On Lincoln

Description

For sixty years the journal Civil War History has presented the best original scholarship in the study of America's greatest struggle. The Kent State University Press is pleased to present this third volume in its multivolume series, reintroducing the most influential of more than 500 articles published in the journal. From military command, strategy, and tactics to political leadership, race, abolitionism, the draft, and women's issues, and from the war's causes to its aftermath and Reconstruction, Civil War History has published pioneering and provocative analyses of the determining aspects of the Middle Period.In this third volume of the Civil War History Readers, John T. Hubbell has selected groundbreaking essays by Douglas L. Wilson, Mark Neely Jr., Herman Hattaway and Archer Jones, Ludwell Johnson, Allen Guelzo, and other scholars who examine Lincoln's assertive idealism, leadership, views on slavery, abolitionism, emancipation, and Lincoln as a war president. Hubbell's introduction assesses the contribution of each article to our understanding of Lincoln and the Civil War era.

Sujets

• Histoire
• USA
• United States of America
• History of the Americas
• American Civil War
• États-Unis
• Guerre de Sécession

Informations

• Publié par: The Kent State University Press
• Date de parution: 25 avril 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781612778525
• Langue: English

Extrait

“Some of today’s most influential Lincoln historians, including Douglas L. Wilson and Allen C. Guelzo, first introduced their trailblazing findings in Civil War History . For inclusion in this anthology, John Hubbell has judiciously selected gems from among the many Lincoln-related articles that ran in that indispensable journal, covering topics ranging from emancipation to military strategy, from important public documents to significant private concerns. Space is granted to both laudatory and critical voices. Lincoln buffs and professional historians alike will welcome the publication of this valuable anthology.”
MICHAEL BURLINGAME, author of Abraham Lincoln: A Life
“These extraordinary essays, culled from more than 500 from Civil War History ’s long-serving editor, are timely and as refreshing as when first published. All are chock-full of information that serves us well. In these beautifully written articles, the authors cover all of the important issues confronted by President Abraham Lincoln, from leadership and the military to race, the first draft in American history, dissent, and the women of the Middle Period. This volume is a major contribution to the more than 16,000 books written about our most respected chief magistrate.”
FRANK J. WILLIAMS, Founding Chair of The Lincoln Forum and retired Chief Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court
“John Hubbell and the Kent State University Press have brought together and conveniently made available fifteen important articles on Lincoln from past issues of Civil War History , the premier journal for the period. Written by leading authorities on Lincoln and the Civil War, most of the articles appropriately focus on the main issues involving Lincoln’s presidency. Professor Hubbell, also a prominent historian, provides an insightful assessment of each article’s contribution to our understanding of Lincoln’s career and role in the Civil War. Readers interested in this great president will want to have a copy of this book on their desk.”
WILLIAM C. HARRIS, Lincoln Prize–winning author of Lincoln and the Border States: Preserving the Union
On Lincoln
CIVIL WAR HISTORY READERS
Since 1955 the journal Civil War History has presented the best original scholarship in the study of America’s greatest trial. In commemoration of the war’s sesquicentennial, The Kent State University Press presents Civil War History Readers, a multivolume series reintroducing the most influential articles published in the journal. Conflict and Command Edited by John T. Hubbell Race and Recruitment Edited by John David Smith On Lincoln Edited by John T. Hubbell
CIVIL WAR HISTORY READERS VOLUME 3
________________________________
ON LINCOLN
Edited by JOHN T. HUBBELL
THE KENT STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Kent, Ohio
© 2014 by The Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio 44242
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2013042808
ISBN 978-1-60635-200-7
Manufactured in the United States of America
L IBRARY OF C ONGRESS C ATALOGING-IN -P UBLICATION D ATA
On Lincoln / edited by John T. Hubbell
pages cm — (Civil War history readers)
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-60635-200-7 (pbk.) ∞
1. Lincoln, Abraham, 1809–1865—Political and social views. 2. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Biography. 3. United States—Politics and government—1861–1865. 4. Political leadership—United States—History—19th century. 5. Presidents—United States—Biography. I. Hubbell, John T., editor of compilation.
E457.2.O5 2014
973.7092—dc23 2013042808
18  17  16  15  14      5  4  3  2  1
Contents
Introduction
Abraham Lincoln as Revolutionary
Otto H. Olsen
Lincoln and Van Buren in the Steps of the Fathers: Another Look at the Lyceum Address
Major L. Wilson
On the Verge of Greatness: Psychological Reflections on Lincoln at the Lyceum
Charles B. Strozier
Abraham Lincoln, Ann Rutledge, and the Evidence of Herndon’s Informants
Douglas L. Wilson
Abraham Lincoln and “That Fatal First of January”
Douglas L. Wilson
Lincoln and the Mexican War: An Argument by Analogy
Mark E. Neely Jr .
Lincoln as Military Strategist
Herman Hattaway and Archer Jones
Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln as War Presidents: Nothing Succeeds Like Success
