Shortlisted for the 2018 Lincoln Prize
Previous biographies of Abraham Lincoln—universally acknowledged as one of America’s greatest presidents—have typically focused on his experiences in the White House. In Becoming Lincoln, renowned historian William Freehling instead emphasizes the prewar years, revealing how Lincoln came to be the extraordinary leader who would guide the nation through its most bitter chapter.
Freehling’s engaging narrative focuses anew on Lincoln’s journey. The epic highlights Lincoln’s difficult family life, first with his father and later with his wife. We learn about the staggering number of setbacks and recoveries Lincoln experienced. We witness Lincoln’s famous embodiment of the self-made man (although he sought and received critical help from others).
The book traces Lincoln from his tough childhood through incarnations as a bankrupt with few prospects, a superb lawyer, a canny two-party politician, a great orator, a failed state legislator, and a losing senatorial candidate, to a winning presidential contender and a besieged six weeks as a pre-war president.
As Lincoln’s individual life unfolds, so does the American nineteenth century. Few great Americans have endured such pain but been rewarded with such success. Few lives have seen so much color and drama. Few mirror so uncannily the great themes of their own society. No one so well illustrates the emergence of our national economy and the causes of the Civil War.
The book concludes with a substantial epilogue in which Freehling turns to Lincoln’s wartime presidency to assess how the preceding fifty-one years of experience shaped the Great Emancipator’s final four years. Extensively illustrated, nuanced but swiftly paced, and full of examples that vividly bring Lincoln to life for the modern reader, this new biography shows how an ordinary young man from the Midwest prepared to become, against almost absurd odds, our most tested and successful president.
Tabela de Conteúdo
Introduction
Prologue: A Puzzling Inauguration
1. The Rising Lincolns and the Kentucky Plummet
2. The Indiana Plunge
3. The Illinois Crash
4. The New Salem Recovery
5. The Rise and Fall of a State Legislator
6. The Rise and Limits of a Pre-1850 Lawyer
7. The Rise and Turbulence of a Marriage
8. A Congressional Aspirant’s Rise
9. The Congressional Fall
10. The Union’s Economic Rescue
11. Three Climactic Railroad Cases
12. The Peoria Address and the Strategy of Defense
13. The 1855 Setback
14. The Lost/Found Speech
15. The Dred Scott Case and the Kansas Finale
16. The Great Debates
17. The Cunning Revisions
18. The Cooper Union Address
19. The Presidential Election and the Fruits of Revision
20. The Erratic Interregnum
21. The Troubled Inaugural Address
22. Fort Sumter and Pickens and the Emergence of an Impressive Administrator
Epilogue: (Slowly) Becoming a Coercive Emancipator
Sobre o autor
William W. Freehling is Singletary Professor of the Humanities Emeritus at the University of Kentucky and the author of the two-volume Road to Disunion and the Bancroft Award-winning Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, 1816-1830.
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