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[Lincoln], Harold Holzer,
LINCOLN AT COOPER UNION: The Speech
that made Abraham Lincoln President.
NEW copy, hardcover with dust jacket. (NY: Simon & Schuster, 2004).
352 pages.
~~~
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 — and 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. ~~~ Holzer
describes the enormous risk Lincoln took by appearing
in New York, where he exposed himself to the country's
most critical audience and took on Republican Senator
William Henry Seward of New York, the front runner, in
his own backyard. Then he recounts a brilliant and
innovative public relations campaign, as Lincoln took
the speech "on the road" in his successful quest for
the presidency.
~~~ From Kirkus Reviews: Had it not been
for his "right makes might" speech on Feb. 27, 1860,
at New York's Cooper Union college, Abraham Lincoln
might well have remained a rustic lawyer and
back-country raconteur. One can expect such fond
hyperbole from Holzer, who has edited numerous
collections of Lincolniana (none reviewed)-speeches,
photographs, apothegms, and gossip. Cooper Union is
with him (their Web site says the old rail-splitter's
appearance there was a principal factor in "assuring
him the presidency"). Holzer's structure is
chronological -- we learn how the invitation arrived
in October 1859 from a group of young Republicans, how
the honorarium was an impressive $200 (an amount that
Lincoln's political enemies later tried to use against
him), how the venue was changed at the 11th hour from
Henry Ward Beecher's Brooklyn church, how Lincoln
thoroughly researched his topic (the right of the
federal government to prohibit slavery in the new
territories), how he crafted his address (and
supervised its subsequent publication), how his tall,
homely, unkempt appearance initially startled his
large audience (about three-fourths capacity), how he
was introduced by William Cullen Bryant. Holzer's
research is prodigious: We learn that 168 gas lamps
hissed in 27 crystal chandeliers; we're told about
each stop made by the future president's train on his
subsequent speaking tour through New England; we read
that the Brooklyn ferry ran every seven minutes and
cost two cents. Although Holzer is an unabashed (even
effervescent) advocate for Lincoln -- and for the
significance of this speech-he also is careful to
analyze the architecture and rhetoric of the remarks
and to puncture some puffballs that have grown in the
yard of Lincoln legends -- e.g., that right after the
speech he turned down a $10,000 annual salary to work
for the New York Central Railroad (the offer was never
made). The entire speech -- annotated -- appears in an
appendix. Sometimes more laudatory than analytical --
but the enthusiasm is infectious.
~~~ This edition currently OUT OF PRINT.
$25.00
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[Lincoln], Ronald C. White, Jr.,
THE ELOQUENT PRESIDENT: A Portrait of Lincoln.
Random House, 2005. NEW copy. Hardcover with dust jacket.
480 pages. ~~ "If America lasts a millennium, it is
unlikely that ever a time will come when
candidates for office every quadrennium do not turn to the
words of Abraham
Lincoln, either because their own are inadequate, or because
they hope to imbue
their own aspirations with some of the mythic echoes of
holiness that seem to
attend anything that came from the Emancipator's pen. We look
to Lincoln's words
for comfort in crisis, inspiration for a cause, and most
of all to give
ourselves a place in the passing ages. He wrote or said
something that
applies—or can be made to apply — to virtually every human
condition and
aspiration, and often, when we cannot find him saying what
we want him to, we
put our own words in his mouth. It is rather in the form
of Winston Churchill's
conclusions on the legendary King Arthur, that if he did
not really live, he
should have; if Lincoln did not say something trenchant for
every occasion, he
should have. ~~ Certainly there is one thing Lincoln
should have done that,
alas, he was not given life enough to do, and that was to pen
his own memoir.
None but he could fill in the innumerable gaps in what
we know, or think we
know, of his life and times. In The Eloquent President:
A Portrait of Lincoln
through His Words, Ronald C. White, Jr., has made himself
Lincoln's
co-author. 'Lincoln's eloquence may prove to be his most
lasting legacy,' White
concludes, and certainly he is well qualified to make such
a judgment. The
author of Lincoln's Greatest Speech, White has
thoroughly plumbed
virtually every known written or oral expression left by
Lincoln. White shows
the development of Lincoln's ideas on Union, slavery, and
mankind. At the same
time he explores the development of Lincoln's written
style and literary
eloquence, the influences of Elizabethan cadence, biblical
rhetoric, and
idiomatic American expression. ~~ From
Lincoln's earliest recollections of his youth to the hours
prior to his death,
White explores all the dimensions of what the man had to
say about his own life
and where he came from, geographically, socially, and
spiritually. In the
process he illuminates many of the time-worn expressions
that have seen their
meaning lost or clouded through careless repetition. He
disassembles some of
them almost mathematically, and then delves into the
component parts to find the
process of Lincoln's thinking as first he persuaded himself,
and then crafted
his phrases to persuade others. Many have written analyses
of Lincoln's style,
but no one has explored so deeply or profitably the man's
literary thinking, and
shown how his words reveal and mirror his own growth.
