to undermine the Republican Party, declared in Dred Scott that Congress could not bar slavery in the territories, the South embraced his ruling as sacred doctrine. From Taney's logic came Jefferson Davis's argument that the Declaration of Independence had guaranteed" community rights" (those of whites) not individual rights, and from Davis's logic came secession. If Lincoln was elected on a promise to bar slavery in the territories, the North must be bent on subverting the Supreme Court, the Constitution, even the" community rights" of the Declaration. Just as they had once entered the Union freely, the Southern states felt justified in freely withdrawing.

In Jaffa's view, it is Lincoln, not the South, who genuinely upheld the Constitution. Lincoln realized that the natural rights embedded within both the Declaration and the Constitution were more sacred than any guarantee of slavery. When the natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness came into conflict with the historic right to own slaves, natural rights had to triumph."The rule of masters over slaves and that of kings over peoples," writes Jaffa, were"but two varieties of what [Lincoln] called the 'same old serpent.'" (p. 67) If the Revolution was fought, the Declaration declared, and the Constitution ratified in order to create a government by and for the people, then slavery must go sooner or later.

Then why did Lincoln claim to fight to save the Union rather than to free the slaves? Jaffa sees no contradiction here. For Lincoln, the Union embodied the principles of the Declaration of Independence, which had made the government of the United States the best and boldest government in human history (indeed, Lincoln followed Madison's lead in identifying the Declaration, not the Constitution, as the foundation of the Union, a foundation from which there could be no secession). The government that the Declaration had created, thought Lincoln, would one day be perfected through the extinction of slavery. Though Lincoln believed that the Constitution forbade the federal government from interfering with slavery where it existed, he, like Jefferson, knew that once contained, slavery would wither-if the Union could be held together. Because the South believed the same thing, it embraced secession, which in turn allowed Lincoln to hasten the very emancipation that the South wished to avoid. In other words, saving the Union and freeing the slaves were not separate goals in Lincoln's mind; they were one and the same. Both were the fruit of the Declaration of Independence, a document that, in Jaffa's view, many historians have neglected or disparaged, but which deserves to be called, to borrow Pauline Maier's phrase,"American Scripture."1

In part Jaffa's book is a defense of Lincoln against his traditional enemies, including neo-secessionists. Yet the book is equally a defense of Lincoln against neo-abolitionists. Modern historians denigrate Lincoln, says Jaffa, because they value passion over prudence. Such historians follow Carl Becker-who followed Hegel and Calhoun-insofar as they assume that natural rights are the fruit of historical processes and not of nature (William Rehnquist comes in for a righteous lashing for espousing this same belief; viva la justicia).

"Despite the enormous number of books on American history written in the last seventy-five years," writes Jaffa,"[Carl] Becker's perspective on the natural rights philosophy has remained unchanged and unchallenged in the mainstream of the academic world."

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So far as I know ... no historian who has written about the Civil War has seriously asked whether Lincoln's belief in the truth of the Declaration can be accepted, not merely as emotionally evocative and persuasive, but as philosophically sound.... But if the question as to whether the philosophy of the Declaration is true or false is essentially meaningless, then questions as to whether slavery is right or wrong or whether freedom is better than despotism are equally meaningless. (p. 75)

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Indeed, if natural rights are not natural-if rights are cultural constructs, mere exigencies of time and place-then reason is itself a myth. All humans have left to celebrate is their will to power, their passion for an essentially non-rational cause, a cause with no nature, no God, no reason at its base. Once we arrive at such conclusions-as Jaffa thinks we have-we are all Nietzscheans, bent on becoming über-menschen in a godless universe. Thus, rather than praise Jefferson and Lincoln for setting the stage for emancipation by promoting natural rights, modern historians dismiss them for their lack of abolitionist zeal.

