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. Belz's essays are interdisciplinary in their approach, combining history, political science, and jurisprudence to study the political and constitutional climate and the changes which occurred under Lincoln during and after the war. Belz studies Lincoln as the focus of both contemporary political controversy and subsequent historical debate over the conservative or revolutionary character of Civil War Constitutionalism. He explores the politically controversial nature of the equality principle that lay at the heart of the slavery struggle and its resolution in wartime emancipation.
| Acknowledgments | ||
| Preface | ||
| Introduction: Constitution and Revolution in the Civil War Era | 1 | |
| 1 | Lincoln and the Constitution: The Dictatorship Question Reconsidered | 17 |
| 2 | The "Philosophical Cause" of Free Government: The Problem of Lincoln's Political Thought | 44 |
| 3 | Abraham Lincoln and American Constitutionalism | 72 |
| 4 | Protection of Personal Liberty in Republican Emancipation Legislation | 101 |
| 5 | Race, Law, and Politics in the Struggle for Equal Pay During the Civil War | 119 |
| 6 | The Freedmen's Bureau Act of 1865 and the Principle of No Discrimination According to Color | 138 |
| 7 | The New Orthodoxy in Reconstruction Historiography | 162 |
| 8 | Equality and the Fourteenth Amendment: The Original Understanding | 170 |
| 9 | The Constitution and Reconstruction | 187 |
| Conclusion: Legitimacy, Consent, and Equality in the Reconstruction Settlement | 217 | |
| Bibliography | 247 | |
| Index | 263 |
Overview