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Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President (Library of Religious Biography)

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I've never written one of these reviews before but having just finished this book I feel compelled to sing its praises. I have also never been a big fan of biographies as a genre, but given this book as an unexpected gift I thought I'd make a go of it.

I made the mistake of reading one of the appendices of this book before starting it. This appendix detailed the many prior attempts to put Lincoln's life into one or two volumes and the consequent warping of the details and ideas of his life by these biographers. It was enough to plant a seed of doubt in anyone's mind that justice could be done to Lincoln's life as a biography.

But after the introduction to this book, the reader is easily reassured that this is no ordinary biography - it focuses in a very analytical way on the culture and community philosophy of 19th century America and brings the details of Lincoln's life into play only within that context. It never sinks into outright eulogies or worship of Lincoln, but rather takes pains to emphasize his conflicting priorities, and above all his humanity. It is an approach that makes one appreciate Lincoln much more than if he were simply praised for 400 pages.

I was infatuated with this book from beginning to end, and am already planning on reading it again.

Allen Guelzo has written a masterly and long-overdue intellectual biography of a leader whose political, moral and religious thought shaped and guided our nation at the time of its greatest crisis. Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President traces every important thread in the formation of Lincoln's intellectual development, and sets each in the context of historical events and the main currents of American thought. Guelzo's remarkable and important book should be read by all students of American history, period, and by anyone with any pretension to understand the intellectual history of this country.

Thousands of books have been written about Abraham Lincoln. These books have ranged from general biographies, multi-volume biographies, examinations of his political career, his presidency, and his views on slavery. Allen Guelzo, in this excellent book, gives us an ideological look at the 16th president. Most historians have ignored Lincoln as a philosophical thinker and Guelzo tries to open up this aspect of Lincoln's character and thought. Examining Lincoln's moral and religious beliefs and how they evolved, Guelzo portrays Lincoln, not as a religious skeptic or as a Christian Redeemer as other biographers have, but as a seeker. Throughout his life, according to Guelzo, Lincoln is looking for a religious structure that he can believe in, but never finds one that meets his needs. Lincoln continues to sense a feeling of inadequacy as the beliefs from his predestinarian Calvinist background give him a sense that he was not one of the elect. This predestinarian background also makes Lincoln feel that, in Lincoln's words, "events have controlled me." During the Civil War, it is this sense of inevitability and predetermination that guides Lincoln in many of his anti-slavery and reconstruction policies. Lincoln sees himself as a tool in bringing about God's will, even though he doubts that he will achieve salvation.

Fascinating portrait and analysis of the sixteenth president through the lens of the religious, political, economic and social issues of his day. Though a scholarly work, I found the book to be thoroughly entertaining as well. The book is a unique study of Lincoln that focuses on the development of his religious and political beliefs and how those in turn influenced his character and actions. The author's writing style and choice of vocabulary seemed to me at times a bit peculiar, but in an almost endearing sort of way.

Biographies of Abraham Lincoln have tended to fall into two broad categories. The first category consists of biographies of the "subjective" Lincoln. These biographies are based largely on the many anecdotes and stories people told about Lincoln's life, typically during the early years in Illinois and concentrate on trying to explore Lincoln as a man (He remains an enigma.)The second category of Lincoln biography is the political. This biography focuses on Lincoln's public actions, typically during or shortly before his Presidency and draws on the lengthy public record available during the Civil War years. This type of biographical approach tends to give short shrift to the personal approach.

In his "Abraham Lincoln, Redeemer President" Allen Guelzo points out these two approaches to Lincoln studies (p.472) and says that his book is an attempt to combine the personal and public approaches to Lincoln. Professor Guelzo, Dean of Templeton Honors Colledge and Professor of History at Eastern Universtiy, writes a primarily intellectual biography; but he tries to explore the degree to which Lincoln's thought formed his political actions.

Professor Guelzo devotes a great deal of attention to establishing Lincoln's political identity as a whig -- an admirer of both Henry Clay and Daniel Webster. From his early days in public life, Lincoln was interested in promoting economic opportunity by encouraging the free market. He supported ambitious programs of public works and public education, to develop transportation infrastructure, (canals, roads, and railroads) and to promote the growth of industry and of a middle class. The whig approach emphasized public virtue, public morality, the value of hard work, and a unified United States. Guelzo effectively contrasts Lincoln's Whiggish beliefs with the agrarian beliefs of the Jefferson-Jacksonian democrats with their commitment to a nation of agrarian, self-sufficient yeomen and farmers. (Lincoln's father was such a yeoman, and Lincoln wanted none of it for himself.)

Professor Guelzo traces the beginnings of Lincoln's opposition to the expansion of slavery, in the early 1850's. to his desire to promote the development of upwardly mobile capitalist workers. He tended to see agrarianism as slavery slightly disguised. Lincoln never lost his whig commitments, according to Professor Guelzo, even after the party disbanded and Lincoln became a leader of the Republican party.

