| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Richard Striner. Father Abraham: Lincoln's Relentless Struggle to End Slavery. New York: Oxford University Press. 2006. Pp. 308. $28.00.
This book argues that Abraham Lincoln played a morally decisive—perhaps the decisive—role in shaping American political development. By the late 1850s, the American republic stood in danger of metamorphosing into a white supremacist empire. Without Lincoln's election to the presidency in 1860, the United States would today be much different. Richard Striner does not push the counterfactual too far, but he does suggest that race relations in America might today be much worse and that political democracy itself might have died.	1
Striner offers no new discovery about Lincoln. As a meditation on presidential greatness and leadership, the book is meant more for general readers than for specialists. To help would-be Lincoln buffs to grasp a complex story, the book offers many fine reproductions of cartoons from the era and photographs of Lincoln. If there is anything specialized about the book, it is Striner's self-conscious effort to revive "great man" history, with particular attention to political ethics and character. This book is part of an effort to get back to a publicly accessible national history.	2
On those terms, the book works quite well. Striner is a master of the political, military, diplomatic, and constitutional developments of the Civil War and conveys them crisply. He also knows Lincoln's collected works and public papers extremely well.	. . .

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