Lincoln and Citizenship

Exploring Lincoln’s Evolving Views of Citizenship

At its most basic level, citizenship is about who belongs to a political community, and for Abraham Lincoln in nineteenth—century America, the answer was in flux. The concept of “fellow citizens,” for Lincoln, encompassed different groups at different times. In this first book focused on the topic, Mark E. Steiner analyzes and contextualizes Lincoln’s evolving views about citizenship over the course of his political career.

As an Illinois ...