The Measure of Abraham Lincoln

By |2024-02-11T23:10:29-06:00February 11th, 2024|Categories: Abraham Lincoln, Conservatism, Essential, Featured, Presidency, RAK, Russell Kirk, Timeless Essays|

Abraham Lincoln never was a doctrinaire; he rose from very low estate to very high estate, and he knew the savagery which lies so close beneath the skin of man, and he knew that most men are good only out of obedience to routine and convention. Whatever the result of the convulsion whose first shocks [...]

What “The Federalist” Really Says

By |2023-10-27T06:03:11-05:00October 26th, 2023|Categories: Abraham Lincoln, American Founding, American Republic, Equality, Featured, Federalist, Federalist Papers, James Madison, John Locke, Timeless Essays, Willmoore Kendall|

It is from careful textual analysis of “The Federalist” that the basic symbols of the American political tradition, and indeed the conservative tradition, may be found. III In his analysis of the Socrates of the Apology, Willmoore Kendall was hinting strongly at the probability that the contemporary John Stuart Mill-Karl Popper school in the United [...]

And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln & the American Struggle

By |2023-05-06T22:48:28-05:00March 14th, 2023|Categories: Abraham Lincoln, American Republic, Books, Civil War, History, Slavery|

Is there room for yet another biography of Abraham Lincoln? Of course there is, especially if the biographer in question is as deft and insightful as Jon Meacham. And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle by Jon Meacham (676 pages, Random House, 2022) Is there room for yet another biography of Abraham [...]

Honoring Veterans, Envisioning Peace

By |2022-11-10T18:53:38-06:00November 10th, 2022|Categories: Abraham Lincoln, Christopher B. Nelson, History, St. John's College, Timeless Essays, Veterans Day, Virtue, War|

On Veterans Day, we honor our surviving warriors. We rightly give thanks to those who have sacrificed their personal peace for the survival of the nation. And we rededicate ourselves to fulfilling the pledge “to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan.” War endures. The oldest [...]

Statesmanship & the Dangers of Civil Religion

By |2022-06-27T17:35:55-05:00June 27th, 2022|Categories: Abraham Lincoln, Bruce Frohnen, Equality, Government, Politics, Timeless Essays|

Demands for statesmanship tend to hold up a model of greatness in political leadership that is profoundly dangerous. The desire to be “great” by upholding the interests of the nation as a political whole promotes a massive increase in the extent and centralization of political power. I recently attended a conference on statesmanship. Truth be [...]

Prudence as Excellence: Edmund Burke, Abraham Lincoln, & the Problem of Greatness

By |2022-03-30T09:12:00-05:00March 29th, 2022|Categories: Abraham Lincoln, Edmund Burke, Virtue|Tags: |

In a democratic age, how can greatness come to be? Edmund Burke offers a way forward: prudence as a form of excellence. Our conference is subtitled “equality and the survival of heroism.” My concern is the survival of prudence amid the longing for heroism—in particular, the misalignment between ambition and circumstance, the persistent pursuit of [...]

A Reading of the Gettysburg Address

By |2023-05-21T11:28:56-05:00November 18th, 2021|Categories: Abraham Lincoln, Alexis de Tocqueville, American Republic, Civil War, Declaration of Independence, E.B., Essential, Eva Brann, In Honor of Eva Brann at 90 Series, Senior Contributors, St. John's College, Timeless Essays|

Liberal education ought to be less a matter of becoming well-read than a matter of learning to read well, of acquiring arts of awareness, the interpretative or “trivial” arts. Some works, written by men who are productive masters of these arts, are exemplary for their interpretative application. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is such a text. Liberal [...]

The Battle of Fort Sumter Begins

By |2021-08-04T14:57:25-05:00August 3rd, 2021|Categories: Abraham Lincoln, Bradley Birzer Fort Sumter Series, Bradley J. Birzer, Civil War, Senior Contributors|

In early March of 1861, without Abraham Lincoln’s authorization, Secretary of State William Seward told Southern commissioners as well as the Northern press that Lincoln would not fight for Fort Sumter. When the Commissioners demanded to meet with a Lincoln official on March 14, 1861, Seward properly declined, but agreed, in a rather complicated fashion, [...]

Lincoln’s Uncertain Decision: Fort Sumter, 1861

By |2021-07-29T10:01:44-05:00July 28th, 2021|Categories: Abraham Lincoln, Bradley Birzer Fort Sumter Series, Bradley J. Birzer, Civil War, Senior Contributors|

The hardest decision of Abraham Lincoln's presidency revolved around the Confederate garrison stationed at Fort Sumter. On March 5, 1861, Abraham Lincoln, only president for a day, had to make a decision on what to do. Lincoln had a divided cabinet, a divided party, and a divided country. Half of his cabinet wanted war with [...]

Abraham Lincoln: A Western Legacy

By |2021-03-31T15:06:30-05:00March 31st, 2021|Categories: Abraham Lincoln, American West, Books|

Throughout his political career, Abraham Lincoln connected the maintenance of freedom with the preservation of the free West. If the American West fell, so would American liberty. Richard W. Etulain’s “Abraham Lincoln: A Western Legacy” seeks to show more explicitly Lincoln’s relationship with the West. Abraham Lincoln: A Western Legacy by Richard W. Etulain (198 [...]

With Charity For All: What Joe Biden Should Learn From Abe Lincoln

By |2021-01-23T13:45:36-06:00January 19th, 2021|Categories: Abraham Lincoln, American Republic, Joseph Biden, Presidency|

The new president would do well to take a lesson from history’s greatest orator and remind his increasingly diverse constituents that we all share the same uniquely American principles. Freshly sworn in after a contentious election, the new president stands to give his first inaugural address. Violence had begun to erupt immediately after the announcement [...]

Arguing With Lincoln: The Views of M.E. Bradford & Richard Weaver

By |2020-09-21T16:43:27-05:00September 21st, 2020|Categories: Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, M. E. Bradford, Richard Weaver|

If for M.E. Bradford, Abraham Lincoln was a gnostic renegade and heretic beyond the pale, he was for Richard Weaver a political and rhetorical father figure with whom one might argue but never condemn. These Southerners’ differing critiques of Lincoln’s person, views, and actions cast some light on this complex figure, one who continues to [...]

“Mount Rushmore”

By |2021-04-22T17:34:29-05:00July 6th, 2020|Categories: Abraham Lincoln, American Republic, Audio/Video, George Washington, History, Music, Thomas Jefferson|

Drawing from American musical sources and texts, Michael Dougherty's composition for chorus and orchestra echoes the resonance and dissonance of Mount Rushmore as a complex icon of American history. Like Mount Rushmore, the libretto is carved out of the words of each President. Mount Rushmore (2010) for chorus and orchestra is inspired by the monumental [...]

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