In this collection of essays by historians, political scientists, and legal scholars, editor Lucas E. Morel takes up the political legacy of Abraham Lincoln's presidency in an intended retort to his modern-day progressive claimants. Though it is more pronounced in certain chapters than others, the volume's unifying theme is its contesting of a recent practice of interpreting Lincoln's career as part of an evolutionary narrative in which the sixteenth president “grew” beyond the political conventions of his time and the prejudices that accompanied them. Race and slavery are the most obvious applications of this thesis, although contributors also target more cryptic extractions from Lincoln's political philosophy, including the meaning and characteristics of statesmanship and its relation to the modern scope of government.
The resulting volume broadly emphasizes an alternative position in which Lincoln is said to acquire something of a timeless characteristic, albeit a simultaneously specified one that synchronizes with...
