Perhaps you are aware of the fact that there is an oddly popular trivia game floating around that a group of clever (and likely bored) college...
Continue »
One of our most eminent Lincoln scholars, winner of a Lincoln Prize for his Lincoln at Cooper Union, examines the four months between Lincoln's election and inauguration, when the president-elect made the most important decision of his coming presidency — there would be no compromise on slavery or secession of the slaveholding states, even at the cost of civil war.
Abraham Lincoln first demonstrated his determination and leadership in the Great Secession Winter — the four months between his election in November 1860 and his inauguration in March 1861 — when he rejected compromises urged on him by Republicans and Democrats, Northerners and Southerners, that might have preserved the Union a little longer but would have enshrined slavery for generations. Though Lincoln has been criticized by many historians for failing to appreciate the severity of the secession crisis that greeted his victory, Harold Holzer shows that the presidentelect waged a shrewd and complex campaign to prevent the expansion of slavery while vainly trying to limit secession to a few Deep South states.
During this most dangerous White House transition in American history, the country had two presidents: one powerless (the president-elect, possessing no constitutional authority), the other paralyzed (the incumbent who refused to act). Through limited, brilliantly timed and crafted public statements, determined private letters, tough political pressure, and personal persuasion, Lincoln guaranteed the integrity of the American political process of majority rule, sounded the death knell of slavery, and transformed not only his own image but that of the presidency, even while making inevitable the war that would be necessary to make these achievements permanent.
Lincoln President-Elect is the first book to concentrate on Lincoln's public stance and private agony during these months and on the momentous consequences when he first demonstrated his determination and leadership. Holzer recasts Lincoln from an isolated prairie politician yet to establish his greatness, to a skillful shaper of men and opinion and an immovable friend of freedom at a decisive moment when allegiance to the founding credo "all men are created equal" might well have been sacrificed.
Review:
In a critical essay entitled "The Great Secession Winter," Henry Adams portrayed an ill- prepared Lincoln concealing his ineptitude between the election in November 1860 and his inauguration in March 1861 behind a strategy of "masterly inactivity." While almost everyone, then and since, has stressed "inactivity," Harold Holzer shifts the emphasis to "masterly," arguing that Lincoln navigated that treacherous... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) winter with principled leadership. Reiterating his views in private letters to leaders rather than in public addresses, Lincoln exerted more "power and influence before his swearing in" than any previous president-elect, argues Holzer, the author of more than 30 books on Lincoln and the Civil War. Contrary to the dominant view of a Lincoln who grew to greatness in the maelstrom of civil war thanks in part to his talent for sensing the will of the people, Holzer's Lincoln was great from the outset and boldly followed his own lights rather than public opinion. Holzer's prose ambles in rangy, companionable strides that gradually gather momentum as he seeks to show how ingeniously Lincoln handled four chief tasks: choosing his Cabinet, writing his inaugural address, reintroducing himself to the American public and getting to Washington, D.C. It seemed impossible for the president-elect to accomplish any of those tasks without outraging one side or another — white Southerners, northern Democrats, Republicans or all of the above. So Lincoln's strategy, Holzer contends, was to maintain a "confident silence." Holzer covers Cabinet selection in enough detail to generate empathy for Lincoln as he endured the tedious process. Yet far from eschewing the grubby politics of plum-awarding, Lincoln reassured all factions by appointing representatives of every region and political stripe. Holzer may overstate the case for unfailing brilliance here: One Cabinet member soon left in disgrace, while two more bickered for years. "Lincoln President-Elect" treats readers to a close reading of Lincoln's First Inaugural. Holzer portrays Lincoln laboring over the text in a dusty storeroom and a stuffy train car, and he demonstrates that the result, which emphasized rule of law and argued that slavery "could be contained without compromising founding principles," amounts to a masterpiece. Holzer is at his best in reconstructing Lincoln's train trip from Illinois to Washington. Readers may occasionally grow impatient (do we need five pages about deciding to grow a beard?), but the evocation of the journey — crushing crowds, endless boring miles, panic over hotel arrangements — is worth it. Along the way, Lincoln made over 100 impromptu speeches, which were criticized for their thin substance and inconsistent delivery. Yet Holzer insists that the speeches reintroduced "the old campaigner to his ... public" while keeping under wraps "the official policy he planned to unveil at his swearing in." Although conflicting accounts regarding Lincoln abound, Holzer does not reveal why he chooses particular sources over others, and this may be the book's chief shortcoming. For example, Lincoln once entrusted a handbag containing the draft of his inaugural address to his son, Robert, only to have Robert drink too much and absentmindedly hand it off to someone else, causing Lincoln to search frantically through a pile of luggage. Some witnesses placed this incident in Cleveland, while others remembered Harrisburg. Holzer unhesitatingly locates it in Indianapolis, merely noting in the endnotes that two sources, one of which is a 1920 reminiscence by the very Robert who was tipsy at the time of the incident, "convincingly remembered Indianapolis." Certainly, the image of a hapless Lincoln surrounded by carpetbags matters more than precise location. But the problem is that anyone who writes about Lincoln must weigh contradictory evidence about almost everything, including matters of grave importance, and the criteria for selection need to be clear. "Lincoln President-Elect" emphasizes Lincoln's early greatness and the public's cluelessness, perhaps to the point of overkill. It sets up a static view of Lincoln that diminishes his capacity for growth and plays down the quality that he himself most valued: his ability to start from, but then urge forward, public opinion. Yet as readers are swept up in this magnificently told story, they may rethink how Lincoln handled the eve of the nation's greatest crisis, in which case a little exaggeration is a small price to pay. Chandra Manning teaches history at Georgetown and is the author of "What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery and the Civil War." Reviewed by Chandra Manning, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
(hide most of this review)
Synopsis:
One of our most eminent Lincoln scholars, winner of a Lincoln Prize for his Lincoln at Cooper Union, examines the four months between Lincoln's election and inauguration, when the president-elect made the most important decision of his coming presidency — there would be no compromise on slavery or secession of the slaveholding states, even at the cost of civil war.
