Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power - Couverture rigide

Carwardine, Richard J.

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 1400044561 ISBN 13 : 9781400044566

Editeur : Alfred a Knopf Inc, 2006

Synopsis

Book by Carwardine Richard

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Preface

Abraham Lincoln understood the value of a well-judged disclaimer, so it may be as well to begin by stating what this book does not purport to be. It is not a personal biography of the sixteenth president of the United States. Rather, it is a study of Lincoln’s political career, one which explores the sources and characteristics of his political authority, both before and after he won national recognition.

To study Lincoln involves peering through a veil of myth and iconography. Any president who successfully steers a nation through a civil war can expect to be decked with the victor’s laurels, but in Lincoln’s case garlands for the Union’s Savior and Great Emancipator have been interwoven with
wreaths for its First Martyr. The nature and timing of Lincoln’s death, personal and public tragedy though it was, proved perfect for his historical canonization. Legions of Lincoln scholars have recognized this, of course, and have tussled to reveal the enigmatic human being and unvarnished politician encased within the marble figure of national memory. After all, the Union’s war president was scarcely a revered national hero at the time: even the loyal press–impatient, anxious, and occasionally despairing–often questioned his wisdom and suitability for the job. Yet Lincoln still emerges, in so much that is written about him and the wartime Union, as a wholly–even unaccountably–exceptional figure. The remedy does not lie in gratuitous debunking: Lincoln was indeed a talented politician who rose beyond expectation to the supreme challenge of his office. But the key to understanding his rise to power and his achievement as president is to place him firmly into the setting in which he operated and to recognize the external sources of his authority, as much as his own endowments. In mid-nineteenth-century America, the world’s first mass participatory democracy, political success derived from the effective interplay of three elements: personal drive, the force of public opinion, and the organizing machinery of the political party and other networks of communication. During Lincoln’s career as a peacetime politician and then as the only United States president to face the challenge of a civil war, his great achievement was to set ambitious but realizable political goals; to fathom the thinking of ordinary citizens and to reach out to them with uncommon assurance; and to hone his impressive skills as a manager of the often unstable and fractious elements that made up the political parties to which he belonged. In what follows I have given particular emphasis to each of these elements, but within a largely narrative framework which recognizes that Lincoln’s words and actions, and those for whom they were intended, need to be understood within specific and changing contexts.

It seemed to many who watched Lincoln at first hand in Illinois and Washington that his special talent lay in his feel for opinion and in establishing rapport with the public at large. One young Springfield lawyer,
convinced that Lincoln was privately “a radical–fanatically so,” deemed that his strength lay in his never going “beyond the People.” For George Baker, a clerk in the State Department, the president’s success “consisted very much in the confidence and respect he won from the people. Other wiser, greater and as good men might not have won this and then all would have been lost in some of our great crises.” But public opinion in Illinois and the wider Union comprised many ideological and cultural strands.
Understanding “the people” meant comprehending pluralism. A common theme in what historians have written about Lincoln is the skill with which he made himself attractive, or at least indispensable, to a broad range of conservative, moderate, and radical elements within–successively–the Whig party, the antebellum Republican coalition, and the wartime Union. Less well appreciated is his remarkable success in reaching out to what was the most powerful of all the era’s subcultures, evangelical Protestantism. Mainstream evangelicals did much to shape the style, substance, and rhetoric of the mass participatory politics that reached their maturity in America at about the same time that Lincoln arrived at his. In antebellum Illinois, as elsewhere, the political fault lines commonly coincided with
religious and ethnic ones. Alert to the power of religious opinion, Lincoln used appeals to Protestant millennialism and Enlightenment rationalism. The orthodox Protestantism which underpinned the ethical stance of Republicans and much of the wartime Union coalition, and which flourished in New England and its “Yankee” diaspora, was not Lincoln’s religious faith. But he shrewdly harnessed the power of the most politically influential and energetic members of that constituency, both to win the presidency and to rally support behind his national vision and the war’s purposes.

