Over at Kiko's House, there's a whole index of posts on Lincoln. Pretty awesome. I'm slowly coming to the realization that I'm going to have to actually read a Lincoln biography. Damn. I was so looking forward to holding on to my simplified view of him as a racist, political opportunist. Damn my open mind!
All jokes aside, I am now taking recommendations on a solid one-volume treatment of Lincoln. I'm not interested in books that only look at him from a particular perspective, or in a particular period. (Lincoln And His Generals, Team Of Rivals etc.) No disrespect to any of those, which I'm sure are great, but I'm looking for a more complete biography. At the moment it looks like a toss-up between Lincoln and With Malice Toward None.
I doubt I'll get to it within the next six months. The reading is piling up. Also, I expect to move toward more primary sources by September.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
At the risk of being redundant, I'll again commend Giants, by John Stauffer. It's not the most thorough biography of Lincoln (or Frederick Douglass), but it does the most laudable job of putting some flesh and bones on the men, as well as illuminating their relationship.
This might belong on the previous post, but there is a great collection of essays on Slavery and Public History (called, "Slavery and Public History", oddly enough) edited by James and Lois Horton that recently came out and is certainly worth a read. There are essays in there by the Hortons, Blight, Berlin, and other such luminaries...well worth the time, even if you just pick and choose which ones to read.
The two-volume Library of America set of Lincoln's papers is worth it -- you get his speeches against the Mexican war that could have been used by anyone arguing against Iraq, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, and so on. While some of it is scrappy correspondence, a lot of it is very readable stuff -- Lincoln is one of those nineteenth century writers who's so eloquent he sounds modern.
Thanks for the link! Very interesting.
I have to admit to preferring Oates' With Malice Toward None to Donald's Lincoln, though I think Donald's bio is more thorough and has a more complicated and critical argument. The reason I like Oates is that it's a more dramatic read (which also means that Lincoln is romanticized a bit more than usual). Don't get me wrong; Oates provides a respectable and reliable account, but I think Donald is the more dispassionate biographer. (So, by admitting that I like Oates more, you now know to characterize any future comment of mine as overly sentimental and illogical! :-D)
TNC,
I know the feeling about hoping to hold onto "simplified views"...they are so easy and not complicated.
The more you learn, the more you read, the more you realize NOTHING is simple, or black or white.
Life is just varying shades of gray.
As far as Lincoln though, as much reading as I have done (which isn't nearly enough...) I don't think I ever had the impression that he was rascist. He said and did "rascist" things but I think they were the ones that were politically expedient.
I have the impression that deep down he really believed we are all people, Americans, regardless of race. Created equal.
Do you have the impression otherwise? From where?
Now, his wife on the other hand...
Not really. Just the occasional remark. I think obviously by 20th century standards he'd be racist, but I don't think that's a very fair standard. So would a lot of abolitionists.
the standards have changed and by today's standards I think from his comments that he would be considered a rascist.
But I get the impression from my readings he didn't feel that way about blacks. But maybe I'm missing something.
Were his statements only because he was a "man of his times", a product of the way all white people spoke at the time? His wife was southern, I'm pretty sure she was a rascist.
Yeah, I just chalk it up to the times. It's funny I used to be very interested in this question, but now, not so much. I don't know how much it ultimately matters. The more history I read, the less use I have for condemnation.
David Herbert Donald's "Lincoln" is recognised as the modern standard for biographies of President Lincoln. If someone is going to read a Lincoln biography, it's the title I would always recommended as both an important historical viewpoint and just a damn good read.
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TNC, just curious: are you planning to turn your reading and research on the civil war into a concrete project, or is it at this point more of an intensive hobby?
If I tell you, I'll have to delete you. And then ban you...
TNC, if you want to go for the exhaustive version check out the unedited version of Michael Burlingame's "Abraham Lincoln: A Life." You can find it at: http://www.knox.edu/Academics/Resources-for-Learning/Lincoln-Studies-Center/Burlingame-Abraham-Lincoln-A-Life.html
Burlingame's biography would actually let you skip some primary reading as the unedited manuscript includes quite a bit. The published version (came out in 2008) is a little shorter (though still two volumes) and thus has less primary sources.
Nevertheless, I'd say it is the most exhaustive and up-to-date Lincoln biography right now.
You could always try We Can Build You by Philip K Dick.
I really, really liked With Malice Toward None, and without wanting to break the rules, would actually recommend Team of Rivals as a biography, because it's not what so many people think it is (what I thought it was), an analysis of the way Lincoln built and then worked with his cabinet.
