Synopses & Reviews
His image today is part of America, from the penny to Mount Rushmore, but in his own day Abraham Lincoln was as much reviled as he was revered, and he remained a controversial figure up to the time of his assassination. Now one of our preeminent authorities on Lincoln charts his rocky road from obscure western politician to national icon.
In Lincoln Seen and Heard, Harold Holzer probes the development of Lincoln's image and reputation in his own time. He examines a vast array of visual and documentary sources to demonstrate the president's impact both on the public and on the historical imagination, enabling us to see the man from Illinois as his contemporaries saw him.
Holzer considers a wide range of images-prints, portraits, political cartoons-to reveal what they say about Lincoln. He shows the ways in which Lincoln was depicted as Great Emancipator and as commander in chief, how he was assailed in cartoons from both sides of the Mason-Dixon line, and how printmakers both memorialized and capitalized on his assassination. Sharing dozens of historic reproductions, Holzer writes with unabashed enthusiasm as he unravels the symbolic meaning and the message of these images and explains their relation to political and military events of the time.
Holzer also takes a closer look at Lincoln's oratory, the words of a man often ridiculed for his homespun manner of speaking. He shows how Lincoln's choice of words in the Emancipation Proclamation was actually designed to minimize its humanitarianism and argues that the story of his failure at Gettysburg has been unfairly exaggerated. Through this provocative collection, Lincoln emerges not only as a leader dependent upon his public image but also as an active participant in its development. Lincoln Seen and Heard helps us distinguish man from myth, while offering a superb introduction to the work of one of our most provocative Lincoln scholars.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part One: Father, Martyr, and Myth
1. "Prized in Every Liberty-Loving Household":
The Image of the Great Emancipator in the Graphic Arts
2. "That Attractive Rainbow":
The Image of Lincoln as Commander in Chief
3. Dying to Be Seen: Prints of the Lincoln Assassination
Part Two: Controversy and Public Memory
4. The Mirror Image of Civil War Memory:
Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis in Popular Prints
5. With Malice Toward One, or "Ridicule Without Much Malice?"
Lincoln in Caricature Reconsidered
6. Lincoln in Confederate Cartoons:
A "Lean-Sided Yankee," Seldon Seen
Part Three: The Gift of Language and the Language of Gifts
7. "Tokens of Respect" and "Heartfelt Thanks":
How Lincoln Coped with Presidential Gifts
8. "Avoid Saying Foolish Things":
The Legacy of Lincoln's Impromptu Oratory
9. The Poetry and Prose of the Emancipation Proclamation
10. Lincoln's "Flat Failure":
The Gettysburg Myth Revisited
Notes
Index