The biographer does a good job on trying to sort out the legendary Lincoln from the mythical Lincoln, mostly. There are times within this book that one begins to feel that the author is projecting his understanding of Lincoln onto the events that happened--such as suggesting that some of his retorts were quips when in fact they probably were not. Everyone, it seems, misunderstands Lincoln at some point or another which was true of his life.

When I began reading this book, I was familiar with the perspective of slavery being a state's rights issue. What this book does uniquely well is that it outlines that this is not so. Since Lincoln was not an outright abolitionist, the position was often confusing in history. What he was, was perhaps, a pragmatist in the sense that he did not politically think slavery could be outright abolished but rather that it could be contained and not spread like a virus. The fact that it was permitted and was within the law of the country at least in some places I think, to him, meant that the institutions of the country had decided it would be so. What the national conscience had not decided, however, was whether or not as a nation it SHOULD be so. Lincoln clearly and categorically personally hated slavery. It was a moral question to him that was easily answerable.

In reading this book, I found several quotes attributed to Lincoln I had not discovered before. His desire to take an oath in 1860 somewhat of his own making was most enlightening. The fact he suggested that war was now in the hands of the people as opposed to his own self was also interesting since after he had sworn to protect the constitution he knew that his job was to defend the institutions it represented. Since the people had no such oath, they were free to come and go as they pleased, as he pointed out. War would be up to them.

The other interesting thing this book does not do is focus much on his assassination. Indeed, as a character study, it has little need to explore that topic. Rather, the book ends just as the civil war starts. The author wisely has allowed the reader to fill in all the blanks that happen in the next five years from that marker in time by understanding the character of the person under study previous to that point. Since the research that was done was thorough, you know what is going to happen next even if you had never read any civil war history prior.

Another interesting item the author elucidates are grammatical changes Lincoln made. Since Lincoln asked for the advice of people around him, he often listened to their suggestions so that the wording he presented was partly his own and partly modified by others who were sensitive to the climate in ways that he might not have been. Many of these original works do not suggest a personality of compromise in the sense that we are often led to believe Lincoln held amongst opposite personalities and contrary positions. Rather, many of his positions are very pointed and not at all compromising when it comes to the consequences of certain behavior and how the law would understand that behavior at a constitutional level. One wonders whether he would have been better served with his original verbiage in some areas we understand with historical hindsight.

All in all, a very thorough character study of Lincoln, and an enjoyable read that any Lincoln scholar should have familiarity with--notwithstanding the occasional authorly attribution of something as a joke or jab that was probably neither. The period of politics leading up to the civil war was, I suspect, sometimes just that loony. ( )

Some things I got out of this book:

- Slavery was THE issue. Slavery was morally wrong. (The issue was NOT race.)
- Lincoln was thorough in his research for speech preparation.
- He did not hold grudges.
- Lincoln spoke out on principles: Polk was expansionist & created the Mexican war then blamed it on Mexico. Although it might hurt his career and the war was already over, he spoke out against the false claims.
- Lincoln spoke out on principles: He spent 6 years speaking against Douglas on the slavery issue.
- The book only lightly talks on Buchanen’s treason against the union - following Lincoln’s example of being gentle on his opponents.

"... 3958 books about him already published by 1939" (Page 33)

Lincoln did not hunt, [or] fish, was kind to animals, fled from farming, did not take up carpentry, "Lincoln never used tobacco; ...did not swear, in a social world in which fighting was a regular male activity, Lincoln became a peacemaker; in a hard-drinking society, Lincoln did not drink, when a temperance movement condemned all drinking Lincoln, the non-drinker did not join it; in an environment soaked with hostility to Indians, Lincoln resisted it; in a time and a place in which the great mass of common men in the West supported Andrew Jackson, Lincoln supported Henry Clay ...in a southern-flavored setting soft on slavery, Lincoln always opposed it ...was generous to blacks; in an environment indifferent to education, Lincoln cared about it intensely ..." (Page 43)

"Lincoln would not be sentimental about the traditional one-room schoolhouse ..." (Page 41) "... Lincoln himself would write as an adult, that he does not look back in piety and gratitude to any mentors ... Not his father, not really his mother or stepmother, not the school, not the church, not any adults in Pigeon Creek or New Salem." (Page 84)

