'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
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.