For the New Salem period, Benjamin P. Thomas’s useful Lincoln’s New Salem (Springfield, IL: Abraham Lincoln Association, 1934) should be read in conjunction with Douglas L. Wilson, Honor’s Voice: The Transformation of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), a shrewd and original book which is also revelatory about Lincoln’s early years in Springfield. There are further insights in Douglas L. Wilson, Lincoln Before Washington: New Perspectives on the Illinois Years (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), and valuable social context in Kenneth J. Winkle, The Young Eagle: The Rise of Abraham Lincoln (Dallas: Taylor, 2001). Lincoln’s economic ideas and his Whig perspectives are the subject of Gabor S. Boritt, Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream (Memphis: Memphis State University Press, 1978); Olivier Frayssé, Lincoln, Land, and Labor, 1809–1860, trans. Sylvia Neely (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994); Daniel Walker Howe, The Political Culture of the American Whigs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979); Joel H. Silbey, “ ‘Always a Whig in Politics’: The Partisan Life of Abraham Lincoln,” Papers of the Abraham Lincoln Association 8 (1986); and Guelzo’s biography.
Lincoln’s political career before 1850 is the subject of Paul Simon, Lincoln’s Preparation for Greatness: The Illinois Legislative Years (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965; repr. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971); Donald W. Riddle, Lincoln Runs for Congress (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1948); Donald W. Riddle, Congressman Abraham Lincoln (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979); and Paul Findley, A. Lincoln: The Crucible of Congress (New York: Crown, 1979).
Of the many works which consider Lincoln’s temperament and personality, and his understanding of religion, the following warrant particular attention: Michael Burlingame, The Inner World of Abraham Lincoln (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994); Charles B. Strozier, Lincoln’s Quest for Union: Public and Private Meanings (New York: Basic Books, 1982); William J. Wolf, The Almost Chosen People: A Study of the Religion of Abraham Lincoln (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959); Hans J. Morgenthau and David Hein, Essays on Lincoln’s Faith and Politics, ed. Kenneth W. Thompson (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1983); Allen C. Guelzo, “Abraham Lincoln and the Doctrine of Necessity,” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 18 (1997); Robert V. Bruce, “The Riddle of Death,” in Gabor S. Boritt, ed., The Lincoln Enigma: The Changing Faces of an American Icon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); and Stewart Winger, Lincoln, Religion, and Romantic Cultural Politics (DeKalb: Northern Illinios University Press, 2003).
2. The Power of Opinion (1854–58)
Don E. Fehrenbacher, Prelude to Greatness: Lincoln in the 1850’s (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962), remains the outstanding work on Lincoln and the political upheaval wrought by the Kansas-Nebraska Act: it has rightly achieved the status of a classic. Also helpful in placing Lincoln within the evolving Republican coalition are Don E. Fehrenbacher, Chicago Giant: A Biography of Long John Wentworth (Madison, WI: American History Research Center, 1957); Mark M. Krug, Lyman Trumbull: Conservative Radical (New York: A. S. Barnes, 1965); and Edward Magdol, Owen Lovejoy: Abolitionist in Congress (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1967). The wider national context of party realignment is best pursued in two magisterial works: Michael F. Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), and William E. Gienapp, The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852–1856 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). The state setting is delineated in Stephen L. Hansen, The Making of the Third Party System: Voters and Parties in Illinois, 1850–1876 (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1980).
Lincoln’s oratorical style and engagement with the public are pursued in Waldo W. Braden, Abraham Lincoln: Public Speaker (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988). Of the several scholarly editions of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the most imaginative is Harold Holzer, ed., The Lincoln-Douglas Debates: The First Complete Unexpurgated Text (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), which exposes the unedited reality behind the polished texts that appeared in the friendly partisan press. Harry V. Jaffa, Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959, 1982), is a political philosopher’s exploration of the principles and continuities underpinning Lincoln’s political thought; David Zarefsky, Lincoln, Douglas, and Slavery: In the Crucible of Public Debate (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), offers a rhetorical analysis of the candidates’ arguments. William Lee Miller, Lincoln’s Virtues: An Ethical Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), rightly emphasizes Lincoln’s devotion to a moral standard while yet remaining an effective democratic politician.
3. The Power of Party (1858–60)
The Republican party that elected Lincoln is contrastingly delineated in Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970); Richard H. Sewell, Ballots for Freedom: Antislavery Politics in the United States, 1837–1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976); Michael F. Holt, The Political Crisis of the 1850s (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1978); and William E. Gienapp, “The Republican Party and the Slave Power,” in R. H. Abzug and S. E. Maizlish, eds., New Perspectives on Race and Slavery in America (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1986). Lincoln’s increasingly evident appetite for the presidency and the 1860 campaign itself are the subjects of William E. Baringer, Lincoln’s Rise to Power (Boston: Little, Brown, 1937), and Reinhard H. Luthin, The First Lincoln Campaign (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1944). The maneuvers at the Chicago convention are further examined in Willard L. King, Lincoln’s Manager: David Davis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960). For the Democrats’ predicament, see in particular Robert W. Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973). The most helpful analysis of voting patterns is William E. Gienapp’s essay “Who Voted for Lincoln?,” in John L. Thomas, ed., Abraham Lincoln and the American Political Tradition (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1986), pp. 68–72. The religious dimension of the campaign is set in wider context in Richard J. Carwardine, Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), and William E. Gienapp, “Nativism and the Creation of a Republican Majority in the North Before the Civil War,” Journal of American History 72 (1985).
