Ted's Reviews > The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln

A friend reminded me of this review by Liking it this evening (well, that was a year or more ago). In reviewing it, I realized that 2016 could possibly be called the "sesqucenteniannual" (one hundred fifty-first) anniversary of Lincoln's death in 1865. But more than that, the great book reviewed here is not only available from many dealers, but a Kindle edition can be had for three bucks! Since there are nothing but words in the volume anyway, a digital edition loses nothing in comparison to a paper one.

In this review I use spoilers to divide it into parts. In the case of the present book, there is nothing in any of these sections which would "spoil" anyone's reading of the book. If the description of the section interests you, take a look.

Lincoln is either the obvious subject, or plays a main part, in hundreds of books. Just to name a few of fairly recent vintage, there is the full scale biography by David Herbert Donald Lincoln, the very popular work by Doris Kearns Goodwin Team of Rivals, which is both more general (it's billed as a "multiple biography" of not only Lincoln, but of others in his administration, and in the Army which he command) and more specialized (in that it is a study of Lincoln's "political genius") than Donald's book; and the following Lincoln books, mentioned among others, in a recent NPR report: The Fiery Trial, Battle Cry of Freedom, and Land of Lincoln (See the following Goodreads reviews:
Team of Rivals http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
Battle Cry of Freedom http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... )

The appeal of the book under review here is that it combines a very readable and interesting biography with a large selection of Lincoln's own writings. Thus it is of interest to readers who are not looking for a very detailed, in-depth or specialized study of Lincoln, but a fairly brief overview of his life, and in addition a wide selection of his writings, the latter a feature of this book missing from the other books mentioned.

When the book was published in 1940, it was the largest single-volume collection of Lincoln's writings ever published. The "writings" include addresses, proclamations, many different categories of letters, and generous selections from the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates.

Introduction
The following section is a short overview of a (short itself) Introduction to the book by Allan Nevins, entitled "Lincoln in His Writings".
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The ten page Introduction by the historian Allan Nevins starts by noting how, in the two or three decades following the Civil War, Lincoln was often viewed as just one actor on a "crowded stage" of notables, whose stars still shone brightly in the memories of those who had lived through the event. Indeed, when Ulysses S. Grant's autobiography was published in the year he died (1885) it caused a sensation, and was universally acclaimed. As well, Douglas, Seward, Chase, Sumner, and above all Robert E. Lee still held the eye of the public. When Oliver Wendell Holmes gave his Memorial Day address in 1884, and spoke the immortal line "In our youth our hearts were touched with fire", Lincoln was not mentioned.

This is not to say, of course, that Lincoln had been forgotten. Nevins' point is that the country was still too close in time to forget any of these men, or to lose the detailed memories of the myriad events and personages which had defined what the country had been through. With passing time, however, the more minor players on that stage faded, and one came to dominate the others, indeed to tower above them.

In his essay Nevins traces the development of Lincoln's ideas, character, and moral qualities by referring to key examples of his writing (all contained in the volume) at various stages of his life. He refers to three different stages of this development: (i) Lincoln's early years in the public eye (exemplified by his 1845 letter to Williamson Durley on the Texas question); (ii) the development of Lincoln's "faculty of close-textured and irresistibly logical reasoning", which Nevins sees dramatized by Lincoln's speech in Peoria on October 16, 1854, when he answered Stephen Douglas's Springfield defense of the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act; and a "final stage", in which he sees "a Lincoln who superadded to special moral qualities and special force of reasoning a spiritual quality which not even the great Edmund Burke had ever possessed." Nevins traces this final stage from Lincoln's First Inaugural speech, through the Gettysburg Address, to his Second Inaugural, speaking of "the noble eloquence of (these) greatest utterances, and … their semi-religious tone".

There's no doubt that this essay is very much a personal view of Mr. Nevins'. It is rather nicely done, however, and provides an appropriate introduction to the section containing the writings themselves.
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Biographical essay
This review section explores briefly the Lincoln biography included in the book, written by Philip Van Doren Stern, a Civil War historian who incidentally, in 1945, privately published his short story "The Greatest Gift" - the inspiration for the classic Christmas movie It's a Wonderful Life.
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It's been a long time since I read this relatively short biography, so I'll not say much about it. It's 190 pages long, so it does have some substance. It is not an academic biography. By that I mean, it does not contain referential footnotes for the facts stated, and it thus does not contain arguments for viewpoints that could have been controversial at the time. It's just a plain vanilla summary of what was understood about Lincoln's life in the late 1930s.

(It is possible that there are things expressed in the essay that would have been objected to by other historians at that time, I frankly wouldn't know. Stern was the one chosen to edit the book and provide the biography, so presumably he felt he had a rather free reign to put the cast on this essay that he deemed correct. Since new evidence and new interpretations of old evidence are constantly being brought forth, there may be additional aspects of the essay that have become controversial or even completely dated by now.)

