Don Yerxa Reports on Harvard's Tocqueville Lecture

Don Yerxa has a nice recap of last night's Alexis de Tocqueville Lecture on American Politics at Harvard's Center for American Politics:

Last night Andrew Delbanco gave...a provocative interdisciplinary assessment of antebellum abolitionists (‘the originals”) that also explored abolition as an enduring American cultural dynamic. Without detracting from the originals’ accomplishments, Delbanco believes that more measured approbation acknowledging the “limits of the abolitionist imagination” is needed. Their sacred rage, uncompromising fervor, and furious certitude, he noted, indeed broadened the horizons of the possible in American society—no small thing! But this needs to be considered in the light of the fact that it took the pragmatic Lincoln and a very bloody Civil War to end slavery...

Check out the entire post for Yerxa's thoughts on the commentary from Wilfred McClay, the Niebuhrian feel of the evening, and history as moral philosophy.