The Children of Lincoln

Minnesota is a land not only of 10,000 lakes but also of 10,000 racial paradoxes. Despite the state's much-celebrated history of liberalism, from the prohibition of slavery at Minnesota's origins and the extension of suffrage to African American men soon after the Civil War to the emergence of Hubert Humphrey as a standard-bearer of desegregation in the civil rights era, the state is also home to some of the most egregious racial disparities in the nation (the “achievement gap,” the homeownership gap, health disparities, rates of incarceration). In The Children of Lincoln, William D. Green effectively uses his skills as a historian to help us explore the genealogy of these paradoxes. In his microstudy of the North Star State, he offers a lens through which to consider the larger panorama of American racial history. Green, the author of two other book-length investigations of nineteenth-century Minnesota history, is a painstaking researcher. Trained as a lawyer, he is a passionate pursuer of evidence—letters, speeches, newspaper articles, court proceedings, government documents, and more—and he is a careful reader of other scholars’ arguments. He is also a wonderful writer, able to tell a story with appropriate flair but also with an eye on his key question: How did white advocates of abolitionism turn their backs on African Americans once emancipation had been achieved? How did they conclude, as one said: “We have done our part

Desegregation · Emancipation · Liberalism · Newspaper · Political science · Politics · Racism · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · State (computer science · Suffrage · White (mutation · American Constitutional Law and Politics · American Environmental and Regional History · American History and Culture · Gender Studies · History · Law