I tip my hat to Dr. Guelzo for writing this outstanding book about President Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation. This book receives my strongest recommendation.Misunderstandings of the man and this important document's meaning and effect seem to run rampant. This is due, in no small part, to lackluster scholarship and/or some sort of Kantian absolutism--both which the author briefly refers to in his introduction. Indeed, the introduction is itself something that people who want to understand Lincoln should read. The operative term here: prudence.The book covers the issuance of the Proclamation and time leading up to it from several angles-militarily, politically, legally, ethically and even theologically. Of course, none of the aforementioned dimensions were so easily divisible, as Guelzo notes. Had Lincoln not taken political and constitutional considerations into account in making military plans, he would have risked serious setbacks to the cause of the Union through a re-election defeat or by an adverse Supreme Court decision rendering him helpless to save the Union.The Border States were crucial to the survival of the Union and a Congress supporting the war effort was likewise essential. None of these were guaranteed, as Lincoln and his supporters had much work before them to ensure that a nation reluctantly plunged into war would not back out and elect a peace-seeking, compromise Democrat who would ultimately dissolve the Union.One need hardly mention that it was the Supreme Court that helped plunge the nation into war with the horrendous Dred Scott decision, and that Lincoln also had to be mindful that that same Court could certainly strike down the Proclamation as exceeding the scope of the President's War Powers.Gulezo conveys the sense of care and caution with which Lincoln promulgated the Proclamation and does so in a gripping fashion. This book is superbly written and is a read worthy of any admirer of America's greatest President.