There is little that I can add to what has already been written. Fehrenbacher is clear, thoughtful, and comprehensive.

I read the abridged edition of 1981, titled Slavery, Law and Politics. I can only echo what the other reviwers have said. It's about a court opinion but it is anything but dry. You learn much about the law and politics of slavery, from the founding of the nation forward. You learn about the Dred Scott case itself, including the legal maneuverings in the lower courts. The author's analysis of Chief Justice Taney's opinion for the Court is one of the best single chapters I have read in a history book in a long time. The author is learned but the prose is engaging--elegant, even. You feel you are in the company of a wise teacher, who is not trying to impress you but simply to impart his considerable knowledge without ego on a topic that turns out to be an excellent prism through which to view an important swath of our history. Read it!

This is one of the best books I've read in a long time. It might seem that a 700 page book (600 pages of text; 100 pages of notes) on a 19th century court case might be the epitome of exceedingly dry material suited only for particularly motivated graduate students. But I found this book captivating. What came through in every paragraph was the work of a skilled and judicious historian sleuthing his way to an understanding of the background and ramifications of the enormously important Dred Scott decision. Not one page in this book read like the work of an uninspired academic sawing his way through a pile of research notes.

Fehrenbacher focuses on the political, legal and constitutional aspects of the Dred Scott case. He explores the background and developments, from the arrival of the first slaves in the colonies in 1619 through the bitter political battles of the 1850s. His discussion of legal developments is particularly interesting because this is one area where the reader encounters the concrete complications and conflicts between various state and federal laws affecting slaves and slave owners. He also shows how legal developments and constitutional theories were affected by the increasingly acrimonious political battles over the rights of slaveholders. His analysis of Chief Justice Taney's opinion was particularly impressive. Finally, his discussion of the immediate and longer term impact of the Dred Scott decision was fascinating. When I finished the book, I was disappointed that he hadn't carried the thoughts in the last chapter further (even though it was clear he had chosen a good stopping point for his analysis). I was also tempted to go back to the beginning and re-read the book immediately! It is so rich, and there's so much of importance to understand. (Instead, I started in on Fehrenbacher's more recent book, The Slaveholding Republic.)

One of the strengths of the book is Fehrenbacher's attention to the relevants facts and texts. His text never reads like a cut-and-paste compilation of other authors' conclusions. Throughout, Fehrenbacher was doing his own thinking - and he came through as quite skilled in asking good questions, identifying all the relevant facts, weighing the possible meanings and interpretations, and arriving at fair conclusions. (Whatever the topic, it's always a pleasure to read the work of someone who works as Fehrenbacher did in this book.)

I highly recommend this book to anyone with even a passing interest in American legal or constitutional history, in the events that lead to the Civil War, or in race relations in America.

I purchased this collection of speeches and letters knowing little about America's most beloved president other than what I had learned in my high school history classes. My first impression was "Boy, where have all the good presidents gone?" Aside from the famous speeches we're all familiar with, Lincoln was a prolific man of letters and an amazing presenter of ideas ahead of their time. Our sixteenth president wasn't perfect, but neither was our nation. During perhaps the most crucial period in U.S. history, thank God there was Abraham Lincoln. I grew up as a Democrat, but if Lincoln were running for the presidency today, he would be the first Republican to get my vote. This Library of America edition of Lincoln's speeches and writings is a beautifully bound volume that I will cherish for years to come.

This is the second volume of the Library of America Project devoted to the works of Abraham Lincoln. It covers the period after the Lincoln-Douglas Debates and includes many of the records of the Lincoln Presidency and the Civil War. The standard Lincoln materials are included, of course, such as the Gettysburg Address, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Inauguaral Addresses. But there is immeasurably more. We see Lincoln writing to his Generals, Cabinet members, and other national leaders in his attempt to hold the Union together. We see a lincolns agonizing over military discipline and frequently pardoning deserting soldiers. We see Lincoln dealing with Indian issues in his day; and we see him supporting the use of black troops in the War effort. This volume is highly useful in uderstanding the Civil War. Equally important it teaches the nature of leadership and fortitude. Finally, Lincoln is one of our Nation's great prose writers and the book deserves reading for that reason alone. The Library of America is to be commended for this volume and for its ongoing series.

