Liberty and Union: The Civil War Era and American Constitutionalism by Timothy S. Huebner (review)

The adoption of the Constitution in the 1780s and the Civil War's eruption in the 1860s constitute two of the most important events in American history. Timothy S. Huebner explores the connections between the Constitution and the Civil War in this sweeping and deeply impressive survey that covers nearly a century of American history. Huebner analyzes how conflicting interpretations of the Constitution set the terms of political debate from the early national period through Reconstruction. The result is a tour de force of historical synthesis.

Huebner begins with an erudite discussion of the key issues left unresolved by the Constitution's framers. For all its virtues as a founding document, the Constitution was far from perfect. It vaguely described the president's powers and failed to clearly define the legal status of slavery and the precise nature of American sovereignty. For example, did sovereignty ultimately rest with the people, the states, or some combination of both? And to what extent could Congress regulate slavery? As Huebner explains, the Constitution's vagueness on these key questions left the nineteenth-century United States dangerously vulnerable to sectional conflict, particularly as the issue of slavery increasingly divided North and South.

One of the most remarkable features of Huebner's study is its scope. The overarching theme of the book is how Americans interpreted the Constitution during the Civil War era, but the book is more than just a legal and constitutional history; it is also an exceptionally well rounded history of the nineteenth century that is firmly based in primary sources and seamlessly integrates constitutional analysis with political and social developments. Huebner's coverage of the Civil War's military history is one of the book's surprising features. The author skillfully integrates the military conflict into his narrative, explaining how battlefield events profoundly shaped the outcome of the constitutional crisis. Ultimately, the constitutional debate over slavery and secession was not resolved in a courtroom or in a contest between great legal minds but on the blood-drenched battlefields of the Civil War. Indeed, by defeating the Confederate army, Union generals such as Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman proved far more successful at decisively resolving the contentious legal questions of slavery and sovereignty than were Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Roger B. Taney and other leading nineteenth-century jurists.

The book's most strikingly original theme is the concept of "black constitutionalism" (p. 52). The various constitutional interpretations propounded by white northerners and southerners in the antebellum era have commanded historians' attention for decades, but Huebner shows that African American leaders and writers developed a distinctive constitutional interpretation of their own. In contrast to the nativist and intensely racialized worldview of so many white Americans, black constitutionalism held a vision of a constitutional order that guaranteed the rights of all Americans regardless of race or ethnicity. To that end, African American writers and activists interpreted the Constitution in the context of the egalitarian principles of the Declaration of Independence, an interpretive approach that President Abraham Lincoln eventually adopted as well. Black constitutionalism thus played a critical role in building momentum for the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments; however, these amendments did not end systemic racial injustice in America. Violent white resistance to the constitutional rights of African Americans plagued the South for generations after the Civil War. Nevertheless, the amendments vastly improved America's founding document and served as the constitutional foundation of the civil rights movement in the twentieth century.

Although the book is sweeping in its scope, Huebner builds his narrative with fascinating and illuminating details. For example, he points out how Lincoln changed the presidential lexicon. In a departure from his immediate predecessors, Lincoln made the Constitution a prominent feature of his inaugural address. As president, he subtly redefined how...