It is truly a biography, one that uses the lives of three other men in particular as touchstones in order to better enlighten the reader about Lincoln -- it is essentially several biographies wrapped up into one, all of which serve to allow you to get to know the main character much, much better. As but one example: I have always thought of Lincoln as the proverbial man of sorrows in no small part because of all the death he had to deal with at every turn in his life, from his mother to his beloved sister to his children. Well, it turns out that everyone was dealing with that -- it was a very rough time to try to stay alive for very long -- and that just puts a whole new light on it for me. Not that Lincoln's losses were any less because of this fact, because of course they weren't, but that such loss was literally a significant part of the culture of his time. It is a truly brilliant piece of scholarship and I can't praise it enough. Really, truly: It's a full-on biography (boyhood to assassination), and deals with the whole man, his foibles and his warts, as well as his greatness.
If anyone happens to be near Springfield Illinois I recommend a visit to the Lincoln Library and Museum.
http://www.alplm.org/
I just went last weekend for the first time and it's a great place.
We're taking the kids (6 and 10) next month! I'm guessing that there's an element of kid-friendly...? I still have to investigate more, but man, I am so excited!
And I'm such a geek! But then I'm in good company here, aren't I. Ah, to be a geek among the geeks.
It's kid friendly.
I went on Sunday and my recommendation would be get there at 9am when it opens and go through the Museum before the crowds show up. It will be less annoying than trying to read the signs in front of various exhibits whilst corn fed white and black midwesterners, the main demographic I saw, stand in your way.
Then hit the two short presentations they have in their theaters last. Both of which are technically amazing and the "Ghosts in the Library" is deeply moving.
The museum has been criticized for being a bit "Disney", but so what. It does a good job of telling the basics of the story of Lincoln and America during his lifetime.
If anyone doesn't drive the Amtrak station is directly across the street from the Museum.
The Chicago History Museum has the actual bed Lincoln died on and the table Lee used to sign the surrender agreement with Grant.
I've often thought about renting a U Haul and placing said table in my living room. The guards at the Museum might not be kind to me if I tried.
Some people would be offended. Personally I would find stealing the surrender table less offensive than the group of drunken Irish immigrant counterfeiters who tried to steal Lincoln's body.
http://www.history.com/genericContent.do?id=61902
I'm sure while they were drinking in their favorite watering hole it seemed like a good idea.
First of all, thank you TNC for the nod Kiko's House, where we are excerpting Donald's "Lincoln" each Sunday through the year. It's not the most brilliant writing, but the scholarship is impecable, especially when it comes to stuff like Lincoln's changing, nuanced and widely misunderstood views on blacks.
Not a book, but I enjoyed this eulogy of Lincoln by his contemporary (and America's greatest orator) Robert Ingersoll. It is only 20 short pages.
Lincoln was a solid book, but I haven't read any other Lincoln bios.
Might I reccomend Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President, by Allen Guelzo? I thought it was interesting as something of an intellectual biography. Guelzo gives an extensive discussion of Lincoln's unorthodox religious views, which often don't get a lot of coverage. He also ties in Lincoln's evolving views on slavery with his views on a capitalist economy as a means of social progress and economic mobility.
Lincoln's father was the archtype of Jefferson's idealized yeoman farmer, and a fundamentalist Baptist to boot, and Lincoln's rejection of the Jeffersonian agrarian ideology that his father represented was very much tied to his views on slavery, which supported that ideology. Even though he believed that blacks were inferior, he believed that they had the right eat the bread of their own labor and advance themselves economically. Slavery didn't just hurt blacks, however, because the system that kept the planter class on top of their perch also kept poor whites from raising their economic status. Slavery was wrong, therefore, on the basis of morality and a classical liberal critique which promoted a modern market economy which would allow people to improve their lot in life in a way that the Jeffersonian ideology didn't..
All in all, I found it to be a pretty stimulating read.
I know you specifically said not to say this, but AFTER you're done with the straight up bio, read Lincoln's Sword, about Lincoln as writer. It was quick, and quite illuminating as to the current President, as well.
I think Carl Sandburg's "Abraham Lincoln" is worth a read as well.
Hope you feel better soon.
"Team of Rivals-The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln," by Doris Kearns Goodwin is as difficult to put down as a dish of rocky road. She brillliantly intertwines the personal (life for young Abraham after the death of his beloved mother, (while quickly having to adapt to a stepmother), as well as how and why he assigned political rivals to cabinet appointments--not unlike President Obama tapping Republicans for assists--and the manner in which he meshed the varying personalities and characters that ort of strategy created.
I have akways been fond of Carl Sandburg's " Lincoln," because it is so personal and delves into the depths of his soul as only an astutely observant wrter/ poet such as Sandburg could do. It is less a history lesson and more a character description, but the bathwater is still there for the baby.
Lincoln was not a racist.The more I have read about him the clearer I am on that. You can call every single founding father a racist, but he clearly was not of that ilk. The entire format of Lincoln Douglas debating that is used in high schools and colleges to this day is predicated upon his historic, whistlestop debates against Stephen Douglas--who clearly, unabahedly, was a racist--all against slavery.
