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introduction Abraham Lincoln is a historiographical lodestone, the subject of so many books that one feels obliged to cite the number (16,000?). They range from the mythological to the hagiographic to the defamatory, from monographs on anynumber of topics, often illuminating, and to biographies, all definitive. The articles in the present collection address subjects salient to an understanding of the man. Perhaps salient is a term that carries its own risks, just as a military salient is a tactical circumstance that invites attack. Some may also invite the charge of being dated, having been published in an earlier century! A fair criticism, perhaps, or at least an expected one. on reflection, however, historical writing at its best is long lasting. Consider Lord Charnwood’s biography of Lincoln (1917) and Frederick Douglass’s speech at the dedication of the Freedmen’s Memorial in Washington, D.C. (1876). The Freedmen’s monument may elicit an understandable unease among latter-day visitors, but Douglass’s words are the most insightful commentaryon Lincoln and race, slavery, and emancipation yet written. Charnwood’s slender volume, published long before the opening of the expansive public records and correspondence, contains insights into his life, character, and presidency seldom equaled even by his most accomplished biographers. Both Douglass and Charnwood write with an elegance that does justice to the great man. Both agree that Lincoln was a great man and offer no apology for that judgment. in Charnwood’s words, the biographer should not “shrink too timidly from the display of partisanship which, on one side or the other, itwould be insensate not to feel.The true obligation of impartialityis that he should conceal no fact which, in his own mind, tells against his views.” The admirable scholarship, the subtlety of analysis, and the appreciation of context in the following articles are reasons enough for their inclusion. if they inspire further reflection and even a few more publications, so much the better. vii E In order to view this proof accurately, the Overprint Preview Option must be checked in Acrobat Professional or Adobe Reader. Please contact your Customer Service Representative if you have questions about finding the option. Job Name: -- /358884t viii introduction otto olsen’s “Abraham Lincoln as a revolutionary” is powerfully analytical and occasionally sardonic in tone. The last may stem from the cooling toward Lincoln at the time of publication. Manyhistorianswerecritical of his persistent advocacy of colonization, his slow path to emancipation, and what may have been an undue “reasonableness and restraint.” Some even found fault with his prose! olsen chooses to underscore what Lincoln did, not his persona or political tactics. The “greatest revolutionary is the one who is most successful, not the one who is most extreme, dramatic, or vocal.” Lincoln’s “assertive idealism” was evident in his early life, as was his belief in a free society, resting on the essential phrases of the Declaration of independence. He also recognized the counter arguments. in his 1852 eulogyto HenryClay, he spoke specificallyand pointedly of an “increasing number of men [who] for the sake of perpetuating slavery. . . were beginning to assail and ridicule the white man’s charter of freedom. . . . So far as i have learned, the first American of any note, to do or attempt to do this, was the late John C. Calhoun.” This statement was a departure from and a challenge to a long acceptance of the fact of slavery and the growing power of its adherents. Slavery, in all its manifestations, was the greatest threat to the ideals and the prosperity of the nation, a point on which Lincoln “displayed as firm a commitment as the abolitionists themselves.”Southerners in fact increasinglythoughtof him as a revolutionary agent, and as the emerging leader of a northern political party, more dangerous than the abolitionists—who themselves had little regard forLincoln.TheCivilWarwas a revolutionaryevent and Lincolnwas its guiding hand. in olsen’s words:“His true greatness was not that he had such admirable personal qualities, but that he successfullyapplied them in a revolutionaryway.” one might infer from this article that Lincoln’s leadership was of consequence, a conclusion strongly challenged by some recent historians. Lincoln’s “assertive idealism,” or variations on that theme, has been of interest to any number of biographers, mostly admiring, with a corporal’s guard of detractors. of special interest is his January 27, 1838, address, “The Perpetuation of our Political institutions,” presented at the Young Men’s Lyceum at Springfield, illinois. in the two following essays, the...

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