Abraham Lincoln And Liberal Democracy

Author : Nicholas Buccola
Publisher : University Press of Kansas
ISBN 13 : 0700622179
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.77/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Abraham Lincoln and Liberal Democracy written by Nicholas Buccola and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2016-03-14 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though Abraham Lincoln was not a political philosopher per se, in word and in deed he did grapple with many of the most pressing and timeless questions in politics. What is the moral basis of popular sovereignty? What are the proper limits on the will of the majority? When and why should we revere the law? What are we to do when the letter of the law is at odds with what we believe justice requires? How is our devotion to a particular nation related to our commitment to universal ideals? What is the best way to protect the right to liberty for all people? The contributors to this volume, a methodologically and ideologically diverse group of scholars, examine Lincoln's responses to these and other ultimate questions in politics. The result is a fascinating portrait of not only Abraham Lincoln but also the promises and paradoxes of liberal democracy. The basic liberal democratic idea is that individual liberty is best secured by a democratic political order that treats all citizens as equals before the law and is governed by the law, with its limits on how the state may treat its citizens and on how citizens may treat one another. Though wonderfully coherent in theory, these ideas prove problematic in real-world politics. The authors of this volume approach Lincoln as the embodiment of this paradox--"naturally antislavery" yet unflinchingly committed to defending proslavery laws; defender of the common man but troubled by the excesses of democracy; devoted to the idea of equal natural rights yet unable to imagine a harmonoius, interracial democracy. Considering Lincoln as he attempted to work out the meaning and coherence of the liberal democratic project in practice, these authors craft a profile of the 16th president's political thought from a variety of perspectives and through multiple lenses. Together their essays create the first fully-dimensional portrait of Abraham Lincoln as a political actor, expressing, addressing, and reframing the perennial questions of liberal democracy for his time and our own.

Author : Jon D. Schaff
Publisher : Southern Illinois University Press
ISBN 13 : 0809337371
Total Pages : 279 pages
Book Rating : 4.78/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Abraham Lincoln’s Statesmanship and the Limits of Liberal Democracy written by Jon D. Schaff and published by Southern Illinois University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-03 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This bold, groundbreaking study of American political development assesses the presidency of Abraham Lincoln through the lenses of governmental power, economic policy, expansion of executive power, and natural rights to show how Lincoln not only believed in the limitations of presidential power but also dedicated his presidency to restraining the scope and range of it. Though Lincoln’s presidency is inextricably linked to the Civil War, and he is best known for his defense of the Union and executive wartime leadership, Lincoln believed that Congress should be at the helm of public policy making. Likewise, Lincoln may have embraced limited government in vague terms, but he strongly supported effective rule of law and distribution of income and wealth. Placing the Lincoln presidency within a deeper and more meaningful historical context, Abraham Lincoln’s Statesmanship and the Limits of Liberal Democracy highlights Lincoln’s significance in the development of American power institutions and social movement politics. Using Lincoln’s prepresidential and presidential words and actions, this book argues that decent government demands a balance of competing goods and the strong statesmanship that Lincoln exemplified. Instead of relying too heavily on the will of the people and institutional solutions to help prevent tyranny, Jon D. Schaff proposes that American democracy would be better served by a moderate and prudential statesmanship such as Lincoln’s, which would help limit democratic excesses. Schaff explains how Lincoln’s views on prudence, moderation, natural rights, and economics contain the notion of limits, then views Lincoln’s political and presidential leadership through the same lens. He compares Lincoln’s views on governmental powers with the defense of unlimited government by twentieth-century progressives and shows how Lincoln’s theory of labor anticipated twentieth-century distributist economic thought. Schaff’s unique exploration falls squarely between historians who consider Lincoln a protoprogressive and those who say his presidency was a harbinger of industrialized, corporatized America. In analyzing Lincoln’s approach, Abraham Lincoln’s Statesmanship and the Limits of Liberal Democracy rejects the idea he was a revolutionary statesman and instead lifts up Lincoln’s own affinity for limited presidential power, making the case for a modest approach to presidential power today based on this understanding of Lincoln’s statesmanship. As a counterpoint to the contemporary landscape of bitter, uncivil politics, Schaff points to Lincoln’s statesmanship as a model for better ways of engaging in politics in a democracy.

Author : Allen C. Guelzo
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780199743742
Total Pages : 160 pages
Book Rating : 4.46/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Lincoln: A Very Short Introduction written by Allen C. Guelzo and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-02-05 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beneath the surface of the apparently untutored and deceptively frank Abraham Lincoln ran private tunnels of self-taught study, a restless philosophical curiosity, and a profound grasp of the fundamentals of democracy. Now, in Lincoln: A Very Short Introduction, the award-winning Lincoln authority Allen C. Guelzo offers a penetrating look into the mind of one of our greatest presidents. If Lincoln was famous for reading aloud from joke books, Guelzo shows that he also plunged deeply into the mainstream of nineteenth-century liberal democratic thought. Guelzo takes us on a wide-ranging exploration of problems that confronted Lincoln and liberal democracy--equality, opportunity, the rule of law, slavery, freedom, peace, and his legacy. The book sets these problems and Lincoln's responses against the larger world of American and trans-Atlantic liberal democracy in the 19th century, comparing Lincoln not just to Andrew Jackson or John Calhoun, but to British thinkers such as Richard Cobden, Jeremy Bentham, and John Bright, and to French observers Alexis de Tocqueville and François Guizot. The Lincoln we meet here is an Enlightenment figure who struggled to create a common ground between a people focused on individual rights and a society eager to establish a certain moral, philosophical, and intellectual bedrock. Lincoln insisted that liberal democracy had a higher purpose, which was the realization of a morally right political order. But how to interject that sense of moral order into a system that values personal self-satisfaction--"the pursuit of happiness"--remains a fundamental dilemma even today. Abraham Lincoln was a man who, according to his friend and biographer William Henry Herndon, "lived in the mind." Guelzo paints a marvelous portrait of this Lincoln--Lincoln the man of ideas--providing new insights into one of the giants of American history. About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.

