Fans pick 100 books like Lincoln's Springfield Neighborhood

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.”

I loved this book because it analyzed Lincoln’s life, thoughts, and character as they developed in 19th-century America. In this “cultural” biography, as it has been termed, an acclaimed historian focuses in particular on how Lincoln sought to reconcile his two major goals before and during his presidency: to preserve the Union and end slavery.

Though Lincoln hoped this could be done without a civil war, the obduracy of the southern states over the slavery issue made war unavoidable. Yet, the defeat of the Confederacy resulted in the realization of both of Lincoln’s goals.

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.

Like Spires, Kantrowitz is interested in the ways in which nineteenth-century African Americans made the case for being recognized as citizens. We tend to focus on stories of freedom, as if that’s what those who escaped from slavery encountered when they reached the North—but in fact they arrived to only relative freedom, and they faced an ongoing struggle for something “more than freedom.” This is the story Kantrowitz tells, focusing mainly on Black activists in Boston. The story begins with community-building efforts—establishing churches, literary societies, newspapers, and the other organizations needed to sustain a flourishing, educated, and economically-secure society. Kantrowitz introduces readers to a number of African American leaders who deserve to be much better known, heroes of American history. His core argument, though, like that of Spires, has to do with defining what the word citizenship actually means, extending it beyond basic inclusion to a determined and deeply ethical… show more.

The stars had to align perfectly for this autobiography to have been written. Born into slavery in the American South, Elizabeth Keckley learned to read and write at a time when laws forbade it. Her skills as a seamstress allowed her to buy her freedom and later become Mary Todd Lincoln’s dressmaker. She also became a close confidant of the First Lady, gaining an unfiltered view of life in the White House during one of the most crucial times in our nation’s history. After Lincoln’s assassination, Keckley published this autobiography and was widely criticized for relaying intimate conversations and private moments she shared with the Lincoln family. In addition, Keckley’s unflinching account of slavery was difficult for many to read. However, this book has endured as one of the best accounts of life as a slave and of the Lincolns’ time in the White House.

Most people don’t know that at one time, slavery existed in every state, not just in the South. This powerful book tells the story of Sojourner Truth’s time in slavery in New York, from her birth in 1797 until she escaped as a young woman in the 1820s. 

Unfortunately, Truth continued to face hardships in freedom, most terribly when her son was sold away from her to Alabama. Fortunately, she fought in court and won so that he was returned.

Truth continued to fight for women’s rights and black civil rights for the rest of her life. In 1864, she even met with Lincoln at the White House.

Abraham Lincoln may be the most written about president (and person) in American history, but his children have been relatively relegated to innocuous side characters who all have a few good stories about them. Lincoln’s Sons by Ruth Painter Randall is still the go-to book for anyone interested in the Lincoln boys, as well as their relationships with their parents. In addition to their early years in Springfield and the famous antics of Willie and Tad in the White House, Randall also follows the boys after the death of their father. She explains the sad life of Tad from 1865 until his early death in 1871, and gives a full accounting of Robert’s impressive legacy as lawyer, businessman, public servant, and protector of his father’s legacy—for decades the only book to do so. There have been a few other books ostensibly about the Lincoln boys in the years since Randall’s… show more.

This book has captured my interest and my heart for a long time. You may wonder what a book about a great president is doing in a list of the best small “L” leadership books. Here is the reason: I get many powerful principles and practices of small “L” leadership–things I can use in my family, at church, and in my professional life–every time I read this book (and I have read it three times!).

It doesn’t hurt that the writing is beautiful! I love the writing, and I love to see how Lincoln created an effective team in his cabinet composed of all of his rivals for the presidential nomination with small and simple things. Amazing!

Reading this collection of stories and sayings from (or about) Lincoln, it’s easy to see what an incredible person he was. From his early years on the frontier through his time as a lawyer, on to his presidential years, his personality is revealed through his observations. Lincoln’s storytelling contained a great deal of wit and wisdom for his listeners. This book is a history lover’s dream, making one realize how much this country lost when an assassin’s bullet cut him down.