Majority Rule and Natural Rights in Lincoln’s Political Thought

• In Event: Liberalism, Republicanism, and Communal Freedom in American Political Thought

Abstract

James Read’s paper “Not Handmaidens but Equal Partners: Majority Rule and Natural Rights in Lincoln’s Political Thought” examines the interplay between Lincoln’s commitments to both the individual natural rights promised in the Declaration of Independence (“all men are created equal”) and to perpetuating communal self-government, grounded in the practice of majority rule (“government of the people, by the people, for the people”). Lincoln recognized that majorities could act unjustly; thus natural rights serve as moral compass for government based on majority rule. But he also recognized that the guidance provided by natural rights was often unclear, and sometimes contradictory on critically important points – like Thomas Jefferson’s “wolf by the ears” dilemma, whereby the enslaved person’s natural right to liberty conflicted with the slave owner’s natural right to self-preservation. Lincoln depended upon the practice of deliberate, constitutionally-channeled majority rule to adjudicate cases where the philosophy of natural rights provided unclear or contradictory guidance. Thus for Lincoln, majority rule was not merely the handmaiden of natural rights but an equal partner, with a distinct, complementary mission.

Author

• James H. Read, St. John's University/ College of Saint Benedict