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The 15 Best Books on President Abraham Lincoln

Essential books on abraham lincoln.

There are countless books on Abraham Lincoln, and it comes with good reason, aside from being elected America’s sixteenth President (1861-1865), he issued the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy and preserved the Union while serving as Commander-in-Chief amidst a brutal Civil War.

“Of our political revolution of ’76, we all are justly proud. It has given us a degree of political freedom, far exceeding that of any other nation of the earth,” Lincoln remarked. “In it the world has found a solution of the long mooted problem, as to the capability of man to govern himself. In it was the germ which has vegetated, and still is to grow and expand into the universal liberty of mankind.”

In order to get to the bottom of what inspired one of history’s most consequential figures to the heights of societal contribution, we’ve compiled a list of the 15 best books on Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln by David Herbert Donald

Donald brilliantly depicts Lincoln’s gradual ascent from humble beginnings in rural Kentucky to the ever-expanding political circles in Illinois, and finally to the presidency of a country divided by civil war. Donald goes beyond biography, illuminating the gradual development of Lincoln’s character, chronicling his tremendous capacity for evolution and growth, thus illustrating what made it possible for a man so inexperienced and so unprepared for the presidency to become a great moral leader. In the most troubled of times, here was a man who led the country out of slavery and preserved a shattered Union – in short, one of the greatest presidents this country has ever seen.

Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin

On May 18, 1860, William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edward Bates, and Abraham Lincoln waited in their hometowns for the results from the Republican National Convention in Chicago. When Lincoln emerged as the victor, his rivals were dismayed and angry.

Throughout the turbulent 1850s, each had energetically sought the presidency as the conflict over slavery was leading inexorably to secession and civil war. That Lincoln succeeded, Goodwin demonstrates, was the result of a character that had been forged by experiences that raised him above his more privileged and accomplished rivals. He won because he possessed an extraordinary ability to put himself in the place of other men, to experience what they were feeling, to understand their motives and desires.

It was this capacity that enabled Lincoln as president to bring his disgruntled opponents together, create the most unusual cabinet in history, and marshal their talents to the task of preserving the Union and winning the war.

We view the long, horrifying struggle from the vantage of the White House as Lincoln copes with incompetent generals, hostile congressmen, and his raucous cabinet. He overcomes these obstacles by winning the respect of his former competitors, and in the case of Seward, finds a loyal and crucial friend to see him through.

This brilliant multiple biography is centered on Lincoln’s mastery of men and how it shaped the most significant presidency in the nation’s history.

Lincoln at Gettysburg by Gary Wills

The power of words has rarely been given a more compelling demonstration than in the Gettysburg Address. Lincoln was asked to memorialize the gruesome battle. Instead he gave the whole nation “a new birth of freedom” in the space of a mere 272 words. His entire life and previous training and his deep political experience went into this, his revolutionary masterpiece.

By examining both the address and Lincoln in their historical moment and cultural frame, Wills breathes new life into words we thought we knew, and reveals much about a president so mythologized but often misunderstood. Wills shows how Lincoln came to change the world and to effect an intellectual revolution, how his words had to and did complete the work of the guns, and how Lincoln wove a spell that has not yet been broken.

Lincoln’s Sword by Douglas L. Wilson

Widely considered in his own time as a genial but provincial lightweight who was out of place in the presidency, Abraham Lincoln astonished his allies and confounded his adversaries by producing a series of speeches and public letters so provocative that they helped revolutionize public opinion on such critical issues as civil liberties, the use of black soldiers, and the emancipation of slaves. This is a brilliant and unprecedented examination of how Lincoln used the power of words to not only build his political career but to keep the country united during the Civil War.

The Fiery Trial by Eric Foner

Selected as a Notable Book of the Year by the  New York Times Book Review , this landmark work gives us a definitive account of Lincoln’s lifelong engagement with the nation’s critical issue: American slavery. A master historian, Eric Foner draws Lincoln and the broader history of the period into perfect balance. We see Lincoln, a pragmatic politician grounded in principle, deftly navigating the dynamic politics of antislavery, secession, and civil war. Lincoln’s greatness emerges from his capacity for moral and political growth.

