Lincoln Scholarship
Jaffa has written two books dealing exclusively with Abraham Lincoln. His first, Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, was written in 1959. Forty years later, he followed it with A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War. Jaffa has also written a number of essays on Lincoln for the Claremont Institute, The National Review, and other scholarly journals. Prior to Jaffa, most conservative scholars, including M.E. Bradford, Russell Kirk, and Willmoore Kendall believed that Lincoln's presidency represented a substantial growth in federal power and limitation on individual rights.
Jaffa also believes that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution share a relationship whereby the latter is intended to preserve the principles of the former. This belief has garnered criticism from legal scholars particularly Robert Bork.
Read more about this topic: Harry V. Jaffa
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