| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America. By Allen C. Guelzo. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004. xviii, 332 pp. $26.00, ISBN 0-7432-2182-6.)

Allen C. Guelzo's work is a richly detailed account of how Abraham Lincoln charted a middle course to the Emancipation Proclamation. Guelzo argues that a proper understanding of the Emancipation Proclamation must recognize that Lincoln was "our last Enlightenment politician" (p. 3), whose commitment to the virtue of prudence required a careful balance among his desire for emancipation, the presidency's constitutional authority, and the political realities of the Civil War. If Lincoln was a prudent man, then the text suggests that he was the only prudent man. Guelzo's Lincoln is an embattled leader, his critics and friends constantly offering conflicting advice, to which the president responded with measured thought and action. The author avoids the romanticism of some biographies by juxtaposing Lincoln with a second protagonist, the act of emancipation, as Republicans, slave-holders, and the slaves themselves perceived it.

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