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FOR YOUR BOOKSHELF | Phillip Shaw Paludan's The Presidency of Abraham Lincoln (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1994)
Across fifteen chapters and a Conclusion, Paludan measured Lincoln against the challenges he expected and, more often than not, the unexpected challenges that arose in the fluids years of wartime. If, as Lincoln always stated, the 1776 Declaration of Independence constituted his North Star, then the 1787 Constitution provided an adequate frame for resisting secession, pursuing the war, managing emancipation, harnessing the talented politicians and generals of his time, and setting the stage for the reconstruction of the nation, the South, national race relations, and the southern and national economy. At the center of that hurricane sat Kentucky-born, Indiana-raised, Illinois attorney Abraham Lincoln.
Attuned to the issues of political party leadership and national leadership through the Lincoln rhetoric and public speeches, Lincoln’s speeches and actions constitute a second founding of the United States culminating in the Thirteenth Amendment (1865), the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) and the Fifteenth Amendment (1870). Like him, hate him, or indifferent to him, Lincoln – Commander-in-Chief and Attorney-in-Chief -- became the catalyst for the dramatic changes in the United States which occurred in the 1860s, and beyond. Thus, as Paludan stated the matter, Lincoln “set a standard that makes it legitimate that we, when the better angles of our nature prevail, define ourselves in important ways by who Lincoln was, by what he did, and by what he said.” Lincoln’s legacy remains a continuing challenge to all Americans, and all future administrations
