PROPHETIC STATESMANSHIP: HARRY JAFFA, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, AND THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS
by Edward J. Erler
Encounter Books, 2025; 228 pp.
Edward Erler is professor of political science emeritus at Cal State, San Bernardino, and is also a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute, which is devoted to the work of the political philosopher Harry Jaffa, the leader of the so-called West Coast Straussians (i.e., the followers of Leo Strauss). Erler was a student of Jaffa’s and Jaffa thought very highly of him. Indeed, he charged Erler with writing a continuation of his book A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War (2000). Jaffa’s continuation was supposed to include an interpretation of the Gettysburg Address, but Jaffa had not completed the planned volume at the time of his death. Prophetic Statesmanship is Erler’s fulfillment of the task Jaffa entrusted to him, although it must be said that only one of the book’s chapters is an interpretation of the Gettysburg Address, and in fact that chapter covers other topics as well. The Claremont Institute has in recent years supported the political policies of Donald Trump. Owing to the fact that Trump is now president, we can expect increasing public attention to the denials by the Claremont scholars of what I contend are obvious truths.
Prophetic Statesmanship goes to extraordinary lengths to deny obvious truths about the War Between the States. Among these truths are that Abraham Lincoln did not believe that blacks were the social and political equals of whites and that although he opposed slavery, he was prepared to put up with its existence for an indefinite period so long as he could keep the Union intact. He wanted a strong national state along the lines of his near-contemporaries Otto von Bismarck in Germany and Camillo Benso di Cavour in Italy. Further, the war provided the basis for a continued campaign against Southern “racism” that began with Reconstruction and continues to the present day.
Let’s begin with Lincoln’s views about blacks and whites. Jaffa, in a long passage from his last book, Crisis of the Strauss Divided: Essays on Leo Strauss and Straussianism, East and West (2012) that Erler quotes, says that “Lincoln in 1858 denied any intention to make voters or jurors of Negroes or of permitting them to marry whites. . . . Lincoln’s proximate goal was arresting the spread of slavery into the territories. To have advocated voting rights for Negroes in Illinois in 1858 before the Civil War would only have divided those who were united in their opposition to the extension of slavery. Lincoln made it clear that in his mind stopping the spread of slavery was only the first step on the road to its ultimate extinction. He did not in 1858 address the question of what might become prudent when the end of that road was in sight.”
Neither Jaffa nor Erler considers an alternative interpretation of Lincoln’s remarks. What if— what a thought!—Lincoln meant exactly what he said? He did not favor making voters or jurors of Negroes and permitting them to marry whites.
But this question is not what I mean by “extraordinary lengths.” Jaffa and Erler think that in his language of prudent restraint, Lincoln was following in the footsteps of St. Thomas Aquinas, who, it transpires, favored the complete political and social equality of Jews and atheists and believed that Christians held no advantage over them as regards salvation.
I strongly suspect you will doubt that Jaffa could have said this. Didn’t Aquinas favor the burning of heretics at the stake and also support severe restrictions on Jews? He was, after all, a major theologian of the medieval Roman Catholic Church. And in fact, in his early work Thomism and Aristotelianism: A Study of the Commentary by Thomas Aquinas on the Nicomachean Ethics (1952), Jaffa argued that St. Thomas misunderstood Aristotle by trying to Christianize him. But in his later years Jaffa realized his mistake, contending that St. Thomas correctly understood Aristotle and that his real aim was to make the church rational. And what was the correct interpretation of Aristotle? Why, that everyone, Greek, and non-Greek alike, should have the same political and social rights. Aristotle was of course against slavery, but prudence—that blessed word—compelled him to be silent. O prudence, what crimes are committed in thy name!
The evidence that Lincoln did not invade the South to end slavery is well known, and I shall not rehearse it here. Suffice it to say that he sponsored the 1861 Corwin Amendment, which would have permanently guaranteed slavery in the states where it existed. Consider this alongside his first inaugural address, which above all emphasized the collection of duties and imposts.
But I must face an important objection. Lincoln many times referred to the “self-evident truth” of the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal.” Doesn’t this commit him to full political and social equality? No, it does not. According to Jaffa, the “self-evident truth” is that “whatever inequalities exist among human beings—however measured—none are great enough to make one human being, or class, or caste naturally the rulers of others. As Jefferson noted, ‘the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.’” But this fact does not rule out substantial political and social inequalities among races or classes. It just says that those in the superior position can’t treat the inferiors as animals. In another amazing misinterpretation of history, Jaffa notes that Lincoln contended that the case for the divine right of kings and the argument for slavery are “precisely alike; and it is natural that they should find similar arguments to sustain them.” Jaffa follows him in this reasoning. Erler tells us that in chapter 2 of A New Birth of Freedom, Jaffa writes that “the divine right of kings, in the comprehensive sense of the right to rule others without their consent, predominated within Western civilization until the American Revolution.” This is of course absurd. In the medieval era, the power of the king was limited by custom, the privileges of the nobility, the teachings of the Catholic Church, and natural law. The king’s power did not mean that the king could treat his subjects as animals or slaves but rather that certain families held their kingship by hereditary right. As the seminal work of Brian Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law, and Church Law, 1150– 1625 (1997), has shown, people in the Middle Ages were well aware of natural rights.
After all the fuss that Lincoln, Jaffa, and Erler have made about equality in the sense they have explained, it turns out that Lincoln didn’t fully believe in it. He made an exception for himself— he was a man of such godlike virtue that he was entitled to rule over others. In his Lyceum Address, delivered in 1838, Lincoln predicted that men of “all-consuming ambition” such as “an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon” will arise and threaten the existence of the American republic. Only a man of such magnanimity that he is able to subdue his ambition, equal to theirs, and use it to defend the republic can overcome this danger. “Lincoln’s conception of the nature of the true statesman in the highest sense,” Jaffa argues, “is the one ‘who can forgo the honors of his countrymen.’” Lincoln viewed himself in just this way and proposed establishing what he termed a “political religion” based on adherence to the Constitution as this godlike man interpreted it. He intended the Gettysburg Address to be part of the scriptures of the new religion.
Unfortunately, the South has not learned this lesson and substitutes history for the principle of Lincolnian equality. According to Erler, “In the Civil War, the South was defeated on the battlefield, but in the Second Inaugural no victory was declared or implied; an olive branch was offered, and charity extended. In response, the South was offended and continued to defend the morality of slavery. ‘Who is to say that slavery is wrong and immoral,’ the public asks today?—and not just the South. It is a meaningless question because it is a value question! If slavery is not immoral, then we can say that nothing is immoral. Everyone is entitled to his own morality; nothing is immoral.”
Why are these the only alternatives? The defenders of the South, from the Civil War down to the present, have argued on the basis of their own understanding of morality, tradition, and Christianity. The nihilistic position Jaffa and Erler foist on them is their own concoction.
Prophetic Statesmanship is worth reading as an example of the misplaced ingenuity with which intelligent scholars can defend ridiculous views. The Claremont Institute’s efforts to unify Americans in the worship of the godlike Abraham Lincoln cannot succeed.
