According to Davis it did not require a Galileo or a Harvey (or a Darwin) to discover the natural inferiority of the Negro. All that was necessary wa… - Harry V. Jaffa

That all men are created equal does not mean that human beings are the same, or equal, in size, strength, beauty, virtue, or intelligence. There are obviously great differences in individual aptitudes and talents in sports, music, mathematics, speaking, and writing. They are also unequal in the virtues, among them courage, temperance, and justice. But as Jefferson once said, the fact that Sir Isaac Newton may be the most intelligent of living human beings does not give him any right whatever to my person or my property.

This changed attitude toward slavery was, however, part of a changed attitude toward morality in general that was sweeping over Western civilization. This change was marked by the apotheosis of "change" itself. What had heretofore been regarded as moral absolutes came to be regarded as merely relative to a particular time and place—to History or Progress—with no enduring claim upon our consciences. Lincoln praised Jefferson for embodying in the Declaration "an abstract truth applicable to all men and all times." But the idea of such truth, and of the correlation of such truth with justice, was increasingly repudiated by the most educated and influential minds in the Western world. Representative of this triumph of historicism and moral relativism was historian Carl Becker's assertion in a landmark 20th-century work that "To ask whether the natural rights philosophy of the Declaration of Independence is true or false is essentially a meaningless question."

So that was the basic issue. Once the ballots had been decided, Lincoln said the only recourse must be through future elections in which the minority can try to become the majority; but there can be no right to reject the results of an election conducted under the rules of the Constitution.