"Abraham's stepmother was by her own modest admission, not equipped to be a mentor to this unusual boy. Her contribution seems to have been her recognition that he was unusual ..." (Page 59)

Chapter 4: I want in all cases to do right; Section 4: Be Emulous to Excel

“Many of the literary selections [that Lincoln copied] are chosen, evidently, for their services in moral improvement - but from writers of distinction,…” (Page 79)

“It is ideal as well as absurd to impose our opinions upon others." (Page 79)

“…You must love learning, if you would possess it. In order to live it,…" (Page 79)

“Rhetoric as a classical field had a closer connection to ethics than a modern mind might imagine." (Page 81)

“Lincoln would read Shakespeare throughout his life, very much including his time as president of the United States." (Page 79)

“Although Lincoln apparently did read, at some time in his youth, that ubiquitous American classic The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, …Lincoln never refers to it. His moral universe was less that of Franklin than that of Shakespeare.” (Page 81)

“He was also separated … from the unmasking subversive thinkers on the Continent in the nineteenth century - Marx, Feuerbach, Nietzsche, not to mention Freud and multiple others in the twentieth … that would tend to undermine or overthrow or deny the notion of each human being as a rational moral agent.” (Page 82)

“[The Bible] is the best gift God has given to man”; “All the good that the Savior gave to the world was communicated through this book”; “All the things most desirable for man’s welfare, here and hereafter, are to be found portrayed in it.” (Page 83) “But for [the Bible] we could not know right from wrong.” (Page 84)

“In his six-year encounter with Senator Stephen Douglas, as we will see, he would make unusually clear the link he asserted between God as creator and the American belief in equality.” (Page 88)

“After four years of the terrible scourge of fratricidal war, begun in response to his own election, he would in his greatest speech recommend binding up the nation’s wounds ‘with malice toward none, with charity for all.’” (Page 90)

"Lincoln, the loyal party man, had a particular scorn for politicians in Illinois who switched from the Whigs to the more dominant Democrats. ... [For] example Thomas Ford, the governor who wrote a sour book about Illinois politics..." (Page 107)

"But although, to be sure, Lincoln changed, as we all do, and kept learning, as some do - I suggest, nevertheless, that there was on this point no radical discontinuity in his life." (Page 115)

"He would be unequivocal about what caused the war: Slavery caused the war, not any of those unlikely other causes later proposed by apologists or revisionists -" (Page 287-288)

"It is important, if you are to make an effective ethical criticism of some part of the existing world to the broad public, that your moral judgement not be thrown at the heads of your hearers like a rock." (Page 294)"

"Lincoln would observe that the two sides in the terrible war read the same Bible, prayed to the same God, and each invoked God's aid against the other." (Page 295)

“And [the lines] were distinctly drawn. Douglas said so, Lincoln thought so, the audiences of the time on both sides thought so - but some scholars and Lincoln writers looking back in later years have not thought so.” (Page 343)

“And in his last great utterance, the Second Inaugural Address, there would be a paragraph, not always noticed in this connection, that would surely testify to the intensity of the writer’s conviction that American slavery was an immense evil. ...” (Page 390)
“Fondly do we hope - fervently do we pray - that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, ’the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.’" (Page 390)

“… It is reasonable to argue that Lincoln became president in spite of the split in the Democratic Party, not because of it.” (Page 404)
( )

William Lee Miller has accomplished a remarkable feat - he has written a truly fresh biography of Abraham Lincoln. In some ways it easier to describe what Miller's book is not rather than what it is. Lincoln's Virtues is not a standard biography, nor is it an uncritical hagiography, nor certainly is it a so-called `debunking' work that would show us an unworthy despicable Lincoln (if anything Miller debunks the debunkings). Miller does take the reader through many of the events of Lincoln's life, but always with an eye to Lincoln's "moral escalation" as a politician (retain the emphasis on both parts: moral and politician).

Lincoln was a politician. The revered, marble-man Lincoln is typically not viewed as a `mere' politician, but in fact politics and his role as a practitioner of politics - a politician - were the centerpiece of his life. As Miller observes in the Preface "if Abraham Lincoln was not a `politician', then words have no meaning." (The Preface, which can be read on Amazon gives the reader an excellent sense of the book and whether it might be of interest).

