| Book Review | Indiana Magazine of History, 101.1

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| Book Review | Indiana Magazine of History, 101.1 | The History Cooperative

Reviews

Our Secret Constitution
How Lincoln Redefined American Democracy

By George P. Fletcher

(New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Pp. xi, 292. Notes, index. Clothbound, $30.00; paperbound, $16.95.)

Judging Lincoln

By Frank J. Williams. Foreword by Harold Holzer and epilogue by John Y. Simon

(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002. Pp. xxiii, 202. Illustrations, bibliography, notes, index. $25.00.)

Lincoln's Constitution

By Daniel A. Farber

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Pp. x, 240. Notes, index. $27.50.)


Although there are more books written about Abraham Lincoln than any other American, his life continues to be a perennial source for investigation and reinterpretation. Jurists, whether they are lawyers, judges, or law professors, bring a unique perspective to the study of Lincoln's life and legacy. Because his quarter-century legal career shaped his thoughts and actions as president and because he faced some of the most challenging constitutional crises in the nation's history, legal scholars have asked many questions about Abraham Lincoln and the law. These three volumes demonstrate that jurists can offer new insights into our understanding of Lincoln's presidency and the Civil War.	1
Columbia University Law Professor George P. Fletcher argues that "the Civil War called forth a new constitutional order," based on the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution (p. 2). These amendments established a second American constitution with principles in sharp contrast to the Constitution of 1787. While the original document was based on the principles of "peoplehood as a voluntary association, individual freedom, and republican elitism," the principles of this second constitution were "organic nationhood, equality of all persons, and popular democracy" (p. 2). These competing visions have struggled for supremacy in American life since the Civil War era.	2
In Fletcher's interpretation, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address serves as "the preamble of the second American constitution" and "the secular prayer of the postbellum American Republic" (p. 4). Unfortunately for America, Fletcher contends, the United States Supreme Court in the late nineteenth century truncated the promise of this second constitution through its judgments in the Slaughterhouse (1873) and Civil Rights (1883) cases. These and other decisions effectively nullified the promise of the postwar amendments and drove the second constitution underground, where it became America's "Secret Constitution" throughout the twentieth century. Although it did not predominate in the decisions of the U. S. Supreme Court, the Secret Constitution "has, in fact, a much deeper grounding in American political and legal culture, and it has come to express itself in diverse arenas" (p. 189). From this location deep in the nation's legal culture, the commitments of the Secret Constitution shaped subsequent constitutional amendments; according to Fletcher, the fourteen amendments since the Civil War "were all designed to further the causes of nationhood, equality, and popular democracy" (p. 7).	. . .

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