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Book Reviews339 Lincoln the lawyer may seem superfluous. Yet this brief study by a practicing attorney and former law professor justifies itself from beginning to end. The author set himself the task of extracting the essential historical meaning from the details of Lincoln's legal career. His success, resulting from the play of a keen mind upon facts already known, constitutes one more eloquent reminder that original research and original scholarship are not synonymous. Lincoln as a Lawyer is concerned primarily with two questions: What kind of a lawyer was Abraham Lincoln? And how did his long experience at the bar affect his character as a public leader? Mr. Frankdevotes something more than half of his text to the first question. From his illurninating analysis we learn that Lincoln made a"thoroughly comfortable living" at the law and by 1860 was well on the way to becoming "an extremely prominent and successful lawyer"; that he was almost entirely a "litigation man," having little office practice; that he excelled in jury trials but also had "the major appellate practice of his time and place"; that he was by preference a statutory rather than a common-law lawyer; that he was neither a legal scholar nor a creative legal thinker and showed scarcely any interest in die bar as an institution; that among his prime assets were an unusual ability to strike at the heart of a matter and a talent for verbal expression that was "touched with genius." Above all, Frank makes it clear that Lincoln's intellectual growth did not cease, but actually accelerated, when he reached middle age. Turning to Lincoln's public career, Frank demonstrates that legal language and legal concepts permeated his speeches, and argues persuasively that the qualities of the statesman, while not a necessary product of his profession, were developed and perfected in the practice of law. Here the analysis suffers a little from the fact that the author's grasp of political history is not as masterful as his understanding of law. His treatment of Lincoln's politics is consequently more or less conventional. It may also be noted in passing that he does not explore the opposite side of the problem—that is, the effect of Lincoln's growing political influence upon his prestige and success as a lawyer. Nevertheless, diis section is superior to any otiier discussion of die subject, and the book as a whole is in many respects the most valuable study ever made of Lincoln's professional life. Lawyer, Frank, like lawyer Lincoln, knows how to go directìy to the heart of the matter. Don E. Fehrenbacher Stanford University Lincoln and the Emperors. By A. R. Tymer-Tymauer. (New York: Harcourt , Brace & World, Inc., 1962. Pp. 176. $4.50. ) 'The CrvTL War, it turned out, was fought as much against Europe's Emperors , who were conspiring to establish their protectorate over North America, as against the feudal slaveholders of the South." Such is the thesis of Lincoln and the Emperors, written by Hungarian-born Mr. Tymer-Tymauer, who was for many years associate foreign editor of the International News Service. He has based this book, he explains, on research in the Vienna Archives, a 340 CIVIL WAR HISTORY 'historic gold mine" which "yielded 471 items (diplomatic documents, highlevel secret correspondence, and intelligence reports relating to the period of the Civil War)." The "emperors" of the story are Napoleon III of France; his wife, Eugenie; Leopold of Belgium (uncle of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria 's consort); Leopold's daughter, Charlotte; her husband, Maximilian; and Maximilian's older brother, Franz Joseph of Austria. Napoleon and his empress, with the cooperation of Franz Joseph and the latter's relatives, undertook to gain European support for intervention to aid die Confederacy. Maximilian received the assignment of making himself Emperor of Mexico with the support of French, Austrian, Belgian and royalist Mexican troops. Though, in the drama as here presented, President Lincoln remains mostly off stage, he is characterized as the antagonist and eventually the nemesis of the conspiring emperors. All tin's makes a good story, and it is interestingly told. It does not, however, make good history. Some of the quotations from...

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