Between Extremes: Seeking the Political Center in the Civil War North

Between 1861 and 1865, northern voters fortified Abraham Lincoln’s administration as it oversaw the end of the institution of slavery and an unprecedented expansion in the size and scope of the federal government. Since the United States never considered suspending the democratic process during the Civil War, these revolutionary developments—indeed the entire war effort—depended on ballots as much as bullets. Why did civilians who, at the start of the conflict, had not anticipated or desire...