But if Jaffa allows Aristotle to get in his way, he nonetheless is able to offer some important elements
to serve in interpreting Lincoln. He quotes from the Dred Scott speech as to Lincoln's perception of the
Declaration's first self-evident truth, holding it to have meant that all have a right to equality, although his
reference to the Peoria speech probably correctly  seen to fit Lincoln's notion that an alteration of the
incorporating moral principle of the Union dissolves it, includes a Lincoln aversion to the insistence he
sees in Douglas of the paramount principle of self-interest as both a critique of Locke for whom man was
motivated by such, and a divorce of the philosophy of the Declaration from at least such notions in such as
Locke.  It is clearly the case that Lincoln was willing to compromise, but unlike Douglas' compromise of
1854, such agreement had to be founded on a toleration of an accepted evil, slavery, and not
acknowledgment that such was not an evil. If Lincoln was being a realist, this should not be viewed as the
later sort of compromise. He was after all operating in a legal environment in which even a bill to prohibit
interstate transport of slaves would not only have been held unconstitutional by the Taney court, but was
beyond the scope of federal authority to even consider. There is probably too much in the Jaffa article to
try to contend with within the scope of this inquiry, but two premises emerge clearly from his argument.
Lincoln was unquestionably anti-slavery and his political economy underscores his every word and act.
The former sentiments had to be tempered by the Constitutional realities of the moment, by the fallacy of
the arguments (of Randall, of Douglas, and others of any natural limits of slavery. The latter are
underscored by Lincoln's perception  that the Constitution was the highest authority, which Jaffa
acknowledges but does not take far enough. The article quotes Lincoln's assertion that a fundamental
principle of the Declaration  (and Constitution) was in "enterprise and industry to all." Jaffa does contend
that without the obliteration of slavery, industry could have been constrained to labor intensive
production, but he seems only to infer that Lincoln's attack on slavery was in reality an assault on labor
intensive activity generally at the expense of capital intensive industry. 

     There are two currents which run through Jaffa which can be examined further within the context of
other literature. Strozier's QUEST FOR UNION and Fehrenbacher's PRELUDE TO GREATNESS offer
somewhat parallel theses of Lincoln's strategy during the 1850's, and there is a segment of the
commentary on Lincoln which relates to the religious character of Lincoln's speech, a theme repeatedly
referenced by Jaffa. The initial comments on Lincoln as a paramount symbol in our national pantheon are
indicative of the role he has assumed in what may be called our civil religion. But in addition to that,
there is an obvious thread of religiousity that permeates the life, actions, and words of the man himself. 

     Cobb and Elder produced a review of such symbols in 1973 in American Politics Quarterly. The
argued that symbols need not be functional in terms of tangible costs or benefits and that their impact by
be substantive in either systemic or diversely individual fashion that "defines major elements of a political
culture." They further suggest that the degree of specification of any symbol and its affective character will
cause it to range on a continuum which measures its impact on social solidarity (or differentiation).

     The inculcation of values associated with symbols probably develops as early in life as the second and
certainly the third stage of Pioget's model of cognitive development. As such, they may essentially be a
pre-consciousness function (as discussed here earlier). This may help to explain how it can be that a
symbol such as Lincoln whose own position was a highly attenuated one in an extremely divisive system,
and who represents at some rather unspecific level some tenets which are yet quite divisive in our culture,
could achieve and hold as prominent a status in our national civil religion. (That does not dismiss casually
the possibility that the ideas represented are so thoroughly interwoven with our tradition and institutions
that they transcend even such divisions).

     Thomas Fleming has posed the possibility that Lincoln's success during his lifetime in achieving the
position from which his stature as a symbol is derived is at least partially attributable to his:

	"... habit of wrapping up his policy in the idiom of Holy Scripture, concealing
	within the Trojan Horse of his gasconade and moral superiority an agenda that
	would never have been approved if presented in any other form." (58)

     That quote taken from M.E. Bradford is one further element of absurdity in that article, as Harry Jaffa
was quick to point out in his response the following month (59). Jaffa, while he sees such absurdities in
every generation since the Civil War, traces Fleming's and Bradford's position to a 1931 diatribe against
Lincoln by Edgar Lee Masters (LINCOLN, THE MAN). The "relentlessly Biblical rhetoric" which
Lincoln used to distinguish himself from others of the period according to Fleming was used to achieve
"the subjugation of the South [which] had to be smeared over with religion" (Masters). That, of course,
may explain Lincoln's extraordinary political success in the South in 1860! Strozier's reference to such
rhetoric is of decidedly more friendly character (60). Jaffa's response is to detail evidence which probably
should have been obvious, but just as obviously was mandated:

