OUR LINCOLN: NEW PERSPECTIVES on LINCOLN and HIS WORLD edited by Eric Foner

 










Published in 2008 by W.W. Norton and Company.

This series of essays was most likely compiled to be the text for college-level classes by Eric Foner, a historian well-known for his expertise on the Civil War, the Underground Railroad, American Slavery and Reconstruction. Lincoln, of course, sits astride all of these issues.

There are 11 essays covering four broad topics: 

-Lincoln as "The President", looking at such things as how he acted as commander-in-chief and how Lincoln protected (and failed to protect) civil rights during the war.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
-Lincoln as "The Emancipator", focusing on his view of slavery, citizenship for African Americans, his zeal for colonizing freed slaves and his hot and cold relationship with abolitionists. 

-Lincoln "The Man" with essays about his writing style (and how it changed as the war went on), his views on religion (and how it also may have changed as the war went on) and his family life (his birth family and his married life).

-Lincoln in "Politics and Memory". This is the shortest section and the most politically charged. The author's comments on the Bush administration only make me wonder what he would have said about the Trump administration.

On the whole, this was a solid collection, but like all collections, not all of the items in the collection are equal. One essay was about Lincoln's control of how his physical image was shared through paintings, sculpture and photographs and I found it to be so tedious that I started skimming it and finally just skipped to the next essay. The three essays on the Lincoln as The Emancipator were all excellent, but they also had a lot of overlap. 

I rate this collection 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: OUR LINCOLN: NEW PERSPECTIVES on LINCOLN and HIS WORLD edited by Eric Foner.

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