Lincoln Eternal

A SHELF OK LINCOLN BOOKS, by Paul M. Angle (Rutgers Univ. Press, $3.00)

AURAHAM LINCOLN: HIS SPEECHES AND WRITINGS, edited by Roy P. Basler (World Pub. Co., $3.75)

LEGENDS THAT LIBEL LINCOLN, by M. S. Lewis (Rinehart, $2.75)

THE DIARY OF A PUBLIC MAN, Prefatory Notes by F. Lauriston Bullard (Rutgers Univ. Press, $3.00)

ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE WIDOW BIXBY, by F. Lauriston Ballard (Rutgers Univ. Press, $3.00)

LINCOLN’S WAR CABINET, by Burton J. Hendrick (Atlantic - Little, Brown, $5.00)

THE LINCOLN READER, edited by Paul M. Angle (Rutgers Univ. Press, $3.75)

That the fascination which Abraham Lincoln everts on students of his life and times is shared by the American public is indicated by the ready acceptance of an apparently never ending succession of “Lincoln Books.” The second half of 1946 produced the first six listed above, and the latest comer, Paul Angle’s Lincoln Reader, might have been added to the 1946 list if it bad not been chosen as the Book-of-the-Month Club selection for February, 1947.

In July, 1946, Mr. Angle published his Shelf of Lincoln Books, which he correctly described as a “critical, selective bibliography,” covering the really significant and important contributions to the body of Lincolniana of the last eighly years. Only one of the other six volumes in our present list appeared in time to be included in bis bibliography. Perhaps it would be well, in the future, for publishers to present Lincoln bibliographies in looseleaf form. They may be out of date in a mailer of months. With the Lincoln material in the Congressional Library which is to be made available in 1947, an indefinite expansion is indicated for the future. And, if only the present rate of one Lincoln book a month is maintained, it is not sale to assume that these additional volumes are, or will be, trivial or repetitive. Lincoln scholarship today is too highly developed and too widely diffused to permil the offering of hasty or ill-considered works on the subject to critics or to the public. An author must be at least abreast of modern Lincoln scholars and have something new and interesting to say. if his contribution to the vast existing corpus of Lincolniana is to meet with any kind of approval.

There is nothing new in the idea of a Lincoln bibliography. The value of Mr. Angles volume lies in its “critical and selective” qualities. In the first place, he has omitted all the trash and trivia. In the second, he has assessed the contributions of the more important books with knowledge and fairness. Certainly it is a book which no student of Lincoln, not already equipped with his own library and opinions, can afford to be without.

I should like lo quote in toto Mr. Angle’s remarks on Mr. Basler’s Abraham Lincoln: His Speeches and Writings, first because I am in entire agreement with the opinions expressed, and also because these remarks present an excellent example of Mr. Angle’s shorter criticism: —

“For the scholar, Basler’s selection is clearly superior to Stern’s [The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln, by Philip Van Doren Stern, 1940], and many general readers will find it equally satisfactory. The collection, chosen for literary significance, historical importance, and human interest, comprises 228 items to Stern’s 274, but every letter or speech is complete. Moreover. Basler’s is the only general collection of Lincoln’s writings in which a successful cfforl to achieve textual accuracy has been made. In more than three-fourths of his selections the editor has taken his text from the original document or a photostatic copy of it: for the remainder he has relied upon the best authenticated printed version. Like Stern, he introduces each selection by a prefatory statement.

“In an Introduction of considerable length Baslcr discusses the devices by which Lincoln, often unconsciously, gave vent to his ‘love of words and symbols and his eternal craving to entertain people and to create beauty.’ His analysis, though occasionally somewhat technical, is both keen and sound.”

In a spirit of noble abnegation, the editors of the Atlantic Monthly have ordained that no book published by the Atlantic Monthly Press shall he reviewed in this magazine. This regulation, which each month causes high blood pressures and an occasional attack of the falling sickness among the Atlantic staff, may surely he waived in the review of a group of books. It would be absurd to omit Burton J. Hendrick’s Lincoln’s War Cabinet from a list of current Lincoln volumes. Mr. Hendrick’s scholarship as an historian of the period is of the highest order, his studies and estimates of the personalities of the members involved in Lincoln’s immediate entourage are of an equally valuable and penetrating biographical insight. Kach member of Lincoln’s War Cabinet is presented whole, his background and upbringing, the forces developing his character and personality, ihe motives and nature of his actions the portrait of each of these uncommon, ambitious men is complete and satisfying in itself.

But, central and controlling among them. emerges the steadily growing figure of Lincoln. They were most of them slow to admit bis siaiure and pre-eminence. Seward and Chase had good reason to believe themselves belter qualified than their chief for leadership. The event demonstrated his superiority. It is in tracing and developing Lincoln’s control of his discordant cabinet and his eventual acceptance by them as a leader of heroic proportions that Mr. Hendrick’s hook achieves unity and a dramatic integrity. No other historian or biographer has told the story of this group so well or so impressively. And it is only through understanding the complexities presented by the combination of external events and the internal dissensions of his administration that Lincoln’s greatness as a leader can be appreciated.

