UNC Press - Lincoln and the Triumph of the Nation

488pp., 6.125 x 9.25, notes, bibl., index

Littlefield History of the Civil War Era

Cloth

ISBN 978-0-8078-3518-0

Published: November 2011

Constitutional Conflict in the American Civil War

The Civil War placed the U.S. Constitution under unprecedented--and, to this day, still unmatched--strain. In Lincoln and the Triumph of the Nation, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Mark Neely examines for the first time in one book the U.S. Constitution and its often overlooked cousin, the Confederate Constitution, and the ways the documents shaped the struggle for national survival.

Previous scholars have examined wartime challenges to civil liberties and questions of presidential power, but Neely argues that the constitutional conflict extended to the largest questions of national existence. Drawing on judicial opinions, presidential state papers, and political pamphlets spiced with the everyday immediacy of the partisan press, Neely reveals how judges, lawyers, editors, politicians, and government officials, both North and South, used their constitutions to fight the war and save, or create, their nation.

Lincoln and the Triumph of the Nation illuminates how the U.S. Constitution not only survived its greatest test but emerged stronger after the war. That this happened at a time when the nation's very existence was threatened, Neely argues, speaks ultimately to the wisdom of the Union leadership, notably President Lincoln and his vision of the American nation.

About the Author

Mark E. Neely Jr. is McCabe-Greer Professor of Civil War History at Pennsylvania State University. He has written several books, including The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties, which won the Pulitzer Prize for History.

Reviews

"This work is alive with character and narrative."
--Publishers Weekly

"Mark Neely is a distinguished and evocative interpreter of Lincoln, the Civil War, and mid-nineteenth-century politics. Full of fresh insight and profound research, Lincoln and the Triumph of the Nation is a compelling and fascinating look at the constitutional history of both the United States and the Confederate States in the Civil War."
--Jean H. Baker, Goucher College, author of Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography

"This is Mark Neely, the platinum standard in the Lincoln field, at his most thought-provoking, original, and persuasive. Making use of a mountain of new research into long-neglected sources, Neely has opened vast new terrain and harvested it with his unparalleled skill for sharp analysis in his distinctive and convincing voice. Here is the finest Lincoln scholar in the country at his very best--and there is nothing better."
--Harold Holzer, co-chairman, Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation

and author of Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter 1860-1861

"This is a sweeping and majestic contribution by an author who has spent a lifetime studying and writing great volumes about Abraham Lincoln, our two-party system, nationalism, and civil liberties during the Civil War. Brilliantly written, Lincoln and the Triumph of the Nation is one of the most original and important books on the war ever published. Mark Neely understands, as did President Lincoln, that the struggle for victory was a battle for the survival of the U.S. Constitution. The story told here should be required reading during the sesquicentennial of the Civil War."
--Frank J. Williams, retired chief justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court and chair of the Lincoln Forum