The Living Lincoln: The Man, His Mind, His Times, and the War He Fought, Reconstructed from His Own Writings (review)

Book Reviews EDITED BY CHARLES T. MILLER B-Il University HaU Iowa City, Iowa The Living Lincoln: The Man, His Mind, His Times, and the War He Fought, Reconstructed from His Own Writings. Edited by Paul M. Angle and Earl Schenck Miers. (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. 1955. Pp. viii, 673. $6.95.) ONE WHO REALLY BELIEVES THAT OF THE MAKING OF BOOKS there IS ?? end might ask why we should have this one. Sandburg's poetic biography, the scholarly work of J. G. Randall and Richard Current, and many other "Uves" surely would leave Uttle room for anything else on Lincoln. And yet The Living Lincoln, which does not turn up a single new thread of evidence, adds to our knowledge and experience of Lincoln; it aUows us to read the events and the mind that so largely shaped them in the very words of the man himself. This is appropriate for a man who could write as he did. Beginning in 1831 in New Salem and ending in Washington with the brief note dated April 14, 1865 ("AUow Mr. Ashmun and friend to come in at 9 A.M. to-morrow"), the editors have given us Lincoln's autobiography. The whole is beautifully done: the respect for the text satisfies the scholar, the linking brief commentaries enhance the flow of the narrative, and, above all, the adroit selection of material from the massive Collected Works forms an unerring architectonic. One may assume, though the team is never split, that Mr. Angle, the distinguished director of the Chicago Historical Society, may be responsible for the clear emergence of the times Lincoln lived in and of Lincoln's mind; while to Mr. Miers we owe, among other things, the amazing miUtary notes by Lincoln hirnseU on his own "web of victory." Both editors are responsible for the square brackets, the swift summaries of skipped periods, the brief comments by others, and the useful index — and both editors keep so discreetly in the background that Lincoln actually speaks. 115 116CIVIL WAR HISTORY His words mingle with the blood of the times he wrote in. They are the precise words of a man with a strong sense of history, the caustic words of a political strategist, and the loving and beloved words of a great human being. As historian, Lincoln here sets down in his autobiography the single theme that makes America. He got the theme from the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. He quotes it in his speeches, alludes to it in his personal letters, and rings aU the changes on it in his debate with Judge Stephen A. Douglas. It is the theme of "we the people" binding ourselves together to secure the sacred liberties of all the people — not just the whites, nor just the white-collared workers, nor those of any one region, nor only Protestants. It was a theme well worth fighting a Civil War for. Still the historian, Lincoln knew that behind the American documents which enshrine it lay the assumptions and comnrmds of the entire Hebraic-Christian tradition from which we spring: "The house divided against itseU cannot stand." Does the Judge say it can stand? [Laughter.] I don't know whether he does or not. ... If he does, then there is a question of veracity, not between him and me, but between the Judge and an authority of a somewhat higher character. [Laughter and applause.] (p. 246.) And a Uttle later: When he says he "cares not whether slavery is voted down or voted up," —that it is a sacred right of seU-government — he is in my judgment penetrating the human soul and eradicating the Ught of reason and the love of liberty in this American people. [Enthusiastic and continued applause.] (p. 252) As a partisan poUtician with this kind of depth, Lincoln could weU afford to quote a great Democrat against his Democratic opponent, who insisted that Negroes are not included in the Declaration of Independence: And I wiU remind Judge Douglas and this audience, that while Mr. Jefferson was the owner of slaves, as undoubtedly he was, in speaking upon this very subject, he...