Professor Guelzo also studies the nature of Lincoln's religious beliefs and the importance Lincoln gave to religous questions. As is the case with Lincoln's economic rebellion against his father, Professor Guelzo finds the beginnings of Lincoln's religious thought in a youthful rebellion against the Calvinism and predestinarian beliefs of his father. Lincoln found he could not believe in the revealed God of the Bible, although he knew the Bible well. He could not accept the doctrine of predestination, but he came close to it in a secular way. During most of his life, Lincoln was a determinist who believed that people had little independent choice in what they did but acted in response to outside factors which they did not control.

According to Professor Guelzo, Lincoln also tended towards the englightenment of John Locke and towards the utilitarianism of Mill and Bentham. His politics and Presidency, of course, have distincly pragmatic characters. Throughout his life, Lincoln remained outside the fold of organized religion.

According to Professor Guelzo, Lincoln's thought developed as Lincoln confronted at deepening levels the difficulty of the Civil War. The beginning of this development was the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates where Lincoln vigourously attacked the morality of holding slaves. Lincoln's thoughts on providence, for Professor Guelzo, were instrumental in Lincoln's decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln told his cabinet he had made a promise "to his maker" to issue the Proclamation and that he could not do otherwise. (pp 341-42.) Guelzo continues his treatment of providential themes in Lincoln with his discussion of the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural Address.

There is also a great deal in the book that discusses Lincoln's handling of the War, the border states, his generals, and the Army. Professor Guelzo's intellectual and religous themes sometimes get lost in these discussions, and we are reminded that Lincoln was a pragmatist, a leader and a consummate politician.

The picture of Lincoln's religiosity that emerges from Professor Guelzo's study has a distinctly modern flavor. (Professor Guelzo sees it as high Victorian.) Lincoln was a person who sought religous belief but could not find his way to an organized religion of his day. He was not, in his mid and late life, content simply with materialism and skepticism but rather developed his own religious thought based upon a rather loosely defined notion of providence and redemption. As personal as his thought was, it helped shape our nation. Lincoln's life, as Professor Guelzo presents it, seems to be a paradigm of many people today who reject organized religion in favor of a search for what many call spirituality.

On a political level, Guelzo's account of Lincoln stresses that the United States is and has become a unified Nation and that Americans should see themselves, for all their diversity and differences as part of a unified people. I also see the book as a reminder of the value of hard work and economic effort.

Professor Guelzo has written a thoughtful, provocative study of Lincoln the man, the thinker, and the President.

This is the finest of the many dozens of books that I have read about Abraham Lincoln in the past thirty years. The author manages to present a first-rate biography that focuses not on personal detail but on the maturation of Lincoln's political, economic, and, most importantly, theological beliefs. It seems that Lincoln needed to believe in God--he was far too great a soul to withstand so much personal and national tragedy without searching for transcendental meaning. Yet, he could not reason his way to devotion and he was too honest to allow himself to borrow comfort from a Christianity he could not intellectually embrace. The dawning irony throughout the book is that it seems that Providence used Lincoln without his realizing it. One need not be overly devout to see Lincoln as America's secular Suffering Servant. Ironically, Lincoln could not find a personal Redeemer in the religion of his day. But, perhaps that very elusive God, provided Lincoln himself to atone for the nation's original sin of slavery.

Like a typical biography, Redeemer President goes through its subject's life. But unlike most biographies, Redeemer President centers on the maturation of its subject's thinking. Guelzo shows how some of Lincoln's most famous ideas, such as his reliance on "the proposition that all men are created equal," was part of Whig orthodoxy. To trace Lincoln's development takes nothing away from his genius, of course.

This was one of the most enjoyable biographies I have read on Lincoln. One might begin with Oates' With Malice Toward None for Lincoln's life as a great story. Then go to Donald's Lincoln for a more modern biography -- lots and lots of facts, but with little attempt to see Lincoln as a product of his own time. Both are very well written, but I prefer Guelzo's over either of them.

If you like Guelzo's book on Lincoln's thought, you'll like A New Birth of Freedom by Harry V. Jaffa, which Guelzo calls "the greatest book on Lincoln's politics for another generation."

Having never read anything of length on Lincoln I was hoping to find a book that not only told me the background behind what I did know, but would give me an entrypoint through which I could encounter the man who is so admired, but whose biography among the populace is more folk than fact.

This book gave me just what I wanted. I was mesmerized by Guelzo's recounting of the rise of wage labor and how incredibly influential that idea was to Lincoln. Additionally, I found his treatment of the theme of Providence in Lincoln's life very helpful.

This book would be of particular interest to those interested in politics, religious thought, as well as history, obviously.

I've read, I suppose, 500 books and articles about Abraham Lincoln, but Allen Guelzo's Redeemer President is by far the best on the subject of the beliefs that animated the 16th President. Lincoln's ideas on politics, the economy and social relations -- and especially on religion -- are clearly (but not too simply) described, and Guelzo shows how these developed over time and influenced Lincoln's actions. The book is most satisfying because it presents a convincing portrait of Lincoln as he understood himself, and so makes him less enigmatic -- but no less complex -- than he is usually shown.

This is the best biography (about anyone) I've read in 10 years. The author makes sense of the political thought and life of a highly complex and heroic icon in American history, and the book itself is a page-turner, a rarity among scholarly works. I'm giving it to all my friends.