4. The Limits of Power (1860–61)
Phillip Shaw Paludan’s The Presidency of Abraham Lincoln (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1994) offers a fresh and incisive examination of Lincoln’s term of office and its immediate antecedents. James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), and Peter J. Parish, The American Civil War (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1975), provide the two most readable and authoritative single-volume treatments of the conflict. Each of these is relevant to the subject of this and later chapters, as is Allan Nevins, The War for the Union, 4 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1959–71).
David M. Potter, Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1942, 1962); Kenneth M. Stampp, And the War Came: The North and the Secession Crisis (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1950); and William E. Baringer, A House Dividing: Lincoln as President Elect (Springfield, IL: Abraham Lincoln Association, 1945), are indispensable for understanding Lincoln’s options and actions in the months that climaxed in hostilities at Fort Sumter. Harry V. Jaffa, A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), examines Lincoln’s political thought as expressed in this crisis of the Union, and places it in a wide philosophical context. On the Sumter crisis itself, Richard N. Current, Lincoln and the First Shot (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1963), provides a compelling analysis.
The significance of the border states, and Lincoln’s strategy toward them, is the subject of William E. Gienapp, “Abraham Lincoln and the Border
States,” in Thomas F. Schwartz, ed., “For a Vast Future Also”: Essays from the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association (New York: Fordham University Press, 1999), and William W. Freehling, The South vs. the South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). Lincolnians’ efforts to cement Democrats into the war coalition are addressed in Joel H. Silbey, A Respectable Minority: The Democratic Party in the Civil War Era, 1860–1869 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), and Christopher Dell, Lincoln and the War Democrats: The Grand Erosion of Conservative Tradition (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1975). Lincoln’s grappling with the international dimension of the conflict and his determination to keep the European powers from intervening is the focus of Howard Jones, Union in Peril: The Crisis over British Intervention in the Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992).
For this period of the presidency, as for the later years, historians are especially dependent on the pens and historical self-awareness of Lincoln’s secretaries. Probably the single most valuable source for Lincoln in the White House context is Hay’s diary, now available in a fine modern edition: Michael Burlingame and John R. Turner Ettlinger, eds., Inside Lincoln’s White House: The Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997). Hay’s sparkling newspaper commentaries, dating chiefly from the early presidency, are in Michael Burlingame, ed., Lincoln’s Journalist: John Hay’s Anonymous Writings for the Press, 1860–1864 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999). Important, too, are Michael Burlingame, ed., At Lincoln’s Side: John Hay’s Civil War Correspondence and Selected Writings (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000), and Michael Burlingame, ed., With Lincoln in the White House: Letters, Memoranda, and Other Writings of John G. Nicolay, 1860–1865 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000), as well as Burlingame’s edition of Nicolay’s interviews and essays, noted earlier.
5. The Purposes of Power (1861–65)
Lincoln’s views on race are considered in Don E. Fehrenbacher, “Only His Stepchildren: Lincoln and the Negro,” Civil War History 20 (1974), and George M. Fredrickson, “A Man but Not a Brother: Abraham Lincoln and Racial Equality,” Journal of Southern History 61 (1975). They are also the subject of Lerone Bennett, Jr., Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream (Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company, 2000), which is more an uncomfortable polemic than a balanced historical analysis, and turns Lincoln into a white supremacist. Gabor Boritt has explored in several publications the complexity and evolution of Lincoln’s thinking about colonization, most recently in “Did He Dream of a Lily-White America? The Voyage to Linconia,” in Gabor S. Boritt, ed., The Lincoln Enigma: The Changing Faces of an American Icon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). Lincoln’s approach to Indian issues is addressed in David A. Nichols, Lincoln and the Indians: Civil War Policy and Politics (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1978). Jean H. Baker, Affairs of Party: The Political Culture of Northern Democrats in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983), indicates the gulf between Lincoln’s views and those of vehement Democratic racists.