Ludwell H. Johnson
To Suppress or Not to Suppress: Abraham Lincoln and the Chicago Times
Craig D. Tenney
“A Catholic Family Newspaper” Views the Lincoln Administration: John Mullaly’s Copperhead Weekly
Joseph George Jr .
Abraham Lincoln on Labor and Capital
James A. Stevenson
Lincoln’s Calvinist Transformation: Emancipation and War
Nicholas Parrillo
Only His Stepchildren: Lincoln and the Negro
Don E. Fehrenbacher
Defending Emancipation: Abraham Lincoln and the Conkling Letter, 1863
Allen C. Guelzo
The Historian as Gamesman: Otto Eisenschiml, 1880–1963
William Hanchett
Contributors
Index
Introduction
Abraham Lincoln is a historiographical lodestone, the subject of so many books that one feels obliged to cite the number (16,000?). They range from the mythological to the hagiographic to the defamatory, from monographs on any number of topics, often illuminating, and to biographies, all definitive. The articles in the present collection address subjects salient to an understanding of the man. Perhaps salient is a term that carries its own risks, just as a military salient is a tactical circumstance that invites attack. Some may also invite the charge of being dated, having been published in an earlier century! A fair criticism, perhaps, or at least an expected one. On reflection, however, historical writing at its best is long lasting. Consider Lord Charnwood’s biography of Lincoln (1917) and Frederick Douglass’s speech at the dedication of the Freedmen’s Memorial in Washington, D.C. (1876). The Freedmen’s monument may elicit an understandable unease among latter-day visitors, but Douglass’s words are the most insightful commentary on Lincoln and race, slavery, and emancipation yet written. Charnwood’s slender volume, published long before the opening of the expansive public records and correspondence, contains insights into his life, character, and presidency seldom equaled even by his most accomplished biographers. Both Douglass and Charnwood write with an elegance that does justice to the great man. Both agree that Lincoln was a great man and offer no apology for that judgment. In Charnwood’s words, the biographer should not “shrink too timidly from the display of partisanship which, on one side or the other, it would be insensate not to feel. The true obligation of impartiality is that he should conceal no fact which, in his own mind, tells against his views.” The admirable scholarship, the subtlety of analysis, and the appreciation of context in the following articles are reasons enough for their inclusion. If they inspire further reflection and even a few more publications, so much the better.
Otto Olsen’s “Abraham Lincoln as a Revolutionary” is powerfully analytical and occasionally sardonic in tone. The last may stem from the cooling toward Lincoln at the time of publication. Many historians were critical of his persistent advocacy of colonization, his slow path to emancipation, and what may have been an undue “reasonableness and restraint.” Some even found fault with his prose! Olsen chooses to underscore what Lincoln did, not his persona or political tactics. The “greatest revolutionary is the one who is most successful, not the one who is most extreme, dramatic, or vocal.” Lincoln’s “assertive idealism” was evident in his early life, as was his belief in a free society, resting on the essential phrases of the Declaration of Independence. He also recognized the counter arguments. In his 1852 eulogy to Henry Clay, he spoke specifically and pointedly of an “increasing number of men [who] for the sake of perpetuating slavery… were beginning to assail and ridicule the white man’s charter of freedom.… So far as I have learned, the first American of any note, to do or attempt to do this, was the late John C. Calhoun.” This statement was a departure from and a challenge to a long acceptance of the fact of slavery and the growing power of its adherents.
Slavery, in all its manifestations, was the greatest threat to the ideals and the prosperity of the nation, a point on which Lincoln “displayed as firm a commitment as the abolitionists themselves.” Southerners in fact increasingly thought of him as a revolutionary agent, and as the emerging leader of a Northern political party, more dangerous than the abolitionists—who themselves had little regard for Lincoln. The Civil War was a revolutionary event and Lincoln was its guiding hand. In Olsen’s words: “His true greatness was not that he had such admirable personal qualities, but that he successfully applied them in a revolutionary way.” One might infer from this article that Lincoln’s leadership was of consequence, a conclusion strongly challenged by some recent historians.
Lincoln’s “assertive idealism,” or variations on that theme, has been of interest to any number of biographers, mostly admiring, with a corporal’s guard of detractors. Of special interest is his January 27, 1838, address, “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions,” presented at the Young Men’s Lyceum at Springfield, Illinois. In the two following essays, the authors interpret this remarkable speech in the context of national politics and in its ideological and psychological implications. Both give attention to the widely quoted passage: “Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.… It thirsts and burns for distinction; and if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves or enslaving freemen.”
Major L. Wilson, in “Lincoln and Van Buren in the Steps of the Fathers,” considers Lincoln’s twin fears, a growing “mobocratic spirit” and an always present threat of “Caesarism.” Political theorists have for centuries argued th