6/24/2024

Last week’s curation at RealClear’s American Civics portal leads off with Thomas Krannawitter’s reflections on Juneteenth, the now-federal holiday that celebrates the freeing of the last slaves in Galveston, Texas, in 1865. “Juneteenth is a uniquely American day of remembrance,” Krannawitter notes, because it commemorates the extension of the American founders’ principles of equality and liberty to slaves. In his view, Americans “were uniquely destined to confront the gross immorality and injustice of slavery because only the Americans declared their political independence upon the self-evident truth of universal, natural human equality.” Krannawitter points out that though in recent decades Democrats have overwhelmingly supported Juneteenth, without the Republican Party and Abraham Lincoln, the Emancipation Proclamation would have never passed and the slaves would not have been freed. In his mind, Juneteenth “should be celebrated by all Americans, of all colors, ages, and walks of life, who cherish freedom and abhor slavery.”

In the most recent edition of the Claremont Review of Books, Diana Schaub takes a look at the Great Emancipator that historian Allen Guelzo presents in his new book, “Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment.” Guelzo examines Lincoln’s complex views on the relationship between democracy and moral principle. “Lincoln did not think that the Constitution enshrined a right to property in man,” Schaub writes, “but it did, out of necessity, make certain accommodations to the legal existence of an unjust institution.” But Schaub argues that Guelzo rightly maintains that “Lincoln’s insistence on the universality of natural rights points toward a desideratum: over time, the gap between natural and civil equality ought to narrow.” Guelzo also takes on several popular but misguided claims regarding our nation’s sixteenth president, including the idea that Lincoln was the founder of big government. Schaub closes by noting that “Guelzo shows how the main elements of Lincoln’s vision—consent, equality, virtuous citizenship—are still worthy of our pursuit.”