The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties Reprint Edition

by Mark E. Neely Jr. (Author)

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ISBN-13: 978-0195080322

ISBN-10: 0195080327

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If Abraham Lincoln was known as the Great Emancipator, he was also the only president to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. Indeed, Lincoln's record on the Constitution and individual rights has fueled a century of debate, from charges that Democrats were singled out for harrassment to Gore
Vidal's depiction of Lincoln as an "absolute dictator." Now, in the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Fate of Liberty, one of America's leading authorities on Lincoln wades straight into this controversy, showing just who was jailed and why, even as he explores the whole range of Lincoln's constitutional
policies.
Mark Neely depicts Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus as a well-intentioned attempt to deal with a floodtide of unforeseen events: the threat to Washington as Maryland flirted with secession, disintegrating public order in the border states, corruption among military contractors, the
occupation of hostile Confederate territory, contraband trade with the South, and the outcry against the first draft in U.S. history. Drawing on letters from prisoners, records of military courts and federal prisons, memoirs, and federal archives, he paints a vivid picture of how Lincoln responded
to these problems, how his policies were actually executed, and the virulent political debates that followed. Lincoln emerges from this account with this legendary statesmanship intact--mindful of political realities and prone to temper the sentences of military courts, concerned not with
persecuting his opponents but with prosecuting the war efficiently. In addition, Neely explores the abuses of power under the regime of martial law: the routine torture of suspected deserters, widespread antisemitism among Union generals and officials, the common practice of seizing civilian
hostages. He finds that though the system of military justice was flawed, it suffered less from merciless zeal, or political partisanship, than from inefficiency and the friction and complexities of modern war.
Informed by a deep understanding of a unique period in American history, this incisive book takes a comprehensive look at the issues of civil liberties during Lincoln's administration, placing them firmly in the political context of the time. Written with keen insight and an intimate grasp of
the original sources, The Fate of Liberty offers a vivid picture of the crises and chaos of a nation at war with itself, changing our understanding of this president and his most controversial policies.

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Editorial Reviews

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"An impressive work, finely written and carefully presented. An important contribution that will serve the undergraduate as well as [the] scholar."--Professor Dennis M. Shannon, Alabama University--Montgomery

"Excellent book--very informative, and appropriate for today's times as well as for the last century. I think it 'must' reading for students taking a course on the Civil War, and it would be apprpriate reading for several other courses."--Robert Langran, Villanova University

"In this Pulitzer Prize-winning study, Mark Neely makes a major contribution to th[e] revision of the analysis of the nature of war behind the lines....A refreshing historical revision of the inner workings of the Union effort, which all too often is presented as if it had been a well-oiled
machine....It is to be hoped that this book will stimulate others to look at the impact of the war on civilians in more detailled ways."--Michael Fellman, Canadian Review of American Studies

"At last, some 125 years after the end of the Civil War, we have a more accurate and honest understanding of the Lincoln administration and civil liberties. After years of painstaking archival research Mark Neely presents a compelling argument that history should be left to those who do research and
not to novelists, literary critics, or thos with political axes to grind, like the 'lost cause' partisan who wrote American Bastile. Neely's book, which is the best scholarly examination of this issue ever written, will rehabilitate Lincoln's reputation on civil liberties....Extremely
convincing."--Paul Finkleman, The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography

"By far the best book on the subject....Masterful."--Gabor S. Boritt, Illinois Issues

"Intriguing....Neely has refined the debate with exhaustive and impressive research. He has supplied detail and restored context to discussions of civil liberties during the Civil War. His questions are good ones. His answers are striking....The first book-length study of civil liberties during
the Lincoln administrations. It will set a standard."--Francis N. Stites, Civil War History

"A thorough and meticulously documented study....Highlighted by more than thirty pages of well-researched endnotes, a comprehensive index, and an index of 'prisoners of state.' Highly recommended."--CHOICE

"An in-depth summary of how Lincoln and his administration handled civil rights in the deepest crisis the nation has ever endured....A chilling reminder that personal liberty always hangs in tremulous balance when the nation is tangled in desperate crisis."--The Grand Rapids Press

