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Rhetoric & Public Affairs 6.2 (2003) 337-370



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The Continuing Fascination with Lincoln

David Zarefsky


Abe: A Novel of the Young Lincoln. By Richard Slotkin. New York: Henry Holt, 2000; pp 478. $14.00 paper.
Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President. By Allen C. Guelzo. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1999; pp xi + 516. $29.00.
Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory. By Barry Schwartz. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000; pp xiii + 367. $27.50.
Abraham Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation, 1861-1865. By William K. Klingaman. New York: Viking, 2001; pp 344. $25.95.
Forced into Glory:Abraham Lincoln's White Dream. By Lerone Bennett Jr. Chicago: Johnson Publishing, 2000; pp xv + 652. $35.00.
Lincoln:A Foreigner's Quest. By Jan Morris. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000; pp 205. $23.00.
The Lincoln Enigma:The Changing Faces of an American Icon. Edited by Gabor Boritt. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001; pp xxvii + 324. $30.00.
Lincoln Seen and Heard. By Harold Holzer. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000; pp xi + 226. $29.95.
Lincoln's Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural. By Ronald C. White Jr. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002; pp 254. $24.00. [End Page 337]
Lincoln's Sacred Effort:Defining Religion's Role in American Self-Government. By Lucas E. Morel. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2000; pp ix + 251. $70.00 cloth; $23.95 paper.
Lincoln's Virtues:An Ethical Biography. By William Lee Miller. New York: Knopf, 2002; pp xvi + 515. $30.00.
A New Birth of Freedom:Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War. By Harry V. Jaffa. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000; pp xiv + 549. $35.00.
On Hallowed Ground:Abraham Lincoln and the Foundations of American History. By John Patrick Diggins. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000; pp xxi + 329. $27.95.
Our Secret Constitution:How Lincoln Redefined American Democracy. By George P. Fletcher. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001; pp xi + 292. $30.00.

More than ten thousand books have been written about Abraham Lincoln. This is a publication rate, on average, of more than one book each week from the time of Lincoln's presidential election in 1860 until now. In light of this voluminous outpouring of scholarship, celebration, and remembrance—Lincoln has been the subject of more books than any historical figure except for Jesus—one legitimately might ask whether anything remains to be said.

Yes, indeed, is the answer inferred from the group of recent books on Lincoln reviewed here. When Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton said at the president's death, "Now he belongs to the ages," his words were true in more ways than one. Not only had Lincoln gone to his eternal rest, but his memory and meaning became the property of succeeding generations, each of which would bring the perspective of its own time to the understanding of Abraham Lincoln, just as it would use its reconstruction of Lincoln to help make sense of its own issues. The twin processes of reconstructing and applying Lincoln's image and message continue, as these books amply demonstrate.

Under the influence of the civil rights movement and the dramatic changes in race relations in the United States over the past 50 years, earlier assessments of the Civil War era are being revised. The abolitionists, long discredited in popular understanding as misguided fanatics, are now more likely to be seen as moral exemplars. The politicians who temporized and made prudent compromises with slavery are now seen less as statesmen than as moral cowards. Under such a probing lens, it is inevitable that Lincoln's thought and action on race would come in for closer scrutiny—and it has. [End Page 338]

For Lincoln's statements about race confront us with a paradox. He opposed slavery and urged fidelity to the bold proclamation in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal, yet he also believed that the races could not coexist under conditions of political and social equality. Only in the last speech of his life did he advocate the right to...

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