Lincoln for the Ages (review)

BOOK REVIEWS LincolnfortheAges. Edited andwith an introduction by Ralph G. Newman . (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1960. Pp. 519. $5.95.) Two years ago the nation observed the sesquicentennial of Abraham Lincoln 's birth. One important result of that observance is this collection of seventy-two brief essays dealing with as many aspects of the life and career of the sixteenth President. It is, David C. Mearns, one of the contributors, writes, "a report on the Lincoln story and the Lincoln status as they were found to exist at the close of his one hundred and fiftieth year." An appendix, including a Lincoln chronology and a discussion of the manuscript sources pertaining to Lincoln, closes the volume. In all, seventy-eight persons have contributed to the collection. Although the editor describes the effort as an "objective reappraisal of Abraham Lincoln as a dynamic force in contemporary thought and action" and as a re-examination of Lincoln's life, the essays, which were originally prepared as radio scripts for Broadcast Music, Incorporated, present little that is new to the Lincoln story. The quality of the contributions is uneven, as would be expected in a project of this type, and there is some overlapping and repetition among the essays. In its total impact, however, the work is impressive. Some of the subjects treated deserve much more than the four or five pages allotted to them and in the case of those essays which clearly stand out in their perception and understanding, the highly distilled product presented here only whets the appetite. The roster of contributors is a distinguished one; to name them all would be impossible, to name only a few would do a disservice to the many excellent essays that would go unmentioned . Suffice it to say that the list includes persons from many walks of life, politicians, professors, poets, and playwrights, all of whom share the excitement of having probed the meaning of Lincoln's greatness. And what is it that made Lincoln great? To attempt to answer a question that has challenged generations of thinkers in the short space of a review would be foolhardy. Lincoln comes in for high praise in this collection; he is a "master politician," "a military genius," "a literary lodestar," the savior of American democracy, and "the most majestic, the saddest, the noblest, and the most compassionate and dramatic figure in the history of the American scene." But for all the praise, one is convinced more than ever after reading these contributions, that the quality of Lincoln's greatness was an essentially human quality. Richard B. Harwell, in deploring the creation of an "unreal 209 210CIVIL WA R HISTORY myth" for Lincoln, sums it up—"the man was fine enough to stand every test of history." Robert W. Johannsen University of Illinois The Civil War at Sea: The Blockaders. Vol. I (January, 1861-March, 1862). By Virgil Carrington Jones. ( New York: Holt, Rinehart, Winston, I960. Pp. xxvi, 483. $6.00.) In the recent flood of Civil War books, no author has attempted to describe the complete story of the Union and Confederate navies. Now, Virgil Carrington Jones undertakes this ambitious and necessary task. The Civil War at Sea: The Blockaders is the first volume in a projected trilogy. It begins with the provisioning of the Star of the West in January, 1861. and concludes with the often told tale of the Monitor and the Virginia (ex-Merrimack) in March, 1862. Chapters correspond to months and the author compresses into each the naval events, major and minor, which transpired during that period whether in the Atlantic, the Gulf, the Mississippi River, Washington, Richmond , Havana, or London. In the never ending tug-of-war between journalist and scholar as to the relative importance of style, research, and interpretation, The Civil War at Sea is an example of a "popular book" designed for the "general reader" compared to the thoroughly researched opus of the professional historian. On the credit side, the book is fast-paced, generating excitement with each chapter; the battle scenes are excellently handled; the dialogues, duly footnoted, are inserted to give the maximum effect for interesting reading. Unfortunately, like other recent authors, Jones leans heavily...