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Book Review
| The Long Pursuit: Abraham Lincoln's Thirty- Year Struggle with Stephen Douglas for the Heart and Soul of America. By Roy Morris Jr. (Washington: Smithsonian Books, 2008. xvi, 254 pp. $24.95, ISBN 978-0-06-085209-2.)Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America. By Allen C. Guelzo. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008. xxx, 383 pp. $26.00, ISBN 978-0-7432-7320-6.)
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| Roy Morris Jr., of Chattanooga, Tennessee, edits Military Heritage Magazine and has authored works on Rutherford B. Hayes (Fraud of the Century, 2003), Walt Whitman (The Better Angel, 2000), and Ambrose Bierce (Ambrose Bierce, 1995). His latest publication is a dual biography of Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas, tracing them from when they first saw each other until the presidential election of 1860. Such a comparison book is most interesting, although Morris is not a noted Lincoln or Douglas scholar. However, his writing is breezy and flowing. The book is aimed at the general public and tells the history of two men completely different in physique, background, education, wealth, and political platform. |
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As Morris recounts their histories, Douglas, from the East, and Lincoln, from Kentucky, became rivals immediately. At one time, they even courted the same girl. Lincoln, originally a Whig, vowed that slavery should not be spread into new territories. Douglas catered to southern Democrats and loudly proclaimed that "Negroes" were not in any way equal to white men and saw little evil in slavery. Lincoln, too, admitted that he thought the Negro was not equal in some categories but hated the practice of one man enslaving another. Yet he admitted that slavery was legal under the U.S. Constitution. |
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Lincoln was propelled out of his political slumber when Senator Douglas's Kansas- Nebraska Act became law in 1854. Lincoln vehemently opposed it and ran for the U.S. Senate. The tide turned against Douglas when he kept pushing his policy of squatter sovereignty. It soon divided his party, and he even earned the enmity of President James Buchanan. With four parties vying for the presidency in 1860, the Republican Lincoln easily swept to victory. |
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Morris recounts The Long Pursuit from mostly secondary sources with some references to newspapers. There are numerous mistakes. Among them, the author mentions Lincoln's law office as being over a "haberdashery" on the second floor, reached by a "back stairs" (p. xii). If Morris refers to the 1840s or early 1850s, it was over a post office on the third floor of the rather new Tinsley Building with stairs opening onto Sixth Street. If he means the late 1850s, it was on the second floor of a new building over William B. Miller's hardware store with stairs to Fifth Street. Lincoln resided with his father for twenty-two years, not "twenty-one" (p. 2), and he was twenty-one years old when he came to Illinois (p. 112). One should use Douglas's autobiography very carefully. He lied about McLean County's name originally being "McClean" to ridicule John Todd Stuart (p. 16). A check of the original published law forming that county shows it as "McLean." Charles Lanphier was a Springfield editor—not a Chicago one (p. 67). Despite those and other serious errors, the general reader will find this book enlightening and pleasant to read. |
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In contrast, Allen C. Guelzo, Henry R. Luce Professor of the Civil War Era at Gettysburg College, is a Lincoln specialist who has won the Lincoln Prize twice. His Lincoln and Douglas is a brilliant new analysis of the huge differences between the political philosophy of the two men. This monograph may be the definitive study, composed from enormous research in primary sources. |
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