100 books like Abe

I was thrilled when I read this book, the first one I found that cited Frederick Douglass’s little-known 1865 eulogy of Lincoln describing him as “emphatically the black man’s president.”

Historians often cited Douglass’s well-known 1876 speech (where he called Lincoln “preeminently the white man’s president”) but ignored the eulogy that I had discovered in Douglass’s papers at the Library of Congress. In vain I had long tried to call scholars’ attention to it.

So when I read this book I immediately wrote the author, thanking him and praising his work. We became fast friends, enthusiasts for opera as well as history. This book shows how Lincoln and Douglass started out from different political positions but moved together over time. Like Douglass Lincoln was “at bottom a racial egalitarian.”  

This 1981 book influenced my decision to become a Lincoln scholar, for the author – a gifted historian of the Reconstruction era – effectively challenged the regnant notion that Lincoln was a “reluctant emancipator.”

So in my first book I devoted a chapter to the origins of Lincoln’s hatred of slavery, building on the foundation that Lawanda Cox had laid.

Examining closely the president’s dealings with racial politics in Louisiana, she traced his maneuvers behind the scenes in support of emancipation and Black suffrage and concluded that Lincoln was “a determined, though circumspect, emancipator and friend of black civil and political rights, consistently striving to obtain what was possible in the face of constitutional restraints, political realities, and white prejudice.”

In this beautifully written study of Lincoln’s pre-presidential years, the political ethicist William Lee Miller, a warm and generous friend as well as a gifted scholar, argued that to “appraise Lincoln fairly” one “should not compare him to unattached abolitionists in Massachusetts or to anyone a century and a half later” but rather to “other engaged politicians in the Old Northwest in the 1850s,” who were far more skeptical about racial equality than Lincoln was.

Miller observed that Lincoln was consistently “cordial and welcoming in his treatment of individual African-Americans,” but that he was more than that. In Miller’s words, Lincoln’s interaction with those Blacks demonstrated “a racially inclusive egalitarianism.” Miller’s companion volume, President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman is an equally insightful examination of Lincoln’s presidential years.

Richard Hart, a prominent, civic-minded Springfield lawyer and an exceptionally kind and generous friend, was also an avid local historian who tirelessly examined original sources in search of information about Springfield during Lincoln’s time.

In 1999, he published a seminal article demonstrating that African Americans “were a significant part not only of the town’s life, but of Abraham Lincoln’s life and environment.” He then elaborated on that point in this book, written with the assistance of Bonnie Paull, a retired professor of English.

I dedicated one of my books to Hart, paying tribute to him as the author “who pioneered the way,” showing that Lincoln’s interaction with African American neighbors, friends, clients, and employees in the Illinois capital profoundly shaped his racial egalitarianism.

Donald’s one-volume biography of Lincoln remains the standard in the field. I knew David Donald and found him always generous. From his perch at Harvard, Donald dominated the Lincoln field for many decades. His biography of Lincoln stands head and shoulders above a host of more recent studies. In fact, it surprises me people keep writing biographies of Lincoln that go over the same ground repeatedly. Donald brings Lincoln alive with the authority that comes from a lifetime of reflection and writing on the Civil War and our greatest president.

I loved how this book offered an intellectual history of the Lincoln administration in action and memory, and with a personal touch.

Focusing on the lives and works of Lincoln’s two personal secretaries, who—as Zeitz points out—were perhaps more akin to a modern president’s Chief of Staff, Zeitz takes you from the prewar years, through the war itself, and then deep into the changing landscape of post-war America.

I enjoyed how it provided a front-row seat to see the rough-and-tumble world of American politics, the process of getting things done during Lincoln’s presidency, and the refashioning of Lincoln’s image in the public mind.

Nicolay and Hay together assembled a monumental history of Lincoln and his presidency, one that still shapes scholarly understandings of him to this day. 

All right, children, it is time to eat our vegetables. This massive work of two volumes, each about a thousand pages, is biography as encyclopedia.  And the original text has been trimmed down to this published version. The original text, in all its length and density, can be read online at the  Lincoln Studies Center of Knox College. If the book seems too daunting, just look up in the informative index something you think you know about Lincoln – his Cooper Union address, say, or the Gettysburg Address, or the Second Inaugural --- turn to the relevant pages and see how much more there is to know about your subject. Or, for some racy material, look up “Mary Todd Lincoln, adultery.” Lincoln biographers have always been tough on his wife, but not as harsh as Burlingame is. Once you start looking up something you thought you knew, you will be… show more.

Lincoln’s religious faith, a puzzle to many, has been a central interest of mine. As a young man Lincoln was accused of infidelity; in maturity he made no religious profession. Yet he read and reread the Bible, attended church in Washington, reflected on God’s purposes, and shared ideas with ministers. White has written several studies of Lincoln, including a fine biography, but none surpasses this bright gem of a book. He explains why Lincoln considered his second inaugural address, delivered as the war ended, to be his greatest speech—a sermon rooted in faith. Believing the war to be God’s judgment on the whole nation for its complicity in the sin of slavery, he urged postwar charity to all. Fittingly, its text is paired with the Gettysburg Address in the Lincoln Memorial.  

An amazing collection of remembrances from both those who loved and hated him. I managed to read all of these first-hand recollections in one evening, feeling like I got to know the essence of Lincoln. Several who met him said, “No man living has a kinder heart.” From those who knew him best, you get the feeling that Lincoln was a sensitive, sincere man who never really knew one as a stranger. Harold Holzer, the author, did a brilliant job compiling and editing this book.

People known for witty sayings or informative stories – think Mark Twain and Dorothy Parker, or Yogi Berra and Samuel Goldwyn – tend to have any such items foisted on them. Lincoln, who was a genuine purveyor of funny and biting remarks is a victim of this form of theft in reverse. Any pointed or funny words get more dignity or heft if attributed to him. It is amazing how many such pseudo quotes are collected and sifted by the Fehrenbachers. There is a whole false American history that could be woven together from these fakes.