"An important book....[Neely's] research is broad and deep, not only in range of the usual primary materials but in a massive amount of sources in the National Archives on specific cases, hitherto unused."--Indiana Magazine of History

"[An] excellent study of civil liberties in the North during the Civil War....Neely writes in clear, straightforward prose....An impressive and valuable addition to the literature of the Civil War."--The Journal of American History

"Neely's welcome book on civil liberties under Lincoln advances us beyond this sketchy profile to detail the workings of Lincoln's internal security system Neely reviews voluminous military court and federal prison records that have not heretofore received systematic attention, encompasses the
perspectives of president and cabinet as well as those of hundreds of officials in the field, and refines the terminology and conclusions of the old authority, James G. Randall's Constitutional Problems Under Lincoln (1926). The result is a balanced and compelling account that fully acknowledges
and explores repressive practices, but repeatedly emphasizes the limits observed by Lincoln and the wartime bureaucracy."--American Historical Review

"Throroughly researched and well written--the best treatment by far of the subject."--Norman B. Ferris, Middle Tennessee State University

About the Author

Mark E. Neely is McCabe-Greer Professor of the History of the Civil War Era at Penn State University.

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press; Reprint edition (August 20, 1992)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0195080327
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0195080322
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1510L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.05 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 9.22 x 6.1 x 0.74 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,634,904 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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LS1866

Legal brief for Lincoln

Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2015

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Neely's book is an ambitious project that tries to synthesize the arrest and detention records of the North during the American Civil War. The amount of archival research he compiles in impressive, and he writes about it beautifully. This book suffers from a major problem though in that its author often blurs the line between historian and advocate for his subject matter, the Lincoln administration, which he goes to great lengths to exonerate from the charge that it abused civil liberties during the war. As a result, we don't see simply the evidence as it is presented but rather a complex case as to why the numerous arrests he documented were "justified" or why Lincoln should be exonerated from the charge. This is needless, and it biases the overall narrative away from a history and towards a legal brief as to why the White House should be given a pass on some of its more questionable actions such as the suspension of habeas corpus and the detention of political opponents in the north.

I'm no critic of the Lincoln administration, but the fact is that wars are inherently messy events and even the "good guys" do bad things during their complexities. Look at Abu Gharib for comparison - it happened and there's no making excuses for it, so why not just accept it as a messy part of history? The same is true of prisoner detentions in the Civil War - they happened, several of them were of dubious legality, and coming up with excuses for them after the fact is not history but advocacy.

8 people found this helpful

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John Carpenter

Good book and well researched

Reviewed in the United States on August 4, 2015

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I thought the book would cover a wider range of subjects, but it is almost exclusively about habeas corpus during the Lincoln administration. Good book and well researched.

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Dennis Brandt

Pulitzer material for sure

Reviewed in the United States on June 12, 2007

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I gobbled up this book, but then, it falls right into my current research topic. Others who found it dull have a point if they are not into this era or the topic, but I loved reading it. I might have given it 4 1/2 stars because occasionally Neely's liberal side sneaks through, as when he deemed the military draft of 1862 an odious event. That's a personal value judgment, not a fact. That it was PERCEIVED by many Northerners as odious, is a fact. But that is a tiny, tiny flaw, and the book is definitely deserving of the Pulitzer it received. (And I suspect those occasional liberal slips were vital to winning the Pulitzer.) Neely's marvelous academic study contradicts with extensively researched facts (the man read 137 rolls of microfilm searching for arrest records) the rantings of the Lincoln-was-a-despot Libertarians such as Thomas DiLorenzo. Not light reading but highly recommended for scholars.

16 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on August 27, 2014

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James Jarocki

Everything you want to know on the subject.

Reviewed in the United States on June 7, 2007

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This is a very worthy and scholarly work with more detail than you could ask for on the subject. My problem with it is that is is a difficult read that is best taken in small doses. No doubt Neely is the award winning expert, it shows.

