In his Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln promised that the nation's sacrifices during the Civil War would lead to a 'new birth of freedom'. Lincoln's Unfinished Work analyses how the United States has attempted to realize - or subvert - that promise over the past century and a half.

"In his Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln promised that the nation's sacrifices during the Civil War would lead to a "new birth of freedom." Lincoln's Unfinished Work analyzes how the United States has attempted to realize-or subvert-that promise over the past century and a half. The volume is not solely about Lincoln, or the immediate unfinished work of Reconstruction, or the broader unfinished work of America coming to terms with its tangled history of race; it investigates all three topics"--