Oxford English Dictionary

Lincoln: The Constitution and the Civil War
October 8-November 19
Hughes Main Library

Join our series of events featuring a look at our 16th president's achievements and controversial decision-making.

Lincoln: The Constitution and the Civil War, a 1,000 square-foot traveling exhibit, illustrates how Lincoln used the Constitution to confront three intertwined crises of the Civil War: slavery, secession and wartime civil liberties. The exhibit displays photographic reproductions of original documents, including the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment.

Lincoln's struggle to save the Union transformed the Constitution and created the nation we are today. To his contemporaries, Lincoln was a controversial president. He was denounced as a "tyrant" for his policies on civil liberties and vilified for issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. To this day, questions about Lincoln's leadership stir debate: Was he a calculating politician willing to accommodate slavery or a principled leader justly celebrated as the Great Emancipator? At Gettysburg, Lincoln's challenge to take up the "unfinished work" of creating a "new birth of freedom" has echoed to Americans through the ages.

This traveling exhibition and lecture series was organized by the National Constitution Center and the American Library Association Public Programs Office. Lincoln: the Constitution and the Civil War has been made possible by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.