The Fiery Trial (58 page)

Preface

1.
Andrew Boyd,
A Memorial Lincoln Bibliography
(Albany, 1870).

2.
Richard N. Current,
The Lincoln Nobody Knows
(New York, 1958), 12; T. J. Barnett to Samuel L. M. Barlow, June 6, 1863, Samuel L. M. Barlow Papers, HL.

3.
For the perils of using “recollected words” attributed to Lincoln, see Don E. Fehrenbacher and Virginia Fehrenbacher, eds.,
Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln
(Stanford, 1996); and Don E. Fehrenbacher, “The Words of Lincoln,” in John L. Thomas, ed.,
Abraham Lincoln and the American Political Tradition
(Amherst, Mass., 1986), 31–49.

4.
See Douglas L. Wilson,
Lincoln’s Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words
(New York, 2006).

5.
The Works of Charles Sumner
(15 vols.; Boston, 1870–83), 4: 10–11.

6.
See, for example, William Lee Miller,
Lincoln’s Virtues: An Ethical Biography
(New York, 2002), 151, 181, 192, 228; Joseph R. Fornieri, “Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation: A Model of Prudent Leadership,” in Ethan Fishman, ed.,
Tempered Strength: Studies in the Nature and Scope of Prudential Leadership
(Lanham, Md., 2002), 127–32; Jean Bethke Elshtain, “Forward,” in Kenneth L. Deutsch and Joseph R. Fornieri, eds.,
Lincoln’s American Dream
(Washington, D.C., 2005), ix; Allen C. Guelzo, “Lincoln and the Abolitionists,”
Wilson Quarterly
, 24 (Autumn 2000), 66–69. A significant recent counter to this point of view is James Oakes,
The Radical and the Politician: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics
(New York, 2007).

7.
CW
, 5: 318, 389.

8.
Miller,
Lincoln’s Virtues
, 105;
Chicago Tribune
, April 12, 1865; Peter Lassman and Ronald Speirs, eds.,
Max Weber: Political Writings
(New York, 1994), 352–59, 369.

9.
Matthew Pinsker, “Lincoln Theme 2.0,”
JAH
, 96 (September 2009), 432–33.

10.
Chicago Daily Tribune
, May 15, 1858.

11.
“Introduction,” in Joseph R. Fornieri and Sara V. Gabbard, eds.,
Lincoln’s America, 1809–1865
(Carbondale, Ill., 2008), 3.

1
“I Am Naturally Anti-Slavery”

1.
CW
, 7: 281. We know little of Lincoln’s early life. In David Donald’s biography, Lincoln reaches the age of twenty-one in fewer than 20 pages. Donald,
Lincoln
(New York, 1995). In Michael Burlingame’s 2,000-page
Abraham Lincoln: A Life
(2 vols.; Baltimore, 2008), his youth occupies fewer than 50 pages.

2.
Marion B. Lucas,
A History of Blacks in Kentucky
, vol. 1:
From Slavery to Segregation, 1760–1891
(Frankfort, Ky., 1992), xv–xx, 2–3; Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene D. Genovese,
Slavery in White and Black: Class and Race in the Southern Slaveholders’ New World Order
(New York, 2008), 7; Michael Burlingame,
The Inner World of Abraham Lincoln
(Urbana, Ill., 1994), 21; Richard L. Miller,
Lincoln and His World: The Early Years, Birth to Illinois Legislature
(Mechanicsburg, Pa., 2006), 17–29. For the division between Lower South, Upper South, and Border South, see William W. Freehling,
The Road to Disunion: Secessionists Triumphant, 1854–1861
(New York, 2007), 2–3.

3.
Lowell H. Harrison,
The Antislavery Movement in Kentucky
(Lexington, Ky., 1978), 20–25; James F. Hopkins, ed.,
Papers of Henry Clay
(10 vols.; Lexington, Ky., 1959–91), 1: 5–7; J. Blaine Hudson, “In Pursuit of Freedom: Slave Law and Emancipation in Louisville and Jefferson County, Kentucky,”
Filson History Quarterly
, 76 (Summer 2002), 290–92; Kenneth J. Winkle, “‘Paradox Though it may Seem’: Lincoln on Antislavery, Race, and Union, 1837–1860,” in Brian Dirck, ed.,
Lincoln Emancipated: The President and the Politics of Race
(DeKalb, Ill., 2007), 10.

