11 May 2009
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Published on May 11th, 2009 @ 08:19:18 pm, using 71 words, 60 views
What’s that, you say? Haven’t had a good reading list of useful management works lately? Ever?? Well, your wait’s over. GOVERNING has a nice set of books up, complete with short summaries to entice you to them, covering a wide range of management topics. Any list that goes all the way from Moneyball to Predictably Irrational can’t be bad. Comes with helpful links for your ordering convenience. Sounds well managed, right?
05 March 2009
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Published on March 5th, 2009 @ 02:39:31 pm, using 497 words, 49 views
Brian Dirck at A. Lincoln Blog has finished his series of the ten worst mistakes Abe Lincoln made, and, while our admiration for Dirck and his work has been frequently stated, maybe it’s a sign of how good Lincoln really was that the list and the justifications for calling them “mistakes” are so weak. He was an indulgent father? A bad manager? He underestimated Southern devotion to the Cause and the Missouri guerillas’ capacity for mayhem? The only one I really wholeheartedly can back is Abe’s work in a slavery case in the wrong direction, which came back to bite him in the a** when he sought the anti-slavery vote and when historians have tried to defend him for not being as racist as the times. Lincoln’s been quoted, rightly, who knows?, for advising attorneys to back away from bad cases and clients. He didn’t back away here, for reasons Dirck hypothesizes, but it was a bad call for someone who asserted his virtually lifelong opposition to slavery.
Dirck’s No. 1 mistake of Abe’s? Picking Andrew Johnson as his VP in 1864. Hard to argue that Johnson was a major dickhead (think basically any current Senator south of the Mason-Dixon line right now), but, as Dirck notes, Abe wasn’t planning on turning over the office to him. Political Abe went with a Union-supporting Democrat, which may have been a good idea with swing states that were still slave-holding in the 1864 election. Not a great idea when you get killed at the theater one night. Johnson is one of the few who might keep the last White House occupant from occupying the top of the “worst presidents in US history” list, so that’s reason enough to consider his selection a bad choice. And it also is likely one of the things the current White House occupant admires and takes away from his readings of Lincoln as one who put bipartisanship above getting the right things done in perilous times. Only Lincoln didn’t. He expected to live and to leave Johnson drunk in whatever office they’d stored him away in until that awful night at Ford’s Theater. None of Obama’s silly courting of those Maine moderates [sic] fits the same, but Obama might just be one of those guys who tests well and can read a speech. While the outcome of Abe’s choice may end up being far worse than the temperate Dirck sees, however, it’s hard to blame Abe for getting an ignorant alcoholic out of the Senate (even if he did support the Union) and maybe picking up a few votes at the same time. Like I said, if this is the worst we can lay on Abe, unlike, say, fathering children with a slave you never acknowledged or starting an unprovoked war on a country while the perpetrators of what you claimed were the cause sat in caves and laughed, then maybe he is really does deserved to be placed at the bottom of that “worst presidents” list.
10 February 2009
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Published on February 10th, 2009 @ 06:42:09 pm, using 548 words, 44 views
Final part of the four on books about Abe’s speeches and speeching. These two deal with his last great one, the Second Inaugural. There is much good here, although I think too many writers today, trying too hard to find Abe’s new-found religion, make too much of the references in it. (One of the safest predictions about the profession of American History 20 years from now is the number of Abe books refuting this new surge of “religious Abe.") These weren’t new to the speech and Abe also had an audience to reach that, in that day, was most likely to be invoking God in less temperate and wise ways. The best part of the speech is, in fact, the invocation of humility in a time when, as later years showed, vengeance and self-righteousness on both sides could keep things from being brought to an acceptable close. There’s no doubt Lincoln felt it deeply and saw things more profoundly and spiritually at the end of the War than at the start. But that coincided with the explicit and conspicuous POLITICAL purpose of the speech, which had its desired effects and one tragic one, which was to piss Booth off so much that he decided no to kidnapping and yes to murder. The eloquence and wisdom and judgment and sensitivity to what had to be said and the way to say it were all phenomenal and unseen before or since, no matter how many times Obama reads “Team of Rivals.” Gettysburg is rightly the speech we as a culture need to memorize, but the Second Inaugural is the one that should be required reading for anyone before they decide they should be President.
