| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Lincoln's Constitution. By Daniel Farber. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. 240 pp. $27.50, ISBN 0-226-23793-1.)

This very useful book is probably mistitled. It is not primarily about Abraham Lincoln's view of the Constitution, or even about the views of the Constitution available to him. Nor, contrary to the jacket blurb, is it a work of legal history. Daniel Farber's main point concerns "the uses of history in constitutional interpretation," or rather the failure of "modern-day originalists" to think historically (p. 197). Using constitutional conflicts under Lincoln as a touchstone, Farber brings a thorough historical perspective to two very pressing sets of current constitutional controversy: one about state's rights versus federalism versus nationalism, and the other about the legitimate exercise of executive power in the event of perceived domestic emergency. Farber follows the typology of constitutional argument rather than that of historical controversy or chronology. Thus "Lincoln in the Historical Spectrum of Constitutional Doctrine" might have been a more descriptive title.

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