Lincoln and the Law

Document Type

Website

Abstract

Lincoln’s effort to restore the Union and his contributions to American political thought and its ideals of freedom. Lincoln himself admitted his ambition lay in politics and not in the law, stating “my forte is as a Statesman, rather than a Prosecutor.” Even if the law was Lincoln’s “secondary” avocation, it was indelibly linked to him in life and death. The Law Library of Congress’s historical collection vividly illustrates three periods in which the law played a prominent part of the Lincoln era: first, works specifically on his work as a prominent Illinois lawyer; second, contemporary literature on Lincoln’s controversial balancing of civil liberties against the demands of war aims; third, period transcripts and reports of the trial of the surviving conspirators in the murder of the President and attempted murder of other public officials.

Publication Date

2014

Share

COinS