Lincoln As I Knew Him: Gossip, Tributes, and Revelations from His Best Friends and Worst Enemies (review)

book reviews155 body of this work. In contrast, a relatively trivial 1841 murder trail occupies four and a half pages, simply because Lincoln sent a long, amusing account of it to his friend Joshua Speed. The problem of selection becomes worse in the later chapters, since there is little material from Lincoln's presidential years as intimate as his more personal letters to Speed or as descriptive as the two brief campaign autobiographies he wrote in 1859 and i860. Despite the limitations inherent in its concept, the book does add to our understanding ofAbraham Lincoln by demonstrating how consistent he was in his self-image and self-description. Although his ambition drove him to become in turn storekeeper, surveyor, postmaster, legislator, lawyer, and ultimately president , at each step he remained true to himself and his past. That Lincoln could accurately state in i860 that his position on slavery was essentially the same as it had been in 1837 (and that ZaIl could seamlessly weave together phrases from both years into a single sentence) is evidence that beneath the pragmatism of the man who said "my policy is to have no poUcy" lay a hard core of unchanging principle. Gerald J. Prokopowicz The Lincoln Museum LincolnAs IKnew Him: Gossip, Tributes, andRevelationsfrom His Best Friends and Worst Enemies. Edited by Harold Hölzer. (Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 1999. Pp. 269. $16.95.) Lincoln As I Knew Him presents a wide range of memories and interpretations on the life and career of Abraham Lincoln, as told in the writings of various contemporaries. Harold Hölzer set out to catch the reader's eye with intimations of "gossip, tributes, and revelations." His selections portray the man in the small particulars of habit and presence as well as in his weighty role as president . The book holds detail of Lincoln's social graces or lack thereof but also yields stories ofhis griefupon his son's death and his anguish over the turnings of the Civil War. Using type of acquaintance as the organizing method, Harold Hölzer begins with family and goes on to include, among others, lawyers, military men, foreign observers, journalists, enemies, African americans, and intimates from the White House. These categories work weU, often held together by a common thread of insight into who Lincoln was. While there is detail of his earlier Ufe, most ofdocuments used were written retrospectively, after Lincoln's death. What emerges is a composite picture of Lincoln in his last years. Harold Holzer's method of selection of documents comes out of his extensive experience of pubUcations on Lincoln's career and the history of the Civil War. The book presents a panoply of sources, the authors of which are for the most part readily recognized, but the selection goes beyond the core offrequently used documents for the study of Lincoln. Hölzer draws from traditional sources 156CIVIL WAR HISTORY such as Dennis Hanks, William Herndon, John G. Nicolay, and John M. Hay. He also includes Stephen Douglas, William Tecumseh Sherman, Elizabeth Keckley, Sojourner Truth, and Frederick Douglass. There are also pieces from foreign observers such as Ernest Duverger de Hauranne and Edward Dicey. One of the most intriguing quaUties of the portrait emerges as the story of Lincoln's sense of humor. Journalists and humorists together in one section present detail of Lincoln's wittiness and his reliance on humor in many social situations. Hölzer has had his own experiences as a journalist and is adept at assembling selections that demonstrate how humorous storytelling became Lincoln's key to survival as a public figure and a leader, especially during the grim years of war. While such a work can scarcely separate the myth of Lincoln from a more truthful picture of the human being he was, Lincoln As I Knew Him has less lofty goals, setting out to catch pubUc interest in the life and times of Lincoln. The book does this well. While much of the evidence is in a sense impressionistic , the editor has crafted a book accessible to the lay reader. Here the reader finds the contrasts of a man who lost touch with his father, who was awkward in physical presence...