In this short, carefully- and concisely-argued book, the author does an excellent job in situating Lincoln within the political setting of the 1850s and in describing the course of events that resulted in his election to the Presidency. This book is largely an answer to those who would contend that Lincoln showed little promise of greatness before supposedly stumbling into the Presidency, where it is acknowledged even by those critics that he rose to the heights demanded by the times. The author certainly admits to the elements of circumstance in Lincoln's ascent. He was a Whig, or a moderate, in a state Illinois that had become increasingly important in national elections.

While it may have appeared that Lincoln was politically dormant in the early 50s, his behind-the-scenes political activity became obvious when he became a key anti-Nebraska activist in 1854. As a Whig, Lincoln lost a very close contest in the Illinois legislature for the U.S. Senate (legislatures elected senators in that era). From 1854 to 1856 it had become obvious that both the Whigs and the upstart Know-Nothings could not deal with the slavery issue, which led to their demise. By 1856 Lincoln had finished second in the running for the Vice-Presidential nomination at the first national Republican convention, and in the process had firmly established himself as a leading Republican in Illinois.

It was the continued Kansas crisis and the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision in March of 1857 and the reactions to them that put Lincoln on the national stage. The court decision had affirmed the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in the Kansas-Nebraska Act under a principle of Congressional non-intervention in territories. But Senator Stephen Douglas contended that his doctrine of popular sovereignty continued to hold. Both Lincoln and most Republicans found the indifference or neutrality of popular sovereignty to the spread of slavery to be repugnant. Thus began a series of exchanges and seven formal debates between Douglas and Lincoln before the elections of 1858.

As a senator from mostly anti-slavery Illinois, Douglas had been forced, at the end of 1857, to denounce the machinations of the proslavery element in Kansas in trying to force their constitution on a mostly slave-free territory. In a shrewd and unprecedented political move, Illinois Republicans nominated Lincoln for the U. S. Senate to counter the infatuation of Eastern Republicans with the newly recreated Douglas. Lincoln fired the first shot in the senatorial campaign with his famous "House Divided" speech where he insisted that a nation divided over slavery could not stand.

One of the more controversial ideas that emerged from the debates was Douglas' Freeport Doctrine. In skirting Lincoln's question of whether territorial legislatures could exclude slavery, Douglas claimed that such a legislature's failure to pass laws that favorably policed slavery was tantamount to formally excluding it. The Democratic illusion that non-intervention and popular sovereignty were benignly equivalent had been exploded. According to the author "Southerners could see the walls closing in on them, and the defection of Douglas vividly dramatized the growing isolation of slave society." Ignoring Dred Scott, the South began to insist on the enactment of positive slave codes for the explicit protection of slavery in territories.

Lincoln narrowly lost the senatorial contest in Illinois in 1858, but the issue of slavery had been discussed on the national stage, as it never had been before. While Lincoln had asked the hard questions about slavery, he remained a moderate in Republican circles, and, as such, perhaps the only Republican that could have been elected President in 1860. It is clear that Lincoln had no intention of attacking the institution of slavery in the South. The Southern demand for slave codes applicable to territories was simply irrational given the fact that it was generally agreed upon that no territories were even suitable for slavery. It is most clear from reading this book that had the extremists of the South permitted Lincoln to exercise the fundamental decency and strength of character that he had, that there would have been no reason to precipitate the destruction of an entire way of life.

'Slavery, Law and Politics' is an abridged version of Don Fehrenbacher's 1978 magnum opus 'The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics.' While it is a technically challenging book for the average reader of historical jurisprudence, its an indispensible resource for understanding the dynamics of the Supreme Court's decision in the Dred Scott case given the historical milieu just before the Civil War. Fehrenbacher pulls no punches, ripping into the Taney court which issued one of the most shameful decisions in the Court's history. Of interest is the 'scorecard' Fehrenbacher keeps of the different aspects of the decision, clarifying the historical ambiguities of what the court really decided. In all, a complex, gratifying read. The original, fully annotated version of the book, unfortunately, is out of print..

This is the last work of the late Don Fehrenbacher, the author of the Dred Scott Decision and other outstanding books on American history. This book was incomplete at his death and was finished by one of his former students, Ward McAfee. Professor McAfee appears to have done an excellent job, the book certainly appears seamless and written with Fehrenbacher's distinctive and precise style.

In this book, Fehrenbacher explored the relationship of the Federal government to slavery from the formulation of the constitution through the Civil War. The quality of writing is excellent and the level of scholarship high. Fehrenbacher's points are buttressed by his careful analysis of American legislative and legal history.

