Vindicating Lincoln: Defending the Politics of Our Greatest President [Hardcover]

Thomas L. Krannawitter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 27, 2008

Was Abraham Lincoln a racist, as some critics would have us believe? Was he the father of big government, as some others maintain? Was the sixteenth president a traitor to the cause of free society and constitutional government? Are the political principles that guided him relevant today?

In this provocative and timely book, Thomas L. Krannawitter sets out to defend the man many consider to be our greatest president from critics on both the left and the right. For although public opinion polls tend to rank Lincoln among the country's most venerated presidents, he is also, paradoxically, the president who is least understood. While Lincoln's name is frequently invoked in contemporary American politics, few Americans understand or agree with the moral and political principles for which Lincoln gave his last full measure of devotion.

Many influential authors view Lincoln as an antiquated monument, a man of his age who knew only nineteenth-century prejudices and lacked twenty-first-century enlightenment. Other writers denounce Lincoln as a tyrant who trampled upon the Constitution and states' rights, and thereby inaugurated big government and the kind of politics feared by the Founding Fathers.

Krannawitter argues that both views spring from a misunderstanding of Lincoln. Today, at precisely the moment when America is most in need of his moral and political understanding, we are more removed from Lincoln's thought than ever before.

Vindicating Lincoln reintroduces us to Lincoln the statesman, the man who defended our greatest ideals of freedom and equality at the darkest moment in American history. Krannawitter shows us why it is in our interest not only to learn about Abraham Lincoln, but to learn from him—to understand that Lincoln's guiding principles were true not only for his time, but that they remain true for ours as well.

On the eve of the bicentennial of his birth in 2009, Lincoln can offer moral and political guidance to us all.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Author and professor Krannawitter (A Nation Under God? The ACLU and Religion in American Politics) has written a stirring, carefully considered exploration of Abraham Lincoln's principles, defending them against criticism leveled at Lincoln over the years by prominent academics and pundits. Even though Krannawitter equates opposition to Roe v. Wade with opposition to slavery (both deny the primacy of human rights), his strident personal politics don't affect the quality of his scholarship. His impressive work takes on both conservative and liberal historians who diminish Lincoln's stature by ascribing expedient motives to his decisions, asserting that Lincoln was guided, even in "the most difficult and trying times," by a commitment to natural law and the idea that all men are created equal. Especially convincing is Krannawitter's argument regarding Lincoln's seemingly paradoxical support of the fugitive slave law. He also explains Lincoln's famous 1862 interchange with Horace Greely-yes, he did say, "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it," but followed up with, "and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it"-and takes on the contention that Lincoln supported big government while the South opposed it.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Among the torrent of Lincoln books flow many that are critical of the Great Emancipator, condemning him as a racist, a tyrant, or a precursor to big government. Into this stream steps a scholar intent on rescuing Lincoln’s reputation from aspersions cast in titles such as What Lincoln Believed (2005), by Michael Lind, a critic from the Left, and Lincoln Unmasked (2006), by Thomas DiLorenzo, a critic from the Right. Perhaps what most worries Krannawitter is a viewpoint he believes prevalent among academics: Lincoln was more expedient than principled. The Lincoln-as-white-supremacist case, pressed by Lerone Bennett in Forced into Glory (2000), doesn’t pass Krannawitter’s muster, nor does Mario Cuomo’s enlistment (in Why Lincoln Matters, 2004) of the rail splitter in the pro-abortion cause (Cuomo extrapolated that the people shouldn’t be permitted a democratic vote on abortion because Lincoln opposed allowing them a vote on slavery). Also contesting authors who think there was a right to secession (Lincoln did not), the readable Krannawitter upholds Lincoln as the true upholder of rights enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. --Gilbert Taylor

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 376 pages
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers; First Edition edition (June 27, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0742559726
• ISBN-13: 978-0742559721
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #851,646 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

62 of 76 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best of Its Kind, August 3, 2008

By 

Nicholas Antongiavanni - See all my reviews

This review is from: Vindicating Lincoln: Defending the Politics of Our Greatest President (Hardcover)

The best book of its kind -- and for now the only one of its kind.

Vindicating Lincoln is a most necessary corrective to the raft of atrocious, mendacious, and vindictive anti-Lincoln scholarship that has cropped up over the last 25 years at least. A perverse alliance has been forged between, on the one hand, far right libertarians and neo-Confederates and, on the other hand, far left politically correct and anti-American ideologues. They may not agree on much, but they agree that they have found a villain for all seasons: Abraham Lincoln.