~~ The Eloquent
President ought rightfully to stand as a lasting monument to White's
industry and innovation, and to the ageless meaning of his subject's words. As
always, and for as long as humankind survive, Lincoln will have the last word."
$27.00
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[Lincoln], Wert, Jeffry D., THE SWORD
OF LINCOLN: The Army of the Potomac.
Simon & Schuster, 2005. NEW copy. Hardcover with dust jacket.
560 pages. ~~ "Bruce Catton referred to it as 'Mr. Lincoln's Army.'
Indeed, he wrote a
three-volume history of the Army of the Potomac, the final
volume of which
earned him the Pulitzer Prize for History. Jeffry D. Wert
refers to the army as
'The Sword of Lincoln,' and so it was, as he ably demonstrates in his new book
of the same title. It is one of the ironies of the Civil War that while other
armies arguably achieved more, in the collective-and selective-memory of most
Americans, the Union Army in the Civil War was the Army of the Potomac.
~~ The Army of the Tennessee under its several commanders, most notably
William T. Sherman, marched thousands of miles and took the war from Kentucky,
across Tennessee, over northern Alabama and across Georgia, then up through
South and North Carolina, and was on the verge of entering Virginia when the war
ended. It defeated a succession of armies, took several state capitals, and
conquered tens of thousands of square miles of the Confederacy, virtually
breaking its backbone. By contrast, the Army of the Potomac was never more than
130 miles from Washington and spent its entire war career in the state of
Virginia except for dogging Confederate marches into Maryland and Pennsylvania
in 1862 and 1863. ~~ Lincoln’s Army ~~ Part of the reason for the
continuing focus on the Army of the Potomac is its foe, Robert E. Lee and the
Army of Northern Virginia. No other Yankee commander faced a foe so wily or
able. More of the reason lies in the army’s special relationship with the
president. Lincoln almost virtually built that army himself, out of the
volunteers he first called to arms in 1861. Because part of its assignment was
the protection of Washington, Lincoln saw the army often, knew its officers
better than any others, and the men in the ranks had the opportunity to see him
repeatedly, thus forging a bond between the two. ~~ Wert describes in
telling detail the birth and development of the army, the makeup of its officer
corps, the culture that developed within the circles of leadership, often
working against its goals, and the spirit of the men in the ranks. Those
soldiers endured more defeat than any other Union enlisted men, yet they stayed
the course, often in spite of inept leaders, and in the face of the growing
legend of invincibility of their foe. They suffered higher casualties than any
other Union field army, in the process fighting the most studied and storied
battles of the war, from Antietam to Gettysburg, the Wilderness and Petersburg,
before Grant and fate finally brought them Appomattox. Wert’s research is
pleasingly thorough, and his judgments mature and well informed, as we would
expect from the author of half a dozen distinguished Civil War military works.
On a subject as big as this, many books could be written, and surely more will
be, but Wert’s achievement is to capture the spirit of this virtual city of
armed men on whom Lincoln pinned so much of his hope for the salvation of the
Union."
$30.00
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[Grant]
Maihafer, Harry J.
THE GENERAL AND THE JOURNALISTS: Ulysses S. Grant, Horace Greeley, and Charles Dana
.
Washington DC: Brassey's, 1998. As new in as new dust jacket, black boards. 1st edition. HARDCOVER OUT OF PRINT.
"As both general and president, Grant felt the full power of the press. By a remarkable twist of fate, not only his wartime successes but also his peacetime failures were directly influenced by Greeley and Dana, two of the greatest figures of American journalism. The trio provides a fascinating contrast: Grant the simple soldier, basically unchanged from the time he left West Point until the day he died, honor untarnished but reputation sullied by men in whom he placed too much trust; Greeley the idealistic, brilliant, opinionated kingmaker, alternating in wartime between hawk and dove, forever shifting in his allegiances; and Dana the perverse, pragmatic, cynical intellectual, one of the first to emphasize news over editorials. The General and the Journalists follows the three powerful men as their paths cross during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Vividly portraying the 19th century era of "personal journalism," when Greeley and Dana became major players on the national stage, Harry J. Maihafer shows how the media greatly affected the conduct of the Civil War and, to this day, has shaped the public's
perception of Lincoln's, Johnson's, and Grant's presidencies. Extensive quotes from contemporary
newspapers convey a feeling of immediacy, bringing to life a new and important aspect of Grant's
career , one of intense drama and bitter conflict."
$30.00
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