Over 15,000 books have been written about Abraham Lincoln. Around ten have been written about Martin Van Buren, give or take five. This disparity is part of the reason I wrote A Presidents Story. I wanted to shine a light on those Presidents that might, at best, have been mentioned in your U.S. History class on that one day devoted to what happened between Washington and the Revolution, on the one hand, and Lincoln and the Civil War, on the other. Through the internet, I have been heartened to discover that there are other Presidential history nerds like myself out there, but our numbers are not legion. We all share a curiosity about those Presidents that received little attention from historians or history teachers.
That said, there is no denying that Lincoln is a fascinating figure who served at a critical juncture in U.S. history. I have collected some Lincoln biographies and have read several books on the Civil War (including Freedom by William Safire which I highly recommend). Anyone else who has the slightest scholarly tendencies has read similar books. In short, I was not looking for another Lincoln biography to read, particularly when my list of biographies of other Presidents remains daunting.
Then I read American Ulysses by Ronald C. White. As I said in my Top Ten List of President Biographies, I loved it. White’s other significant work before his biography of Grant was A. Lincoln. After picking the book up several times, I decided White’s work on Grant earned an expectation that I would at least try reading his work on Lincoln.
A. Lincoln may be better than American Ulysses. I am not sure I learned anything particularly new about Lincoln but White really is a gifted biographer and writer. He has a talent for finding interesting material on his subject and weaving it into a compelling story that proceeds at a comfortable pace and never bogs down in the minutiae of a life. Lincoln’s shortcomings are developed to ground him in humanity but, in the process, the 16th President becomes more heroic rather than less.
I respect Lincoln because of the difficulty of the time in which he served and, I believe, he tried his best to accommodate many competing considerations. But, like all of us, he was not perfect. His suspension of habeas corpus was not his finest hour and there are valid arguments that his approach to the war may have cost many more lives than necessary. Hindsight is 20/20 but, even excluding those animated by racism, it is fair to question whether Lincoln’s tactics consigned us to 100 years of civil rights abuses that were little better than slavery itself or whether the process could only be hastened by the War and the Emancipation Proclamation.
A. Lincoln does not set out to resolve these questions. Instead, White gives us a much fuller understanding of who Lincoln was, how he was influenced and how he went about addressing problems. Much like I tried to do with the lesser known Presidents in A Presidents Story, White gives the Civil War and Lincoln’s assassination their due but the book truly shines when discussing the lesser known moments in Lincoln’s life and career. I finished the book still pondering whether Lincoln made the right calls as President but having a greater appreciation for what it was about his past that caused him to reach the decisions he made.
Ultimately, I concluded that Ronald White has not used his platform in A. Lincoln or American Ulysses to make me more or less of a fan of either of his subjects. He held my interest in order to make me more informed. I can take it from there.