4.
Stephen Aron,
How the West Was Lost: The Transformation of Kentucky from Daniel Boone to Henry Clay
(Baltimore, 1996), 99–100; Monica Najar, “‘Meddling with Emancipation’: Baptists, Authority, and the Rift over Emancipation in the Upper South,”
Journal of the Early Republic
, 25 (Summer 2005), 157–87; Louis Warren,
Lincoln’s Youth: Indiana Years
(New York, 1959), 13; Miller,
Lincoln and His World: Early Years
, 27; Ronald C. White Jr.,
A. Lincoln: A Biography
(New York, 2009), 18.

5.
CW
, 4: 62; Thomas Cooper,
Some Information Respecting America
(London, 1794), 25; Kenneth J. Winkle,
The Young Eagle: The Rise of Abraham Lincoln
(Dallas, 2001), 11; Andrew R. L. Cayton,
Frontier Indiana
(Bloomington, Ind., 1996), 261–67.

6.
Jeremy Adelman and Stephen Aron, “From Borderlands to Borders: Empires, Nation-States, and the Peoples in Between in North American History,”
American Historical Review
, 104 (June 1999), 814–23; Nicole Etcheson,
The Emerging Midwest: Upland Southerners and the Political Culture of the Old Northwest, 1787–1861
(Bloomington, Ind., 1996), 4–5; William N. Parker, “From Northwest to Midwest: Social Bases of a Regional History,” in David C. Klingaman and Richard K. Vedder, eds.,
Essays in Nineteenth Century Economic History: The Old Northwest
(Athens, Ohio, 1975), 23; J. L. Balen to Justin S. Morrill, March 11, 1859, Justin S. Morrill Papers, LC.

7.
James E. Davis,
Frontier Illinois
(Bloomington, Ind., 1998), 157;
National Era
, August 19, 1847;
CW
, 3: 135.

8.
Richard Yates and Catherine Yates Pickering,
Richard Yates: Civil War Governor
(Danville, Ill., 1966), 107; John Mack Faragher,
Sugar Creek: Life on the Illinois Prairie
(New Haven, 1986), 46–48; Etcheson,
Emerging Midwest
, 67.

9.
Cayton,
Frontier Indiana
, 189–90; John C. Hammond,
Slavery, Freedom, and Expansion in the Early American West
(Charlottesville, 2007), 97–103, 116–21.

10.
Paul Simon,
Lincoln’s Preparation for Greatness
(Norman, Okla., 1965), 121; Paul Finkelman, “Evading the Ordinance: The Persistence of Bondage in Indiana and Illinois,”
Journal of the Early Republic
, 9 (Spring 1989), 35–48; Arvah E. Strickland, “The Illinois Background of Lincoln’s Attitude toward Slavery and the Negro,”
JISHS
, 56 (Autumn 1963), 476.

11.
Davis,
Frontier Illinois
, 167–68; Suzanne C. Guasco, “‘The Deadly Influence of Negro Capitalists’: Southern Yeomen and Resistance to the Expansion of Slavery in Illinois,”
CWH
, 47 (March 2001), 7–11;
CW
, 3: 455–57.

12.
Paul M. Angle, ed.,
Prairie State: Impressions of Illinois, 1673–1967, by Travelers and Other Observers
(Chicago, 1968), 81; N. Dwight Harris,
The History of Negro Servitude in Illinois
(Chicago, 1904), 48–52, 226–27; Simon,
Lincoln’s Preparation
, 124–25.

13.
Merton L. Dillon, “The Antislavery Movement in Illinois, 1809–1844” (unpub. diss., University of Michigan, 1951), 124; Harris,
History of Negro Servitude
, 229, 235; Elmer Gertz, “The Black Codes of Illinois,”
JISHS
, 56 (Autumn 1963), 454–73; “Notes on Illinois: Laws,”
Illinois Monthly Magazine
(March 1832), 244;
Liberator
, April 3, 1840.

14.
Winkle,
Young Eagle
, 50.

15.
For the market revolution and its impact, see Charles Sellers,
The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815–1846
(New York, 1991); and Melvin Stokes and Stephen Conway, eds.,
The Market Revolution in America: Social, Political, and Religious Expressions, 1800–1880
(Charlottesville, 1996).

16.
Burlingame,
Abraham Lincoln: A Life
, 1: 43–44, 56–57.

17.
Thomas C. Buchanan,
Black Life on the Mississippi: Slaves, Free Blacks, and the Western Steamboat World
(Chapel Hill, 2004);
CW
, 4: 62.

18.
Albert A. Fossier,
New Orleans: The Glamour Period, 1800–1840
(New Orleans, 1957); Joseph G. Tregle Jr., “Early New Orleans Society: A Reappraisal,”
JSH
, 18 (February 1952), 20–36; J. P. Mayer, ed.,
Journey to America
, trans. George Lawrence (New Haven, 1959), 164–65; Richard C. Wade,
Slavery in the Cities: The South, 1820–1860
(New York, 1964), 150.