Here are the summaries from the fly-leaves of two of the more recent books, both good, both worth your time. Read and learn.
James Tackach, Lincoln’s Moral Vision: The Second Inaugural Address
. . . during the political turbulence of the 1850s and during Lincoln’s presidency, his positions on [slavery, race, and religion] shifted dramatically. The profound changes in Lincoln’s thinking are evident in the Second Inaugural Address, in which he condemns slavery as a grievous national sin that prompted a just God to deliver upon the United States a fierce punishment in the form of a devastating civil war.
This book argues that the Second Inaugural Address was Lincoln’s resolution of the key moral and political issues of his time and is the key document in Lincoln’s entire literary canon.
Ronald C. White, Jr., Lincoln’s Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural
After four years of unspeakable horror and sacrifice on both sides, the Civil War was about to end. On March 4, 1865, at his Second Inaugural, President Lincoln did not offer the North the victory speech it yearned for, nor did he blame the South solely for the sin of slavery. Calling the whole nation to account, Lincoln offered a moral framework for peace and reconciliation. The speech was greeted with indifference, misunderstanding, and hostility by many in the Union. But it was a great work, the victorious culmination of Lincoln’s own lifelong struggle with the issue of slavery, and he well understood it to be his most profound speech. Eventually this “with malice toward none” address would be accepted and revered as one of the greatest in the nation’s history.
07 February 2009
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Published on February 7th, 2009 @ 07:05:29 am, using 630 words, 39 views
That loud wail that woke you, at least briefly, this morning was me seeing that the NY Times, finally deciding to focus on Abe books the weekend before his bicentennial, had gotten that overrated right-wing pundit William Safire to do the review. But then the wail toned down to a surprised mutter as I got through the first-half of the review talking about Abe and some of the books we’ve mentioned here without much to raise volume about. The second half, though? Well, here’s where he started wobbling badly:
But what of books not being written about our 16th president? I’d like to see an anthology of “Lincoln’s Greatest Mistakes — or Were They?”
He then proceeds to suggest topics for such a work that have already been done as books or put in anthologies. Now, given the wealth of Abe material, I wouldn’t want to be held responsible for knowing everything that’s been written about him either, but the self-assurance of the suggestion without any sign that he had checked to see if such books existed is part of that lazy “I’m the NY Times and you’re not” that has made the recent prospect of the paper and/or at least the Book Review so pleasant.
But here’s the real problem with Safire’s take. He proclaims that Abe’s overriding ideal, the end that justified his means, was maintenance of majority rule. I would take exception. Majority rule was a means for Abe itself. You could have just as easily said his ideal was the rule of law, which has as much or more evidence for it, but it too was only a means. The true end? The preservation of the structure that allowed individual Americans like Abe (and like me) to rise above circumstance to make the most of their lives, a structure, including majority rule, rule of law, and much more, that had been shakily constructed with the birth of this nation and was then, as now, under internal threat. IOW, Abe was committed to what will be called by future historians, pondering its life and current death, the American Legacy to future generations and to people across the globe wanting to rise above circumstance. That required maintaining the Union, the Declaration, and the Constitution, even if it meant in the short-term accepting contradictory goals that would long-term undermine the Legacy, such as keeping slavery intact but restricted to the South.
Having incorrectly set up Abe’s principles and commitment, Safire then goes on to postulate how an Abe who placed majority rule above all would react to other and/or contemporary (and frankly some fantasy) scenarios had he lived or lived today. Which, of course, gives him the chance to whip in a bit of the warped worldview of a man who could faithfully and in good conscience work for Richard Nixon. So, while not as conspicuously mendacious as the usual assignment of important books to hack but Beltway-popular reviewers, the Book Review editor does again manage to turn something valuable into conservative cant.
