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31 Harv. J. L. & Pub. Pol'y 197 (2008)
Dred Scott Revisited

handle is hein.journals/hjlpp31 and id is 201 raw text is: DRED ScoT REVISITED HARRY V. JAFFA* I. It has been many years since I first wrote that the American Revolution was, at once, an event in time and an idea out of time.' Lincoln meant no less when he wrote that Jefferson en- shrined in the Declaration of Independence an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times.2 It was a commonplace among the Founders (and Lincoln) that the American experi- ment in self-government was not for Americans alone, but for all mankind.3 This was not merely an expression of national pride. It was a sober judgment. It was almost as impossible then, as it is now, to imagine circumstances more favorable to the success of this experiment than those that existed at the Founding. It was, and is, hard to imagine this experiment suc- ceeding elsewhere if it failed here. The Civil War clearly was a test, as Lincoln said at Gettysburg, of whether any nation con- ceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal could long endure.4 The test came when * Harry V. Jaffa is a Distinguished Fellow of the Claremont Institute, Professor Emeritus of Government at Claremont McKenna College, and author of numer- ous articles and books, including his widely acclaimed study of the Lincoln- Douglas debates, Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates (1959), and its sequel, A New Birth of Freedom (2002). 1. See HARRY V. JAFFA, EQUALITY AND LIBERTY 120 (1965). 2. Letter from Abraham Lincoln to Henry L. Pierce and Others (Apr. 6, 1859), in 3 THE COLLECTED WORKS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 374, 376 (Roy P. Basler ed., 1953). 3. See, e.g., THE FEDERALIST NO. 1, at 27 (Alexander Hamilton) (Clinton Rossiter ed., 1999) (It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.). 4. Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address (Nov. 19, 1863), in THIS FIERY TRIAL: THE SPEECHES AND WRITINGS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 183, 184 (William E. Gienapp ed., 2002).

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