Jaffa's attack on those who put passion ahead of prudence may sound like an odd indictment coming from someone who wrote in 1964 that"extremism in defense of liberty is no vice." More important, in censuring modern scholars for abandoning old premises, Jaffa mistakes his enemies. Few modern scholars-and even fewer who write about slavery and the Civil War-reject the concept of natural rights. Like most Americans (with the notable exception of Chief Justice Rehnquist), most historians hold natural rights to be so self-evident that they cannot conceive why Lincoln delayed freeing the slaves or why he considered a Thirteenth Amendment to protect rather than to abolish slavery. The triumph of natural rights, not their rejection, is why modern historians endorse passion in the cause of abolition. Even those who today defend the South's cause have abandoned for the most part the racial logic of Calhoun, Taney, and Davis in order to espouse natural rights. Neo-secessionists tend to honor the postbellum myth that states' rights-not slavery-led to secession. They add, wrongly, that slavery was doomed to fall of its own weight in an independent South.

This is not to say that Jaffa barks at shadows. He is correct to charge that Hegel, Marx, and more recent critical theorists (who go unmentioned in Jaffa's book) have taught scholars to see impersonal and often inscrutable forces behind history. But when faced with tyranny-as we now are, judging by the events of September 11-one suspects that these scholars, like Carl Becker when faced with Hitler, will dart back to the sheltering waters of the Declaration. Natural rights are so widely accepted that they have become unconscious premises, part of our intellectual air, freeing rational minds to explore the role of the non-rational in history. To explore the role of the non-rational in history, indeed, is possible only in a society premised on the rational. Without Jefferson, we would have no freedom to evaluate the ideas of those whom Jaffa deplores: Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche. At times, indeed, Jaffa seems intent on liberating the world from these philosophers of the non-rational, though only through the prism of the non-rational can we identify the constituent parts of Islamic terrorism or the defense of slavery.

Jaffa responds that to engage in the Hegelian understanding of history-to impute non-rational causes to past events-is to engage in contradiction. If historical actors could not understand the forces that directed them, how can historians (like Carl Becker) assume that they grasp the forces that direct their scholarship? How can historians be any more objective or rational than those they study? This contradiction certainly describes the predicament of post-structuralists, who often assume that one"discourse" or"knowledge" is as true or untrue as another and are hence left rudderless in a universe of moral chaos. Strangely, however, one suspects that even post-structuralists hark to Jaffa's drum.

Two things need to be said here. First, to return to the contradiction Jaffa sees between the non-rational historical actor and the rational historian: this same contradiction applies to Jaffa. If history can be guided by Truth and Reason, as is Jaffa, then how do we explain why some historical actors-whether John Brown, John Calhoun, or Adolph Hitler-did not employ their reason to see the good? Jaffa submits that such actors were irrational rather than non-rational; they and their followers engaged in logical fallacies. But how different is logical fallacy from Becker's conception, or Hegel's, of the non-rational? To engage in irrationality, after all, is to follow one's will rather than one's conscience, and one's will in turn follows from non-rational forces, be they ids, passions, discourses, or relations to the means of production. Clearly, historical actors do not always grasp the basis for their actions; and just as clearly, historians-both Jaffa and Becker-are in a position to grasp the irrational or non-rational premises to which historical actors were blind. To deny this truth is to deny that the historical enterprise, given that such denial is tantamount to arguing either that all historical actors act only rationally (and can invariably be taken at their own words) or that they all act only irrationally (and cannot be understood at all). If you believe either premise, you have no need for historical explanation.

The second thing that must be said is that even the greatest believers in the non-rational in history-post-structuralists-secretly believe in reason. Scratch an American post-structuralist and you'll find that what he or she seeks to understand (or alter) is society's division of power and that power must be understood through reason. Consider that in the view of post-structuralists, strong discourses prevail over weak ones. This Darwinian twist leaves post-structuralists trying to figure why some discourses are strong and others weak, which in turn forces post-structuralists to come to terms with the underlying nature of power, which takes them back to the realm of structure, which must be understood through reason. Consider: if the idea of power is itself discourse, then power becomes meaningless and the triumph of empires, natural rights, or any discourse or ideology, becomes inexplicable.

