Jefferson, Lincoln, and Wilson: The American Dilemma of Race and Democracy seeks to explore how the collision of races shaped American democracy in the lives, thought, and actions of three of the nation's most important presidents. Each of them led the nation in a different epoch, during times that had their own set of historical circumstances that shaped constructions of race: Jefferson at the very beginning of the republic, as the nineteenth century dawned and the institution of slavery flourished; Lincoln when the country had expanded into a continental empire and fell into...