“A historian finds the seeds of an inevitable civil war embedded in the ‘contradictions, ambiguities, and silences’ about slavery in the Constitution.”

After its early introduction into the English colonies in North America, slavery in the United States lasted as a legal institution until the passage of the Thi

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice An innovative account of Abraham Lincoln, constitutional thinker and doer Abraham Lincoln is justly revered for his

This book argues that conflicts over slavery and abolition in the early American Republic generated a mode of constitutional interpretation that remains powerfu

Finalist for the 2022 Lincoln Prize An award-winning scholar uncovers the guiding principles of Lincoln’s antislavery strategies. The long and turning path to