Mr. Lauriston Bullard’s two volumes are not so “important" as the preceding ones, but they are interesting as candid discussions of debatable questions. The Widow Bixby did not lose five sons - as the War Department told Mr. Lincoln - but two. No original copy of Lincoln’s famous letter exists, the so-called “facsimiles" being clumsy forgeries. John Hay is reputed - at second, third, and fourth hand — to have claimed that he wrote the letter. Mr. Bullard produces the copy of a letter signed by John Hay in which he staled that the Bixby loiter itself was genuine, presumably meaning that Lincoln composed and signed it. Mr. Bullard believes that Mr. Hay, a young man at that time, with a rather lush prose style, was wholly unable to write such a letter in the authentic Lincoln idiom. If he did so, it was a unique performance on his part. While Mr. Bullard cannot disprove the pro-Hay testimony, few will question his judgment of the internal evidence and the vast dillcrence between the known Lincoln style and that of Hay’s acknowledged writing.

The Diary of a Public Man has puzzled Lincoln scholars ever since its original publication in the North American Review in 1879. Neither the Review’s then editor, the brilliant. Allen Thorndike Rice, nor his successor, Lloyd Bryce, ever revealed the name of the author of this important, but incomplete, diary covering the Washington scene on the brink of the Civil War. No Sherlock Holmes among Lincoln scholars has discovered his identity. If authentic, the Diary has really great historical value. If a literary hoax, it is a performance of astonishing virtuosity. It could only have been forged by someone with an amazing knowledge not only of the period but of the way of thinking and feeling and writing of a cultivated man of the world, in a time of chaos and confusion, conveying the “intimations,”as Carl Sandburg writes in his foreword, “of that strange hush preceding a hurricane.” Mr. Bullard presents all the known facts about the Diary in an excellent preface, concluding that, although all scholars would gladly accept it as a genuine historical document, the doubt remains. “And if this ‘Diary’ is in fact a fake, it has full right to be pronounced an — almost—perfect crime.” Published for the first time in a mediumpriced edition, with full notes and references, this extraordinary document is now made available to the general public.

In Legends That Libel Lincoln, Montgomery S. Lewis has gone to great pains to prove that Abraham’s father, Thomas Lincoln, was not a shiftless, penniless itinerant farmer; that Abraham was not driven insane by wild, tragic grief over the loss of Ann Rutledge, who was not the love of his life; that he did not fail to appear at his scheduled marriage to Mary Todd; that Mary Todd Lincoln was not a hellcat and a shrew but a good wife and mother, afflicted with a growing “cerebral" malady, which culminated in insanity; that she was shamefully maligned by contemporary and later writers who pictured Lincoln’s home life as a hell on earth in order to augment his tragic stature as a man of sorrows. Most readers will agree that Mr. Lewis’s arguments are, on the whole, convincing. One may feel that these “libels,” based largely on Herndon’s opinions and material, have been already generally discounted, and that Mr. Lewis is using a gun of rather loo large a caliber for mosquito shooting. His book, however, will correct some popular misconcept ions.

The Lincoln Reader, edited by Paul M. Angle, can bo most easily described in the editor’s own words: it is “a biography written by 65 authors. Prom their writings 179 selections have been chosen and arranged to form an integrated narrative, Great names in Lincoln biography — Carl Sandburg, Ida M. Tarbell, Lord Charnwood, Albert J. Beveridge, William H. Herndon, John G. Nicolay, and John Hay - stand out prominently; others, like James G. Randall and Benjamin P. Thomas, are belter known to scholars than to the general public. Quite a few whose writings appear here have been forgotten by almost everyone, and at least two who wrote contemporary news stories which I have included have never emerged from anonymity. And I suppose there are not many readers who would include Lincoln himself in a list of Lincoln biographers, yet some of his writings have notable biographical significance.”

This modest statement, however, does small justice to the wise selectivity shown by the editor. The idea of a coherent biography consisting of the best selections from a number of authorities dealing with each phase of the subject’s career is, in itself, a bold conception. In the case of Lincoln, where the mass of available material is really stupendous, the task assumes terrifying proportions. Only a scholar of Mr. Angle’s broad and comprehensive grasp could have succeeded in this undertaking. That he has succeeded is apparent to anyone after reading a chapter or two. Moreover, his success is achieved with an appearance of ease, as if — as was probably the case - he knew his material so thoroughly, and had already so assayed and assessed its comparative values, that the matter of choosing what to publish was no difficult affair. This apparent case, this sureness of touch, are possible only to one who is a complete master of his subject, and Mr. Angle is obviously such a master. If this book is read in combination with his Shelf of Lincoln Books, in which the various authorities quoted in The Lincoln Reader are wisely and goodnaturedly appraised, the reader has in his hands a complete course on the life of Abraham Lincoln. This knowledgeable reduction of a great volume of material into significant selections which combine coherently as a biography is a genuine service to the general reader, which will also be applauded by scholars. In addition, it is presented as a fascinating and deeply interesting book.

The selection of this volume by the Book-ofthe-Month Club is a wise choice. It is notably well illustrated and is distinguished in format. Credit should be given to the Rutgers University Press, under whose imprimatur four of the seven Lincoln books described above have appeared. This is a real contribution to American scholarship concerned with the most American of our great men and heroes, that eternal Lincoln who, in simple truth, belongs to all men and “to the ages.”