Book Reviews                                                                    

Robert W. Johannsen. Lincoln, the South, and Slavery: The Political Dimension. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991. Pp. 128 with index. $19.95 (cloth).

Readers of this book will learn that Abraham Lincoln was an ambitious politician. Perhaps this information was shocking to the audience at Louisiana State University, who heard three of the four chapters when they were delivered as the Walter Lynwood Fleming lectures there, and to the insurance executives who heard chapter four when it was delivered as the R. Gerald McMurtry Lecture at Fort Wayne. But Lincoln's ambition will scarcely come as news to students of history, who are quite familiar with the statement of his law partner William H. Herndon that Lincoln's political ambition was a "little engine that knew no rest."

More controversial, perhaps, is the book's central thesis: that Lincoln's increasingly antislavery stance from 1854 to 1860 was motivated primarily by his ambition for office. "Lincoln was by nature a careful individual, taking no step or making no move without first calculating its impact on his career," argues Robert Johannsen, Randall Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Illinois. "Nearly all of his public statements on the slavery question prior to his election as president were delivered with political intent and for political effect." Johannsen insists that "this does not mean that one must question the sincerity of Lincoln's anti-slavery convictions." Notwithstanding this disclaimer, the thrust of the author's argument is to cast doubt on the sincerity of those convictions.

Johanssen's most important historical work to date has been a big biography of Stephen A. Douglas. That hints at his own motives in shaping this small book about Lincoln. Douglas's critics in the 1850s, including Lincoln, accused the Little Giant of political motives for his position on slavery. To advance his presidential aspirations by currying favor with the South, they charged, Douglas callously declared that he "cared not whether slavery was voted down or voted up in the territories," whereas Lincoln said that he could "not but hate" this "declared indifference. . .for the spread of the monstrous injustice of slavery." Douglas looked "to no end of the institution of slavery." Lincoln considered slavery "a moral, social, and political wrong" and therefore opposed "the modern Democratic idea that slavery is as good as freedom, and ought to have room for expansion all over the continent."

Johanssen interprets all this through Douglas's eyes. Lincoln, he insists, was no less a politician than Douglas, and Lincoln's "expression of these convictions was shaped and directed by political exigencies and motivations." His main motive was to advance his own aspirations, which could be done only by beating Douglas. That goal, more than genuine antislavery convictions, animated Lincoln in his various contests with Douglas, especially the famous debates in the race for the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois in 1858. As the Republican party grew in strength, Lincoln's expressions on slavery became more radical in order to position himself for leadership in the party.

A more accurate reading of the evidence — including some presented in this book — reveals that Lincoln often put the antislavery cause before his career. In the debates, for example, Douglas hammered endlessly at what he considered Lincoln's most vulnerable points: the House Divided speech of 1858 with its reference to the "ultimate extinction" of slavery; and Lincoln's insistence that the "created equal" clause of the Declaration of Independence applied to blacks as well as whites. If the union of states "cannot endure thus divided" between slavery and freedom, said Douglas, then Lincoln "must strive to make them all free or all slave, which will inevitably bring about a dissolution of the Union."

. . . the book's central thesis: that Lincoln's increasingly antislavery stance from 1854 to 1860 was motivated primarily by his ambition. . .

As for racial equality, even of the limited sort endorsed by Lincoln, Douglas considered it a "monstrous heresy."" Are you in favor of conferring upon the negro the rights and privileges of citizenship?" he shouted to sympathetic crowds, who shouted back "No! No!" "If you desire to allow them to vote . . then support Mr. Lincoln and the Black Republican party, who are in favor of citizenship of the negro. ('Never, never.') . . . Those of you who believe that the negro is your equal ... of course will vote for Mr. Lincoln ('Down with the negro,' 'No, no, etc.')."

Johanssen says nothing about this racial demagoguery in his lengthy analysis of the debates — for good reason. It contradicts his thesis. Douglas was obviously exploiting the race issue for political advantage, while Lincoln stuck to his position at great political cost. Douglas won the senatorial election, and Lincoln was again relegated to apparent political oblivion. In view of this outcome the reader may well ask which of these two men "shaped and directed" his convictions for "political exigencies and motivations." *

James M. McPherson is George Henry Davis Professor of American History at Princeton University. His most recently published book is Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution (New York Oxford University Press, 1991), reviewed by Illinois Issues in February 1992.

30/January 1993/Illinois Issues