Customer Reviews

Lincoln, the South, and Slavery: The Political Dimension (Walter Lynwood Fleming Lectures in Southern History)

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Robert W. Johannsen's dislike of Abraham Lincoln comes roaring through in these four lectures put into print. It is the work of an experienced, thoughtful professional historian who uses sources that are many and wide-reaching, most of them primary. All that is worth 5 stars. However, if the only thing that someone knew of Lincoln came from Johannsen's fourth lecture "Lincoln and the South," he would have to conclude that it was a miracle that Lincoln was elected in 1860. According to Johannsen, no one except for a few radical abolitionists had anything good to say about him. He also believes that Lincoln never did much right except pull the wool over the public's eyes. Johannsen is a Stephen A. Douglasphile, and it shows. He wrote a near 1,000 page biography of Douglas and here even uses some of Douglas's conjectures about Lincoln as if they were facts. While not a Lincolnphobe in the awful sense of Thomas DiLorenzo, Johannsen isn't too far from it, although his arguments are much more noteworthy than those of the historically-challenged DiLorenzo. Johannsen's principle point is that Lincoln was a consummate politician and ambitious, as if we should all be shocked to hear that. Perhaps Mr. Johannsen would care to name the one person who ever ran for president who had no ambition and who never engaged in politics. He thinks that Lincoln's anti-slavery stance was almost entirely political in nature, which is to imply that Lincoln really didn't mean anything he said about slavery the 175 times he spoke of the subject between 1854 and 1858. If so, Lincoln was the bravest and shrewdest pure politician of all time, because he expressed a principle with which the majority of U.S. citizens did not concur but won anyway. Johannsen spends page after page lambasting Lincoln for not saying something soothing to the South after his election, only to finally and honestly conclude that there wasn't anything Lincoln have said anyway. By all means, read Johannsen's four lectures but follow up with James McPherson's work on Lincoln for a more balanced viewpoint.