Lincoln and His Contemporaries (review)

BOOK REVIEWS6l Fugitive Slave Act did not have the political repercussions elsewhere that it had in Wisconsin. And in the end, as McManus points out, the Badger State ultimately favored unionist over states rights doctrines. In one passage (on page 190) McManus inadvertently reveals that he may have allowed his opposition to a coercive federal government today affect his judgment of the past. Although McManus provides us with ecological regression estimates of voter movement between elections, he does not use the method to highlight the demographic aspects of Wisconsin's party loyalties. His empirical observations suggest that ethnic and religious identities had much to do with the levels of support won by the Republicans and Democrats. Given his opposition to ethnocultural interpretations, McManus should have confronted this evidence more systematically. Finally, McManus and those who downplay the differences between Republicans and abolitionists must address the fact that the fight over the territorial issue was more symbolic than substantive. There were very few slaves in the territories in the 1850s, and just as Southern whites demanded that the "right" to bring slaves into territories that could not sustain slavery be preserved, Northerners demanded that the "right" of a Northern majority to prevent slavery's unlikely expansion be respected. The Republican platforms of 1856 and i860 made no mention of repealing the Fugitive Slave Act, abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia, or banning the interstate slave trade. However much Republican politicians privately favored such ideas, it is certainly not clear that Northern voters did. Lex Renda University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee Lincoln and His Contemporaries. Edited by Charles Hubbard. (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1999. Pp. 167. $27.95.) The literature on Abraham Lincoln's life and his presidency is large and seemingly ever expanding. Developed from the Centennial Lincoln Symposium at Lincoln Memorial University, this collection of essays could have strayed into Lincoln worship. Instead, under the editorship of Charles Hubbard, they successfully place Lincoln's presidency in the context of his complex interaction with his countrymen during the crisis years ofthe Civil War. The essayists focus on Lincoln's interaction with three diverse groups: the military, African Americans , and those who sought the president's death as the war drew to a close. In discussing Lincoln as a military leader, Harold Hölzer uses contemporary printed images to demonstrate how the image of the president as commander in chiefevolved from weak or cowardly to respectable afterAntietam, blossoming into deification following his murder. FrankWilliams traces the development of Lincoln's skills as commander in chief back to his career as an attorney, arguing that his ability to mix with people from all social and economic levels, and his talent for negotiation and compromise, gained the support and goodwill of the 62CIVIL WAR HISTORY military leadership. Although Salmon Chase thought that Maj. Gen. Henry HaIleck "was good for nothing," John Y Simon convincingly argues that Lincoln used Halleck as a buffer and lightning rod, deflecting criticism that might otherwise have fallen on the administration, and he further demonstrates that the general accepted this difficult role. In discussing Lincoln's interaction with African Americans, Hans Trefousse argues that Lincoln reflected liberal attitudes and ideas toward race relations, and contrasts the president's views with those ofVice PresidentAndrew Johnson, who Trefousse characterizes as a racist and white supremacist. As a result, Trefousse sees Lincoln's assassination and the succession of Johnson to the presidency as the key to Reconstruction's failure. Edna Greene Medford accepts that the Emancipation Proclamation was a step forward, but she faults Lincoln for failing to address the demands of African Americans for equality under the law. Medford forcefully argues that it was the failure of Lincoln and the liberal Republicans to embrace African American equality that accounts for the failure of Reconstruction. In the final selection of essays, William Hanchett argues that John Wilkes Booth was part of a larger conspiracy that reached to the highest levels of the Confederate government in Richmond. As he did in his 1983 book The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies, Hanchett argues that Confederate abduction plots escalated into direct financial support for Booth and the assassination of the president . However, as Thomas Turner accurately points...