But, let’s give Safire this: a good ending. If he had only written his last paragraph, he could have been given credit for something worth reading. So here it is:
Let us, then (he liked that construction), not wallow in worship of a statue looking gravely down on multitudes from a marble monument engraved with famous lines. The way to honor the hero who did most to force us [my emphasis, think of all the ways that could have been said to put the onus on the Confederacy and you’ll see my point] to stay united is to absorb the ever-better histories that illuminate Lincoln’s character, his humanity, his genius in expression and, above all, his sure grasp of high political purpose.
06 February 2009
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Published on February 6th, 2009 @ 07:21:57 pm, using 310 words, 38 views
Part two of four focusing on guiding you to some books about Abe and what, really, is he most distinctive for among our presidents (okay, we’ll argue that, but at least ONE of the most distinctive). These two books look at a couple of speeches the non-Lincolnite might not be as aware of but that laid the foundation for what was to come as President. So check them out before we get to the two speeches he’ll be remembered for hundreds of years from now.
Harold Holzer, Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech That Made Abraham Lincoln President
Lincoln at Cooper Union explores Lincoln’s most influential and widely reported pre-presidential address–an extraordinary appeal by the western politician to the eastern elite that propelled him toward the Republican nomination for president. Delivered in New York in February 1860, the Cooper Union speech dispelled doubts about Lincoln’s suitability for the presidency, and reassured conservatives of his moderation while reaffirming his opposition to slavery to Republican progressives.
Award-winning Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer places Lincoln and his speech in the context of the times–an era of racism, politicized journalism, and public oratory as entertainment–shows how the candidate framed the speech as an opportunity to continue his famous “debates” with his archrival Democrat Stephen A. Douglas on the question of slavery.
Lewis E. Lehrman, Lincoln at Peoria: The Turning Point
To understand President Abraham Lincoln, one must understand the extraordinary antislavery speech Lincoln delivered at Peoria on October 16, 1854. The three-hour address marked the turning point in Lincoln’s political pilgrimage, dramatically altering his political career and, as a result, the history of America.
In Lincoln at Peoria author Lewis E. Lehrman examines the seminal speech and its historical context. Lehrman argues that the great divide between the statecraft of Lincoln’s presidential years and his early legislative years originates with the speech at Peoria in 1854.
05 February 2009
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Published on February 5th, 2009 @ 08:04:22 pm, using 169 words, 49 views
I’m sure you’re waiting eagerly for more of the last series of Abe book notices we’ve promised on works about his speeches, but USA Today decided to offer its version of what we do here, a quick review of 4 books that you might want to check out. Here’s what they have to say about one of them (just ignore that it ends up screwing up the author in the text). You’ll have to find out about the other 3 yourself. (Back to the series tomorrow, I promise.)
“They Have Killed Papa Dead!”
By Anthony Pitch
Steerforth Press, 493 pp., $29.95
Nineteenth-century Washington teemed with boarding houses, brothels, bars that served “liquid opiates” — and with Confederate sympathizers. Drawing on primary sources from the Library of Congress and the National Archives, Papa delves into the fevered world of John Wilkes Booth. Possessing the looks of a matinee idol, Lincoln’s assassin exerted a Charles Manson-like grip on his co-conspirators. Papa races along through the manhunt, the trials, the executions. A treat for the Lincoln fanatic.
03 February 2009
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Published on February 3rd, 2009 @ 06:48:54 pm, using 192 words, 45 views
We’d like to be able to claim the most incisive analysis and info on Abe a week away from his bicentennial, but that accolade actually has to go to, no surprise, A Lincoln Blog, and its author, Lincoln scholar Brian Dirck. What to know why? Go check out this current post explaining the nuances of the interconnection of politics AND morality that underlay Abe’s decision on when and why to do the Emancipation. Far more understanding than the usual surface-level displays we get from less, uh, capable students. Here’s a brief bit to convince you:
. . . but I will argue that Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation not because of abolitionist and runaway slave pressure, but in direct (and in my judgment courageous) contradiction to enormous countervailing political pressure to leave slavery intact. There is in fact little evidence that Lincoln was receiving really urgent signals from Union army officers in the field that freeing the slaves was necessary to relieve them of the problems caused by the “contraband” population–in fact, he received many more political signals that freeing those slaves would cause him and the Republican Party innumerable political and legal headaches.
