Just Curious

Evaluating Abraham Lincoln from a libertarian's perspective

A good friend and mentor remarked not long ago to me that while Stephen Douglas was a good man, Abe Lincoln was great. Indeed, during the years immediately leading up to the Civil War, in stark contrast to the burning sun of Abraham Lincoln, the tapers light of Mr. Douglas disappeared into the outer darkness of Slave Power.

The tragedy applies to many other great characters of the time. John C. Calhoun, who had the most exquisite mind of any Southern politician; Daniel Webster, the great compromise-broker from Massachusetts, and Henry Clay, all came to mind. But they too have labored for nought. While the name of Abraham Lincoln, the theologian of American anguish (from Elton Trueblood), shall be remembered from the East to the West unto ages and ages, who the hell care who Henry Clay or John C. Calhoun were the stuff they stood for?

But what about Honest Abe? Was he really the great leader our history books have made him out to be? Or, does that even matter? Does it matter if he's an enemy of free speech or not?

Here's a brief article by Professor T. Machan, of Cato Institute, Hoover Institution, Chapman University and formerly of Auburn University, Alabama:

http://www.cato.org/dailys/06-01-02.html

Professor Machan made an excellent point that issues like habeas corpus and free speech cannot be discoursed in the abstract. Likewise, the rights of the Several State to secede must be viewed in light of the circumstances, namely, that these White Southern slave-holding aristocrats are trying to take with them HOSTAGES, i.e. their slaves, contrary to the latter's will, as they secede. While in the abstract Mr. Calhoun's South Carolina may have had the perfect right to withdraw from the "more perfect Union," in reality it has not the right so to do unless it first abolish slavery and allow the slaves the right to vote on their feet. Dred Scott is irrelevant here for any good libertarian, for laws are made for men, and not men for the laws.*

In this sense Professor Machan's position is much closer to the liberal contractarian tradition, than it is to the murky Burkean view which took cultural traditions (here slavery) as a given.

*courtesy to Jesus Christ and Alexander Mordecai Bickel, sometime Sterling Professor of Law, Yale University.

posted by James Chang @ 2:42 PM