Departments

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Abraham Lincoln

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    12/21/2022

    Was the Civil War Inevitable?

    by David W. Blight

    As a growing number of Americans entertain the idea that dissolving the nation might be better than holding its incompatible parts together, it's worth revisiting the series of decisions that led to the Civil War, and to ask whether the nation has, or will, experience the equivalent of the Dred Scott decision. 

  • 10/9/2022

    Lincoln Would have Had an Answer for the "Originalists"

    by Richard Striner

    The 16th President looked to the constitutional crises of his time and asked whether the document was created to serve the people or the other way around. Today he might ask the same of the Supreme Court. 

  • SOURCE: The Bulwark
    2/21/2022

    Spielberg was the Director Lincoln Deserved

    The director, with writer Tony Kushner and star Daniel Day-Lewis, nailed the idea of Lincoln as an imperfect leader nevertheless "fitted to the times we were born into," in a film that holds up after ten years.

  • SOURCE: Heather Cox Richardson
    4/7/2021

    April 6, 2021: On the Republican Party

    by Heather Cox Richardson

    Since the time of Lincoln, the Republican Party has been part of a bipartisan understanding that expanding the nation's infrastructure – meaning investing in all sorts of supports to economic and social activity – has been a boon to prosperity. That commitment is fraying today. 

  • SOURCE: Civil War Memory
    3/8/2021

    The Problem With CNN’s Lincoln Documentary

    by Kevin M. Levin

    In a brief review, history educator and civil war scholar Kevin M. Levin says CNN's latest Lincoln documentary doesn't use the knowledge of a great roster of historians to full advantage. 

  • SOURCE: New York Daily News
    2/5/2021

    What Lincoln Understood About Unity

    by Harold Holzer

    "The fact is, even the most eloquent calls for harmony seldom repair a house divided — not without the accompaniment of painful but unavoidable choices about national policy and purpose."

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    1/12/2021

    Review: Was the Constitution a Pro-Slavery Document?

    by Gordon S. Wood

    Gordon Wood says James Oakes's new book examines the dialectical relationship between 19th century interpretations of the Constitution as a pro-slavery and anti-slavery document and argues that that debate steered Lincoln toward a commitment to racial equality as inextricable from abolition.