01 February 2009
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Published on February 1st, 2009 @ 05:17:31 pm, using 368 words, 24 views
As we close in on Abe’s bicentennial next week, we’re going to wind down our series on Abe and books about him by focusing on enduring legacy of his speeches, which refined and made new the promise of the Revolution and the American Legacy we have trashed over the last several years. We’ll provide you info from the flaps of a couple of books at a time for a few days that either treat his speeching or particular speeches. The examinations of his thinking and the productions and meanings of his speeches are timely and worthy of our final thoughts about the man before his big day arrives. Look for more this week.
Waldo W. Braden, Abraham Lincoln, Public Speaker
Abraham Lincoln has been called a literary artist, a master of words, and the most gifted writer among American statesmen. Yet many of the same admirers and scholars who praise Lincoln as a prose stylist consider him to have been a second-rate public speaker. In Abraham Lincoln, Public Speaker, Waldo W. Braden disagrees with this viewpoint and argues persuasively that Lincoln’s abilities as an orator were considerable. In his discussion of Lincoln’s speaking practices from 1854 through 1865, Braden draws extensively on Lincoln’s papers and the reports of those who knew him and heard him speak. Braden presents Lincoln as he appeared on the hustings in mid-nineteenth century frontier America, as a campaigner on the public platform, and in his formal speeches as president.
John Channing Briggs, Lincoln’s Speeches Reconsidered
Throughout the fractious years of the mid-nineteenth century, Abraham Lincoln’s speeches imparted reason and guidance to a troubled country. Lincoln’s words were never universally praised. But they resonated with fellow legislators and more and more with the public as he spoke on such volatile subjects as mob rule, temperance, the Mexican War, slavery and its expansion, and the justice of a war for black freedom and American union.
John Channing Briggs [!!!!!] reveals how the process of studying, writing, and delivering speeches helped Lincoln develop the ideas that have so profoundly changed history. Briggs follows Lincoln’s thought processes and careful attention to oratory, beginning with the Illinoisan’s [!!!!!!!] speech to the Springfield Lyceum in 1838 and ranging to the incomparable Second Inaugural Address.
28 January 2009
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Published on January 28th, 2009 @ 11:23:07 am, using 526 words, 59 views
So many of the Lincoln books, as we’ve seen in these posts leading up to his 200th birthday next month, chronicle and detail events and controversies in his life, leaving in the shadows (at least somewhat) how he specifically interacted with others in the same detail. We do get books on his personal family life and such, as we’ve noted before, but we don’t want to leave the impression that there aren’t any really good studies on his relationships with those who served him and those he counted as friends. So, check out the books below for more detail than we’re providing with excerpts from the cover summaries and to see how his personal networks also fed back into who he was and what he accomplished, especially during the Civil War.
T. Harry Williams, Lincoln and His Generals
[One of the biggest “classics” and not that long if you want to be able to brag about your Lincoln reading] This is the human, dramatic, and fascinating story of Lincoln as commander in chief of an army at war against its brothers. It is a riveting look at his search for a winning general, and of his own emergence as a master strategist. Here is the Lincoln who, in loneliness and doubt, bore the whole burden of forging a modern command system that would serve a nation in years to come. More than a military history of the Civil War, this is the story of the American president as war director.
Craig L. Symonds, Lincoln and His Admirals
Lincoln was remarkably patient; he often postponed critical decisions until the momentum of events made the consequences of those decisions evident. But Symonds also shows that Lincoln could act decisively. Disappointed by the lethargy of his senior naval officers on the scene, he stepped in and personally directed an amphibious assault on the Virginia coast, a successful operation that led to the capture of Norfolk. The man who knew “little about ships” had transformed himself into one of the greatest naval strategists of his age.
David Herbert Donald, “We Are Lincoln Men": Abraham Lincoln and His Friends
“We Are Lincoln Men” examines the significance of friendship in Abraham Lincoln’s life and the role it played in his presidency. Though Lincoln had hundreds of acquaintances and dozens of admirers, he had almost no intimate friends. Behind his mask of affability and endless stream of humorous anecdotes, he maintained an inviolate reserve that only a few were ever able to penetrate. In this highly original book, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner David Herbert Donald examines, for the first time, these close relationships and explores their role in shaping Lincoln’s career.