Half of this study addresses Lincoln’s pre-presidential career. The first chapter explores the roots of Lincoln’s political ambition, examining his early life, the sources of his ideas, his alienation from the land, his seizing of the opportunities offered by the emerging market economy, and his evolution by 1840 into a leading Illinois Whig. His effectiveness in state politics and his election to the United States Congress, where he served from 1847 to 1849, signaled his political ability, but only hinted at the more serious and morally engaged figure that reentered politics in 1854 after the repeal of the Missouri Compromise opened the door to slavery’s westward expansion into Kansas-Nebraska. Establishing the philosophical sources of that moral engagement demands a discussion of Lincoln’s evolving religious views.

Chapter 2 examines how during the mid-1850s Lincoln became a chief beneficiary of the swirling public opinion that, acting as the arbiter of political power, destabilized the old parties and opened the door to realignment. Through several seasons of public speaking Lincoln’s steady advocacy of an antislavery argument did much to shape public sentiment and to effect the displacement of the Whigs by a broader-based Republican party that aspired to national power. Within the mix of ideological, ethnic, and religious loyalties amongst Illinois voters, Yankee influence came to preponderate through the decade. In his debates in 1858 with his great rival, United States Senator Stephen A. Douglas, Lincoln earnestly sought to harness antislavery religious sensibilities not only in the Yankeedominated settlements but as widely as possible across the state, and showed his grasp of the dynamics of the emergent mass democracy that made America politically unique.

Two years after Lincoln’s narrow defeat at Douglas’s hands, the power of a crusading party unlocked the door of the presidency. In the interplay of the elements shaping Lincoln’s antebellum career, it was the operations of party which did most to bring about his remarkable political ascent in 1860. Chapter 3 shows how his winning the presidential nomination demanded the confidence of a Republican organization whose national leadership had several other names from which to choose. Once Lincoln had been selected, his reaching office was almost completely dependent upon his party’s exertions. Party organizations were essential to effective campaign- ing, their controls over patronage providing the necessary levers of discipline and unity. The chapter examines the posture of a party that was an institutional and philosophical amalgam. Economic interest and bitter anti-southern feeling were important elements of the Republican mix. Equally important, the party was an expression of the reform-minded, optimistic Protestant evangelicalism unleashed by the religious movement known as the Second Great Awakening. Lincoln’s candidacy served its purposes well, for in his blend of constitutional conservativism and highminded, even Yankee-style moralism, they had a champion behind whom both pragmatic coalition-builders and high-minded crusaders could enthusiastically rally.
The fourth chapter examines Lincoln’s response to the challenge of exercising influence and power during the year or so between his election and early 1862. During the three phases of this period–as president-elect, as president during the uneasy peace before Sumter, and as a war leader– Lincoln showed those signs of anxiety and uncertainty only to be expected in someone lacking executive experience and facing a uniquely daunting challenge. Still, what gave coherence and continuity to his political course throughout this momentous year were three elements essential to the Union’s victory and his own political survival. First, he kept an undeviating focus on the permanence of the Union. Second, he instinctively understood the strategic essentials: limiting secession and maximizing support in the border region; blockading the South; and preventing the internationalizing of the conflict. Third, he engaged with and nourished a cross-party, broad-based popular patriotism.

Chapter 5 concerns Lincoln’s political purposes and their evolution from restoring the prewar Union to embracing emancipation. Lincoln’s assault on slavery was born of pragmatism and sustained by his evolving ideas of divine as well as human purposes. He defended emancipation as an essential means of preserving the Union and mortally wounding the Confederacy. But it became an end in itself, something without which the Union was scarcely worth saving and toward which God’s own plan
appeared to be driving him. Emancipation raised unavoidable questions about the place of the ex-slave and African-American in the nation’s life, issues on which Lincoln and the more radical Republicans found themselves at odds as they fashioned their policies on the reconstruction of the Union. By the...