The sections of the essay are:

The Indiana years
The Lincoln family moves to Illinois
Lincoln moves to Springfield
Mary Todd
The congressman from Illinois
The years of the locust
Stephen A. Douglas
The return to battle
Lincoln and the Republican party
The election of James Buchanan
The fate of a nation is decided in Kansas
"A House Divided"
The Lincoln-Douglas debates
Blood and iron at Harper's Ferry
The Republicans seek a presidential candidate
The end of compromise
"Here I have lived a quarter of a century"
The first assassination plot
Sumter and Seward
The war begins
The Lincolns in the White House
Bull Run
The Trent affair
The first campaign against Richmond
The proclamation of emancipation
Gettysburg
The President vs. Congress
The Presidential campaign of 1864
The beginning of the end
Plots and counterplots
Victory and peace
"Night and day journeys a coffin"

Following the essay itself is a 25 page Chronology. This is a quite detailed listing of not only events in Lincoln's life, but also of political developments which came to have an important influence on Lincoln's life story and/or on the course of national events.
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The Writings of Abraham Lincoln
This is the main section of the book.
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From A Note on the Text

… the total number of Lincoln's words preserved for posterity is more than one million … This volume, of course, does not pretend to completeness … The principle of selection used has been to include all those items which are of biographical interest or of historical importance. … it has been necessary to print excerpts from some of the longer pieces … For the general reader these excisions should not be serious, for the material omitted has been left out because it is relatively unimportant, dull, repetitious, of ephemeral interest or because it pertains only to Lincoln's legal or business life.

The writings presented are about 275 in number, stretching to over 600 pages. The first item is "Address to the People of Sangamon County, Illinois, March 9, 1832"; the last, "Lincoln's Last Writing, April 14, 1865". Every item is introduced with remarks which provide historical and political context. These range from a sentence or two (most longer) to over a page. The selections themselves range from brief one paragraph letters to major excerpts from addresses.

I think it fair here to present a somewhat arbitrary selection of the items included, from among those that are more than one or two pages long. Hopefully these will help any Goodreader perusing this section to decide whether the book would be of interest.

(In each case the number in parentheses is the length in pages of the entry, including the introductory material.)

- Address Before the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, January 27, 1838 (11)

- From an Address to the Springfield Washingtonian Temperance Society, February 22, 1842 (4)

- "The Bear Hunt" (1846) (4) (a poem by Lincoln)

- Speech at Peoria, Illinois, in Reply to Senator Douglas, October 16, 1854 (48 – the longest entry)

- From a speech in Springfield, Illinois, June 26 1857 (15)

- Notes for Speeches, about October 1, 1858 (7)

- From Lincoln's Reply in the Seventh and Last Joint Debate at Alton, Illinois, October 15, 1858 (25) (excerpts from all seven of the Lincoln-Douglas debates are included)

- First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861 (12)

- From the Message to Congress in Special Session, July 4, 1861 (13)

- From the Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1861 (8)

- Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, September 22, 1862 (4)

- From the Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862 (11)

- Opinion of the Draft, August [15?], 1863 (6)

- Address at the Dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery, November 19, 1863 (3) (The introductory section is two pages long. The Gettysburg Address itself is one page.)

- Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction, December 8, 1863 (5)

- From the Annual Message to Congress, December 8, 1863 (8)

- Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865 (4)

- Last Public Address, April 11, 1865 (6)
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Miscellany
In the last section I've included various comments on additional material in the book, and on the edition of the book which I'm reviewing.
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The only material in the book that I have not mentioned is the last section, a nine page Subject Index. This lists the items written by Lincoln in categories, such as Addresses, Letters (Military, Personal, etc.), Orders, and Proclamations. It also includes a section titled "Lincoln, Abraham, the Life of" which is a very brief index to the biography by Stern, too brief to be of much use.

This book was originally published in 1940 as a Modern Library Giant. The Modern Library series was published by Random House. The "Giant" format contained longer books, about 5 ½ inches wide and 8 ¼ inches tall. The majority of books in the series were in a smaller format, 4 ¾ inches by 7 ¼ inches. All the books were published as hardbacks; I am not aware that any included dust jackets.

The edition I am reviewing is this 1940 edition, which however must have been reprinted at various times up to the time that I bought it sometime in the 60s or 70s. A picture of the front cover of this book shows what they all looked like: a plain dark colored cover (various colors), imprinted with an image of a running torchbearer ("the Promethean bearer of enlightenment") created by Lucian Bernhard in 1925. The spine of the book contained the title and another imprint of the iconic image.



The Modern Library is still (or more accurately, once again) being published. I do not know if all the books that were published in the early days have been reproduced in more recent editions, but this Lincoln book has. It is available in both paperback and hardback editions, also as an eBook. The hardback edition appears to be identical in content to my edition. It has exactly the same number of pages.
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