Fehrenbacher begins with the issue of whether or not the Constitution protected slavery. This charge was made initially by Abolitionists in the 1840s and has been often repeated in recent years. Fehrenbacher's close analysis reaches a different conclusion. His view, well supported by careful reading of the original documents, is that the Constitution was neutral towards slavery. The Founders meant neither to protect nor discourage slavery. Many of the clauses cited as protecting slavery were the product of other concerns, notably the primary concern with producing a constitution acceptable to all sections.
What followed the implementation of the Constitution was, however, another matter. Fehrenbacher devotes several well documented chapters to the different way in which the Federal government supported slavery. These include protection of slavery within the District of Columbia, foreign policy actions that protected the privileges of slaveholders, Federal censorship of Abolitionist propaganda, and Federal support of fugitive slave pursuits. For example, successive American governments were remarkably lax in pursuing suppression of American commercial involvement in the African slave trade, well after importation of slaves into the USA was abolished.

The Federal tilt towards slavery was the product, not of constitutional protection, but of Southern domination of the Federal branch and Southern political unity on any issue touching slavery. Federal involvement in protecting slavery produced recurrent crises whenever the question of slavery expansion into newly acquired territories occurred. Fehrenbacher has a nice description of these recurrent crises though this is an oft described problem.

Finally, Fehrenbacher demonstrates why the South found the election of Lincoln to be so threatening. After benefiting from decades of Federal tilt towards slavery, Southerners were convinced that Republican domination of the Executive branch would result in a Rederal anti-slavery tilt and put slavery at risk in the whole USA. Fehrenbacher then concludes with a nice concise description of Federal policy towards slavery during the Civil War and Reconstruction, including Lincoln's crucial role.

An fine and well written book.

One of the first books about the US Civil War I've read was Don Fehrenbacher's The Dred Scot Case. That book, among my favourite all time history books, made it all but certain that I would eventually seek more of his works.

In 'The Slaveholding Republic', Fehrenbacher returns to themes very similar to the ones examined in 'Dred Scot'. Both books are about how the experiment in freedom established by the American Founding Fathers dealt with the paradox pointed out by Samuel Johnson "how is it that the greatest yelp for liberty come from the drivers of nigros?"

'Dred Scot' focused on two main themes - the status of slaves (and free blacks) in the law, and the legal/political questions of the power to abolish and establish slavery.

'The Slaveholding Republic' deals with these themes, but presents a broader picture. In the first chapter, Fehernbacher deals with the constitution's attitude to slavery. Fehernbacher is clearly upset about attacks on the constitution as a pro-slavery tool, and he makes a convincing case that the constitution neither supported nor condemned slavery, and that if anything, the very wording (avoiding the word 'slave' entirely) shows unease with slavery.

The second chapter deals with slavery in Washington DC. Until the 1830s, slavery in the capital was only a minor political issue. With the rise of Garrisonian abolitionism, attacks on slavery in the capital started to increase, but until the civil war, the only achievement reached was the barring of the slave trade in it.

Whatever debate was running within the US about slavery, to the world, the US was unquestionably a slave holding republic, constantly trying to defend pro slavery interests, especially in compensating slave holders for slave carried away. Even people with anti-Slavory convictions such as John Qunicy Adams treated slaves as property for those purposes.

Two chapters deal with the Slave trade. In it, Fehrenbacher diffrentiates between importation of slaves to the US, which was effectively surpressed, and the atlantic slave trade to Cuba and Brazil, in which Americans, because of the US's passive support, played a large roll up to the late 1850s.

The next two chapters are about the Fugitive Slave Laws. In essence, those demonstrate a conflict between the clause in the constitution obliging the return of escaping slaves, to the defence of free slaves from kidnapping. Until the 1830s, most clashes developed due to the Northern states trying to protect free blacks from kiddnapping. But with time, these laws became obstructionists, preventing even the retension of fugitives. As part of the 1850 compromise, a draconian fugitive slave law was enforced, crashing the rights of free blacks and raising strong objections from Northern abolitionists, especially in New England.

