Lincoln and the Dignity of the Presidency

The Roman Republic was at the back of the minds of the framers of the American Constitution; it was their hope that the chief magistrate of these United States would conduct himself with “the high old Roman virtue,” becoming an exemplar of pietas, gravitas,...

The Measure of Abraham Lincoln

“Whatever the result of the convulsion whose first shocks were beginning to be felt, there would still be enough square miles of earth for elbow-room; but that ineffable sentiment made up of memory and hope, of instinct and tradition, which swells every man’s heart...

The Common Heritage of America and Europe

“Western civilization,” “North Atlantic community,” “the unity of the free world”—such phrases are employed nowadays by our publicists and our politicians so frequently and loosely that, to a good many of us in America, the words have ceased to signify much. Yet the...

Friedrich Gentz on Revolutions

A little book forgotten for a century and a half, Gentz’s Origin and Principles of the American Revolution, compared with the Origin and Principles of the French Revolution, has recently been reprinted in the United States. For the revolutions of our own century have...