Lincoln and the Democrats
The Politics of Opposition in the Civil War

This book explains the behavior of a two-party system during war - emphasizing the Democrats' role in the Civil War.

Mark E. Neely, Jr (Author)

9781107637634, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 30 January 2017

218 pages
22.8 x 15.2 x 1.3 cm, 0.32 kg

'Tantalizingly poses new questions, presents an array of fresh research, and feistily questions assumed facts and fellow historians. Probing, daring, and ever-crusty, he has confirmed his reputation as a Lincoln luminary by producing another book that, for all its brevity and quirkiness, cannot be ignored.' Harold Holzer, The Wall Street Journal

Lincoln and the Democrats describes the vexatious behavior of a two-party system in war and points to the sound parts of the American system which proved to be the country's salvation: local civic pride, and quiet nonpartisanship in mobilization and funding for the war, for example. While revealing that the role of a noxious 'white supremacy' in American politics of the period has been exaggerated - as has the power of the Copperheads - Neely revives the claim that the Civil War put the country on the road to 'human rights', and also uncovers a previously unnoticed tendency toward deceptive and impractical grandstanding on the Constitution during war in the United States.

1. Beyond politics: how the North won the Civil War
2. The elections of 1862, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the invention of the Democratic Party myth
3. The problem of a loyal opposition
4. The elusive constitutionalism of the Democratic Party
5. Lincoln, the Constitution, and the birth of human rights.

Subject Areas: History of the Americas [HBJK]