In the late 1960s, Meyer engaged in a continuing debate over the status of Abraham Lincoln with Harry V. Jaffa. Jaffa faulted Meyer for blaming Lincoln for the "destruction of the autonomy of the states". Meyer argued that Lincoln's abuses of civil liberties and expansion of government power should make him anathema to conservatives, while Jaffa defended Lincoln as in the tradition of the Founding Fathers. Slavery, segregation and African American civil rights were seen as the defining case against fusionism's relevance to modern times because of the insistence by Meyer and others at the time that states rights be preserved even in the face of these demands.