Lincoln : A President for the Ages

320 Pages·2012·2.96 MB·English

by  Participant Media

Table of Contents

ALSO BY PARTICIPANT MEDIA
Title Page
ABOUT THIS BOOK

Chapter 1 - THE FACES OF LINCOLN

Chapter 2 - ELIZABETH KECKLEY

Chapter 3 - “A SACRED EFFORT”

Chapter 4 - “BY NO MEANS EXCLUDING FEMALES”

Chapter 5 - LINCOLN, FDR, AND THE GROWTH OF FEDERAL
POWER
The Origins of the Debate over Federal Power
Lincoln’s View of the Role of Government
Lincoln Versus State Sovereignty
National Power in the Civil War Era

Chapter 6 - “THAT THIS MIGHTY SCOURGE OF WAR MAY
SPEEDILY PASS AWAY”

Chapter 7 - AT THE END OF TWO WARS

Chapter 8 - ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Chapter 9 - PRESIDENT ABRAHAM LINCOLN CONFRONTS
THE WAR ON TERROR

Chapter 10 - “PUBLIC OPINION IS EVERYTHING”
Chapter 11 - “THE ALMIGHTY HAS HIS OWN PURPOSES”
“Not a Technical Christian”: Lincoln’s Faith
Religion and Politics: Lincoln’s Experience
Lincoln and the Christian Right

Chapter 12 - THE REAL LINCOLN IS THE ICON

Chapter 13 - LINCOLN—THE UNLIKELY CELEBRITY

Acknowledgments
NOTES
INDEX
Copyright Page
ALSO BY PARTICIPANT MEDIA
A Place at the Table
Last Call at the Oasis
Page One
Waiting for “Superman”
Oceans
Cane Toads
Food, Inc.
ABOUT THIS BOOK
“Now he belongs to the ages.” When a grief-stricken Edwin M.
Stanton, secretary of war, uttered those words at 7:22 on the
morning of April 15, 1865, it marked the end of Abraham
Lincoln’s nine-hour death-struggle against an assassin’s bullet
and the beginning of an epoch of mourning, memorializing,
pondering, and debating the enormous historical legacy of our
sixteenth president—an epoch that, it sometimes seems, has
continued unabated for a century and a half. Every generation
rediscovers and reinterprets Lincoln, in the process redefining
what it means to be American, so central is he to our national
story.
Today, the motion picture is perhaps the single most powerful
medium by which we repurpose the past—“writing history with
lightning,” as President Woodrow Wilson is supposed to have
said about Birth of a Nation, one of the first, and most
controversial, cinematic efforts to define the legend of Lincoln.
So when one of our era’s greatest directors—Steven Spielberg
—joins forces with one of our leading playwrights—Tony
Kushner—and a cast of eminent performers, headed by the
brilliant and versatile Daniel Day-Lewis, to offer a new
interpretation of Lincoln’s story, it’s likely that millions of
Americans will seize the opportunity to take a fresh look at his
legacy and to ask what new meanings it may have for us today.
Hence this book. In the wake of so many thousands of literary
attempts to distill the essence of Lincoln, it may seem futile to
try to offer a new version of the familiar story. In an effort to
meet this challenge—and to take seriously, even literally,
Stanton’s encomium of Lincoln as a man who “belongs to the
ages”—we approached a collection of today’s most eminent
historians, journalists, and students of Lincoln with a novel
assignment: to offer their own best judgments, admittedly
speculative but solidly grounded in historical fact and
generations of scholarship, as to how Lincoln might have
responded to the political, social, economic, and military crises
of times not his own.
We were delighted when these notable Lincoln scholars
accepted the task. The results appear in the pages that follow.
You’ll read the thoughts of Henry Louis Gates Jr., as to how
Lincoln (had he lived) might have managed the enormous
challenges of race relations during the period of
Reconstruction and beyond, Jean Baker’s fascinating (and
somewhat counterintuitive) assessment of how the Great
Emancipator might have responded to the movement for
women’s suffrage, and Daniel Farber’s insightful comparison of
Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt as historical reshapers of the
role of federal power in American democracy.
You’ll read thoughtful discussions by the eminent historians
and authors James Tackach, Allen C. Guelzo, Douglas L. Wilson,
Richard Carwardine, and Harold Holzer on such topics as
Lincoln and the use of atomic weapons, Lincoln and the
creation of a new global order in the wake of World War II,
Lincoln and modern communications and celebrity culture, and
Lincoln and the religious right. And you’ll read journalist James
Malanowski’s surprising (and surprisingly convincing) portrait
of Lincoln as an “outlaw hero”; a penetrating analysis by Frank
J. Williams, former chief justice of the Rhode Island Supreme
Court, of how Lincoln might have approached today’s
controversial War on Terror; and a lively interview with
journalist Andrew Ferguson, author of the acclaimed Land of
Lincoln, on what he discovered about Lincoln’s many meanings
during a year of traveling the country to meet some of the
sixteenth president’s most passionate admirers—and
detractors.
Each of these chapters introduces, in a sense, a new Lincoln;
yet the cumulative effect, we think, will be to deepen your
understanding of and appreciation for the political genius,
spiritual wisdom, and profound integrity of the man so many
consider the greatest and most representative American.
We’re also delighted to be able to include in this book some
other features that we hope will enhance your insight into the