Lincoln and the Democrats The Politics of Opposition in the Civil War [Paperback]

This book explains the behavior of a two-party system during war - emphasizing the Democrats' role in the Civil War.This book supplies crucial political history of the Northern war effort. It will be widely adopted in courses on American history and may also attract attention from the general audience interested in the Civil War. There is high interest on the heels of the sesquicentennial of the War.This book supplies crucial political history of the Northern war effort. It will be widely adopted in courses on American history and may also attract attention from the general audience interested in the Civil War. There is high interest on the heels of the sesquicentennial of the War.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.'In this book, Mark Neely, Jr outlines what he considers to be the five big questions of the Civil War. And he gets them spot-on. We can pursue many other aspects and interests of the Civil War era, but these are the nuclear-core questions. And not only does he pose the right questions, he goes one better. He givesls8