Jury in Lincoln's America

Stacy Pratt McDermott is the assistant director and associate editor of the Papers of Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, Illinois, and the coeditor of The Papers of Abraham Lincoln: Legal Documents and Cases and The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln.

"(The Jury in Lincoln's America) provides an excellent account of the legal and social history of the region, especially in McDermott's analysis of the records of the courts in Illinois and the historiography of the jury system." (Journal of Illinois History) "This in-depth analysis gives us an unparalleled sense of how juries worked, what juror worked, what juror status meant for the outcome of legal cases…and what it suggests about legal, political, and social culture in this county– and by extension in the larger Midwest. It is an impressive accomplishment." (The Annals of Iowa) "McDermott's social history of the jury pushes past hoary glorification of the jury in Anglo-American liberty and digs up social history evidence about the kinds of constituencies that the jury actually represented." (The Journal of American History) "McDermott's careful study, based on extensive primary source research…sheds fresh light on the legal history of nineteenth-century America." (Indiana Magazine of History) "The legal environment that shaped Lincoln provides the context of The Jury in Lincoln's America, and Lincoln's experiences with the law as an attorney, a litigant, a judge, and a juror provide a fascinating human connection to the history of law in pre-Civil War Illinois, the Midwest, and America." (SirReadaLot.org)