Lincoln deconstructed slavery's essence in three core value foundations" morality. ethics and constitutionality. Lincoln fiercely proclaimed that no man can own another man; it was morally egregious, totally unethical, and supremely unconstituional. Further, while his wife's family from Atlanta may have owned slaves and been of another mindset--and he did seek to break off his engagement to Mary Todd, who was truly a whack job, even before she lost her children and husband, and because her family also put him off), but was threatened by her father since that sort of thing was socially unacceptable back then--that was not who Lincoln was.( Don't think he wanted to go to the theatr that night, either--he did to shut her up for two hours!)
He was a depressed ad lonely man who had signifiant self doubts and when he died they found a yellowed news clipping with a positive story about him--as though he needed instand validation to lift his heavy spirits. He took the war dead personally and wanted to reconstruct the south to end the divisions and heal the nation. He is probably the most moral man of any president before Carter.
I'd like to second (or third, whatever) the recommendation for the Oates bio. It is beautifully written and well-balanced without being overly sentimemtal toward Lincoln. I just finished it and actually prefer it to the Donald bio, which I read several years ago. Actually, I thought it was more critical toward Lincoln than the Donald book, but others disagree with that assessment.
I only perused a few of the entries, but I think you may an interesting read, to get a sense of Lincoln's place in history, the recently published The Lincoln Anthology: Great Writers on His Life and Legacy from 1860 to Now, which contains writings and speeches from wide spectrum of famous figures (including Marx!).
Skip Burlingame--he tries to psychoanalyze Lincoln and that's just annoying.
Guelzo's good, but (and he's a friend, so . . .) it may be a bit dry. He has a book on the Emancipation Proclamation you should know of, and one on the Lincoln-Douglas debates. All of them have important things to say about AL's attitudes on race.
But do, do, do check Wilentz's article in the latest New Republic on that, too. You'll get a sense of how complex the question is.
I know you don't want topical books, but YOU'D BE INSANE TO IGNORE the late George Frederickson's BIG ENOUGH TO BE INCONSISTENT: Abraham Lincoln Confronts Slavery and Race (The WEB Du Bois Lectures). Short, brilliant, not to be missed.
Donald's better than Oates, and the latter's quite dated now.
Best (scholarship AND readability) current AL bio is: http://www.amazon.com/Lincoln-Purpose-Power-Richard-Carwardine/dp/1400044561
I know you're looking for actual history, but I'd still strongly recommend Gore Vidal's novel.
I wouldn't give priority to David Donald's biography of LIncoln. It's not deeply insightful, treating Lincoln as passive and failing to take seriously his anti-slavery convictions. While Donald wrote years ago about the need "to get right with Lincoln," this book doesn't do that unfortunately. You'll get better insights into Lincoln from Oake's "The Radical and the Republican" and it's a twofer because it also covers Frederick Douglass. I'll support previous recommendations for Stephen Oate's book on Lincoln; it's a better read by far.
Sorry, dude, 1 book's not gonna do it. But two will- William Lee Miller- "Lincoln's Virtues" and "President Lincoln". Two of the best books I've read on any subject, he's an incredible writer. If you want a review, pop over to Hertzberg at the New Yorker, he just read them both.
TNC,
I have read both Oates' With Malice Toward None and Donald's Lincoln, and was not impressed with them. I didn't get a good sense of the whole man from either book.
I think poster ellaesther [11:51am] is right on about Kearns-Goodwins' Team of Rivals. It is a biography in every sense of the word and it would be a mistake to walk away from it because of the notion that it "only look[s] at him from a particular perspective, or in a particular period." That is just not true. I don't know why that idea has gained attention, other than the 'opinion=assertion=fact' false construct.
The book examines his whole life. It is a biography and if you want to understand the man, from a boy to a president, as he made his way through the most troublesome of times, you should read it [in my humblest of opinions].
I'm not going to get into the racist thing as I do not think at the end of his life he was a racist, even if he were judged by today's standards. But, that's another whole discussion.
I have not yet read Guelzo's Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President, but it's been on my "to read" list for a couple years because of all the good things I've heard about it. If I remember correctly, your Atlantic colleague Benjamin Schwartz gave it a rave review a few years ago.
There was an outstanding article by Garry Wills on Lincoln and racism recently in the New York Review of Books:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22750
Re Sandburg's "Abraham Lincoln": Beautifully written, but be aware that he throws in a good bit of fiction with the fact, so much so that calling it non-fiction is a stretch. "Faction" would be more appropriate.
I really enjoyed the David Herbert Donald biography and really disliked the Oates biography -- personal taste, maybe. The Oates book just had an annoying voice, I thought. I also second and third the comments on "Team of Rivals" and "Lincoln's Virtues"+ its sequel -- great stuff. I guess asking for one volume on Lincoln is like asking for one on the Civil War -- anyone who's read more than one can't recommend just one!