Constitutional Problems under Lincoln

The purpose of this volume is to examine those measures of the Lincoln government which involved significant constitutional issues. While Lincoln spoke of the cause for which he contended as no less than the maintenance of democracy in the world, such a man as Wendell Phillips denounced Lincoln's government as a "fearful peril to democratic institutions" and characterized the President as an "unlimited despot." In the doubtful struggle to preserve the Union, the war Congress and the war Cabinet had many a hard choice to make when measures out of harmony with American notions of civil liberty seemed the only alternative to defeat and disintegration. "Must a government, of necessity, be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?" was the question Lincoln propounded when making one of his difficult decisions, and this question embodied a real dilemma which his govermnent continually confronted. To study in some detail, both historically and legally, the manner in which these constitutional problems of the Civil War presented themselves, to note the measures taken in solving them, and to offer such an appraisal of these measures as historical research may justify, is our task. - Introduction.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.