| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Lincoln Emancipated: The President and the Politics of Race. Ed. By Brian R. Dirck. (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2007. xiv, 189 pp. $32.00, ISBN 978-0-87580-359-3.)

Was our nation's most revered president, Abraham Lincoln, a champion of civil rights and freedom, as he is primarily publicly remembered, or a racist, as a vocal group of contemporary historians has charged? Much recent scholarship has focused on this contentious issue, the significance of which for the history of American race relations belie its seemingly narrow scope. This new collection, edited by Brian R. Dirck, attempts to summarize and advance this debate. The essays build on the brilliant discussion of Lincoln's racial views in William Lee Miller's Lincoln's Virtues (2002), a book to which most of this volume's authors are heavily indebted. Lincoln Emancipated has a mildly schizophrenic quality: some contributors staunchly defend the Great Emancipator against any and all perceived criticisms, while others search for a profitable, nonpolemical middle ground that contextualizes Lincoln's racial views and policies. The best contributions manage to avoid hagiography, the bane of much Lincoln scholarship. Generally, the authors' findings tend to suggest that Lincoln did suffer from racial prejudice fundamentally at odds with his republican principles, although to some extent his frontier upbringing and career as a practical politician explain, but do not justify, that failing.

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