Lincoln on the Verge by Ted Widmer

As a divided nation plunges into the deepest crisis in its history, Abraham Lincoln boards a train for Washington and his inauguration – an inauguration Southerners have vowed to prevent. Lincoln on the Verge  charts these pivotal thirteen days of travel, as Lincoln discovers his power, speaks directly to the public, and sees his country up close.

Drawing on new research, this riveting account reveals the president-elect as a work in progress, showing him on the verge of greatness, as he foils an assassination attempt, forges an unbreakable bond with the American people, and overcomes formidable obstacles in order to take his oath of office.

A. Lincoln: A Biography by Ronald C. White

Through meticulous research of the newly completed Lincoln Legal Papers, as well as of recently discovered letters and photographs, White provides a portrait of Lincoln’s personal, political, and moral evolution.

White shows us Lincoln as a man who would leave a trail of thoughts in his wake, jotting ideas on scraps of paper and filing them in his top hat or the bottom drawer of his desk; a country lawyer who asked questions in order to figure out his own thinking on an issue, as much as to argue the case; a hands-on commander in chief who, as soldiers and sailors watched in amazement, commandeered a boat and ordered an attack on Confederate shore batteries at the tip of the Virginia peninsula; a man who struggled with the immorality of slavery and as president acted publicly and privately to outlaw it forever; and finally, a president involved in a religious odyssey who wrote, for his own eyes only, a profound meditation on “the will of God” in the Civil War that would become the basis of his finest address.

Most enlightening, the man who comes into focus in this gem among books on Abraham Lincoln is a person of intellectual curiosity, comfortable with ambiguity, and unafraid to “think anew and act anew.”

Tried by War by James M. McPherson

As we celebrate the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth, this study by preeminent, bestselling Civil War historian James M. McPherson provides a rare, fresh take on one of the most enigmatic figures in American history.  Tried by War offers a revelatory (and timely) portrait of leadership during the greatest crisis our nation has ever endured. Suspenseful and inspiring, this is the story of how Lincoln, with almost no previous military experience before entering the White House, assumed the powers associated with the role of Commander in Chief, and through his strategic insight and will to fight changed the course of the war and saved the Union.

Honor’s Voice by Douglas L. Wilson

Abraham Lincoln’s remarkable emergence from the rural Midwest and his rise to the presidency have been the stuff of romance and legend. But as Douglas L. Wilson shows us in Honor’s Voice, Lincoln’s transformation was not one long triumphal march, but a process that was more than once seriously derailed. There were times, in his journey from storekeeper and mill operator to lawyer and member of the Illinois state legislature, when Lincoln lost his nerve and self-confidence – on at least two occasions he became so despondent as to appear suicidal – and when his acute emotional vulnerabilities were exposed.

Focusing on the crucial years between 1831 and 1842, Wilson’s skillful analysis of the testimonies and writings of Lincoln’s contemporaries reveals the individual behind the legends. We see Lincoln as a boy: not the dutiful son studying by firelight, but the stubborn rebel determined to make something of himself. We see him as a young man: not the ascendant statesman, but the canny local politician who was renowned for his talents in wrestling and storytelling (as well as for his extensive store of off-color jokes).

Wilson also reconstructs Lincoln’s frequently anguished personal life: his religious skepticism, recurrent bouts of depression, and difficult relationships with women – from Ann Rutledge to Mary Owens to Mary Todd.

Abraham Lincoln by Lord Charnwood

No other narrative account of Abraham Lincoln’s life has inspired such widespread and lasting acclaim as Charnwood’s  Abraham Lincoln: A Biography . Written by a native of England and originally published in 1916, the biography is a rare blend of beautiful prose and profound historical insight. Charnwood’s study of Lincoln’s statesmanship introduced generations of Americans to the life and politics of Lincoln and the author’s observations are so comprehensive and well-supported that any serious study of Lincoln must respond to his conclusions.

