"The American mind has long been divided over whether Abraham Lincoln was a tyrannical megalomaniac bent on trampling constitutional restraints to restore the Union and free the slaves or whether he was in fact a Henry Clay conservative Whig operating strictly within constitutional parameters. Two recent collections suggest persuasively that Lincoln was indeed operating carefully and very consciously within constitutional limits, albeit with a definite agenda to expand those limits (as Garry Wills and others have suggested), to embrace Jefferson's grander vision of human rights expressed in the Declaration of Independence. This volume of essays by Belz (Univ. of Maryland), an eminent Lincoln constitutional authority, explores in an intriguing interdisciplinary methodology Lincoln's constitutional orientation in prosecuting the war, freeing the slaves, and providing a blueprint for Reconstruction. Complements Think Anew, Act Anew: Abraham Lincoln on Slavery, Freedom, and Union (Ch, Jul'98), edited by noted Ulysses Grant and Civil War historian Brooks Simpson (Arizona State Univ.) Upper-division undergraduates and above" -Choice "This anthology will be of value to all Lincoln collections and should attract the many persons who, for pleasure and profit read and reread Lincolniana." -Library Journal "[A Press Portrait] ... reminds us of the bitterness and tension of the Civil War years, and Mr. Mitgang's anthology helps us to see the wartime President as he appeared to his own generation." -The New York Times Book Review