5/20/2004

Guelzo, Jaffa, Lincoln

I wondered, seeing this, if Lincoln Prize winner Allen C. Guelzo is or was a student of Harry Jaffa: "Lincoln's prudence, writes Guelzo, was rooted in an 'unquestioning belief in universal natural rights'"...

Then I noticed this:

Forty years ago, Harry Jaffa wrote the greatest book on Abraham Lincoln's politics for a generation; now, Jaffa has written the greatest book on Lincoln's politics for another generation... —Allen C. Guelzo, author of Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President

There is some free Jaffa reading to be had at the Claremont Institute's site, like this rebuttal of Joe Sobran's views of Lincoln: "it was the secession of the Deep South, not from Lincoln and the Republicans, but from Stephen A. Douglas, that made the Civil War virtually inevitable — and brought about the abolition of slavery."