From the Editor | Phillip Guerty | Teaching Lincoln and the Constitution | Vol 21 No 1 | January 2007

Table of Contents

OAH Magazine of History
Volume 21, No 1
January 2007

From the Editor

Teaching Lincoln and the Constitution

Phillip Guerty

This issue of the OAH Magazine of History, cosponsored by the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission (ALBC), is the first of three special issues over the next three years dedicated to Abraham Lincoln. The current issue, under the editorship of Rhode Island Supreme Court Chief Justice Frank Williams, examines Lincoln and the Constitution. In January 2008, Darrel Bigham will serve as guest editor for an issue on Lincoln and race. The following January, Harold Holzer will bring together a group of Lincoln scholars to look at the Lincoln legacy. I want to thank the commission for its help in putting together what will undoubtedly be an exciting series Lincoln issues.

As timing would have it, examining Lincoln and the Constitution is most relevant as the country faces serious questions about the power of the executive branch during times of national crises. As Frank Williams points out in his introduction, "Eerie similarities haunt the Bush administration's interpretation of constitutionality, civil liberties, executive privilege, and nationhood." This parallel is no more apparent than in the debates sparked by both presidents' suspension of habeas corpus. For Bush, questions about civil liberties during a time of war culminated in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. For Lincoln, it was Ex Parte Merryman. Looking at the legal history of both cases allows teachers to engage their students in questions about the laws which govern our nation and how laws are interpreted at difficult times in our history. In his historiographical essay, Phillip Shaw Paludan explores how historians have viewed Lincoln's ideas about executive authority. Daniel Farber looks at the ways that Lincoln used the Declaration of Independence to construct national identity. Using the lens of emancipation, Edna Greene Medford discusses Lincoln's complex view of the Constitution and the powers that it granted the presidency.

The teaching resources section of the Magazine features strategies that will help teachers convey to their students the complexities of Lincoln's relationship to the Constitution and, ultimately, to the nation's history. Using a wide range of primary documents, including Lincoln's First Inaugural Address, Veronica Burchard explores the ways teachers can get students to analyze Lincoln's views on secession and the nature of the Constitution. Similarly, Jennifer L. Rosenfeld provides an excellent teaching strategy that asks students to analyze and compare Lincoln's thoughts and legal actions regarding emancipation, beginning with the D.C. Emancipation Act of 1862 and ending with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. The Lincoln Museum in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, and the Lincoln Museum and Presidential Library in Springfield, Illinois, have provided short articles that survey how each institution helps teachers and students explore the subject of Lincoln and the Constitution by combining the latest technology with traditional exhibits.

This special issue on Lincoln also contains two documents from the Gilder Lehrman collection that give teachers an excellent opportunity to initiate a discussion with students about presidential powers and the Constitution. The first is a letter from Lincoln to three proslavery Unionists from Louisiana. As Richard Carwardine points out, "the document offers evidence that emancipation was for Lincoln an irreversible process . . . and that freedom for the enslaved was more than a means to a restored Union, it was becoming an end in itself." The second Gilder Lehrman document is a fragment of Lincoln's last annual message to Congress encouraging them to pass the Thirteenth Amendment.

Kevin Gaines provides an insightful analysis of the civil rights movement in a global context for our ongoing America on the World Stage series. Although the series will conclude with the next issue of the Magazine, OAH and AP/College Board have assembled and will publish a volume of the series essays along with new teaching strategies for each article, in the forthcoming America On the World Stage (University of Illinois Press) in spring 2008.

I would like to encourage teachers to attend this year's convention, "American Values, American Practices: The Centennial Meeting of OAH," in Minneapolis, Minnesota, from March 29 to April 1, 2007. As the OAH has changed to better meet the needs of history teachers, the annual meeting has included more sessions and activities for them. These sessions include: "Teaching American Values, Teaching Abraham Lincoln," cosponsored by the ALBC;" "America on the World Stage: A Preview," several sessions on Teaching American History Grant programs, "Teaching Primary Documents: Women and Religion," and "Activating Students' Historical Curiosity." Check out the annual meeting program online at <http://www.oah.org/meetings/2007/program/> for the times of these panels and other teaching related sessions. Additionally, the OAH Committee on Teaching and the OAH Magazine of History Advisory Board will host a luncheon and a reception Friday, March 30, for precollegiate teachers and others interested in history education. This year's luncheon speaker, Peter Hahn, The Ohio State University, will discuss, "Teaching the History of the U.S. Experience in the Middle East." Readers may recall Peter's excellent work as our guest editor of the "U.S. and the Middle East" issue of the Magazine last May. Tickets for the luncheon should be purchased in advance through the preregistration form on page 192 of the annual meeting program or online at <http://www.oah.org/meetings/2007/prereg/>. Feel free, as well, to stop by the OAH Magazine of History booth at the exhibit hall and share your thoughts about the Magazine. We enjoy hearing from our subscribers!

—Phillip M. Guerty