Dead Presidents II

Books read this week: Abraham Lincoln: A Biography (Benjamin P Thomas) 6/10

People like to have heroes, and a hero is what Abraham Lincoln: A Biography gives us. It is, the foreward assures me, the definitive single volume life of that most inspirational of presidents. Lincoln, like Grant was a product of the great social ferment of the middle years of the 19th Century in America - those years when anyone could reach the top, because there wasn't anyone already there to stop them. The years when the American dream was actually real. Lincoln does have an inspirational life story - born in a log cabin, he rose to the top of his field both in law and later in politics with virtually no formal schooling. It is the early part of the book, before Lincoln reached the White House, which is most interesting and entertaining. The picture of Lincoln that emerges is of a deeply compassionate, extremely smart and very cunning man with a broad sense of humour.

It is unfortunate that Thomas seeks to present something of a whitewashed image of Lincoln, as I think the real man is far more interesting (and I like my heroes flawed). It is even more unfortunate that, writing in the 1950s, many of the flaws that Thomas tries to explain away are, to the modern reader, no flaws at all; he tries to apologise for the fact that, when a young man, Lincoln occasionally drank whisky. He has to reassure us that although Mrs Lincoln occasionally took a glass of wine, that this was customary for women of her class in that age. It is a little odd.

The book has aged particularly badly when it comes to race relations; it was written before the civil rights movement, and that shows. Whether it is the throwaway line where Thomas claims slaves in the deep south were happy, contented and eager to serve, or the general condemnation of the "extremist" abolitionists who take a lot of flak for wanting slavery abolished quickly because, well, three million human beings were being kept in slavery, there is an unpleasant institutional racism running through the book. This is most apparent when discussing the Dred Scott decision; a ridiculous piece of legal legerdemain by the US Supreme Court, and particular Chief Justice Roger Taney, which held that the phrase "All men are created equal" meant exactly the opposite of what it actually said. Any balanced discussion of the decision should begin by pointing out that it is flat out wrong, and twists the law into a pretzel (the Dred Scott decision, is, to my mind, one of the primary arguments against giving major legislative power to any branch of the government not directly subject to democratic review). We are instead told that Taney's decision that "All men are created equal" means "But some are more equal than others" was "in contradiction of Lincoln's belief". A more thorough condemnation would be nice.

Nevertheless, I found the book interesting, and the picture of Lincoln's family life heartwarming. It does finish very abruptly; a little more detail on the immediate aftermath of (*SPOILERS*) Lincoln's assassination and a chapter on his legacy would have greatly improved the book.

Next week: Graham Greene.