Lincoln’s Melancholy by Joshua Wolf Shenk

Giving shape to the deep depression that pervaded Lincoln’s adult life, Joshua Wolf Shenk’s Lincoln’s Melancholy reveals how this illness influenced both the president’s character and his leadership. Lincoln forged a hard path toward mental health from the time he was a young man. Shenk draws from historical records, interviews with Lincoln scholars, and contemporary research on depression to understand the nature of his unhappiness. In the process, he discovers that the President’s coping strategies; among them, a rich sense of humor and a tendency toward quiet reflection; ultimately helped him to lead the nation through its greatest turmoil.

Lincoln at Cooper Union by Harold Holzer

This favorite among books on Abraham Lincoln explores his most influential and widely reported pre-presidential address – an extraordinary appeal by the western politician to the eastern elite that propelled him toward the Republican nomination for president. Delivered in New York in February 1860, the Cooper Union speech dispelled doubts about Lincoln’s suitability for the presidency and reassured conservatives of his moderation while reaffirming his opposition to slavery to Republican progressives.

Award-winning Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer places Lincoln and his speech in the context of the times – an era of racism, politicized journalism, and public oratory as entertainment – and shows how the candidate framed the speech as an opportunity to continue his famous “debates” with his archrival Democrat Stephen A. Douglas on the question of slavery.

Holzer describes the enormous risk Lincoln took by appearing in New York, where he exposed himself to the country’s most critical audience and took on Republican Senator William Henry Seward of New York, the front runner, in his own backyard. Then he recounts a brilliant and innovative public relations campaign, as Lincoln took the speech “on the road” in his successful quest for the presidency.

Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years by Carl Sandberg

Originally published in six volumes, Sandburg’s Abraham Lincoln was called “the greatest historical biography of our generation.” Sandburg distilled this work into one volume that became one of the definitive books on Abraham Lincoln.

We Are Lincoln Men by David Herbert Donald

Though Abraham Lincoln had hundreds of acquaintances and dozens of admirers, he had almost no intimate friends. Behind his mask of affability and endless stream of humorous anecdotes, he maintained an inviolate reserve that only a few were ever able to penetrate.

Professor Donald’s remarkable book offers a fresh way of looking at Abraham Lincoln, both as a man who needed friendship and as a leader who understood the importance of friendship in the management of men. Donald penetrates Lincoln’s mysterious reserve to offer a new picture of the president’s inner life and to explain his unsurpassed political skills.

The Lincolns: Portraits of a Marriage by Daniel Mark

Although the private lives of political couples have in our era become front-page news, the true story of this extraordinary and tragic first family has never been fully told.  The Lincolns  eclipses earlier accounts with riveting new information that makes husband and wife, president and first lady, come alive in all their proud accomplishments and earthy humanity.

Award-winning biographer and poet Daniel Mark Epstein gives a fresh close-up view of the couple’s life in Springfield, Illinois (of their twenty-two years of marriage, all but six were spent there), and dramatizes with stunning immediacy how the Lincolns’ ascent to the White House brought both dazzling power and the slow, secret unraveling of the couple’s unique bond.

If you enjoyed this guide to essential books on Abraham Lincoln, be sure to check out our list of The 10 Best Books on President George Washington !

Abraham Lincoln

President Abraham Lincoln preserved the Union during the American Civil War and issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing enslaved people.

Quick Facts

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Abraham Lincoln was the 16 th president of the United States , serving from 1861 to 1865, and is regarded as one of America’s greatest heroes due to his roles in guiding the Union through the Civil War and working to emancipate enslaved people. His eloquent support of democracy and insistence that the Union was worth saving embody the ideals of self-government that all nations strive to achieve. In 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves across the Confederacy. Lincoln’s rise from humble beginnings to achieving the highest office in the land is a remarkable story, and his death is equally notably. He was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth in 1865, at age 56, as the country was slowly beginning to reunify following the war. Lincoln’s distinctively humane personality and incredible impact on the nation have endowed him with an enduring legacy.