19.
Miller,
Lincoln and His World: Early Years
, 81–82; Wade,
Slavery in the Cities
, 5–6, 199–201; Walter Johnson,
Soul by Soul: Life inside the Antebellum Slave Market
(Cambridge, Mass., 1999).

20.
Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis, eds.,
Herndon’s Informants
(Urbana, Ill.,1998), 457; Miller,
Lincoln and His World: Early Years
, 104–5;
CW
, 4: 64. Hanks also later claimed that Lincoln exclaimed after watching a New Orleans slave auction, “If I ever get a chance to hit that thing, I’ll hit it hard.” Don E. Fehrenbacher and Virginia Fehrenbacher, who have evaluated numerous such recollected statements by Lincoln, consider this one among the least credible. Don E. Fehrenbacher and Virginia Fehrenbacher, eds.,
Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln
(Stanford, 1996), 198. Allen Gentry’s grandson claimed that his grandmother, Gentry’s wife, related that Lincoln called a slave auction he witnessed in New Orleans a “disgrace.” But the interview in which the grandson related this occurred in 1936, over a century after the alleged statement. Burlingame,
Abraham Lincoln: A Life
, 1: 44.

21.
BD
, 1: 138–39.

22.
David Herbert Donald,
“We Are Lincoln Men”: Abraham Lincoln and His Friends
(New York, 2003), 29, 44–47, 55;
CW
, 2: 320.

23.
Joseph A. Harder, “The Lincoln-Douglass ‘Debate’: Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass and the Rediscovery of America” (unpub. diss., University of Virginia, 2004), 27–28;
CW
, 1: 260–61.

24.
Miller,
Lincoln and His World: Early Years
, 198, 231; Lucas,
History of Blacks in Kentucky
, 1: 89; Catherine Clinton,
Mrs. Lincoln: A Life
(New York, 2009), 15–17.

25.
Richard E. Hart, “Springfield’s African-Americans as a Part of the Lincoln Community,”
JALA
, 20 (Winter 1999), 40–42; Stephen Berry,
House of Abraham: Lincoln and the Todds, a Family Divided by War
(Boston, 2007), xii–xiii, 40; William H. Townsend,
Lincoln and His Wife’s Home Town
(Indianapolis, 1929), 192.

26.
Berry,
House of Abraham
, x–xii, 41–42.

27.
Townsend,
Lincoln and His Wife’s Home Town
, 95, 140–55, 214, 226, 243.

28.
In addition to the laws of Kentucky and Illinois mentioned earlier, see Paul Finkelman, “Prelude to the Fourteenth Amendment: Black Legal Rights in the Antebellum North,”
Rutgers Law Journal
, 17 (Spring and Summer 1986), 425.

29.
William Lee Miller,
Lincoln’s Virtues: An Ethical Biography
(New York, 2002), 26–44.

30.
Alexis de Tocqueville,
Democracy in America
, ed. J. P. Mayer, trans. George Lawrence (New York, 1966), 627.

31.
Arthur Zilversmit,
The First Emancipation: The Abolition of Slavery in the North
(Chicago, 1967), 114–28; Stanley L. Engerman, “Emancipations in Comparative Perspective: A Long and Wide View,” in Gert Oostine, ed.,
Fifty Years Later: Antislavery, Capitalism and Modernity in the Dutch Orbit
(Pittsburgh, 1996), 227–29; Stanley L. Engerman,
Slavery, Emancipation and Freedom: Comparative Perspectives
(Baton Rouge, 2007), 4–5, 36–50; David Brion Davis, “The Emancipation Moment,” in Gabor S. Boritt, ed.,
Lincoln the War President
(New York, 1992), 75–79;
CW
, 6: 48–49. An article in the
New York Commercial Advertiser
, reprinted in
Douglass’ Monthly
(April 1862), 636–37, summarizes the various measures that abolished slavery in the northern states.

32.
Eric Foner,
The Story of American Freedom
(New York, 1998), 40–41; Winthrop D. Jordan,
White over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550–1812
(Chapel Hill, 1968), 354; Leonard P. Curry,
The Free Black in Urban America, 1800–1850
(Chicago, 1981), 260; Leon F. Litwack,
North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790–1860
(Chicago, 1961), 31–54, 74–93; David W. Blight,
Frederick Douglass’ Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee
(Baton Rouge, 1989), 13.