There was specific constitutional provision for emergency measures in the case that Abraham Lincoln faced - an insurrection - which no other president has faced.

After I published a book called Lincoln's Virtues a wit said that my next book should be Lincoln's Vices. But in my opinion that would be a short book!

There was specific constitutional provision for emergency measures in the case that Abraham Lincoln faced - an insurrection - which no other president has faced.

I do not think you can fault Abraham Lincoln for picking generals that did not work out, because, as he said to John Hay when he went back to George B. McClellan in the fall of 62, we have to work with what we have.

When I went to an Aspen seminar on "American Scriptures" - the bicentennial of the Declaration and they discussed the preamble and the Gettysburg Address and much more, but not Lincoln's Second Inauguration, I challenged that omission and they said find something on it and to my astonishment, at that time, there was no book or long article that really did it. So I wrote one that attempted to do it justice. Although obscurely published, that essay got a nice bounce. Somehow David Donald saw it, and in his notes to his biography singled it out.

Abraham Lincoln did not contend that his actions were immune from Congressional correction; on the contrary, he specifically said he was acting beyond the present provisions in the expectation that congress would retroactively approve, which they did. He did not say anything like Richard Nixon: if the president does it is legal.

Abraham Lincoln had a deep realism; he did not deceive or mislead himself, but faced the world he had to deal with as it really is. At the same time, he had a striking moral intelligence, and a confidence in the working of his own mind and conscience.