The Availability of Lincoln's Political Religion

Abstract

N A RECENT ESSAY, Jean Yarbrough argues that the founding fathers to combine the best liberal democracy and republicanism, but that in the process they misunderstood how essential participation is to the development (republican) civic virtue.2 Their misunderstanding indicates an unawareness of the danger that might pose for the preservation republican government.3 Abraham Lincoln, who inherited a republic questionable civic virtue, would agree with Professor Yarbrough; that is, he was aware the danger posed by lethargy and took action against it by revitalizing participation. Lincoln diagnosed the basic problem to be the realization the universal principles the Declaration Independence (hereafter Declaration) within the transitory world midnineteenth-century American politics. He sought to treat this problem time (in Pocock's sense)4 by developing a form participation called political religion. This secularized religion requires citizens to worship the laws the republic to the point being willing to sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars, so that in their particularistic action the republic might live as a affirmation intrinsic human justice.5