If you think you don't need to read another Lincoln book think again. The author writes in the preface "But I believe that casting a bright, concentrated light on Lincoln and the politics of slavery--with politics defined in the broadest sense, not simply as elections and office-holding but the shaping of opinion within the extended public sphere--can illuminate his life and his era in new ways." Fascinating book. ( )

Lincoln moved on the politics of slavery very, very slowly. Even after legally liberating the majority of slaves with the Emancipation Proclamation, he continued to push for the completion of abolition by states instead of coming out strongly for the Thirteenth Amendment. He kept defending the whites-only reconstruction government in Louisiana until he began to hesitate just before he was assassinated. It was Congress and Republicans in the country who pushed for national abolition and did what they could to impose a fair settlement in the South. Lincoln should be recognised as a genius of political diplomacy for moving piecemeal towards abolition while keeping the border states on the Union side, but he remained to the last a cautious, compromising moderate on emancipation and racial justice. He wasn't a straightforward hero of freedom and he repeatedly overestimated the chances of voluntary abolition, but he was wise in his careful policies and he grew in his recognition of black equality. Perhaps a more radical president would have lost the Civil War: as he said of Kentucky (which rejected the 13th 14th, 15th amendments), to have lost the state would have been almost to lose the whole game. ( )

a heavily researched scholarly work without the usual romantic fictions around the civil war ( )

Not a biography of Lincoln, but an insightful look at the Nation's, as well as Lincoln's, position on slavery and the equality and rights applicable to the enslaved and freed blacks. It's a well known era of our Nations history, and we all know the basics. But not many books can cover such a well known subject and still introduce so many new or unrecognized facts about slavery and the viewpoints of the citizens and politicians of the day.
While slavery is acknowleged as evil, undoing the slavery policy was much more complex than we would think given today's mindset. Many in the North favored abolishing the practice of slavery over time, compensating slaveholders, and then relocating freed slaves to designated colonies to be established. The immediate freeing of all slaves, many feared, would lead to chaos and anarchy with a million suddenly free men, without jobs, without land, without resources, without education, and rightfully angry and resentful, suddenly roaming the country.
We've all read of how Lincoln freed the slaves by the Emancipation Proclimation, but we don't normally hear about how it came to be, the political thoughts, for and against at the time, what prompted Lincoln to issue the declaration when he did and how he did, and what it actually meant since those affected were in rebellion. The politics behind the decision are not well known, nor do we hear often of how Lincoln's views on the subject may have changed over his years in politics. There were so many more issues and complexities on the issue at the time, things we aren't often exposed to. The new insights into this subject made this a very interesting book. ( )

nonfiction/history-biography. A comprehensive portrait that shows how Lincoln changed and grew over the course of his political career. ( )