Jefferson, Lincoln, and Wilson: The American Dilemma of Race and Democracy

"This is a superb collection of well-written essays by a group of distinguished scholars, edited by two of the country's most eminent political historians. In considering the subject of race in U.S. history by focusing on the ideas, attitudes, and actions of three leading presidents, the collection offers a stimulating, illuminating, and altogether fascinating exploration of this most intractable of American problems."

Jefferson, Lincoln, and Wilson: The American Dilemma of Race and Democracy seeks to explore how the collision of races shaped American democracy in the lives, thought, and actions of three of the nation's most important presidents. Each of them led the nation in a different epoch, during times that had their own set of historical circumstances that shaped constructions of race: Jefferson at the very beginning of the republic, as the nineteenth century dawned and the institution of slavery flourished; Lincoln when the country had expanded into a continental empire and fell into civil war over slavery; and Wilson when, simultaneously, the United States emerged as a leader on the world stage and consolidated legally sanctioned apartheid at home. As great and brilliant presidents, they constitute a kind of trinity, partly because no other chief executives have communicated the ideals of democracy so effectively or eloquently, to both their fellow citizens and the peoples of the world, even as they violated principles for which they ostensibly stood.

Cooper and Knock have brought these three leaders together in this unique and significant collection of essays written by leading scholars in the field. Contributors include Jean Harvey Baker, David W. Blight, John Milton Cooper Jr., Eric Foner, Annette Gordon-Reed, Thomas J. Knock, Erez Manela, Manning Marable, Peter S. Onuf, and Lucia Stanton.

Jonathan Rosenberg, Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, author of How Far the Promised Land? World Affairs and the American Civil Rights Movement from the First World War to Vietnam
John Milton Cooper Jr. is E. Gordon Fox Professor of American Institutions (Emeritus) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of Woodrow Wilson: A Biography. Thomas J. Knock is Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Clements Department of History at Southern Methodist University and author of To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order.