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Book Review "Lincoln lived, above all, off the spiritual capital of his words. Were everything else about him forgotten, and only his writings together with some of his talk to survive, he would stand revealed as an extraordinary human being, as one who in the terrible crisis of the nation's history The Great Emancipator label does not re-emerge in the interpretive battles over Lincoln until the renewed civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s recreated the promise of its origins and thereby secured its destiny, as one who understood so well the values of freedom and the fundamentals of democratic government that even if he should cease to instruct Americans he might still instruct and inspire the people of other lands." Thus Merrill D. Peterson, professor emeritus of history at the University of Virginia, assesses Abraham Lincoln's strengths and significance in Lincoln in American Memory, a new survey and analysis of the many ways that laypeople and scholars have understood and reinterpreted Lincoln throughout the nearly 130 years since his assassination. From the almost instant apotheosis of the martyred president in the North, to the only reluctantly yielded hatred of him by the South, which saw in him the personification of the Yankee humiliation of the Confederate cause, Peterson demonstrates the dialectic of our historical development as a nation since the Civil War through the lens of the continuing reappraisal of our 16th president. With mastery of the massive historical literature on Lincoln and a keen grasp of the nation's political history, Peterson shows how each generation has reinterpreted Lincoln in terms of its own most urgent needs. This process is not unique to historians of Lincoln, for Peterson painstakingly reveals how the discussion of Lincoln has transcended normal historical debate to be virtually inseparable from each generation's conflict over the nation's essential vision and values. Peterson traces the successive interpretations chronologically from the moment of Lincoln's death. The uncommonly eloquent response of preachers, poets, politicians, journalists and common citizens to his martyrdom established the Lincoln legend. Peterson then analyzes the debates among the professional historians, who did not enter the process until early in this century after the legend had already been securely created by Lincoln's contemporaries. Most helpfully, Peterson isolates the key elements of the image. Abraham Lincoln is either Savior of the Union, the key to triumphant nationalism; the Great Emancipator, advancing the cause of human freedom; the Man of the People, epitomizing democracy; the First American, representing the virtues of American culture; or the Self-made Man, personifying individual opportunity. We watch the evolution of these separate but not necessarily contradictory images from Lincoln's law partner William Herndon, to poet Carl Sandburg, to novelist Gore Vidal. Peterson traces their evolution through reminiscences, portraits and photographs, commemorative statues, plays, novels and movies, as well as scholarly works. The history of the major statues, particularly the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, tells much about the struggle of regions, races and political parties in state houses and in Congress to reach agreement on whether and how to honor Lincoln. The Lincoln Memorial, like the national holiday for his birthday, came about only after decades of bitter opposition from Southerners. The need of almost every president in the 20th century to "get right with Lincoln" or at least to call upon his example in times of crisis is thoroughly presented. Peterson shows that each president dealt with different parts of the Lincoln image. For example, Woodrow Wilson, a Southerner and a Democrat, through his appreciation of Lincoln as Savior of the Union, both shored up his own war presidency and helped heal the lingering ill will between whites of the South and the North. That he all but ignored the Great Emancipator should surprise no one who recalls how Wilson showed as the first film ever presented in the White House Birth of a Nation, the controversial silent classic based upon his friend Thomas Dixon's novel The Clansman. Indeed, the Great Emancipator does not re-emerge in the interpretive battles over Lincoln until the renewed civil rights 28/ November 1994 / Illinois Issues movement of the 1960s and 1970s. By then the most radical revisionists among Black Nationalists, such as Lerone Bennett Jr., focused on Lincoln as the epitome of white racism. The debates about slavery and race during the past several decades have established Lincoln as the central figure to understand in the nation's battle to deal with (or refuse to deal with) slavery and racism. He remains the litmus test for the debaters and their deepest beliefs about America's promise or failure to live up to the Declaration of Independence. Peterson tells this most controversial part of the Lincoln story fully and fairly, including the perspectives of such major African-American interpreters as abolitionist Frederick Douglass and historian John Hope Franklin. Of interest to Illinois students of Lincoln, Peterson makes no reference to the recent discoveries of the Lincoln Legals Project nor to the dispute surrounding Stephen B. Oates' biography With Malice Toward None and its alleged similarities to Benjamin P. Thomas' Abraham Lincoln. Peterson ends his volume with a section on the psychohistorical interpretations of Lincoln. He rejects the approach, although he regards Charles Strozier's Lincoln's Quest for Union as the best of these efforts. Turning to Garry Wills' Lincoln at Gettysburg, Peterson praises its close textual analysis of Lincoln's language as the source of his greatness. To Peterson it was the "iron nerve of ideology" in Lincoln's thought and politics that allowed him to lead the nation through its darkest hour. One should perhaps expect from a historian who has focused much of his research on Jefferson and Lincoln the conviction that words, carefully chosen in order to give direction to the political process in times of crisis, are fundamental to effective leadership. Their language about equality, whatever personal doubts and ambivalence they personally felt and displayed about slavery or about African Americans as full participants in this democracy, made Lincoln and Jefferson, in Peterson's eyes, the premier founders and consolidators of America's commitment to full equality. Christopher N. Breiseth is president ofWilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. A former professor of history at Sangamon State University, he has published several essays on Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War era.
Announcing:
Learn the what & why about:
Featuring:
To register:
Make checks payable to SSU,
(Acct.#2-14261), or
Sangamon.edu
Co-sponsors:
Illinois Legislative Studies Center at
Sangamon State University
and Governors State University
Lobbying Workshop
Sponsored by the
Illinois Legislative Studies Center
Sangamon State University
Friday, December 2, 1994
Public Affairs Center
Sangamon State University
Springfield, IL
What you will learn:
Featuring:
Who should attend:
To register:
Make checks payable to SSU,
(Acct.#2-14261), or
November 1994 / Illinois Issues / 29
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Sam S. Manivong, Illinois Periodicals Online Coordinator Illinois Periodicals Online (IPO) is a digital imaging project at the Northern Illinois University Libraries funded by the Illinois State Library |
