With Malice Toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln (review)

BOOK REVIEWS With Malice Toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln. By Stephen B. Oates. (New York: Harper & Row, 1977. Pp. xvii, 492. $15.95.) An important new biography of Abraham Lincoln is always a major literary event, and the appearance of Stephen B. Oates' With Malice Toward None is no exception. The first serious one-volume life since the publication seventeen years ago of Reinhard H. Luthin's The Real Lincoln, it is bound to be widely read. Professor Oates has done an admirable job. Attempting to bring the Lincoln story up to date, he has not tried to uncover any new facts, nor has he relied principally on unpublished material. On the contrary, using the best primary and secondary sources available, he has added greatly to our understanding of the sixteenth President by skillfully weaving the research and findings of the last twenty years into the known story as presented so expertly in 1952 by Benjamin P. Thomas and so comprehensively in 1960 by Reinhard H. Luthin. In addition, he has reversed completely the long dominant view of a conservative Lincoln beset by radical enemies, a notion implicit in the multi-volume works by Carl Sandburg and James G. Randall. Showing the President to have been anything but conservative, Oates follows the interpretation of David H. Donald and others who have long questioned the earlier assessment . The Lincoln who emerges from these pages is not the simple "Honest Abe" who rose from obscurity to the presidency. In general agreement with Don E. Fehrenbacher, the author describes Lincoln's career in Illinois in positive yet critical terms. The backwoods youth, the break with the family, the embarrassment about his origins and the skill in achieving standing at the bar as well as financial security constitute the theme of the first part of the book. While there is a lack of detail about Lincoln's origins, the description of the Springfield and New Salem years is convincing and the difficult problem of Lincoln's marital affairs well handled. Neither claiming too much nor too little for the relationship between husband and wife, the author gives us a portrait of a marriage reasonably successful at least until 1862 and Willie's death, after which Mrs. Lincoln's mounting psychological problems put a severe strain on the President. Perhaps the most interesting part of the biography is its stress on racial questions and slavery. Making full use of the findings of Benjamin Quarles, George M. Fredrickson, and James M. Mc170 Pherson, among others, without necessarily agreeing with them, Professor Oates traces Lincoln's growth from his Southern beginnings to his real esteem for Frederick Douglass, from the advocacy of anti-abolitionism and belief in racial supremacy to the endorsement of limited black suffrage and freedmen's rights. Especially during the later years, the author sees in the frequent recommendation of colonization schemes nothing more than a clever device to make emancipation and related measures palatable to a prejudiced North, an interpretation of considerable merit. But nowhere in the text is there the slightest doubt about the Emancipator's long-standing dislike of slavery, even in the recounting of the famous episode of the shackled slaves on the boat on the Ohio River, so expertly treated by Richard N. Current in the past. Oates also deals convincingly with Lincoln's rise to power. Unlike Thomas and undoubtedly influenced by Fehrenbacher, he sees no hiatus in his subject's political career between 1849 and 1854. On the contrary, he stresses Lincoln's lasting ambition and political skill. Considering the service in the state legislature, the activities in the Whig party, the term in Congress, the challenge of Douglas and the nomination in Chicago a coherent pattern of political advancement , the author emphasizes Lincoln's devotion to the idea of democracy and his loyalty to the Republic established by the Fathers. Influenced by Willard L. King, Oates makes a point of the absence of deals in securing the nomination in 1860, but curiously enough does not dwell on the rejection of the Crittenden Compromise , a matter of much previous historiographical controversy. Professor Oates' handling of the outbreak of war tends to follow Current's account. Assessing...