Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times By David S. Reynolds

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Author: David S. Reynolds

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One of the Wall Street Journal's Ten Best Books of the Year | A Washington Post Notable Book | A Christian Science Monitor and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2020Winner of the Gilder Lehrman Abraham Lincoln Prize and the Abraham Lincoln Institute Book Award"A marvelous cultural biography that captures Lincoln in all his historical fullness. . . . using popular culture in this way, to fill out the context surrounding Lincoln, is what makes Mr. Reynolds's biography so different and so compelling . . . Where did the sympathy and compassion expressed in [Lincoln's] Second Inaugural—'With malice toward none; with charity for all'—come from? This big, wonderful book provides the richest cultural context to explain that, and everything else, about Lincoln." —Gordon Wood, Wall Street JournalFrom one of the great historians of nineteenth-century America, a revelatory and enthralling new biography of Lincoln, many years in the making, that brings him to life within his turbulent ageDavid S. Reynolds, author of the Bancroft Prize-winning cultural biography of Walt Whitman and many other iconic works of nineteenth century American history, understands the currents in which Abraham Lincoln swam as well as anyone alive. His magisterial biography Abe is the product of full-body immersion into the riotous tumult of American life in the decades before the Civil War.It was a country growing up and being pulled apart at the same time, with a democratic popular culture that reflected the country's contradictions. Lincoln's lineage was considered auspicious by Emerson, Whitman, and others who prophesied that a new man from the West would emerge to balance North and South. From New England Puritan stock on his father's side and Virginia Cavalier gentry on his mother's, Lincoln was linked by blood to the central conflict of the age. And an enduring theme of his life, Reynolds shows, was his genius for striking a balance between opposing forces. Lacking formal schooling but with an unquenchable thirst for self-improvement, Lincoln had a talent for wrestling and bawdy jokes that made him popular with his peers, even as his appetite for poetry and prodigious gifts for memorization set him apart from them through his childhood, his years as a lawyer, and his entrance into politics.No one can transcend the limitations of their time, and Lincoln was no exception. But what emerges from Reynolds's masterful reckoning is a man who at each stage in his life managed to arrive at a broader view of things than all but his most enlightened peers. As a politician, he moved too slowly for some and too swiftly for many, but he always pushed toward justice while keeping the whole nation in mind. Abe culminates, of course, in the Civil War, the defining test of Lincoln and his beloved country. Reynolds shows us the extraordinary range of cultural knowledge Lincoln drew from as he shaped a vision of true union, transforming, in Martin Luther King Jr.'s words, "the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood." Abraham Lincoln did not come out of nowhere. But if he was shaped by his times, he also managed at his life's fateful hour to shape them to an extent few could have foreseen. Ultimately, this is the great drama that astonishes us still, and that Abe brings to fresh and vivid life. The measure of that life will always be part of our American education.

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"Abe" is a new biography of Lincoln by David Reynolds, a historian who specializes in the culture of 19th-century America. His approach is to re-tell the story of Lincoln's life by emphasizing the popular culture of his times, in newspapers, literature, entertainment, and the like, to describe how the culture influenced Lincoln, and how Lincoln influenced the culture. This approach sets "Abe" apart from the other Lincoln biographies that I've seen.I found the book to be most interesting in its early chapters, when Reynolds describes Lincoln's family and his youth. There, the culture of the times had the most powerful influence in shaping Lincoln's thought and character. Reynolds goes into considerable depth in describing Lincoln's ancestry and parents; in particular, his description of Thomas Lincoln, Abraham's father, goes far to correct the portrait of Thomas as an ignorant lout. For example, he points out that Thomas quit his church in order to join another that was actively anti-slavery: an unusual act in early 19th-century Kentucky. And his discussion of Lincoln's marriage is sensitive and thought-provoking.Later chapters, especially those during Lincoln's presidential years, explore other out-of-the-way corners of Lincoln's life, such as his creation of Thanksgiving as a national holiday, or his influence on the celebration of Christmas. Some of Reynolds' exploration of the culture wars of the time make for painful reading, such as the virulently racist anti-Lincoln tracts circulated by the Democratic Party. Nearly as painful are the writings of Lincoln supporter David Ross Locke, who, in the persona of the Copperhead "Petroleum Vesuvius Nasby", wrote crude satires that were immensely popular in the North, and with Lincoln, who read them aloud at cabinet meetings. Warning: if you are triggered by the 'N' word, this book is not for you.All of this gives "Abe" a dimension that I've not seen in other Lincoln biographies, and Reynolds appears to want to present Lincoln as a man of his times, rather than as a projection of our ideals. However, Reynolds mars his work by mixing polemics into his history. This is clear in his use of the anachronistic terms "conservative" for the pro-slavery, racist movements, and "progressive" for the abolitionist, pro-equality movements. His projecting the terminology of 21st-century politics as defined by the Left onto mid-19th century America is sharply misleading, both for Lincoln's time and for ours. For example, Reynolds describes how Lincoln's thinking on slavery was guided by his readings of the Constitution and the Founders: that the Founders saw slavery as an aberration, and intended to place it on the road to extinction. Nowadays, such thinking would be termed "originalist", and would label Lincoln as conservative. Contrariwise, racists' thinking of the time was informed in part by the new Darwinism: for them, the "science" of race was settled. Nowadays, such genuflection to "science" is a hallmark of progressives. My point is that Reynolds' use of "conservative" and "progressive" is polemical rather than historical, an attempt to portray "progressives" as always the good guys and "conservatives" as always the bad guys. It's a crudity worthy of David Locke.To summarize: "Abe" is an interesting read, and offers much fresh material. And Reynolds' presentation of Lincoln as a man of his times is rewarding, especially in his exploration of Lincoln's early years. However, in the later chapters, the polemicist in Reynolds overwhelms the historian. I give the first half of "Abe" five stars, and the second half one.

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