Abraham Lincoln: The Enigmatic President

  Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America by Garry Wills Lincoln at Copper Union: The Speech that Made Abraham Lincoln President by Harold Holzer Each of these books covers a single important speech by Abraham Lincoln. The Cooper Union Address set a course for his presidential quest, and the famous Gettysburg Address reset the course of the war. The speeches were delivered about 3.5 years apart. The Cooper Union Address was given in New York City on February 27, 1860, prior to Lincoln’s nomination as the Republican presidential candidate. The Gettysburg Address was delivered on November 19, 1863, about four months after the battle. Both books are highly readable and well-researched. Wills won the Pulitzer Prize for Lincoln at Gettysburg, and Holzer won the Lincoln Prize for his book on the Cooper Union Address. It might seem hard to write an entire book about a single speech, but Wills and Holzer had no difficulty filling the pages. More importantly, readers wil...

  Grant Takes Command 1863-1865 by Bruce Catton When asked what sort of man Grant was, Lincoln replied that Ulysses S. Grant was “the quietest little fellow you ever saw. The only evidence you have that he’s in any place is that he makes things git! Wherever he is, things move." Lincoln explained that every other general briefing him before a battle told him that he was short of some crucial resource to ensure victory, but, if ordered, they would proceed anyway. This essential resource was almost always cavalry, and Lincoln claimed their real purpose was to shift responsibility to him. When Grant took charge, he immediately reassigned twenty thousand horseless cavalrymen to the infantry. Since there was no way to acquire horses for every man designated as cavalry, these soldiers were held idle as a handy excuse. Recognizing the duplicity, Grant removed the excuse before his first battle. In this biography, Pulitzer Prize-winning Bruce Catton does an excellent job of describing the...

  Abraham Lincoln, The Boy The Man by Lloyd Ostendorf This book, illustrated by the author and enhanced with photographs, tells the story of Lincoln's life through pictures and brief narratives. As noted in the acknowledgments, it targets younger readers. (First published in 1962.) When I write a historical novel, I find books aimed at younger readers invaluable. They provide three benefits. First, books for youths tell history as a story, just as a historical novel does. Second, they focus on highlights which can provide an outline for a more extensive narrative. Third, they present the popular view and mythology of historic events. This is valuable because a historical novelist must know when he or she is diverting away from common perceptions. Without proper setup, running counter to general belief can jar the reader out of the story, and the cardinal rule for storytelling is never pull the audience out of the story. Abraham Lincoln: The Boy The Man accurately portrays Li...

  The Radical and the Republican, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery  Several books study the relationship between Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. I have not read Brian Kilmeade’s The President and the Freedom Fighter , so I cannot compare them. The Radical and the Republican is a balanced view of a pair of critically important men in American history. Since Lincoln and Douglass did not meet until nearly two and a half years into Lincoln’s first administration, the book mostly reports their personal histories and views separately, as if they were on parallel tracks toward the same goals. Except that the tracks were not parallel. The strategy and tactics were so wide apart that Douglass doubted that Lincoln was an ally in his cause. Although you could not prove it by Lincoln’s utterances, their slavery goals were the same. The following two quotes from the book succinctly summarize how Lincoln crafted his strategy. The first is from Lin...

  Abraham Lincoln in the Kitchen:  A Culinary View of Lincoln’s Life and Times Rae Katherine Eighmey A historical novel must read like a story, enriched by details about how protagonists and antagonists lived. While a writer might overindulge in specifics—food, lodging, transportation, clothing—a light touch enlivens the narrative. When I wrote Tempest at Dawn , an academic focus on daily life during the Revolution provided ample research. By contrast, similar cultural and routine details are rarer for the Civil War era. While books on common soldiers abound, my focus is the war's politics, not its battles. Abraham Lincoln in the Kitchen helped fill the void. I’m not a cook, so I merely scanned the fifty-five recipes, but these are surrounded by excellent descriptions of everyday life, especially food procurement, preparation, and consumption. Each chapter covers a specific historical period, and Eighmey does a good job of sleuthing out how Lincoln lived, and she presents accu...

  The Impending Crisis of the South, How to Meet it by Hinton Rowan Helper Four reasons made this book appealing to me. First, written in 1857 by someone who lived through the era, it offers an authentic perspective. Second, its anti-slavery stance comes from a Southerner. Third, the book sparked a movement called Helperism. Finally, Lincoln appointed Helper as consul to Argentina, suggesting he likely read the book. This is supported by a section of Lincoln's Cooper Union Address that, more eloquently, echoes Helper's commentary. When writing a historical novel, it’s crucial to get inside the heads of the people who actually experienced the period. One technique is to read contemporaneous writings, including books, periodicals, newspapers, and speeches. Helper’s thesis is that slavery harms economic growth, inventiveness, and the middle class. He uses extensive census statistics to solidly prove his case. While the sheer amount of data is convincing, it can feel dull. Fortunat...