Book Synopsis When the American people went to war in 1861, the task and the duty of maintaining the foundation principles of the republican experiment were in jeopardy. The question of if, and how, these principles should be preserved was of pressing importance. The outcome of the war could require the republican government to be transformed in order to strengthen the union or, conversely, if the war created the revolutionary situation that at times seemed pending, new principles for the resulting new nation would have to be formed as it emerged from the destruction and dislocation of the war. These were the issues to bear on the Constitution during the Civil War. These were the dilemas facing President Lincoln. This book, by one of the nations leading constitutional historians, analyzes the nature and tendency of American Constitutionalism during the nations 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. Belzs 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. Review Quotes [A Press Portrait] . . . reminds us of the bitterness and tension of the Civil War years, and Mr. Mitgangs anthology helps us to see the wartime President as he appeared to his own generation.-- --The New York Times Book Review This anthology will be of value to all Lincoln collections and should attract the many persons who, for pleasure and profit read and reread Lincolniana.-- --Library Journal The American mind has long been divided over whether Abraham Lincoln was a tyrannical megalomaniac bent on trampling constitutional restraints to restore the Union and free the slaves or whether he was in fact a Henry Clay conservative Whig operating strictly within constitutional parameters. Two recent collections suggest persuasively that Lincoln was indeed operating carefully and very consciously within constitutional limits, albeit with a definite agenda to expand those limits (as Garry Wills and others have suggested), to embrace Jeffersons grander vision of human rights expressed in the Declaration of Independence. This volume of essays by Belz (Univ. of Maryland), an eminent Lincoln constitutional authority, explores in an intriguing interdisciplinary methodology Lincolns constitutional orientation in prosecuting the war, freeing the slaves, and providing a blueprint for Reconstruction. Complements Think Anew, Act Anew: Abraham Lincoln on Slavery, Freedom, and Union (Ch, Jul98), edited by noted Ulysses Grant and Civil War historian Brooks Simpson (Arizona State Univ.) Upper-division undergraduates and above-- --Choice About the Author Herman Belz is Professor of History at The University of Maryland at College Park and is a leading expert on the constitution and politics in the Civil War Era.