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For Constitutional Scholars

Reviewed in the United States on April 9, 2020

Mark E. Neely, Jr. explains that both the American Civil War and Abraham Lincoln’s “suspension of the writ of habeas corpus…was unprecedented” (xiii). Initially, Lincoln deferred to his cabinet in the East and to his generals in the West in order to suspend and enforce the writ (19-32). By the end of the Civil War, the Union had arrested tens of thousands of civilians and held them as prisoners in military camps. Neely’s thesis is that Americans tolerated Lincoln’s suspension of the writ of habeas corpus “because they recognized the peril to the Union and shared the government’s mission to win the war” (92). Neely combines his experiences as Director of the Lincoln Museum with his previous research on Lincoln and the Civil War era in order to write a detailed analysis on Constitutional theory. Neely utilizes primary sources, including The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, the Turner-Baker Papers, and The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. He also cites secondary sources of the limited historiography on the subject, including F.C. Ainsworth, James G. Randall, and John A. Marshall.
Neely argues that “the focus in examining military arrests of civilians during the Civil War cannot remain on President Lincoln himself” (118). In fact, the State Department, the War Department, the Navy Department, state governments, and Union generals made over thirteen thousand arrests throughout the war (21-23). Neely insists that “the lowest point for civil liberties in the North during the Civil War” was when Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton suspended the writ of habeas corpus throughout the Union on August 8, 1862 (53). Neely claims that most of these suspensions were necessary in order to enforce the Conscription Act (64). Others whom the Union arrested were blockade-runners, Confederate deserters, or had sold liquor to the Union armies. Nonetheless, Lincoln ultimately took the brunt of the responsibility and received much of the criticism from Democrats, particularly during election years when the political stakes increased (208). However, Neely claims that if “the Democrats had been in office and the Republicans in opposition…their roles…would surely have been reversed” (209).
Neely’s strength is his exhaustive research. He examined hundreds of reels of microfilm of the arrest records of prisoners during the Civil War in addition to hundreds of other primary sources previously neglected by historians (118-119). While he provides many examples of individual arrests, he often skims past the details without clarity and leaves the reader with more questions. Although Neely admits that these sources were often incomplete or duplicated, this pattern frustrates the reader with a lack of evidence. While Neely provides much quantitative data in the form of percentages, fractions, and whole numbers that supports his thesis, his overuse of statistics distracts the reader. Neely finally admits on the penultimate page that “the time had come to abandon the count and focus on the meaning of the statistics” (234). In addition, Neely dedicates an entire chapter to the Ex parte Milligan case but admits that the “decision…had little effect on history” (184). Neely also relies on block quotes throughout the work. Perhaps he could have paraphrased or abbreviated these quotes in order to better focus on the thesis.
Neely has a clear bias towards Lincoln and attempts to shift the blame away from him for violating civil liberties. Instead, Neely places blame on Secretary of State William H. Seward, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, and the Union generals for suspending the writ of habeas corpus (72-75). However, Lincoln had allowed these individuals to suspend the writ. For example, Lincoln retroactively approved General Ambrose Burnside’s arrest of the infamous Copperhead Clement Vallandigham even though Lincoln had no plans to arrest him (65-68). But Neely also confesses that the “Lincoln administration” had a “sorry blemish” in Missouri and seems to blame Lincoln because violations of civil liberties had become “a nightmare” in that state (50). In fact, more arrests “occurred in Missouri than in any other state” due to that state’s “substantial level of disloyalty” (44). Most of these arrests resulted from guerrilla warfare that “threatened to break down the customary distinction between soldiers and civilians” (47). Still, Neely avoids directly blaming Lincoln despite acknowledging that “this book would tell” a much “different story…if Missouri and its thousands of political prisoners could be left out” (50).
Neely organizes his endnote citations in a detailed “Notes” section that allows scholars to review each source. Although he does not provide any images, he provides a few numerical charts. Neely also includes an additional “Index of Prisoners of State” that “represent less than 2 percent of the cases examined for this book” (269). Neely challenges historians that count the number of Union arrests at 13,535. Neely claims that this number is “unverifiable and erroneous” and proposes that at least 14,000 arrests took place but that the actual number is still much higher, as many of the arrest documents no longer exist (234). Despite the flaws, Neely pioneers an effort to reevaluate Lincoln’s relationship to civil liberties on a comprehensive scale. While other historians have focused on one person or place, Neely attempts to cover all of the civilian arrests during the Civil War but realizes that the numbers are impossible to count.

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