Revue de presse :

“An illuminating and thoroughly intelligent assessment of Lincoln the politician. . . Carwardine provides a comprehensive study of how an essentially good man could gain and wield power, even in scoundrel time.”
—Kevin Baker, The New York Times

“One closes this biography wondering how postbellum politics might have been different were it not for that fateful gunshot on April 14, 1865. Carwardine’s Lincoln Prize-winning study is not only analytical and smart, it’s also delightfully readable — and it will surely emerge as one of the most important Lincoln books to be published this decade.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power stands up to any comparison. Carwardine’s confident writing and exemplary scholarship come together well in this faceted, evenhanded treatment of the 16th president. . . Carwardine wisely reinterprets many sources to present his nuanced overview of the moral man who was Abraham Lincoln.”
—Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett, The Oregonian

“Among the most thoughtful of the many [books] that have been pouring out in anticipation of the Lincoln bicentennial now three years away.”
—T.C. Johnsen, The Christian Science Monitor

“This is the biography of a prudent, decisive, activist Lincoln the world has been waiting for. Richard Carwardine has drawn a true portrait of the strengths of Lincoln’s personal character, the development and tenacity of Lincoln’s ethical convictions, his subtle and deliberate political acumen, his respect and embrace of moral principles for the conduct of personal relations and public statecraft; and, finally, Carwardine demonstrates Lincoln’s mastery of men and of public opinion.”
—Lewis E. Lehrman, Co-Chairman of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

“The book offers an insightful, judicious, and, in some ways, original study of Lincoln’s public career.”
—Eric Foner, London Review of Books

“Rarely does a biography of a popular historical figure offer all the qualities that make for a good read: lively writing, a fresh perspective, significant insight, and a compelling narrative. Carwardine does all this and more. How Lincoln obtained, used, and often withheld power to achieve base political objectives as well as enlightened national ones are brilliantly detailed. There is simply no other Lincoln biography like it.”
—Tom Schwartz, Lincoln Presidential Library

“Richard Carwardine has given us a thoughtful examination of Lincoln’s profoundly moral relationship to power and of the Great Emancipator’s role as a representative American of his age. The publication of this beautifully written book, which makes use of the earliest evidence and the latest insights, marks a high point in a decade that has been particularly rich in Lincoln scholarship. No one seriously interested in Lincoln can afford to ignore Carwardine’s judicious work.”
—Daniel Walker Howe

“As commander in chief in a war for the very survival of the United States, Abraham Lincoln wielded enormous power, which he infused with unequaled moral purpose and religious clarity. Richard Carwardine explains the wellsprings of these extraordinary qualities of Lincoln's leadership better than any other biographer.”
—James M. McPherson

“Carwardine succeeds brilliantly in comprehending both the pragmatic and moral dimensions of Lincoln the political leader. No other historian has penetrated so incisively and handled so deftly Lincoln as practical politician and Lincoln as moralist.”
—William J. Cooper

“Carwardine's astute blending of information and interpretation affords a rare result — the sense of an accurate perspective. It is like having the best seat in the house.”
—Douglas L. Wilson, Lincoln Studies Center

“Richard Carwardine’s long suit is his skill in situating Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln's various political, social and religious contexts during the Civil War. Carwardine's Lincoln is the most perceptive and powerfully-written biography of Lincoln by an English historian since Lord Charnwood.”
—Allen C. Guelzo, Henry R. Luce Professor of the Civil War Era & Director, Civil War Era Studies at Gettysburg College

“In the very crowded shelves containing books about Abraham Lincoln, Professor Carwardine has added a superbly conceived and crafted study, filled with fresh perspectives that add a great deal to our understanding of the sixteenth president. It is a great achievement.”
—Joel H. Silbey, Cornell University

“The Atlantic can serve as a wonderful clarifying prism. Oxford don Richard Carwardine looks across it and paints a remarkable picture of the greatest of the Americans who fused the secular and the sacred.”
—Gabor S. Boritt, Director, Civil War Institute, Gettysburg College

“Richard Carwardine’s study of the political leadership of Abraham Lincoln represents an extraordinary achievement.”
—Mark A. Noll, Professor of History, Wheaton College, IL

“The best book on Lincoln to appear in many years . . . by a true expert in the politics and history of the antebellum and Civil War eras.”
—David Hein, Professor and Chair of Religion and Philosophy, Hood College

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Alfred a Knopf Inc
• Date d'édition: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1400044561
• ISBN 13: 9781400044566
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 392