Abraham Lincoln, Constitutionalism, and Equal Rights in the Civil War Era / / Herman Belz.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Fordham University Press Complete eBook-Package Pre-2014
• VerfasserIn: Belz, Herman,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : Fordham University Press, , [2023]; ©1997
• Year of Publication: 2023
• Language: English
• Series: The North's Civil War
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (265 p.)

This striking portrait of Abraham Lincoln found in this book is drawn entirely from the writing of his contemporaries and extends from his political beginnings in Springfield to his assassination. It reveals a more severely beleaguered, less godlike, and finally a richer Lincoln than has come through many of the biographies of Lincoln written at a distance after his death. To those who are familiar only with the various “retouched” versions of Lincoln’s life, Abraham Lincoln: A Press Portrait will be a welcome—if sometimes surprising—addition to the literature surrounding the man who is perhaps the central figure in all of American history. The brutality, indeed that malignancy of some of the treatment Lincoln received at the hands of the press may well shock those readers who believe the second half of the twentieth century has a monopoly on the journalism of insult, outrage, and indignation. That Lincoln acted with the calm and clarity he did under the barrage of such attacks can only enhance his stature as one of the great political leaders of any nation at any time.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- PREFACE -- Introduction: Constitution and Revolution in the Civil War Era -- 1 Lincoln and the Constitution: The Dictatorship Question Reconsidered -- 2 The "Philosophical Cause" of Free Government: The Problem of Lincoln's Political Thought -- 3 Abraham Lincoln and American Constitutionalism -- 4 Protection of Personal Liberty in Republican Emancipation Legislation -- 5 Race, Law, and Politics in the Struggle for Equal Pay During the Civil War -- 6 The Freedmen's Bureau Act of 1865 and the Principle of No Discrimination According to Color -- 7 The New Orthodoxy in Reconstruction Historiography -- 8 Equality and the Fourteenth Amendment: The Original Understanding -- 9 The Constitution and Reconstruction -- Conclusion: Legitimacy, Consent, and Equality in the Reconstruction Settlement -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX