Lincoln, Calhoun and the UN's dilemma: McClellan's insight into the future

Michael Brandon McClellan of Port McClellan has published yet another fine analytical article in the Weekly Standard, neatly tying the past with the present.

During the decades leading up to the Civil War, the states-rights theories of John Calhoun ,supporting the slave-owning rights of Southern States, ran hard up against Jefferson's theories of individual rights based in natural law, a philosophy that Lincoln embraced as he defended the Union and justified his actions against dissolution.

This is a must-read article for anyone who recognizes that the "irrelevance" of the UN is more than a Bushism.

I would also heartily encourage Professor Harry V. Jaffa's recent book on Lincoln, A New Birth of Freedom, which attacks the issue of the Lincoln-Calhoun ideological clash head on.