Lincoln on Lincoln [Hardcover]

Paul M. Zall (Author), Abraham Lincoln (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1999

Even though Abraham Lincoln has been the subject of numerous biographies, his personality remains an enigma. For the 1860 presidential race he prepared two sketches of his life. These brief campaign portraits provide the core around which Paul Zall weaves extracts from correspondence, speeches, and interviews to produce an in-depth biography.

These descriptions from Lincoln’s speeches and correspondence offer a window into his soul and mind. Lincoln’s own words reveal an emotional evolution typically submerged in political biographies. They explain, to a degree not previously understood, the great mystery of his life: the process through which he matured from laborer to store clerk to country lawyer to our greatest president. Of the various internal struggles that plagued him throughout this evolution, perhaps the most compelling is his attempt to reconcile his conscience with the rule of the Constitution. Zall frames Lincoln’s words with his own illuminating commentary, providing a continuous, compelling narrative. Beginning with Lincoln’s thoughts on his parents, the story moves though his youth and early successes and failures in law and politics, and culminates in his clashes and conflicts—internal as well as external—as president of a divided country.

Abraham Lincoln was not the kind of person to bare his soul in public or in private. “Even between ourselves,” lamented Mary Todd Lincoln, “his expressions were few.” Paul Zall has created the autobiography Lincoln never had the chance to write.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Abraham Lincoln was notoriously reticent about revealing details of his personal history. When he did speak of his past, he generally created more questions than definitively filling in blank spots. For the 1860 presidential campaign, he provided two biographical sketches. These vignettes form the core of this often fascinating but frustrating effort to "solve" the enigma of Lincoln's quirky personality. Zall, a senior researcher at the Huntington Library, offers his own commentary as well as excerpts from Lincoln's letters and speeches. Together, they illuminate striking but confusing facets of his life, including his troubled relationship with his father and his relentless but often unfulfilling drive to "make good." Although a firmer understanding of Lincoln still seems to lie just beyond our reach, Zall has provided a useful addition to the lore of Lincoln. Jay Freeman

From Kirkus Reviews

Excerpts from Lincoln's autobiographical writings, some quite brief, selected, edited, and annotated by Zall, a senior researcher at the Huntington Library. Zall wants these passages culled from letters and other sources to provide ``a story of Lincoln's life in his own words.'' Unfortunately, the 16th president was not loquacious, certainly not about his quotidian life, so he reveals little. As Zall admits, ``He was not the kind of person to bare his soul in public or in private.'' We do learn to share the young Lincoln's excitement when he earns his first dollar; we cringe as he consents to sew shut the eyes of some intransigent hogs; we laugh at some of the doggerel he composes about his rural background (``When first my father settled here, / Twas then the frontier line: / The panther's scream, filled night with fear / And bears preyed on the swine''); we admire him for his stand on slavery (the sight of slaves was ``a continual torment to me,'' he notes); and we tremble with the dramatic irony of a vision he has in late 1860: in the mirror he sees a faint second image alongside the first, and his wife believes its a dark harbinger of his death. Zall reminds us that Lincoln won only 40 percent of the popular vote in 1860, that he freed slaves only in the states that had seceded, that he was in some ways a reluctant candidate. What does not emerge in these excerpts, however, is any sense of why Lincoln came to be who he was. Why did he not simply remain a farmer? Why did he struggle so hard to educate himself? Why did he want to enter politics? Whence his fierce humanism? Abe may have been honest, but about his own character, he was none too candid. A collection that casts a strong light, but so much of it falls behind the president that shadows obscure his faceand much of his character. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: University Press of Kentucky (October 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813121418
• ISBN-13: 978-0813121413
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,341,069 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3.0 out of 5 stars Lincoln on Lincoln, August 3, 2010

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A reader (North Dakota, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lincoln on Lincoln (Paperback)

With the exception of a few brief narratives, Abraham Lincoln never wrote an autobiography. Despite the common perception that he shared few of his personal thoughts, Lincoln revealed much about himself in his correspondence, speeches, and interviews. Chronologically arranging relevant excerpts from these sources and from others' reminiscences, editor Paul M. Zall has constructed a quasi-autobiography of the sixteenth president.

Readers should not expect a cohesive and comprehensive account of Lincoln's life. Although Zall's editorial remarks fill in some of the gaps, many of these important primary sources do not flow well together. Some of these passages could have used better context. The excerpts Zall selected, however, effectively illuminate many of the important topics of Lincoln's public and private life and show Lincoln's wisdom, self-effacing manner, ambition, and political philosophy.