FULL NAME: Abraham Lincoln BORN: February 12, 1809 DIED: April 15, 1865 BIRTHPLACE: Hodgenville, Kentucky SPOUSE: Mary Todd Lincoln (m. 1842) CHILDREN: Robert Todd Lincoln , Edward Baker Lincoln, William Wallace Lincoln, and Thomas “Tad” Lincoln ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Aquarius HEIGHT: 6 feet 4 inches

Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, to parents Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks Lincoln in rural Hodgenville, Kentucky.

Thomas was a strong and determined pioneer who found a moderate level of prosperity and was well respected in the community. The couple had two other children: Lincoln’s older sister, Sarah, and younger brother, Thomas, who died in infancy. His death wasn’t the only tragedy the family would endure.

In 1817, the Lincolns were forced to move from young Abraham’s Kentucky birthplace to Perry County, Indiana, due to a land dispute. In Indiana, the family “squatted” on public land to scrap out a living in a crude shelter, hunting game and farming a small plot. Lincoln’s father was eventually able to buy the land.

When Lincoln was 9 years old, his 34-year-old mother died of tremetol, more commonly known as milk sickness, on October 5, 1818. The event was devastating to the young boy, who grew more alienated from his father and quietly resented the hard work placed on him at an early age.

In December 1819, just over a year after his mother’s death, Lincoln’s father Thomas married Sarah Bush Johnston, a Kentucky widow with three children of her own. She was a strong and affectionate woman with whom Lincoln quickly bonded.

Although both his parents were most likely illiterate, Thomas’ new wife Sarah encouraged Lincoln to read. It was while growing into manhood that Lincoln received his formal education—an estimated total of 18 months—a few days or weeks at a time.

Reading material was in short supply in the Indiana wilderness. Neighbors recalled how Lincoln would walk for miles to borrow a book. He undoubtedly read the family Bible and probably other popular books at that time such as Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrim’s Progres s, and Aesop’s Fable s.

In March 1830, the family again migrated, this time to Macon County, Illinois. When his father moved the family again to Coles County, 22-year-old Lincoln struck out on his own, making a living in manual labor.

Lincoln was 6 feet 4 inches tall, rawboned and lanky yet muscular and physically strong. He spoke with a backwoods twang and walked with a long-striding gait. He was known for his skill in wielding an ax and early on made a living splitting wood for fire and rail fencing.

Young Lincoln eventually migrated to the small community of New Salem, Illinois, where over a period of years he worked as a shopkeeper, postmaster, and eventually general store owner. It was through working with the public that Lincoln acquired social skills and honed a storytelling talent that made him popular with the locals.

Not surprising given his imposing frame, Lincoln was an excellent wrestler and had only one recorded loss—to Hank Thompson in 1832—over a span of 12 years. A shopkeeper who employed Lincoln in New Salem, Illinois, reportedly arranged bouts for him as a way to promote the business. Lincoln notably beat a local champion named Jack Armstrong and became somewhat of a hero. (The National Wrestling Hall of Fame posthumously gave Lincoln its Outstanding American Award in 1992.)

When the Black Hawk War broke out in 1832 between the United States and Native Americans, the volunteers in the area elected Lincoln to be their captain. He saw no combat during this time, save for “a good many bloody struggles with the mosquitoes,” but was able to make several important political connections.

As he was starting his political career in the early 1830s, Lincoln decided to become a lawyer. He taught himself the law by reading William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England . After being admitted to the bar in 1837, he moved to Springfield, Illinois, and began to practice in the John T. Stuart law firm.

In 1844, Lincoln partnered with William Herndon in the practice of law. Although the two had different jurisprudent styles, they developed a close professional and personal relationship.

Lincoln made a good living in his early years as a lawyer but found that Springfield alone didn’t offer enough work. So to supplement his income, he followed the court as it made its rounds on the circuit to the various county seats in Illinois.

On November 4, 1842, Lincoln wed Mary Todd , a high-spirited, well-educated woman from a distinguished Kentucky family. Although they were married until Lincoln’s death, their relationship had a history of instability.

When the couple became engaged in 1840, many of their friends and family couldn’t understand Mary’s attraction; at times, Lincoln questioned it himself. In 1841, the engagement was suddenly broken off, most likely at Lincoln’s initiative. Mary and Lincoln met later at a social function and eventually did get married.

