Lincoln’s Prophetic Statesmanship
Edward J. Erler, Prophetic Statesmanship: Harry V. Jaffa, Abraham Lincoln, and the Gettysburg Address. New York: Encounter Books, 2025.
Written at the request of Harry Jaffa, Ed Erler’s Prophetic Statesmanship attempts to complete Jaffa’s Lincoln corpus. Jaffa had asked Erler to say more about the Gettysburg Address, the initial purported subject of A New Birth of Freedom, despite only comprising two and a half pages. Erler’s Prophetic Statesmanship does just that. A cursory observation will see that only one chapter is dedicated to a direct treatment of the speech, but a closer read will reveal its themes in every chapter.
The build up to the pivotal chapter on the Gettysburg Address is an exposition of just what it means for Lincoln to be a prophetic statesman. For Erler, as with his teacher Harry Jaffa, Lincoln stood in the role of a prophet who recognized the betrayal of his people to their ‘sacred’ faith in the principles of the Declaration of Independence, while possessing the foresight to see the upcoming crisis that would resolve the question of the “House Divided”–that the nation could no longer remain “half slave and half free.” Lincoln’s prophetic role lies in recalling the American people to remember their first love and to repentance. When the war comes for Lincoln as “the judgment” on America for the sin of Slavery, it is the rededication of the nation to its foundation of principles as a “new birth of freedom”, that provides the basis for the reunification and salvation of the nation.
For those in the Straussian orbit, the label of Lincoln as a prophetic statesman, perhaps in parallel or juxtaposition with the philosophic ruler, is curious. For Erler, the label prophetic statesman alludes to the profound synthesis of natural right and revelation as illuminated by both Jaffa and Strauss. The reliance of Lincoln on both reason and revelation, natural right and religion both constitute the pillars of what Jaffa saw as so essential to his statesmanship. For Erler, and as illuminated by Dr. Thomas G. West, Lincoln’s appeals to the principles of natural right mark the basis of Jaffa’s Crisis of a House Divided, after the theme and style of the drama of Plato’s Republic. Conversely, the theological character of Lincoln’s statesmanship echoes that found in Plato’s Laws. The synthesis reason and revelation as an application of Lincoln’s prudence, and of the possibility of the application of natural right to political right, Erler’s contribution to Jaffa’s corpus.
To bring us to the significance of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address requires partially relitigating the feud between the West and East Coast Straussians. Erler spends significant space on this, and for the uninitiated, it is a little frustrating how much time he dedicates to hashing it out with Michael Zuckert. Though one can see how this was important for Erler, as it was for Harry Jaffa, to show that the philosophical and moral soundness of the American Founding is essential if we are to be able to celebrate Lincoln’s statesmanship as a recovery of its principles. Our ability to even call Lincoln a statesman hinges on our ability to rightly describe his ability to exercise classical prudence to make the right choice, in the right way, for the right reason. For Lincoln to be a “prophetic” statesman, moreover, requires the compatibility of religious and philosophic truth as features of classical prudence. Jaffa famously attempted to demonstrate the famous continuity between the principles of classical prudence and the American Founding, such as in Jaffa’s famous Aristotelian Locke. The synthesis of reason and revelation also finds continuity from Thomas Aquinas to Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, who were “all working, albeit at different times, for the same eternal purpose, the moral foundations of civilized life [4].” Like Thomas Aquinas, the Founders also profoundly understood the moral synthesis of the principles of reason and revelation, bound together by the workings of Providence. As both are complementary sources of moral truth, both play complementary roles in political life. At Erler’s insistence, this is also found in Strauss, where obedience to the “city of righteousness” must be supplemented by discerning the “outlines of the city” with “his own powers” (49). This suggests that the City of God and that of the Philosopher are one and the same city.
The synthesis of reason and revelation for Erler is essential for the possibility of Lincoln’s standing as a “prophetic” statesman. In Lincoln, one sees parallels between his defense of natural human equality and the teaching of the gospels, where Jesus famously suggested that those who bore the seed of the word (in faith) and did the will of the Father were his true mother and brothers, transcending the bonds of flesh and blood (1 Peter 2:23, 1 James 1:18, Mt 12:48-50). In his Peoria Speech, Lincoln appeals to the universal maxim “that all men are created equal” as his “ancient faith,” the same maxim found in the Declaration of Independence. With the opening of the slavery question to the territories, the principles of the “old faith” of natural human equality are being attacked by a heretical “new faith”, championing the “sacred right” to enslave another person.
The task of Lincoln’s statesmanship is the recovery and defense of the principles of the founding—to remember the covenant in which the nation was founded. For Erler, Lincoln’s account of the social compact as the basis for political government is the same as that of the Founding generation, being the right to self-government that every man possesses for himself. Stephen Douglas’s teaching of popular sovereignty, removed from its natural rights foundation represents a clear perversion and heresy of our ancient faith, and what Lincoln comes to see as part of the arm of a gradual conspiracy to expand slavery. The greatest threat to the principle of natural human equality at the heart of the American regime wasn’t just Douglas’ perversion of popular sovereignty, but Dred Scott’s sanctioning of slavery in the territories. Not only did this mark the prospective end of the Republican Party, but it also laid the foundation for the legalization of slavery in free states.
