"My Ancient Faith": Abraham Lincoln's Response to the Jeffersonian Problem.

In this paper I consider the "Jeffersonian problem": whether one generation has the right to bind future generations to an inherited constitutional order. Thomas Jefferson's challenge rests on fundamental democratic principles of equality and consent, and therefore—while there may be substantial pragmatic reasons to be wary of his argument—any response must also remain true to those moral ideals. I argue that through the crisis of slavery and the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln was compelled to revisit the basis of the American political regime, and in doing so articulated a conception of democratic politics that answers Jefferson's challenge. He does so in two ways: first, Lincoln's political religion revives reverence for the ancestral in a democratic context; second, Lincoln's concept of rededication allows each generation to affirm that revered past while simultaneously manifesting its own sovereign power through novel applications of past principle. I conclude by arguing that the inclusion of generational obligations is essential to democratic politics and that Lincoln's approach provides the best means of doing so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]