Abraham Lincoln: A Biography

Preface

PREFACE _e_ NOT WIT H S TAN DIN G the great number of books that have been written about Abraham Lincoln during our generation, a major need, perhaps the major need so far as most persons are concerned , has long remained unfilled. There has been no accurate, readable one-volume biography for the Lincoln beginner, for the person who can devote only a small portion of his time to learning about Lincoln, or for the high-school teacher or college professor who wishes to include a reasonably short life of Lincoln on his students' reading list. The last satisfactory life of Lincoln within the covers of a single volume was written by Lord Charnwood, an Englishman, and published thirty-five years ago. That is still an excellent book; but we have learned much more about Lincoln during those thirty-five years. Indeed, the very intensity of Lincoln study during that period, with the publication of the work of Barton, Beveridge, Sandburg, and Randall, the research done by the Abraham Lincoln Association, and the investigations of a host of other students into one phase or another of Lincoln's life, makes the correlation and condensation of our findings all the more imperative . Perhaps the principal reason why no one has attempted to write a one-volume life of Lincoln in recent years is the students' knowledge that, with the opening of the Robert Todd Lincoln Collection in the Library of Congress and the publication of the xx Preface forthcoming Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln by the Abraham Lincoln Association, any such biography would immediately become obsolete, unless rewritten. The first of these great source collections became available to us in 1947; I have fully explored it. And as an editorial adviser in the preparation of the Collected Works, I have also been able to make full use of them in advance of their publication. So it is my hope and purpose that this book will fill a long-felt want. It is intended primarily for the reading public rather than for the expert, though I hope that the experts will approve of it. And I believe that even they will discover that it offers new interpretations and reveals many unknown facts. BENJAMIN P. THOMAS Springfield, IUirwia ...