The couple had four sons— Robert Todd , Edward Baker, William Wallace, and Thomas “Tad”—of whom only Robert survived to adulthood.

Before marrying Todd, Lincoln was involved with other potential matches. Around 1837, he purportedly met and became romantically involved with Anne Rutledge. Before they had a chance to be engaged, a wave of typhoid fever came over New Salem, and Anne died at age 22.

Her death was said to have left Lincoln severely depressed. However, several historians disagree on the extent of Lincoln’s relationship with Rutledge, and his level of sorrow at her death might be more the makings of legend.

About a year after the death of Rutledge, Lincoln courted Mary Owens. The two saw each other for a few months, and marriage was considered. But in time, Lincoln called off the match.

In 1834, Lincoln began his political career and was elected to the Illinois state legislature as a member of the Whig Party . More than a decade later, from 1847 to 1849, he served a single term in the U.S. House of Representatives. His foray into national politics seemed to be as unremarkable as it was brief. He was the lone Whig from Illinois, showing party loyalty but finding few political allies.

As a congressman, Lincoln used his term in office to speak out against the Mexican-American War and supported Zachary Taylor for president in 1848. His criticism of the war made him unpopular back home, and he decided not to run for second term. Instead, he returned to Springfield to practice law.

By the 1850s, the railroad industry was moving west, and Illinois found itself becoming a major hub for various companies. Lincoln served as a lobbyist for the Illinois Central Railroad as its company attorney.

Success in several court cases brought other business clients as well, including banks, insurance companies, and manufacturing firms. Lincoln also worked in some criminal trials.

In one case, a witness claimed that he could identify Lincoln’s client who was accused of murder, because of the intense light from a full moon. Lincoln referred to an almanac and proved that the night in question had been too dark for the witness to see anything clearly. His client was acquitted.

As a member of the Illinois state legislature, Lincoln supported the Whig politics of government-sponsored infrastructure and protective tariffs. This political understanding led him to formulate his early views on slavery, not so much as a moral wrong, but as an impediment to economic development.

In 1854, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act , which repealed the Missouri Compromise , allowing individual states and territories to decide for themselves whether to allow slavery. The law provoked violent opposition in Kansas and Illinois, and it gave rise to today’s Republican Party .

This awakened Lincoln’s political zeal once again, and his views on slavery moved more toward moral indignation. Lincoln joined the Republican Party in 1856.

In 1857, the Supreme Court issued its controversial Dred Scott decision, declaring Black people were not citizens and had no inherent rights. Although Lincoln felt Black people weren’t equal to whites, he believed America’s founders intended that all men were created with certain inalienable rights.

Lincoln decided to challenge sitting U.S. Senator Stephen Douglas for his seat. In his nomination acceptance speech, he criticized Douglas, the Supreme Court , and President James Buchanan for promoting slavery then declared “a house divided cannot stand.”

During Lincoln’s 1858 U.S. Senate campaign against Douglas, he participated in seven debates held in different cities across Illinois. The two candidates didn’t disappoint, giving stirring debates on issues such as states’ rights and western expansion. But the central issue was slavery.

Newspapers intensely covered the debates, often times with partisan commentary. In the end, the state legislature elected Douglas, but the exposure vaulted Lincoln into national politics.

With his newly enhanced political profile, in 1860, political operatives in Illinois organized a campaign to support Lincoln for the presidency. On May 18, at the Republican National Convention in Chicago, Lincoln surpassed better-known candidates such as William Seward of New York and Salmon P. Chase of Ohio. Lincoln’s nomination was due, in part, to his moderate views on slavery, his support for improving the national infrastructure, and the protective tariff.

In the November 1860 general election, Lincoln faced his friend and rival Stephen Douglas, this time besting him in a four-way race that included John C. Breckinridge of the Northern Democrats and John Bell of the Constitution Party. Lincoln received not quite 40 percent of the popular vote but carried 180 of 303 Electoral College votes, thus winning the U.S. presidency. He grew his trademark beard after his election.

Lincoln’s Cabinet

Following his election to the presidency in 1860, Lincoln selected a strong cabinet composed of many of his political rivals, including William Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edward Bates, and Edwin Stanton.

