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Reviews
REVIEW ESSAY
UNDERSTANDING LINCOLN
Lincoln's Quest for Equality
The Road to Gettysburg
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By Carl F. Wieck
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(DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2002. Pp. x, 214. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $36.00.)
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Abraham Lincoln's Political Faith
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By Joseph R. Fornieri
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(DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003. Pp. x, 209. Notes, selected bibliography, index. $38.00.)
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Freedom, Union, and Power
Lincoln and His Party in the Civil War
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By Michael Green
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(New York: Fordham University Press, 2004. Pp. xvii, 398. Notes, bibliography, index. $65.00.)
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| The political career of Abraham Lincoln is a subject of perennial interest among scholars and the American public. The rise of this obscure Illinois lawyer and legislator to the office of President as the United States dissolved into civil warfare remains a dramatic and multifaceted story. Because he skillfully led the nation through its greatest crisis and was swept from office by an assassin's bullet, his life and career continue to intrigue, inspire, and invite further investigation. These three volumes all examine aspects of the politics and ideology of Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party in the 1850s and 1860s. Although none of these volumes introduces a large corpus of new material, each offers a new perspective on the origins and development of Lincoln's political ideas. |
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Carl F. Wieck's volume, Lincoln's Quest for Equality: The Road to Gettysburg, is devoted to demonstrating that the abolitionist Unitarian minister Theodore Parker had a profound effect on Lincoln's thought during the 1850s and that this influence is most pronounced in Lincoln's "House Divided" speech of 1858 and in his Gettysburg Address of 1863. Wieck insists that Lincoln drew more than simply the phrasing of "a government of the people, by the people, and for the people" from Parker. The vehicle for this transfer of ideas was William H. Herndon, Lincoln's third law partner. Herndon was a frequent correspondent with Parker, and Parker sent copies of some of his published sermons to Herndon. Wieck considers Parker's 1854 "Sermon of the Dangers which Threaten the Rights of Man in America" as a key influence on both the House Divided speech and the Gettysburg Address. Establishing this connection is important, Wieck argues, because it suggests that Lincoln had stronger and earlier ties to abolitionism than scholars have appreciated. |
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Unfortunately, Wieck's argument rests on a series of suppositions couched in conjectural phrases. That Lincoln and Herndon were partners and that Herndon and Parker were correspondents is evident from the historical record. That Herndon shared Parker's 1854 sermon with Lincoln is certainly possible and perhaps probable, but it is difficult to demonstrate that these conditions yielded substantial influence on Lincoln's political thought. Wieck even suggests that Herndon carefully concealed Parker's influence on Lincoln to protect the latter from the stigma of abolitionism: "No revealing paper trail can be allowed to exist" (p. 69). |
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Wieck's exercise in tracing the intellectual influence of Theodore Parker on Abraham Lincoln is ultimately unconvincing because he relies too heavily on supposition to connect historical dots. More importantly, Wieck fails to explain how the knowledge of Parker's greater influence on Lincoln changes our understanding of Lincoln's political thought. The conclusion that "Lincoln was never deaf to abolitionist voices" (p. 176) is not new, nor is the assertion that Lincoln moved toward more radical solutions to the problem of slavery over the course of his career and his presidency. |
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