San Antonio College Library

"Father Abraham challenges recent portraits of Lincoln as an essentially passive politician and reluctant abolitionist. Exhaustively researched and crisply argued, this superb book gives us a new appreciation of Lincoln as moral leader."--Jacket.

"In this landmark book, Daniel Crofts examines a little-known episode in the most celebrated aspect of Abraham Lincoln's life: his role as the "Great Emancipator." Lincoln always hated slavery, but he also believed it to be legal where it already existed, and he never imagined fighting a war to end it. In 1861, as part of a last-ditch effort to preserve the Union and prevent war, the new president even offered to accept a constitutional amendment...

"In the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Fate of Liberty, Mark Neely -- one of America's leading authorities on Lincoln -- explores the whole range of Lincoln's constitutional policies, examining his controversial restriction of civil liberties and the abuses of power that arose under martial law." "Neely depicts Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus as a well-intentioned attempt to deal with a floodtide of unforeseen events -- from the disintegrating public...

In this collection of new and original essays, edited by Joseph R. Fornieri and Sarah Vaughn Gabbard, ten eminent historians examine the society that influenced the life, character, and leadership of the man who would become the Great Emancipator. Among the topics explored in Lincoln's America are religion, education, middle-class family life, the anti-slavery movement, politics, and law. Also covered are the transition of American intellectual and...

In his first inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln declared that as president he would "have no lawful right" to interfere with the institution of slavery. Yet less than two years later, he issued a proclamation intended to free all slaves throughout the Confederate states. After careful analysis, author Burrus M. Carnahan concludes that if the courts had decided that the proclamation was not justified, the result would have been the personal legal liability...

Examines Abraham Lincoln's emergence onto the political scene in the years leading up to the Civil War and draws on Lincoln's own words to explore his response to the issues that shaped the war and his presidency.

To understand Abraham Lincoln, one must understand the extraordinary antislavery speech he delivered at Peoria on October 16, 1854. This three-hour address marked the turning point in Lincoln's political pilgrimage, dramatically altering his political career and, as a result, American history. Here, historian Levis E. Lehrman examines the seminal speech and its historical context, arguing that the divide between the statecraft of Lincoln's presidential...

"Slavery, Race, and Conquest in the Tropics challenges the way historians interpret the causes of the American Civil War. Using Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas's famed rivalry as a prism, Robert E. May shows that when Lincoln and fellow Republicans opposed slavery in the West, they did so partly from evidence that slaveholders, with Douglas's assistance, planned to follow up successes in Kansas by bringing Cuba, Mexico, and Central America into...

Lincoln s reelection in 1864 was a pivotal moment in the history of the United States. The Emancipation Proclamation had officially gone into effect on January 1, 1863, and the proposed Thirteenth Amendment had become a campaign issue. Lincoln and Freedom: Slavery, Emancipation, and the Thirteenth Amendment captures these historic times, profiling the individuals, events, and enactments that led to slavery s abolition. Fifteen leading Lincoln scholars...

"An award-winning scholar uncovers Lincoln's strategy for abolishing slavery in this groundbreaking history of the sectional crisis and Civil War. Some celebrate Lincoln for freeing the slaves; others fault him for a long-standing conservatism on abolition and race. James Oakes gives us another option in this brilliant exploration of Lincoln and the end of slavery. Through the unforeseen challenges of the Civil War crisis, Lincoln and the Republican...