Formed out the adage “Hold your friends close and your enemies closer,” Lincoln’s cabinet became one of his strongest assets in his first term in office, and he would need them as the clouds of war gathered over the nation the following year.

Before Lincoln’s inauguration in March 1861, seven Southern states had seceded from the Union, and by April, the U.S. military installation Fort Sumter was under siege in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. In the early morning hours of April 12, 1861, the guns stationed to protect the harbor blazed toward the fort, signaling the start of the U.S. Civil War , America’s costliest and bloodiest war.

The newly President Lincoln responded to the crisis wielding powers as no other president before him: He distributed $2 million from the Treasury for war material without an appropriation from Congress; he called for 75,000 volunteers into military service without a declaration of war; and he suspended the writ of habeas corpus, allowing for the arrest and imprisonment of suspected Confederate States sympathizers without a warrant.

Crushing the rebellion would be difficult under any circumstances, but the Civil War, after decades of white-hot partisan politics, was especially onerous. From all directions, Lincoln faced disparagement and defiance. He was often at odds with his generals, his cabinet, his party, and a majority of the American people.

On January 1, 1863, Lincoln delivered his official Emancipation Proclamation , reshaping the cause of the Civil War from saving the Union to abolishing slavery.

The Union Army’s first year and a half of battlefield defeats made it difficult to keep morale high and support strong for a reunification of the nation. And the Union victory at Antietam on September 22, 1862, while by no means conclusive, was hopeful. It gave Lincoln the confidence to officially change the goals of the war. On that same day, he issued a preliminary proclamation that slaves in states rebelling against the Union would be free as of January 1.

The Emancipation Proclamation stated that all individuals who were held as enslaved people in rebellious states “henceforward shall be free.” The action was more symbolic than effective because the North didn’t control any states in rebellion, and the proclamation didn’t apply to border states, Tennessee, or some Louisiana parishes.

As a result, the Union army shared the Proclamation’s mandate only after it had taken control of Confederate territory. In the far reaches of western Texas, that day finally came on June 19, 1865—more than two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation took effect. For decades, many Black Americans have celebrated this anniversary, known as Juneteenth or Emancipation Day, and in 2021, President Joe Biden made Juneteenth a national holiday.

Still, the Emancipation Proclamation did have some immediate impact. It permitted Black Americans to serve in the Union Army for the first time, which contributed to the eventual Union victory. The historic declaration also paved the way for the passage of the 13 th Amendment that ended legal slavery in the United States.

On November 19, 1863, Lincoln delivered what would become his most famous speech and one of the most important speeches in American history: the Gettysburg Address .

Addressing a crowd of around 15,000 people, Lincoln delivered his 272-word speech at one of the bloodiest battlefields of the Civil War, the Gettysburg National Cemetery in Pennsylvania. The Civil War, Lincoln said, was the ultimate test of the preservation of the Union created in 1776, and the people who died at Gettysburg fought to uphold this cause.

Lincoln evoked the Declaration of Independence , saying it was up to the living to ensure that the “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth,” and this Union was “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

A common interpretation was that the president was expanding the cause of the Civil War from simply reunifying the Union to also fighting for equality and abolishing slavery.

Following Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the war effort gradually improved for the North, though more by attrition than by brilliant military victories.

But by 1864, the Confederate armies had eluded major defeat and Lincoln was convinced he’d be a one-term president. His nemesis George B. McClellan , the former commander of the Army of the Potomac, challenged him for the presidency, but the contest wasn’t even close. Lincoln received 55 percent of the popular vote and 212 of 243 electoral votes.

On April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee , commander of the Army of Virginia, surrendered his forces to Union General Ulysses S. Grant . The Civil War was for all intents and purposes over.

Reconstruction had already began during the Civil War, as early as 1863 in areas firmly under Union military control, and Lincoln favored a policy of quick reunification with a minimum of retribution. He was confronted by a radical group of Republicans in Congress that wanted complete allegiance and repentance from former Confederates. Before a political debate had any chance to firmly develop, Lincoln was killed.

Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865, by well-known actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre in Washington. Lincoln was taken to the Petersen House across the street and laid in a coma for nine hours before dying the next morning. He was 56. His death was mourned by millions of citizens in the North and South alike.

Lincoln’s body first lay in state at the U. S. Capitol. About 600 invited guests attended a funeral in the East Room of the White House on April 19, though an inconsolable Mary Todd Lincoln wasn’t present.

His body was transported to his final resting place in Springfield, Illinois, by a funeral train. Newspapers publicized the schedule of the train, which made stops along various cities that played roles in Lincoln’s path to Washington. In 10 cities, the casket was removed and placed in public for memorial services. Lincoln was finally placed in a tomb on May 4.

On the day of Lincoln’s death, Andrew Johnson was sworn in as the 17 th president at the Kirkwood House hotel in Washington.

Lincoln, already taller than most, is known for his distinctive top hats. Although it’s unclear when he began wearing them, historians believe he likely chose the style as a gimmick.

He wore a top hat to Ford’s Theatre on the night of his assassination. Following his death, the War Department preserved the hat until 1867 when, with Mary Todd Lincoln’s approval, it was transferred to the Patent Office and the Smithsonian Institution. Worried about the commotion it might cause, the Smithsonian stored the hat in a basement instead of putting it on display. It was finally exhibited in 1893, and it’s now one of the Institution’s most treasured items.

Lincoln is frequently cited by historians and average citizens alike as America’s greatest president. An aggressively activist commander-in-chief, Lincoln used every power at his disposal to assure victory in the Civil War and end slavery in the United States.

Some scholars doubt that the Union would have been preserved had another person of lesser character been in the White House. According to historian Michael Burlingame , “No president in American history ever faced a greater crisis and no president ever accomplished as much.”

Lincoln’s philosophy was perhaps best summed up in his Second Inaugural Address , when he stated, “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

The Lincoln Memorial

Since its dedication in 1922, the Lincoln Memorial in Washington has honored the president’s legacy. Inspired by the Greek Parthenon, the monument features a 19-foot high statue of Lincoln and engravings of the Gettysburg Address and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. Former President William Howard Taft served as chair of the Lincoln Memorial Commission, which oversaw its design and construction.

The monument is the most visited in the city, attracting around 8 million people per year. Civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech on the memorial’s steps in 1963.

Lincoln has been the subject of numerous films about his life and presidency, rooted in both realism and absurdity.

Among the earlier films featuring the former president is Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), which stars Henry Fonda and focuses on Lincoln’s early life and law career. A year later, Abe Lincoln in Illinois gave a dramatized account of Lincoln’s life after leaving Kentucky.

The most notable modern film is Lincoln , the 2012 biographical drama directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln and Sally Field as his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln . Day-Lewis won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance, and the film was nominated for Best Picture.

A more fantastical depiction of Lincoln came in the 1989 comedy film Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure , in which the titular characters played by Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter travel back in time for the president’s help in completing their high school history report. Lincoln gives the memorable instruction to “be excellent to each other and... party on, dudes!”

Another example is the 2012 action film Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter , based on a 2010 novel by Seth Grahame-Smith. Benjamin Walker plays Lincoln, who leads a secret double life hunting the immortal creatures and even fighting them during the Civil War.

Lincoln’s role during the Civil War is heavily explored in the 1990 Ken Burns documentary The Civil War , which won two Emmy Awards and two Grammys. In 2022, the History Channel aired a three-part docuseries about his life simply titled Abraham Lincoln .

• Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
• I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.
• No man is good enough to govern another man, without that other ’ s consent.
• I have learned the value of old friends by making many new ones.
• Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
• Whenever I hear anyone arguing over slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
• To give the victory to the right, not bloody bullets, but peaceful ballots only, are necessary.
• Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit, and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.
• Don ’ t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.
• Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.
• With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation ’ s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.
• I walk slowly, but I never walk backward.
• Nearly all men can handle adversity, if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
• I ’ m the big buck of this lick. If any of you want to try it, come on and whet your horns.
• We can complain because rose bushes have thorns.
• Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?
• It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.

