Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power (64 page)

5.
The Purposes of Power (1861
–
6
5
)

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
–
6
5
)

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 and 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).

The 1864 election is the subject of David E. Long,
The Jewel of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln’s Re-election and the End of Slavery
(Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1994). Although he probably understates the extent of treason amongst wartime dissidents, Frank L. Klement has done more than anyone to shed light on the antiwar Democrats and the 1864 climax of the peace movement: see, especially,
The Copperheads in the Middle West
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), and
The Limits of Dissent: Clement L. Vallandigham and the Civil War
(1970; rept. New York: Fordham University Press, 1998).

7.
The Potency of Death

William Hanchett, in
The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983), provides a coolheaded examination of Lincoln’s assassination and its subsequent interpretation and reinterpretation. Contemporary reactions to Lincoln’s death are considered in Thomas Reed Turner,
Beware the People Weeping: Public Opinion and the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982), and David B. Chesebrough, “
No Sorrow like Our Sorrow
”
: Northern Protestant Ministers and the Assassination of Lincoln
(Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1994). The evolving place of Lincoln and of the Civil War in the nation’s psyche is the focus, respectively, of Merrill D. Peterson,
Lincoln in American Memory
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), and David W. Blight,
Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001).

Reference

Finally, two indispensable reference works deserve special mention: Earl Schenck Miers, ed.,
Lincoln Day by Day: A Chronology, 1809
–
1865,
3 vols. (Washington, DC: Lincoln Sesquicentennial Commission, 1960), and Mark E. Neely, Jr.,
The Abraham Lincoln Encyclopedia
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982).

CHRONOLOGY OF LINCOLN’S LIFE