First, where do you get the idea that it is held in low esteem by the 'scholarly community'.
You cited one pro-Southern reviewer as evidence.
Second, based on the quotes that I gave you, the work seems pretty creditable in what I was pointing out, the context of the circumstances Lincoln found himself in.
So, I did not know that Farber's work is considered in low esteem by scholars nor do I know that now.
Here is a favoritable review of the work,
An antidote to Perret's unsatisfactory treatment of the constitutional issues arising from the war is Daniel Farber's Lincoln's Constitution. As Farber, the Sho Sato Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, and the McKnight Presidential Professor of Public Law at the University of Minnesota, observes, "to call the Civil War a constitutional crisis is almost a misuse of words, like calling Pearl Harbor a military setback. In the Civil War, the Constitution was placed under pressure that it had never seen before and has not seen since.... [T]he Civil War experience illuminates the deepest, most critical constitutional issues," including the "nature of the Union and the states, the breadth of the president's independent power to pursue the national interest, the scope of civil liberties during national emergencies, and the collision between the imperatives of national survival and the rule of law."
The first half of Lincoln's Constitution deals with the rights and wrongs of secession, a subject that Perret does not treat at all. Looking back to James Madison and earlier debates about the relationship between the states and the Union, Farber vindicates Lincoln's theory of the Union: there was no constitutional right to secession.
Of course, the most controversial element of Lincoln's war presidency is his treatment of civil liberties. Even many defenders of Lincoln argue that he overstepped constitutional bounds by declaring martial law, arbitrarily arresting civilians and trying them by military tribunal, and shutting down opposition newspapers. After the war, the Supreme Court criticized many of these measures in Ex parte Milligan.
Farber rejects this view. Indeed, he is sympathetic to Lincoln's response to some War Democrats in 1863. In a letter to Erastus Corning, Lincoln observed that the Constitution is a remarkable document, but it is not the same document during war that it is during peace.
I can no more be persuaded that the Government can constitutionally take no strong measures in time of rebellion, because it can be shown that the same could not lawfully be taken in time of peace, than I can be persuaded that a particular drug is not good medicine for a sick man, because it can be shown not to be good for a well one. Nor am I able to appreciate the danger apprehended by the meeting [of the New York Democrats] that the American people will, by means of military arrest during the Rebellion, lose the right of Public Discussion, the Liberty of Speech and the Press, the Law of Evidence, Trial by Jury, and Habeas Corpus, throughout the indefinite peaceful future, which I trust lies before them, any more than I am able to believe that a man could contract so strong an appetite for emetics during temporary illness as to persist in feeding upon them during the remainder of his healthful life.
What can we conclude about Abraham Lincoln as a war president? First and foremost, that he saved the Union. It is hard to imagine that anyone else among his contemporaries could have done what he did. Many were willing to let the Union go to pieces. Who knows how many "confederacies" there would now be on the North American continent had the view of James Buchanan or the Peace Democrats prevailed? Who knows when slavery would have ended? Who knows what would have become of a world without a United States to oppose both the Nazis and the Communists?
Many others, spurred by the fiery purity of the abolitionists, would have pursued policies that lacked any element of consent. As Lincoln remarked on numerous occasions, public sentiment is critically important in a republic. In the absence of public sentiment, legislators cannot pass laws and presidents cannot execute them. Lincoln could have avoided war by making another of the base concessions that politicians had been making for several decades. But that would only have postponed the day of decision, making it unlikely that republican government could survive in North America; and insofar as the United States was the "last, best hope of earth," making it unlikely that republican government could survive anywhere.
Lincoln set a high standard for leadership in time of war. He called forth the resources of the nation, he appointed the agents of victory, both civilian and military, he set the strategy, he took the necessary steps to restrain those who would cooperate with the disunionists, and he provided a rhetoric that stirred the people. Yet he did these things within a constitutional framework.
At a time when the United States once again faces an adversary intent on nothing less than its destruction, President Bush may correctly take his bearings from Lincoln, whose war presidency teaches us how much may be required of the statesman whose duty is "to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States."
http://www.claremont.org/writings/crb/winter2004/owens.html
From the fact that a major scholar tore it to shreds in a peer reviewed academic journal.
You cited one pro-Southern reviewer as evidence.
You keep alleging and impugning Gutzman as pro-southern yet have offered no evidence to that, nor any evidence that anything Gutzman ever said about Farber was wrong. Why is that?
So, I did not know that Farber's work is considered in low esteem by scholars nor do I know that now.
And you'll never know as long as you invent phony reasons to dismiss and neglect every critical review out of convenience for Farber.
Here is a favoritable review of the work,
The Claremont Institute is not a scholarly peer reviewed journal. It is a Lincolnite hack machine that agrees with Farber because they share in his extreme partisan disposition toward Lincoln.