In this reader's view, Miller spends too much time on Lincoln's early days - the evidence from the early days is quite clouded looking back through the lens of Lincoln's later. While these early events were no doubt important to young Lincoln's development, whether we can parse their importance today is highly problematic - doubly so given the underlying doubts about the `facts'. An interesting and perhaps revealing set of facts does emerge, however. Lincoln was a social nonconformist - he did not drink, hunt, fish, regularly attend church, or swear - all of which marked him as highly idiosyncratic in the frontier communities of his youth. And yet, Lincoln was no social outcast; to the contrary he was often at the center of social life telling stories.

Miller rewards the patient reader, especially with the chapters on the Lincoln-Douglas debates and the Cooper Union Address. The Lincoln-Douglas debates have provided fodder for the Lincoln debunkers who want to portray Lincoln the `Great Emancipator' as a common white racist (to use a 20th century term). Lincoln did say some highly offensive things (to our ears) about the social inequality of black and white. Without excusing Lincoln, Miller reminds us of the context. Lincoln was running for political office in a state that had recently adopted a constitutional amendment by popular vote to exclude all blacks, free or slave, from its borders. Moreover, he was running against a political Giant, Stephen A. Douglas, a proud across-the-board white supremacist. One really must read Douglas's statements to appreciate Lincoln's. Here is the key point of dispute between Lincoln and Douglas: Was the black man a human being with the right not to be enslaved? Lincoln said yes on both counts and Douglas said no and no.

Miller demonstrates that Lincoln rose from his unlikely background to potential Republican nominee for the presidency because of his stance against slavery and because of his ability to communicate his thoughts with absolute clarity. The Cooper Union Address, discussed at some length, established his credentials to interested, but skeptical Easterners and was key to his political rise. Lincoln conveyed his reasoning without evoking great waves of emotion and, in this instance also without his trademark storytelling.

Miller's Lincoln is a politician: an unstinting party man, willing to compromise to attain policy goals, and standing on core principles. (Lincoln the man also shines through as a fundamentally decent, honest, generous person, but that is not the book's focus). Lincoln's core principles were chronologically, first, that slavery was wrong (or nothing is wrong) and, second, preservation of the Union. The Union that Lincoln sought to preserve was no mere gathering of states, but rather a republic, the first modern republic. Lincoln came to regard its preservation as paramount, but also believed that slavery would not survive within that Union.

Miller quotes Lincoln's letter to his long-ago Congressional colleague Alexander Stephens: "You think slavery is right and should be extended; while we think slavery is wrong and ought to be restricted. That I suppose is the rub. It certainly is the only substantial difference between us." That statement captures the essence of the argument with Lincoln's trademark ability to get at the nub of a thing in a way that anyone could understand and no one could dispute.

Oddly, Miller concludes his book at Lincoln's inauguration (after a brief, but interesting discussion of the forgotten and failed Crittenden Compromise). It is a measure of Miller's success that the reader feels regret rather than relief that Miller did not explore Lincoln's Virtues in his years as President.

Addendum: Miller subsequently wrote President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman that covers Lincoln in the White House. ( )

Dear Lord have I struggled with this book; seduced by the well designed cover and a long standing desire to read more about Lincoln I purchased this book a couple of years ago now and abandoned it about half-way through....just a little too much of a plod for my taste, though I do intend to attempt to finish it.

An astonishingly compelling read. Nineteenth century US history may be limited in he public imagination to the Civil War, but the century was crucial in shaping the modern US.
Miller's book traces Lincoln's evolution from a backwoods lawyer to the most revered statesman in US history, a martyr to the cause of freedom. It's a compelling read, exposing the battles between moral purity and expediency, jockeying for political position between the Whigs and the Democrats (with some interesting parallels to recent political history) , and the slow spread of abolitionist sentiment through the US. Miller largely omits mention of the war itself: the stories are well known, available elsewhere, done to death. But by the time you finish the book, the war seems - in retrospect - inevitable.

While Miller obviously adores Lincoln, any puffery here is well bracketed by exposition of the man's flaws. What emerges is a complex portrait of a man seldom portrayed in more than a one-dimensional fashion, even in epic treatments of the Civil War such as Ken Burns' documentary.