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  • Lincoln Looks West: From the Mississippi to the Pacific
  • Kristen K. Epps
Lincoln Looks West: From the Mississippi to the Pacific. Ed. Richard W. Etulain. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2010. ISBN: 978-0-8093-2961-8, 280 pp., cloth, $34.95.

In this volume, Richard Etulain has compiled nine essays that present a comprehensive portrait of how Lincoln, a “man of the West,” viewed westward expansion and politics. Until the publication of Lincoln Looks West, Lincoln scholars had often ignored this aspect of the president’s life. This collection makes clear that Lincoln was profoundly immersed in Western affairs, as a politician who opposed slavery’s expansion, promoted internal improvements such as railroads, supported influential legislation such as the Homestead Act, developed new policies regarding Native Americans’ rights, and used his authority to make strategic government appointments that strengthened the Republican Party in western states and territories. Ultimately, these authors illustrate that Lincoln was serious about shaping the West, and as historians reflect on Lincoln’s political career, we must remember how his personal ties to the West guided his political trajectory.

Etulain organizes the volume around the three stages he considers the defining periods in Lincoln’s relationship to the West. The first stage in Lincoln’s genesis as a western politician came during his early career, when his adoption of Whig principles and devotion to internal improvements supported his core philosophy of bringing economic prosperity to the West. During the second stage, which began with Lincoln’s congressional election [End Page 411] in 1847, slavery’s expansion and popular sovereignty were at the forefront of his mind. Here Etulain astutely notes that Lincoln’s opposition to slavery’s expansion was as much a western stance as it was an antislavery one. The last stage encompassed his presidency, when he devoted time to domestic issues in the West (including conflicts between white American settlers and Native Americans, as one example) and to organizational challenges arising from the creation of new territories in the far West. His introduction is one of the strengths of this collection.

Although the quality of the essays is a bit uneven, and several have been published elsewhere, the collection includes some insightful thoughts on Lincoln’s evolution as a Western politician. The first essay, by Mark Neely Jr., addresses Lincoln’s vocal stance on the Mexican War, arguing that while some key observers, like William Herndon, deemed Lincoln’s position akin to “political suicide,” in reality Lincoln’s behavior closely aligned with other western Whigs. Neely bolsters his claims by examining the political situation in neighboring Indiana, concluding that opposition to the war was part of the Whig platform, and thus was primarily a party issue.

The second contribution, by Michael S. Green, focuses on Lincoln’s famous speech at Cooper Union, which cogently outlined why slavery should not be allowed to expand westward. Lincoln felt strongly about the West as a place open to free labor and economic opportunity, in the process revealing how much his Western background had molded his political views. Earl S. Pomeroy, in the third essay of this collection, counteracts the myth that Lincoln pushed for Nevada’s admission to the union because he needed another state to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment, insisting that this theory is flawed since Colorado and Nebraska also came up for admission during the war years.

The fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh installments—by Vincent Tegeder, Deren Earl Kellogg, Robert W. Johannsen, and Paul M. Zall respectively—evaluate Lincoln’s patronage appointments in the West. Tegeder examines these through the eyes of Radical Republicans who, although they disagreed with moderates about emancipation and other wartime policies, found consistent support in Lincoln’s choice of officials in western territories such as Colorado. Kellogg focuses specifically on New Mexico, arguing that while Lincoln usually granted appointments to officials who were not already residents of that territory, New Mexico’s large Hispanic population, ties to the South, and border with Texas convinced Lincoln to examine the existing leadership and mine it for individuals who truly understood the territory’s [End Page 412] unique political environment. Johannsen deals exclusively with Lincoln’s appointments in Washington Territory...

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