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James Oakes is a Distinguished Professor at the CUNY Graduate Center. His latest book is The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution. (May 2022)
Was Emancipation Constitutional?
In The Broken Constitution, Noah Feldman argues that the Confederate states had a constitutional right to secede and that Lincoln violated the Constitution in forcing them back into the Union and freeing the slaves.
The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America
by Noah Feldman
May 12, 2022 issue
Why Did the Slave Trade Survive So Long?
The history of the Atlantic slave trade after the American Revolution is a story of sustained efforts to suppress it even as demand for African slaves increased.
The Last Slave Ships: New York and the End of the Middle Passage
by John Harris
April 8, 2021 issue
An Unfinished Revolution
The ideological struggle to control the story of Reconstruction began at Appomattox.
Reconstruction: America After the Civil War
a PBS documentary series produced by Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow
by Henry Louis Gates Jr.
The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution
by Eric Foner
December 5, 2019 issue
The Great Divide
Becoming Lincoln
by William W. Freehling
The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War
by Joanne B. Freeman
A Strife of Tongues: The Compromise of 1850 and the Ideological Foundations of the American Civil War
by Stephen E. Maizlish
May 23, 2019 issue
The Power of Running Away
The Captive’s Quest for Freedom: Fugitive Slaves, the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, and the Politics of Slavery
by R.J.M. Blackett
December 6, 2018 issue
Our ‘Wicked War’
The Dead March: A History of the Mexican-American War
by Peter Guardino
November 23, 2017 issue
The Supreme Partisan
A Self-Made Man: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1809–1849
by Sidney Blumenthal
Wrestling with His Angel: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1849–1856
by Sidney Blumenthal
July 13, 2017 issue
A Different Lincoln
Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860–1861
by Harold Holzer
Lincoln and His Admirals: Abraham Lincoln, the US Navy, and the Civil War
by Craig L. Symonds
Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief
by James M. McPherson
April 9, 2009 issue
They Soared Above the Din
Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America
by Allen C. Guelzo
The Lincoln-Douglas Debates
edited by Rodney O. Davis andDouglas L. Wilson
October 23, 2008 issue
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