	"Now any one acquainted in the least with mid-Nineteenth century America,
	North and South, knows that the accents of the King James Bible were the common
	currency of political -- and indeed of familiar -- decisions. Lincoln's use of phrases
	drawn from the Bible was not the least unusual. What was unusual was the beauty
	and perfection of the language." (61)

     He offers a Southern speech base on the same Biblical passages as Lincoln's House Divided speech, but
which is a thorough argument for not only slavery, but also racialism and white supremacy as a case in
point. The speaker was Confederate Vice President Stephens in the aftermath of Ft. Sumpter. That speech
goes even further, using the reference to argue that the Constitutional assumption of racial equality was in
error. Lincoln himself, of course, repeatedly answered such assertions.  That same 'problem' of Lincoln's
political rhetoric appears to have also been a matter of concern for Don Fehrenbacher, but in that context
it becomes quite a different kind of phenomenon, and while in his PRELUDE TO GREATNESS, Lincoln
seems at times to descend to the level of consummate politico, there is at all times recognition that it is a
principled politics that Lincoln is engaging in.  Here, where Fleming saw Lincoln evading Douglas'
questions in the debates, Fehrenbacher clearly establishes the opposite. In fact, Lincoln not only answers 
him but repeatedly poses questions to Douglas, over objection of his own supporters, that go unanswered,
or as they are replied to, work to cripple Douglas and fragment the Democratic Party beyond 1858 (62).
The foremost example of such strategic maneuvering by Lincoln results in the so-called Freeport Doctrine,
a perhaps curious entitlement for what seems to be little more than the Taney court local energy mold for
America.

     Hofstader alludes to Hearndon's portrayal of Lincoln as a political animal. His life was fully absorbed
in his political being (63). He quotes Hearndon:

	"Politics was his life, newspapers his food, and his great ambition 
	his motive power." (64)

     He goes on to describe Lincoln as no maverick, identifying him as "a firm orthodox Whig" (65) on
every important issue, from the Bank, tariffs, the Mexican War and internal improvements, to the
extension of slavery. The parallels cut deeply. The repeal of Missouri may have marked the demise of the
Whigs, but it launched the GOP and reinvigorated Lincoln (66). And Lincoln took pains that he not be
portrayed as a 'silk-stocking Whig' (67). He was clearly no Democrat, but could proceed from
'Jeffersonian' principle to support Hamilton's program, holding that the party of Jefferson had abandoned
its principles in holding that one man's liberty was nothing when it conflicted with another's property
(68). 

     Especially Strozier (69) devotes some remarks to Lincoln's political rhetoric, including some
commentary to his propensity to argue conspiracies. There is some inference that Lincoln was in such
matters talking through his stove pipe hat. But 'conspiracy' is the stuff of politics and history. What, after
all, is coalition-building? Stealth may or may not have anything to do with it. When those of common or
mutual benefiting ends work together, they are 'conspiring.' Is Lincoln to be faulted for pointing out what
everyone was aware of? There was a determined political effort largely centered around the Democratic
Party to extend slavery, to restrict federal prerogatives, to accentuate state and local energy in economic
matters, and the like. Lincoln represented quite an alternative position -- he might even be said to have
conspired to promote it. Carey certainly did, in such causes as his Verspers circles. Lincoln was hardly as
paranoid as Strozier seems to suggest (70).

     That same Confederate Vice President  of earlier Fleming reference, while in the Senate and the
Democratic Cabinets of the 1850's, undertook policy designed to limit American military capacity and
decapitate movement toward a steamship industry in the United States -- efforts that clearly hurt the
Union cause and made the Civil War bloodier, and which were not reversed until the war with such
strategic defense initiatives as the Monitor projects.

     As Jaffa identified it, the assassins of Lincoln are, as they have been, busy people. A special emphasis
should be placed on the fact that through all the debate as to interpretation of Lincoln, there is very little
substantive reference or comment on 'Lincolnomics.' There is a controversy as to his position vis-à-vis
Henry Clay of relevance to that.  Fehrenbacher, for example, makes much of their connection while
Strozier emphasizes Lincoln's opposition to his candidacy for the nomination in 1848. But any difference
there had little to do with economics. With respect to 'Lincolnomics,' it is incredible that it seems to be of
so little concern. It is here that the really important Lincoln emerges.

     Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, and Lincoln, the Preserver of the Union, are obviously important
themes. Attempts to undermine such interpretations of Lincoln, whether in Woodward, Kelley, Fleming,
or elsewhere, are totally inadequate. That fact, as much as anything else, may account for the continuation
of these themes as central to popular conceptions of Mr. Lincoln, to return to the earlier caveat. What
emerges as necessarily superior interpretation of Lincoln is analysis of him as both Emancipator and
Preserver from his political economic perspective. He 'saved' the Union  as much by his program of
economic development as any other way. Similarly, emancipation was a blow against the labor intensive
degradation of man. In this, he was very much cut in the mold of what is referred to as the American
System of political economy of Franklin, Hamilton, Adams, Clay, Carey, Peshine Smith, and Raymond. It
is in this regard that Lincoln transcends even the brightest interpretations in popular and scholarly
evaluation. This is the essence of Lincoln and the substance of the apotheosis of Abraham Lincoln. 

     A century after the North American Review referenced a renaissance of nationalism, the time is
overdue for a further 'revision' of the popular and scholarly estimate of the central figure of that time, a
revision which needs to focus on the essence of what renaissance and nationalism mean.  It may be that
"justice has been done to his patriotism, patience, and humanity" and that "only recently ,,, his intellectual
capacity has been generally recognized and admitted .., " but there is to date still a great deficiency in our
nation's interpretation and appreciation of Abraham Lincoln.  While it has been suggested that Lincoln
was a precursor of the 'modern' Presidency, and as such a sort of intermediary between Hamilton's
'energetic executive' and say, FDR, it should be emphasized that it is only the 'third' Roosevelt of the
Arsenal of Democracy that comes  close to cohering with Lincoln's political economy (though some
aspects of the earlier FDRs do foreshadow that -- the TVA, for example, may, while most aspects of the
New Deal do not). It does not suffice to say that it follows on the 'enlargement' of the office alone. Such an
understanding of Lincoln does something else -- it raises some serious questions about the vision of the
'liberal' tradition in this country espoused by Louis Hartz. Too often this 'liberalism' is political jacobinism
only and does not encompass the political economy necessary (as represented by Lincoln, et al). This
deficiency to a great extent colors much of Hartz' analysis and renders much of his commentary wanting,
whether he is talking about Lincoln, Hamilton, the Whigs or the Roosevelts. In Hartz, a jaded
'Americanism' replaces the American System, a point to which more will be addressed). How can it be
that Hartz' Americanism finds Marx so alien when Lincoln's associates had far less trouble with him?
That, of course, does not alter the failings of Marx so much as it exposes those of Hartz. Lincoln provides
an important refinement on the 'born equal' argument (71) and the entire liberal absolutism perspective. 
Whatever Samuel Chase may have had in mind when he spoke of a 'third road' as a particular American
prerogative in 1931 (72), the substantive essence of the Lincoln apotheosis suggests a great deal which
Hartz' tradition passes over (though this is not to be confused with the 'third way' panned by Hayek or von
Mises). At the very least, it is not enough to say, as Hartz does, that Lincoln 'democratizes' Hamilton's
elitism (73). That not only fundamentally misreads Hamilton, but also constrains Lincoln. It leaves Hartz
burdened by a poverty of economic perspective. That is not to argue economic determinism, but it does
cast shadows across his analysis from Americanism to nationalism and the natural rights of man. It is
undoubtedly the case that Lincoln's popular apotheosis in no way is attributable to anything close to these
levels of consideration of his policy and philosophy, and yet, there may indeed be an absolute ethos
embedded in Lincoln. It may also be the absolute moral ethos of the American people. And it may be in
this conjunction that Lincoln has come to hold such a paramount position in our culture, in that he
embodies the American Spirit, and does so in a manner which we recognize, though not in a reductionist
fashion. But it is not one that is uniquely American either, and in this sense probably can best explain not
only why our Revolution is exportable but also why what occurred at Lexington were indeed 'shots heard
'round the world.' In the Civil War as in the Revolution, the science of political economy and government
was at issue and at stake. The extreme measures which Lincoln had to undertake were absolutely
mandatory in that fight. The nation, as expressed in those ideas, was under assault, as it always had been.
And if the measures seem extreme, they were dedicated to and based in the spirit that Franklin and
Hamilton and Madison breathed into the Constitution -- an act of re-creation that marks man's existence
in the image of the Creator who breathed that creative spirit into humanity. Karl Walling of the Air Force
Academy has commented on this deliberate structuring in the presentation of his paper Republican
Empire delivered at the Chicago Conference of the American Political Science Association on September
1, 1995. He depicts a Hamilton determined to structure the economy of scale 'empire' with the requisite
'public strength'  instilled in the federal authority to hold it together in order to acheive 'individual
security.' His case not only presents a Hamilton more similar to the one portrayed here, but one
determined to establish the legal order toward securing that structuring. But he connects all this to the
conception of civil religion which Hamilton developed out of Plutarch:

	"Hamilton was particularly impressed with the 'empire of the mind' of the Romans which
	Numa acquired through the political use of religion. However temporarily, Numa civilized
	the Romans by turning their thoughts from war to peace and indolence to industry. Namu's
	example gave Hamilton a lifelong respect for the political  influences of religion, especially 
	when passions of religious veneration can be associated with the constitutional rule of law.
	It also convinced him that no government could endure unless it possessed a similar kind
	of empire over the hearts and minds of its citizens." (74)



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