Lincoln’s prophetic insight lies in his attempts to call for a return to the ancient faith of the Declaration’s principles, but also in his ability to peer into the future and see the crisis pro-slavery powers have set in motion. In his “House Divided” Speech, Lincoln recalls Matthew 12:22-28, and predicts that the nation “cannot endure permanent half slave and half free,” but will “become all one thing, or all the other.” Erler explains how the stakes of this passage are existential, as the Pharisees who raise the criticism seek to destroy Jesus (115). Lincoln blames what he sees to be “evidences of design” to expand slavery nationally by individuals like President Bucchanan, Roger Tawney on the Supreme Court, and Stephen Douglas—the latter perhaps unaware of how his teaching of popular sovereignty without moral precept had, like the messenger who prepares the way, softened the people to the slavery issue.
At the very least, Lincoln calls Douglas a “dead lion” ill equipped to the task of opposing slavery. Erler is prescient to point out that this is from Ecclesiastes 9, the book of the “philosopher.” We read of a poor wise man who tried to deliver a small city, and yet whose words were not heard, much like the prophets. Despite the prophet’s unheeded warnings, the war would come, and it would be the task of Lincoln, now as President of the Union, to make sense of the crisis that befalls the nation.
By the time of the Gettysburg Address, the prophetic crisis had been fulfilled through the conflict of the Civil War. In it, we see Lincoln bring together the theological significance of the war in the context of the nation’s past, present, and future. Using the Biblical language of “four-score and seven years ago”, Lincoln draws a direct connection between 1776 and 1863, the fateful delivery of his speech, and when the nation was “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Erler shows us how the reference for the word “proposition” rather than “maxim” points towards the future, as the telos of the regime (148). Now we are brought to the present, being “engaged in a great civil war,” testing whether such a nation dedicated to the proposition that natural right can become political right can endure. Through renewed dedication to the cause of those who died in the battle, and its proposition of natural human equality, one is directed from the present to the future, that the nation will have a “new birth of liberty”. In other words, a new baptism and resurrection. This brings us into eternity, where government of and by the people shall not perish from the earth.
Building upon the themes of the Gettysburg Address, in Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, we see how Lincoln saw, and perhaps anticipated the Civil War as God’s judgement for the nation’s betrayal of its founding principles, just as Thomas Jefferson did when he shared, “indeed I tremble when I think that God is just, and his justice cannot sleep forever.” Both sides did what they could to prevent the war, but the war came nonetheless as God’s judgment for the sin of slavery, which both the North and South profited from (178). If, Erler reasons, liberty is a “gift of God” as Jefferson reasoned, then God’s judgment for the abuse of this gift is merited. As Lincoln observes, if the war is the blood-price for slavery, then let it be so “that the judgments of the Lord are righteous and true altogether.” (Ps. 19:9) Slavery was the stumbling block that divided the Union and brought about the war, because the nation had abandoned its sacred faith. Through a dedication to the principles of the ancient faith of the nation, “with malice towards one and goodwill towards all”, showing the importance of Christian virtue in what lies ahead, the nation can “bind up” its wounds, “so that it might achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” For Erler, Lincoln is the prophetic statesman whose speeches were “prudent endeavors to apply the abiding principles of justice to changing circumstances.” (175) In this case, “the Second Inaugural seeks to prepare the American people to receive God’s justice for the sin of slavery.”
Through Lincoln’s theological teaching, the people are brought to an understanding of their role in the narrative of their betrayal, God’s judgment, and their ultimate redemption through a rededication to their ancient faith in the principles of the Declaration of Independence—that Aristotle’s best regime in which natural justice was married with political justice was possible. The great tragedy of the war, for Erler, is that these principles were “eclipsed almost immediately” by the development of historicism, and the rejection of natural right and moral truth as a meaningful feature of political life (164). According to Erler, while the Civil War put away the “genie” of racism, in our day, we have brought it back with “race reparations and equity.” (188) In the face of the tribalism of our time, Erler suggests we need a rededication to our founding principles and the cause Lincoln advanced—towards Lincoln’s prophetic vision, which “pierces the gloomy darkness of impending tyranny.” (190)
Erler’s book can appear eclectically organized in some places, and at the end of a concise two hundred pages, more could be said. He does accomplish his task, however, and shows us how the proper exercise of Aristotelian natural right can utilize revelation, and how this was central to Lincoln’s statesmanship. Erler’s Prophetic Statesmanship gives us a thoughtful close to Jaffa’s corpus, while also serving as an introduction of its own, both to Jaffa and the study of Lincoln.