William C. Davis, Lincoln’s Men: How President Lincoln Became Father to an Army and a Nation
No American president has enjoyed as intimate a relationship with the soldiers in his army as did the man they called “Father Abraham.” In Lincoln’s Men, historian William C. Davis draws on thousands of unpublished letters and diaries–the voices of the volunteers–to tell the hidden story of how a new and untested president became “Father” throughout both the army and the North as a whole.
25 January 2009
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Published on January 25th, 2009 @ 11:16:15 am, using 248 words, 36 views
As Abe’s 200th birthday arrives next month, we’re getting more attention to the multitude of books coming out, and not just at this blog. The Boston Globe has a decent review of three books up right now that you should check out, with nods to the wider library available as well. You’ll find a couple we’ve noted here, the new Lincoln epic bio, the shorter paean to his devotion to the written word, and a nice overview of Mrs. Lincoln, who doesn’t always get those. Here’s just a smidgen to get you to wander over there to check the whole thing out:
. . . Kaplan is hardly the first to recognize and celebrate Lincoln’s way with words. He emphasizes the particularly literary side of the 16th president, who carried Byron, Burns, and Shakespeare in saddlebags. A gifted writer himself, Kaplan even manages to get us interested in young Abe’s satirical verses and the contents of the primers he devoured. While Kaplan emphasizes the written word, the picture he paints is of a man always moving between the spoken, the written, and the printed: reading aloud with friends, writing notes to himself for speeches, poring over newspapers. Lincoln preferred to write before he spoke and even believed the written word superior to the spoken, but never thought either should be taken lightly. His care with language shaped his outrage at President James K. Polk’s evasive justifications for the Mexican War and Stephen Douglas’s vile race-baiting a decade later.
Don’t dally now.
15 January 2009
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Published on January 15th, 2009 @ 08:07:33 pm, using 293 words, 73 views
Think all the book reviews we’ve seen on Abe for the last few months have been hooey? (We won’t get into your thoughts about the blog.) Well, now you can do your own. As Brian Dirck informs us at A Lincoln Blog, virtually the whole treasury of Abe’s words is now available online for any old yahoo to inspect, analyze, and expound on. Like what, you say? How about this?
So let’s see: we now have The Collected Works, the Papers of Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln Day by Day and the Lincoln Legal Papers available online, for free, in very user-friendly formats, for anyone’s use. Also, a search on the The Collected Works website yields hits from some of the better reminiscences, like Ward Hill Lamon’s memoirs, and Carpenter’s Six Months in the White House.
As usual, Dirck also gives us a couple of things to ponder, including how the availability of materials like these to the general public makes it possible that the old “talented amateurs” can once again get seriously into the history racket and broaden what the professionals have done to the field. Although he would be professionally in competition with these “public” works, he nevertheless sees the benefits:
On the other hand, there’s something to be said for those old, classic works of history, written by men of letters like Francis Parkman. Yes, their research methods weren’t very systematic, sometimes appallingly so, and they drew some pretty dubious conclusions at times. But their books are classics for a reason: they have wit, flair, and a certain grandeur that is lacking in many more “professional” works.
Go read the whole post. Then go write the next classic bio on Abe and show him that this new situation really could be good.
11 January 2009
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Published on January 11th, 2009 @ 02:06:01 pm, using 949 words, 45 views
As I mentioned in the last post, the subject of Abe and his devotion and adherance to the Constitution is one of the hottest among those who want to glorify Lincoln and those who want to whack him (metaphorically). The thing for me on this is that Lincoln consistently expressed his desire to do no more than the Constitution allowed him and in fact refused to act precipitously against slavery, which he personally abhorred, precisely for that reason. Even the Emancipation Proclamation, which some question constitutionally, was deliberately limited to what he felt he could do under the document he admired. Yes, some of what he did wasn’t in the Constitution, but most of it got validated later under his instigation (I did say “most of it"). And Lincoln, contrary to those who would use him to create a King today, never said anything about “unitary” executives or a desire to undercut either Congress or elections. (Wouldn’t the easiest thing to do in a Civil War tend to be to invalidate the Constitution with martial law and not risk being defeated for reelection? You doubt for a minute that the current resident of the White House and his owner Cheney would have abrogated elections under the same circumstances?) So, yes, the Constitution did not emerge unscathed from his administration, but most of it was remedied as soon as possible and no permanent damage was done. It wasn’t until this administration and this Congress that Americans could held without charge indefinitely in non-homeland war conditions, not something you would expect had Lincoln permanently damaged the Constitution he loved.
So, you know where I stand on this one, thankful that we had a Lincoln and not a Polk or Harding (or you know who) in charge at the time. There are other views, of course, and not surprisingly they have been written up extensively. So, as his bicentennial inches closer, we’ll tip you to some of the books you can find around right now on the subject, giving you key portions of their liner notes. Which one(s) you decide to pursue will be up to you. Any of them will be worth your time.
George Anastaplo, Abraham Lincoln: A Constitutional Biography.
With eloquent insights into Lincoln’s intellect and the issues dividing the country he led, Anastaplo describes how the sixteenth president successfully managed the impossible task of keeping the world’s greatest democracy united. Anastaplo also demonstrates Lincoln’s continuing and profound influence on modern American society, law, and politics and shows readers the lessons this fascinating man can still teach Americans about coping with diverse times.
Daniel Farber, Lincoln’s Constitution.
Daniel Farber’s purpose in Lincoln’s Constitution is to lead the reader to understand exactly what Lincoln did, what arguments he made in defense of his actions, and how his words and deeds fit into the context of the times. Farber sets the constitutional problems that arose during Lincoln’s term within their historical moment, as illuminated by recent work by historians, and investigates how well Lincoln’s views hold up today–over a century later. The answers are crucial not only for a better understanding of the Civil War but also for shedding light on issues that the courts struggle with now: state sovereignty, presidential power, and national security limitations on civil liberties.
Brian McGinty, Lincoln & the Court.
The Civil War was, on one level, a struggle between competing visions of constitutional law, represented on the one side by Lincoln’s insistence that the United States was a permanent Union of one people united by a “supreme law,” and on the other by Jefferson Davis’s argument that the United States was a compact of sovereign states whose legal ties could be dissolved at any time and for any reason, subject only to the judgment of the dissolving states that the cause for dissolution was sufficient. Alternately opposed and supported by the justices of the Supreme Court, Lincoln steered the war-torn nation on a sometimes uncertain, but ultimately triumphant, path to victory, saving the Union, freeing the slaves, and preserving the Constitution for future generations.
Mark E. Neely, Jr., The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties.
Neely depicts Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus as a well-intentioned attempt to deal with a floodtide of unforeseen events–from the disintegrating public order in the border states to the outcry against the first draft in U.S. history. Drawing on letters from prisoners, records of military courts and federal prisons, memoirs, and federal archives, he paints a vivid picture of how Lincoln responded to these problems, how his policies were actually executed, and the virulent political debates that followed. Lincoln emerges from this account with his legendary statesmanship intact–mindful of political realities and prone to temper the sentences of military courts, concerned not with persecuting his opponents but with prosecuting the war efficiently.
James F. Simon, Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney: Slavery, Secession, and the President’s War Powers.
The clashes between President Abraham Lincoln and Chief Justice Roger B. Taney over slavery, secession, and the president’s constitutional war powers went to the heart of Lincoln’s presidency. James Simon, author of the acclaimed What Kind of Nation–an account of the battle between President Thomas Jefferson and Chief Justice John Marshall to define the new nation–brings to vivid life the passionate struggle during the worst crisis in the nation’s history, the Civil War. The issues that underlaid that crisis–race, states’ rights, and the president’s wartime authority–resonate today in the nation’s political debate. . . .
Almost 150 years after Lincoln’s and Taney’s deaths, their words and actions reverberate in constitutional debate and political battle. Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney tells their dramatic story in fascinating detail.
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