Conversations with Lincoln (review)

BOOK REVIEWS Conversationswith Lincoln. By Charles Segal. (N.Y.: Putnam, 1961. Pp. 448. $6.95) More words have been written about Abraham Lincoln than about any other American. One bibliographic compilation requires over 1,000 pages to list the books and pamphlets published before 1939. By now, the experts have lost count. Indeed, Lincoln has attracted most of our major American historians, and their writing is marked by an excellence and a thoroughness of research which might tend to discourage any newcomers to the field. But, happily, this is not the case. There is always a new generation of historians producing provocative and penetrating studies of our great Civil War president. Because of my special interest in Lincoln, I recendy was attracted to a new book which interested me very much. It offers a new approach to an understanding and appreciation of Lincoln's personality and character. In this book—Conversations with Lincoln, by Charles M. Segal—Lincoln is revealed to us through the eyes and ears of his contemporaries. Mr. Segal has collected and edited over 100 "live" conversations, or reports of these conversations, which Lincoln had with a wide variety of Americans from the time he was nominated for the Presidency in 1860 until his tragic death in 1865. We see Lincoln as he was seen by his cabinet, his generals, by office seekers, wire-pullers, clerks, diplomats, newspaper editors, foreign correspondents, artists, poets, and many more. If one feels as I do: that by virtue of the reverence which has accumulated over the years Lincoln has become a remote and almost inaccessible figure, Conversations with Lincoln will bring him back to life. This book not only confirms Lincoln's greatness; interestingly enough, it succeeds in doing so by revealing the low esteem in which he was held by many of his contemporaries , particularly those closely associated with him. Some may be astonished to know that many of Lincoln's associates considered him a "simple Susan," a baboon, a huckster in politics, or, as one Springfield neighbor put it, "a first-rate-second-rate man." "If I wanted to paint a despot—a man perfecdy regardless of every constitutional right of the people," cried one senator from Delaware, "I would paint the hideous form of Abraham Lincoln. . ." Such acrimony might have weakened a lesser man. Yet Lincoln's broad, friendly view of humanity, his deep religious faith, his understanding and tolerance, enabled him to overlook and rise above the carping. As he did so, he increased his own stature. Lincoln came to view his opponents as men who 233 234Cl VIL W AR HISTORY could not help being dissatisfied. They had spent their political lives working in minorities, he said, and they had just "got into the habit of being dissatisfied ." During the thick of the war, although Lincoln was confident of the nation's future, he was constantly burdened by military, civilian, and political problems which threw him into moods of despondency. "Look at me," he would say to his intimate friend, Ward Lamon, "I wish I had never been born! With a fire in my front and rear; having to contend with the jealousies of the military commanders, and not receiving the cordial cooperation and support from Congress which could reasonably be expected; with an active and formidable enemy in the field threatening the very lifeblood of the government,—my position is anything but a bed of roses." We get a view of a more confident Lincoln from John Hay, one of his secretaries who, incidently, playfully refers to his chief as "the tycoon." After the Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in the summer of 1863, Hay reported Lincoln to be "in fine whack. . . .1 have rarely seen him more serene and busy." Although "well-meaning" journals advised Lincoln "to keep his fingers out of the military pie," Hay believed that if Lincoln followed this advice the pie would be "a sorry mess." Contrary to the view held by some authorities that Lincoln was ignorant of military matters, Mr. Segal's Conversations with Lincoln reveals "Old Abe" as an expert war strategist. Lincoln believed that the early Union military defeats were caused by his "quarrelling...