Abraham Lincoln first demonstrated his determination and leadership in the Great Secession Winter — the four months between his election in November 1860 and his inauguration in March 1861 — when he rejected compromises urged on him by Republicans and Democrats, Northerners and Southerners, that might have preserved the Union a little longer but would have enshrined slavery for generations. Though Lincoln has been criticized by many historians for failing to appreciate the severity of the secession crisis that greeted his victory, Harold Holzer shows that the presidentelect waged a shrewd and complex campaign to prevent the expansion of slavery while vainly trying to limit secession to a few Deep South states.
During this most dangerous White House transition in American history, the country had two presidents: one powerless (the president-elect, possessing no constitutional authority), the other paralyzed (the incumbent who refused to act). Through limited, brilliantly timed and crafted public statements, determined private letters, tough political pressure, and personal persuasion, Lincoln guaranteed the integrity of the American political process of majority rule, sounded the death knell of slavery, and transformed not only his own image but that of the presidency, even while making inevitable the war that would be necessary to make these achievements permanent.
Lincoln President-Elect is the first book to concentrate on Lincoln's public stance and private agony during these months and on the momentous consequences when he first demonstrated his determination and leadership. Holzer recasts Lincoln from an isolated prairie politician yet to establish his greatness, to a skillful shaper of men and opinion and an immovable friend of freedom at a decisive moment when allegiance to the founding credo "all men are created equal" might well have been sacrificed.
Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter 1860-1861
Used Hardcover
Harold Holzer
0 stars -
0 reviews
$9.95
In Stock
Product details
640 pages
Simon & Schuster -
English9780743289474
Reviews:
"Synopsis"
by Simon and Schuster,
One of our most eminent Lincoln scholars, winner of a Lincoln Prize for his Lincoln at Cooper Union, examines the four months between Lincoln's election and inauguration, when the president-elect made the most important decision of his coming presidency — there would be no compromise on slavery or secession of the slaveholding states, even at the cost of civil war.
Abraham Lincoln first demonstrated his determination and leadership in the Great Secession Winter — the four months between his election in November 1860 and his inauguration in March 1861 — when he rejected compromises urged on him by Republicans and Democrats, Northerners and Southerners, that might have preserved the Union a little longer but would have enshrined slavery for generations. Though Lincoln has been criticized by many historians for failing to appreciate the severity of the secession crisis that greeted his victory, Harold Holzer shows that the presidentelect waged a shrewd and complex campaign to prevent the expansion of slavery while vainly trying to limit secession to a few Deep South states.
During this most dangerous White House transition in American history, the country had two presidents: one powerless (the president-elect, possessing no constitutional authority), the other paralyzed (the incumbent who refused to act). Through limited, brilliantly timed and crafted public statements, determined private letters, tough political pressure, and personal persuasion, Lincoln guaranteed the integrity of the American political process of majority rule, sounded the death knell of slavery, and transformed not only his own image but that of the presidency, even while making inevitable the war that would be necessary to make these achievements permanent.
Lincoln President-Elect is the first book to concentrate on Lincoln's public stance and private agony during these months and on the momentous consequences when he first demonstrated his determination and leadership. Holzer recasts Lincoln from an isolated prairie politician yet to establish his greatness, to a skillful shaper of men and opinion and an immovable friend of freedom at a decisive moment when allegiance to the founding credo "all men are created equal" might well have been sacrificed.
Powell's City of Books is an independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon, that fills a whole city block with more than a million new, used, and out of print books. Shop those shelves — plus literally millions more books, DVDs, and eBooks — here at Powells.com.
Don't Miss