But discourse is not power and power is not discourse. In post-structuralist practice, if not in post-structuralist theory, discourses and ideologies are (as in Hegelianism or Marxism) disguises for power, costumes that mask reality, or, perhaps more properly, they are formulae for the distribution of power. Much as post-structuralists might argue that discourse determines reality, they usually portray competing discourses as the tools with which historical actors struggle for power; power itself remains something real and explicable and external to discourse. Power is not just an illusion created by words.

If one takes post-structuralists at their word, of course, then post-structuralist arguments are merely another sort of discourse, another claim to power that is no more right or wrong than any other. But few post-structuralists follow such logic; they must believe that their own scholarly discourses have a claim to power that transcends the claims of others, else they would not write. Most American post-structuralists are old-fashioned admirers of the redistribution of power to the excluded, whether the excluded are women, people of color, or the working class. In short, scratch a post-structuralist and you're likely to find a believer in good, hardy American egalitarianism, not a worshipper of Nietzsche. Scratch a post-structuralist a little harder and you'll find someone who has a dimly conceived yet objective definition of power, a definition that devolves on the natural rights of human beings. When those rights are breached, there is injustice; when they are observed, there is good. Thus American post-structuralists see the rule of elites over subalterns, light-skinned people over dark-skinned, and men over women-like the rule of masters over slaves and that of kings over peoples-as different varieties of Lincoln's"same old serpent."

Though a dedicated post-structuralist-as opposed to their American fellow travelers-would revolt at the suggestion that there are such things as objective truths or natural rights, objective truth and natural rights are in effect what post-structuralists seek to gain by making themselves and others aware of their own biases and subjectivity. One might argue that post-structuralists have led us to abandon the idea of objective truth, right, or good, and hence that post-structuralists have made us moral relativists. That we are moral relativists is Jaffa's great fear. But as post-structuralists like to argue, to understand one's values and biases is to make oneself a better citizen, or, to put it differently, to know one's values and biases is to live by the golden rule. To do unto others as you would have them do unto you requires understanding those others and oneself as thoroughly as possible. Take this thinking a step further and post-structuralists become allies of natural rights, since, as Jaffa tells us, at the base of natural rights lies the golden rule. Shockingly, Harry Jaffa and Joan Wallach Scott then become parishioners at the same church.2

One wonders why Jaffa and his foes cannot agree that both reason and vast, impersonal forces (or discourses, or whatever name you wish to give the non-rational) move history simultaneously? Can't we acknowledge that the Declaration of Independence was morally and logically correct and yet admit that the Virginia founders were pushed toward their radical views by the religious rebellions of small farmers (Baptists and Methodists), the British threat to free the slaves, the desire to profit from western lands, and by paranoid fears of a British plot to enslave America? Can't Becker-and Woody Holton, Rhys Isaac, and Bernard Bailyn-be correct and Jaffa too?3 Perish the thought! That would smack of Hegelianism. Besides, a truce would deny Jaffa his role as Jeremiah, a role in which he, like his Straussian peer of the 1980s, Alan Bloom, excels.

"We must," concludes Jaffa,"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) Indeed we must, in light of events of September 11. But what September 11 makes equally clear is that we must continue our quest to understand the non-rational in history, albeit with clear consciences about our own devotion to the universal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and with the clear understanding that there is right and wrong in the world (and that we Americans are sometimes in the wrong). Meanwhile, we must not confuse our faith in right and wrong with the belief that"extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." The prudence that Jaffa so admires in Lincoln must overcome the extremism that Jaffa so admired in Goldwater. In the spirit of prudence, Harry Jaffa's bold and trenchant defense of the moral tradition in American politics and history deserves a salute from all of us, whether we are post-structuralists, Straussians, conservatives, or liberals. Oh captain, my captain.

Notes

1.11Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (New York, 1997).

2.11Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York, 1988).

3.11Woody Holton, Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves & the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia (Chapel Hill, 1999); Rhys Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790 (Chapel Hill, 1982); Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967).