Brian R. Dirck – författare

This fascinating history explores Abraham Lincoln's legal career, investigating the origins of his desire to practice law, his legal education, his partnerships with John Stuart, Stephen Logan, and William Herndon, and the maturation of his far-flung practice in the 1840s and 1850s. Brian Dirck also examines Lincoln's clientele, how he charged his clients, and how he addressed judge and jury, as well as his views on legal ethics and the supposition that he never defended a client he knew to be guilty.

Both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis are locked in the American psyche as iconic symbols of victory and defeat. The author contests that these images tend to obscure the larger visions that compelled both men to pursue their policies and actions, resulting in the American civil war.

As ""Savior of the Union"" and the ""Great Emancipator,"" Abraham Lincoln has been lauded for his courage, wisdom, and moral fiber. Yet Frederick Douglass's assertion that Lincoln was the ""white man's president"" has been used by some detractors as proof of his fundamentally racist character. Viewed objectively, Lincoln was a white man's president by virtue of his own whiteness and that of the culture that produced him. Until now, however, historians have rarely explored just what this means for our understanding of the man and his actions. Writing at the vanguard of ""whiteness studies,"" Brian Dirck considers Lincoln as a typical American white man of his time who bore the multiple assumptions, prejudices, and limitations of his own racial identity. He shows us a Lincoln less willing or able to transcend those limitations than his more heroic persona might suggest but also contends that Lincoln's understanding and approach to racial bigotry was more enlightened than those of most of his white contemporaries. Blazing a new trail in Lincoln studies, Dirck reveals that Lincoln was well aware of and sympathetic to white fears, especially that of descending into ""white trash,"" a notion that gnawed at a man eager to distance himself from his own coarse origins. But he also shows that after Lincoln crossed the Rubicon of black emancipation, he continued to grow beyond such cultural constraints, as seen in his seven recorded encounters with nonwhites. Dirck probes more deeply into what ""white"" meant in Lincoln's time and what it meant to Lincoln himself, and from this perspective he proposes a new understanding of how Lincoln viewed whiteness as a distinct racial category that influenced his policies. As Dirck ably demonstrates, Lincoln rose far enough above the confines of his culture to accomplish deeds still worthy of our admiration, and he calls for a more critically informed admiration of Lincoln that allows us to celebrate his considerable accomplishments while simultaneously recognizing his limitations. When Douglass observed that Lincoln was the white man's president, he may not have intended it as a serious analytical category. But, as Dirck shows, perhaps we should do so—the better to understand not just the Lincoln presidency, but the man himself.

A thought-provoking and engaging guide to the legal, moral, and political issues that arise when the United States goes to war.From the American Revolution to the Bush administration's new type of war on terror, Waging War on Trial views warfare from a legal, social, cultural, and political standpoint. Included are homefront debates during major hostilities, "brushfire" incidents, and how the events of September 11th have shaped our domestic wartime policy.The battle continues today as the President and Congress debate over who begins and ends military operations. Concerns about civil liberties, the draft, and internal security are as relevant today as during the Civil War. Questions arise on how dissenters and minorities are treated and if America can legally control the behavior of our soldiers. It's an intricate interplay between war and America's institutions.A–Z entries on key people such as Oliver Wendell Holmes and Senator Lee Overman, court decisions such as Abrams v. United States and Schenck v. United States, events such as the Gulf War, and issues such as the suspension of the writ of habeas corpusA chronology spanning the history of waging war from 1792, which saw the formation of the Society of Cincinnatus, through 2002, with the United States contemplating war with Iraq