Once you've read this book, you will never look at Abraham Lincoln in the same way. Bennett writes a polemic here, but it is a well-researched and passionate effort. Although some of his conclusions are suspect, I respect the basic premise of this book, which is that Lincoln was a thorough going racist. Bennett proves that Lincoln's political mentor was Senator Henry Clay, a Kentucky slave owner. Lincoln exhibited racist speech using the pejorative for "Negro" up until the last days of his life. He consistently frequented "black face" comedy shows that denigrated blacks in stereotypical ways. Lincoln always supported fugitive slave laws in Illinois and nationally. The Lincoln described by Bennett completely missed the concept of full emancipation for all African Americans. His lukewarm Emancipation Proclamation was only an attempt to stave off the radical abolitionists who were pressing for full freedom for all Black Americans. Lincoln's Proclamation promised to emancipate blacks in areas currently in rebellion (in which Lincoln had no jurisdiction), and did not emancipate slaves in the areas that had not seceded or were militarily re-occupied. It was a halfway measure designed to obfuscate Lincoln's true agenda, i.e., gradual emancipation and/or deportation for colonization of the native born African American population. Bennett does a credible job showing that Lincoln's speeches, including the Gettysburg Address, were high sounding but did not include African Americans in the great American ideal of freedom for all. "All men are created equal" did not include blacks until Lincoln had been assassinated and was not able to obstruct the final version of the thirteenth amendment. Eye-opening commentary includes a discussion of how Lincoln pursued the War for two years with pro-slavery Democrat generals like McClellan, Halleck and Pope. Certainly Lincoln's incompetence was responsible for extending the War, causing loss of life for over 650,000 Americans North and South. After reading Bennett, Lincoln comes across as ambitious, indecisive, manipulative, misguided, decidedly racist and desperately craving some kind of long lasting historical legacy. Lincoln was slow coming to grips with the true nature of the War. Lincoln maintained all along that this War was being fought for Union, failing to ever grasp the eventual importance of the slave issue except to use blacks as a political pawn piece to win the war. Lincoln comes across as Machiavellian and insensitive when he finally issues the Emancipation Proclamation only as a military strategy to keep England and France out of the War. However, Bennett fails to address the impact of Lincoln`s call for 75,000 volunteers after he had successfully maneuvered the South into firing on Sumter. Before his call for the 75,000, Virginia and North Carolina had not seceded and were not predisposed to go out. By his actions, he forced these states out and then proceeded to ineptly preside over a botched, bloody, protracted war that could have been averted by more clear headed, adroit diplomacy before the initial Battle of Manassas. Manassas led to Shiloh and, by then, the need to justify somehow the already horrific loss of life. Certainly, once the eleven states seceded, it was the effective end of American slavery because then the slaves could escape across international borders. A slave in Mississippi, once into Indiana, would have been free from pursuit, thus signaling the ultimate demise of the slave system. Lincoln's myopia regarding this key point precipitated not only the war deaths of so many Americans, but also set in motion the raw emotions and scapegoating that marked the brutal "reconstruction" of the South. The pursuit of the war and reconstruction only exascerbated racist feelings that whites felt toward blacks and necessitated the Civil Rights marches led by leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr. almost a century after this sad period in American history. Americans today are still dealing with the issues that Lincoln did not deal with during his tenure as president. Bennett's demonization of southern leaders like Robert E. Lee show his lack of overall perspective as to why Southerners fought for their respective states. He doesn't acknowledge that in the South over 90% of the fighting men never owned slaves and were fighting for their families, homes and farms. The Union invader was fighting only for Union, not emancipation (if you listen closely to what Bennett's Lincoln was about). Abraham Lincoln was undoubtedly the deeply flawed, morally shallow politician as Bennett paints him, but Bennett interprets the results only as a twentieth century black militant. When you visit the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. after reading this book, you will read the Gettysburg Address in a different, less glorious light, and you will sincerely wonder why Lincoln merits such an exalted position on the National Mall. You will realize that the mythologized Lincoln did not die Christ-like for his country's sins. He was not the Man of the Age, but a man who was given the highest position in the American Pantheon because of his tragic death and the position power that he held during a catastrophic historical period (that he helped to make much worse). Another book on Lincoln that has been virtually banned for decades is Edgar Lee Masters' Lincoln The Man, which gives an equally withering testimonial to the man behind the myth, but from the perspective of a Copperhead. I'm giving Forced into Glory five stars for originality and the courage to write and publish it. This book is so "outside the box", it will probably be censured by the mainstream media. Many will speak negatively about it, but will not take the trouble to actually read it and give it a chance.