Among the startling abstract thought of the American revolutionary period none was so startling to me as this. Hitherto, power, by which was meant almost exclusively political power, granted charters of liberty to favored subjects. Right? You had the elaborate stratifications: nobility, aristocracy, Church, commoner; the "three estates" of France. Titles, that is entree to politically powerful positions, were conferred by the monarch. Power granted liberty.
The idea, scratch that, one of the ideas of America inverted things: It was liberty which was to grant charters of power. Huh. What an idea! Lincoln was among the first in America to caution urgently against going back to the old ways of Europe. And he saw, however incompletely, what was an afterthought to the Revolutionary generation, that economic power was at least equally dangerous, in actuality more dangerous since the Declaration of Independence gave the pursuit of wealth (happiness) equal billing among the rights of man with life and liberty.
Liberty grants Power. It. Was. All. There. The Revolutionary generation saw far, made a practical exception to all that equality and liberty business for slaves, but, you know, saw pretty far. Lincoln, standing on the shoulders of pygmies, saw farther, (He was 6'4" after all.), to the end of slavery, and beyond the far ridge saw the glow of the gathering firestorm that would burn over everything: capitalism uber alles.We missed it.