There is yet no definitive treatment of Lincoln and emancipation, but the several helpful studies available include John Hope Franklin, The Emancipation Proclamation (New York: Anchor, 1965), and Benjamin F. Quarles, Lincoln and the Negro (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962). The portrait painter F. B. Carpenter, in The Inner Life of Abraham Lincoln: Six Months at the White House (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995; rept. of 1866 edition), reports his conversations with Lincoln, on which historians of emancipation have been especially dependent. James M. McPherson, “Who Freed the Slaves?” in his Drawn with the Sword: Reflections on the American Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), and Ira Berlin, “Who Freed the Slaves? Emancipation and Its Meaning,” in David Blight and Brooks D. Simpson, eds., Union and Emancipation: Essays on Politics and Race in the Civil War Era (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1997), offer contrasting answers to their common question. Lincoln’s contribution to the process that turned the Emancipation Proclamation into the Thirteenth Amendment is examined in Michael Vorenberg’s deeply researched Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
The religious workings of Lincoln’s mind in wartime are explored in Nicholas Parrillo, “Lincoln’s Calvinist Transformation: Emancipation and War,” Civil War History 46 (Sept. 2000); Mark A. Noll, “Both Pray to the Same God”: The Singularity of Lincoln’s Faith in the Era of the Civil War,” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 18 (Winter 1997), pp. 11–12; Ronald C. White, Jr., Lincoln’s Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002); and Guelzo’s biography. Garry Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), is a brilliant work, but one which imposes on Lincoln’s short speech more than it can reasonably bear.
Lincoln’s plans for reconstruction and his relations with the Radical Republicans can be pursued in Hans L. Trefousse, The Radical Republicans: Lincoln’s Vanguard for Racial Justice (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969); Herman Belz, Reconstructing the Union: Theory and Policy During the Civil War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1969); Peyton McCrary, Abraham Lincoln and Reconstruction: The Louisiana Experiment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978); and LaWanda Cox, Lincoln and Black Freedom: A Study in Presidential Leadership (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1981). Taking issue with these is William C. Harris’s wide-ranging study, With Charity for All: Lincoln and the Restoration of the Union (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997), which emphasizes the essentially conservative purposes of Lincoln’s restorationist policy. For the larger context, Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), is indispensable.
6. The Instruments of Power (1861–65)
Lincoln’s respect for the Constitution, his use of the coercive power of the state, and his record on civil liberties are the subject of two outstanding studies: James G. Randall, Constitutional Problems Under Lincoln (rev. ed., Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1951), and Mark E. Neely, The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). Also helpful are several essays in Don E. Fehrenbacher, Lincoln in Text and Context (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987), and Herman Belz, Abraham Lincoln, Constitutionalism, and Equal Rights in the Civil War Era (New York: Fordham University Press, 1998). The centralizing and nationalizing tendencies of the war are discussed in Richard Franklin Bensel, Yankee Leviathan: The Origins of Central State Authority in America, 1859–1877 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), and Heather Cox Richardson, The Greatest Nation of the Earth: Republican Economic Policies During the Civil War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997).
Lincoln’s relationship with his generals, his military understanding, and the development of a hard war strategy are best pursued in T. Harry Williams, Lincoln and His Generals (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952), a sparkling gem of a book; Gabor S. Boritt, ed., Lincoln’s Generals (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); and Mark Grimsley, The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy Toward Southern Civilians, 1861–1865 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Lincoln’s enthusiasm for the possibilities of new technology is the subject of Robert V. Bruce, Lincoln and the Tools of War (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1956).
The argument that party conflict helped the Union survive is set out in Eric L. McKitrick, “Party Politics and the Union and Confederate War Efforts,” in William Nisbet Chambers and Walter Dean Burnham, eds., The American Party Systems: Stages of Political Development (2nd ed., New York: Oxford University Press, 1967). It is provocatively rebutted by Mark Neely in The Union Divided: Party Conflict in the Civil War North (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002). The story of Lincoln an
d the wartime Republican party can be approached from a variety of angles. The best studies include Harry J. Carman and Reinhard H. Luthin, Lincoln and the Patronage (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943); Kenneth M. Stampp, Indiana Politics During the Civil War (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1945, 1978); William B. Hesseltine, Lincoln and the War Governors (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1955); Dale Baum, The Civil War Party System: The Case of Massachusetts, 1848–1876 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984); Robert J. Cook, Baptism of Fire: The Republican Party in Iowa, 1838–1878 (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1994); and Lex Renda, Running on the Record: Civil War Era Politics in New Hampshire (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998). Adam I. P. Smith’s book on the North’s wartime political experience, No Party Now: Politicians and the Public in the Civil War North (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming), will be an important addition to this list.
The most assured and grounded study of mainstream Protestantism in the wartime Union is James H. Moorhead, American Apocalypse: Yankee Protestants and the Civil War, 1860–1869 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978). The role of the United States Sanitary Commission in rallying broad-based support for the Union is well examined in Jeanie Attie, Patriotic Toil: Northern Women and the American Civil War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998). Union soldiers’ motivation and politics are addressed in Reid Mitchell, Civil War Soldiers (New York: Viking Penguin, 1988); James M. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Joseph Allan Frank, With Ballot and Bayonet: The Political Socialization of American Civil War Soldiers (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998); William C. Davis, Lincoln’s Men: How President Lincoln Became Father to an Army and a Nation (New York: The Free Press, 1999); and Steven E. Woodworth, While God Is Marching On: The Religious World of Civil War Soldiers (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001).
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