The two final chapters bring us to the outbreak of the civil war. Fehrenbacher manages to sum the arguments he raises in 'Dred Scot', without making the reader feel he's returning to the same grounds. Rather, the intepretations are striking. I was especially interested with Stephen Dauglas's role in the session crises. Twice in the 1850s, Dauglas's actions contributed to the dissolation of the union and the coming of the war. In 1852, his ilcalculated move with the Kensas-Nebraska act harmed raised Southern expectations and alienated Northerners. In 1857, the life long compromiser Dauglas suddenly became a man commited to the 'great principle' of popular sovreignty, breaking down the Democratic party as he did it. Had Dauglas managed to come up with a compromise, he might have remained the head of the united democratic party in the 1860 election, and after his defeat, he might have had enough influence to keep the South in the union. Of course, the counter factual is fanciful, but it is nonetheless intriguing.

This chapter and the next were completed by Fehrenbacher's former student, historian Ward M. McAfee. For the most part, McAfee does a commendable job, and writes good prose, which is very effective, even if it is not quite as elegant as Fehernbacher. It would be interesting to know how much of the last two quarters McAfee completed. My guess would be about one quarter of the first and half of the last. McAfee, continues Fehrenbacher's thesis very well, and there are few if any discrenible slips in the argument. However, McAfee has a tendency to moralise which I found slightly irritating.

The last chapter explains why the rise of the Republican party was such a threat to the South, despite Lincoln's repeat assurences that he meant no harm to slavery 'where it existed'. Ultimately, slavery depended not only on the States right to control their own domestic institutions, but also on support from a pro-slavery federal government. Lincoln's election meant that for the first time, the South was no longer representitive of America. The slaveholding republic was no more, and slavery was on the route to extinction. Slaveholders' attempt to recreate the Slaveholding republic was the source of sescession, and the Civil War that brought a fast ending to the the institution.

During the time of the American Revolution, slaveholder Thomas Jefferson, man of the enlightment, considered slavery to be a great evil. As an older man, settled into Southern ways, he let his antislavery convictions deteriorate into mere rethorics. Until Abraham Lincoln's election, the United States prefered to ignore Jefferson's words that "all men were created equal", and it was truly a Slaveholding republic.

Fehrenbacher begins his account of the federal government's relation to slavery with a plain thesis: that the constitution was not intended to really protect slavery, that it was to be neutral on the subject and leave any regulation of slavery to the states. Fehrenbacher starts from this point and explores the relationship in a number of contexts including the national capital, the slave trade, and foreign relations (the most interesting chapter of this work). Throughout the work he demonstrates how the southern interest in slavery dominated the federal government in practically every aspect, even in administrations of presidents who were morally opposed to slavery (J.Q. Adams). This dominance of the slavery interest pre-1860 is used to explain the knee jerk hostility that the South had to the Republican party. The fairly benign opposition that the Republicans had to expansion of slavery was blown up by southerners who viewed any opposition to slavery, however minor, was seen as a radical attack on the Constitution. Fehrenbacher argues that essentially this reaction based on a fundmental error in understanding the Republican party was one of the major reasons for southern succession. I stronly recommend this book for any interested in the history of slavery or the early federal government.

I bought both volumns of this over the summer. I first bought Libary of America's publication of Jefferson which is a must have. Then Franklin. Those two are extremely good and I highly recommend them to anyone interested in raw historical material.

Now as for the volumes on Lincoln, don't get me wrong; they are also extremely good. As with all of these books, it is a rewarding reading experience to peruse collections of un-edited letters and speeches in their chronological order.

These volumes have every conceivable bit of correspondence imaginable. Lincoln apparently preferred the short letter, as there are several single paragraph letters to generals on the field and the like. He also wrote with simplicity and suprising bluntness. Volume 1 has a number of early speeches and famous debates which give you a sense of the lawyer turned politician. These of course are very lengthy. But also in volumes 1 and 2 there are numerous short letters which include urgent notes to General McClellan and others that would have made me quit the post had I been the receiver! In contrast there are letters revealing Lincolns more sensitive personal side.

I'm rating Lincoln's volumes just behind those of Jefferson and Franklin because there are no references detailing the circumstances for each writing. I felt a little lost not knowing what the impetus was behind the letters and correspondence. This is a departure from the Jefferson and Franklin books, which provide very detailed notes.

Finally I should say that Library of America's books are of very high quality for more than their authorship and reading content. All are bound nicely and printed on bible paper-like acid free paper. They are of exceptional quality just as books. I would say they are the best quality available.

Additionally, Library of America is a non-profit organization with the aim of distributing the work of America's essential writers without commercial gain.