This is the book for you if you have ever been puzzled by the arguments that Lincoln was a "tyrant," a "racist," the "father of big government," or that Lincoln cared nothing about slavery but fought the Civil War only protect the economic interests of the ruling class. This is also the book for you if all you know of Lincoln is his grand monument and the afterglow of his once great reputation, and want an honest assessment of why generations considered him the greatest American of them all -- greater even than Washington or any of the Founding generation.

Every anti-Lincoln myth is carefully stated, and understood exactly as its proponents wish to be understood, and then patiently demolished.

This is also perhaps the best book in a generation on the Civil War -- its causes, its justice, its necessity. Krannawitter clearly describes every step in the long path that led to war, and elucidates every controversy. He does justice to both sides, knowing full well that doing full justice to the arguments of the Confederate side not only serves intellectual honesty, but better illuminates the truthfulness and righteousness of Lincoln's case.

The Civil War was a necessary war, and Abraham Lincoln was a great man. It has a taken many years and an unholly alliance of liars and cranks to muddy the waters. But this one book will clear them up again, for all those who have eyes to see and a brain to think.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars EXCELLENT, December 15, 2010

By 

Christopher Schwinger (Kansas) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Vindicating Lincoln: Defending the Politics of Our Greatest President (Paperback)

I strongly recommend this book. There has been an enormous attempt on the part of the libertarian movement to distort the history of the Civil War to say it was all about economic control and a stronger central government, based on revelations about our government's mismanagement of 20th century wars. The new popular myth is that the South represented freedom and the North oppression, a childish stereotype that isn't even true, since the South had slavery! Thomas Krannawitter presents a very well-researched, well-documented rebuttal of myths such as that Lincoln was a power maniac, that the North was the aggressor in the war and the South's secession about tariffs (the one they claim caused the war actually wasn't passed until after the secession!), and that the South represented freedom and the North oppression. I have never seen such twisted reasoning as the kind that Krannawitter quotes and deals with in detail. He covers all of the major attacks on Lincoln, and I came away from the book feeling much more educated and prepared to defend the President we rightly call "The Great Emancipator". It is a tedious book to read, rather verbose and sometimes too philosophical, but the benefits of reading it far outweigh the difficulty of getting through it.

32 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An eminently important book! Powerful, intelligent, and convincing!, August 24, 2008

By 

Roy E. Perry "amateur philosopher" (Nolensville, Tennessee) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Vindicating Lincoln: Defending the Politics of Our Greatest President (Hardcover)

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

These words from the Declaration of Independence are the heart and soul of Abraham Lincoln's political philosophy. Based on the idea of government as a social contract--a government of the people, by the people, and for the people--they express the concept of natural rights.

Thomas L. Krannawitter, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Hillsdale College (Michigan), writes: "Saving the Union of the Constitution, preserving free elections, and placing slavery in the course of ultimate extinction were the goals for which Lincoln fought the Civil War. Unifying and justifying all of them is the principle that all men are created equal."

Krannawitter's brilliant work of scholarship is a devastating critique of historicism, revisionism, libertarianism, multiculturalism, and postmodernism--modern theories of government and morality that embrace relativism and deny the principle of equal rights.

Again, Professor Krannawitter writes, "Lincoln was consistent and unswerving in his demand that freedom, choice, and self-government be understood within the moral and political framework of the 'laws of nature and of Nature's God,' first and foremost in the natural right principle of human equality."

Lincoln's admirable statesmanship is in grave danger in the 21st century. Dr. Krannawitter clearly shows not only the relevance and importance of Lincoln's commitment to human equality for his own day, during the desperate days of the Civil War when the very existence of the Union was in peril, but also for our nation and world today.

Great men and women become the targets of those of lesser intelligence and meaner spirits. The greater the person, the more vicious the attacks. This has been true in the case of Lincoln. In recent decades, misguided and/or disgruntled critics have disparaged Lincoln for being a "tyrant," a "dictator," a proponent of "big government," a "war criminal," and a power-hungry despot who sought to destroy the Constitution.

Vindicating Lincoln should go a long way in dispelling such "Lincoln myths" that disparage our greatest president.

Two thumbs up for this magnificent work. Bravo, Mr. Krannawitter!