Research Catalog

Title

• Abraham Lincoln, constitutionalism, and equal rights in the Civil War era / by Herman Belz.

Author

Belz, Herman

Publication

New York : Fordham University Press, 1998.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

Frank and Virginia Williams Collection of Lincolniana (Mississippi State University. Libraries) MsSM

Description

xi, 265 p.; 24 cm.

Summary

• This book, by one of the nation's leading constitutional historians, analyzes the nature and tendency of American constitutionalism during the nation's greatest political crisis. In a series of related essays, Herman Belz combines detailed narrative with probing judicial analysis of the political thought of Abraham Lincoln, his exercise of executive power, and the application of the equality principle which would become a central issue during Reconstruction.
• Was Lincoln a dictator, albeit benign? Was he a revolutionary nationalist, casting aside constitutional forms and procedures and paving the way for a twentieth-century "imperial presidency"? Or was he a constitutional chief executive who, even in the nation's darkest hour of crisis, operated within the limits imposed by the Founding Fathers? Was Reconstruction a revolutionary repudiation of the Constitution, or a legitimate amendment thereof?

Series Statement

• The North's Civil War, 1089-8719 ; no. 2

Uniform Title

North's Civil War no. 2.

Subject

• 1800-1899
• African Americans > History > 19th century
• Constitutional history > United States
• Equality before the law > United States > History > 19th century
• Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 > Views on the Constitution
• Reconstruction
• United States > Politics and government > 1861-1865

Genre/Form

History

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [247]-262) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

ch. 1. Lincoln and the Constitution : the dictatorship question reconsidered -- ch. 2. The "philosophical cause" of free government : the problem of Lincoln's political thought -- ch. 3. Abraham Lincoln and American constitutionalism -- ch. 4. Protection of personal liberty in Republican emancipation legislation -- ch. 5. Race, law, and politics in the struggle for equal pay during the Civil War -- ch. 6. The Freedmen's Bureau Act of 1865 and the principle of no discrimination according to color -- ch. 7. The new orthodoxy in Reconstruction historiography -- ch. 8. Equality and the Fourteenth Amendment : the original understanding -- ch. 9. The Constitution and Reconstruction.

ISBN

• 082321768X (hardcover)
• 0823217698 (pbk.)

LCCN

^^^97009935^

OCLC

36470329

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library