Author : James Garfield Randall
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 298 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Lincoln, the Liberal Statesman written by James Garfield Randall and published by . This book was released on 1962 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Dr. Randall, whom Allan Nevins called 'the profoundest student of Lincoln's career,' portrays Lincoln's steadfast liberalism against the background of a blundering generation. Here the unpopular Lincoln is met; the troubled and worried Lincoln made human. The curious friendship between Lincoln and John Bright is traced and the influence each exerted on the other. From these pages Lincoln emerges as a great liberal statesman in all that the term implies" --Back cover.

Author : Abraham Lincoln
Publisher : HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 472 pages
Book Rating : 4.75/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Lincoln on Democracy written by Abraham Lincoln and published by HarperCollins Publishers. This book was released on 1990 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On cover: His own words, with essays by America's foremost Civil War historians.

Author : Michael Lind
Publisher : Anchor
ISBN 13 : 0307430162
Total Pages : 370 pages
Book Rating : 4.68/5 ( download)

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Download or read book What Lincoln Believed written by Michael Lind and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Countless books have been written about Abraham Lincoln, yet few historians and biographers have taken Lincoln seriously as a thinker or attempted to place him in the context of major intellectual traditions. In this refreshing, brilliantly argued portrait, Michael Lind examines the ideas and beliefs that guided Lincoln as a statesman and shaped the United States in its time of great crisis.In a century in which revolutions against monarchy and dictatorship in Europe and Latin America had failed, Lincoln believed that liberal democracy must be defended for the good of the world. During an age in which many argued that only whites were capable of republican government, Lincoln insisted on the universality of human rights and the potential for democracy everywhere. Yet he also held many of the prejudices of his time; his opposition to slavery was rooted in his allegiance to the ideals of the American Revolution, not support for racial equality. Challenging popular myths and capturing Lincoln’s strengths and flaws, Lind offers fascinating and revelatory insights that deepen our understanding of this great and complicated man.

Author : J. David Greenstone
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400863619
Total Pages : 347 pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Lincoln Persuasion written by J. David Greenstone and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this, his last work, J. David Greenstone provides an important new analysis of American liberalism and of Lincoln's unique contribution to the nation's political life. Greenstone addresses Louis Hartz's well-known claim that a tradition of liberal consensus has characterized American political life from the time of the founders. Although he acknowledges the force of Hartz's thesis, Greenstone nevertheless finds it inadequate for explaining prominent instances of American political discord, most notably the Civil War. Originally published in 1993. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Author : William D. Pederson
Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 0739149911
Total Pages : 274 pages
Book Rating : 4.11/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Lincoln's Enduring Legacy written by William D. Pederson and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2010-12-16 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of highly readable and accessible essays on Lincoln's legacy offers a wide array of perspectives on the enduring impact of the nation's greatest president on leaders, thinkers, and American history. The book explores how Lincoln's words and deeds have influenced the pursuit of justice and freedom and the practice of democracy in the century and a half since he governed.

Author : J. Alvis
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 1137362286
Total Pages : 146 pages
Book Rating : 4.85/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Statesmanship and Progressive Reform: An Assessment of Herbert Croly’s Abraham Lincoln written by J. Alvis and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-08-01 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A critical assessment of Herbert Croly's influential account of Abraham Lincoln in his 1909 book, The Promise of American Life, which argued that Progressivism was a continuation of the spirit of Lincoln's political thought. This book argues for the first time that Croly's praise of Lincoln is highly problematic.

Author : Allen C. Guelzo
Publisher : Knopf
ISBN 13 : 0593534441
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.41/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Our Ancient Faith written by Allen C. Guelzo and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2024-02-06 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intimate study of Abraham Lincoln’s powerful vision of democracy, which guided him through the Civil War and is still relevant today—by a best-selling historian and three-time winner of the Lincoln Prize "It is altogether fitting and proper that, with this meditation on democracy and its most subtle defender, Allen Guelzo again demonstrates that he is today’s most profound interpreter of this nation’s history and significance." —George F. Will Abraham Lincoln grappled with the greatest crisis of democracy that has ever confronted the United States. While many books have been written about his temperament, judgment, and steady hand in guiding the country through the Civil War, we know less about Lincoln’s penetrating ideas and beliefs about democracy, which were every bit as important as his character in sustaining him through the crisis. Allen C. Guelzo, one of America’s foremost experts on Lincoln, captures the president’s firmly held belief that democracy was the greatest political achievement in human history. He shows how Lincoln’s deep commitment to the balance between majority and minority rule enabled him to stand firm against secession while also committing the Union to reconciliation rather than recrimination in the aftermath of war. In bringing his subject to life as a rigorous and visionary thinker, Guelzo assesses Lincoln’s actions on civil liberties and his views on race, and explains why his vision for the role of government would have made him a pivotal president even if there had been no Civil War. Our Ancient Faith gives us a deeper understanding of this endlessly fascinating man and shows how his ideas are still sharp and relevant more than 150 years later.