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Abraham Lincoln

By: History.com Editors

Updated: February 7, 2024 | Original: October 29, 2009

Abraham Lincoln , a self-taught lawyer, legislator and vocal opponent of slavery, was elected 16th president of the United States in November 1860, shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War. Lincoln proved to be a shrewd military strategist and a savvy leader: His Emancipation Proclamation paved the way for slavery’s abolition, while his Gettysburg Address stands as one of the most famous pieces of oratory in American history. 

In April 1865, with the Union on the brink of victory, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln’s assassination made him a martyr to the cause of liberty, and he is widely regarded as one of the greatest presidents in U.S. history.

Abraham Lincoln's Childhood and Early Life

Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, to Nancy and Thomas Lincoln in a one-room log cabin in Hardin County, Kentucky . His family moved to southern Indiana in 1816. Lincoln’s formal schooling was limited to three brief periods in local schools, as he had to work constantly to support his family.

In 1830, his family moved to Macon County in southern Illinois , and Lincoln got a job working on a river flatboat hauling freight down the Mississippi River to New Orleans . After settling in the town of New Salem, Illinois, where he worked as a shopkeeper and a postmaster, Lincoln became involved in local politics as a supporter of the Whig Party , winning election to the Illinois state legislature in 1834.

Like his Whig heroes Henry Clay and Daniel Webster , Lincoln opposed the spread of slavery to the territories, and had a grand vision of the expanding United States, with a focus on commerce and cities rather than agriculture.

Did you know? The war years were difficult for Abraham Lincoln and his family. After his young son Willie died of typhoid fever in 1862, the emotionally fragile Mary Lincoln, widely unpopular for her frivolity and spendthrift ways, held seances in the White House in the hopes of communicating with him, earning her even more derision.

Lincoln taught himself law, passing the bar examination in 1836. The following year, he moved to the newly named state capital of Springfield. For the next few years, he worked there as a lawyer and served clients ranging from individual residents of small towns to national railroad lines.

He met Mary Todd , a well-to-do Kentucky belle with many suitors (including Lincoln’s future political rival, Stephen Douglas ), and they married in 1842. The Lincolns went on to have four children together, though only one would live into adulthood: Robert Todd Lincoln (1843–1926), Edward Baker Lincoln (1846–1850), William Wallace Lincoln (1850–1862) and Thomas “Tad” Lincoln (1853-1871).

Abraham Lincoln Enters Politics

Lincoln won election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1846 and began serving his term the following year. As a congressman, Lincoln was unpopular with many Illinois voters for his strong stance against the Mexican-American War. Promising not to seek reelection, he returned to Springfield in 1849.

Events conspired to push him back into national politics, however: Douglas, a leading Democrat in Congress, had pushed through the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), which declared that the voters of each territory, rather than the federal government, had the right to decide whether the territory should be slave or free.

On October 16, 1854, Lincoln went before a large crowd in Peoria to debate the merits of the Kansas-Nebraska Act with Douglas, denouncing slavery and its extension and calling the institution a violation of the most basic tenets of the Declaration of Independence .

With the Whig Party in ruins, Lincoln joined the new Republican Party–formed largely in opposition to slavery’s extension into the territories–in 1856 and ran for the Senate again that year (he had campaigned unsuccessfully for the seat in 1855 as well). In June, Lincoln delivered his now-famous “house divided” speech, in which he quoted from the Gospels to illustrate his belief that “this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free.”

Lincoln then squared off against Douglas in a series of famous debates; though he lost the Senate election, Lincoln’s performance made his reputation nationally. 

Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 Presidential Campaign

Lincoln’s profile rose even higher in early 1860 after he delivered another rousing speech at New York City’s Cooper Union. That May, Republicans chose Lincoln as their candidate for president, passing over Senator William H. Seward of New York and other powerful contenders in favor of the rangy Illinois lawyer with only one undistinguished congressional term under his belt.

In the general election, Lincoln again faced Douglas, who represented the northern Democrats; southern Democrats had nominated John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky, while John Bell ran for the brand new Constitutional Union Party. With Breckenridge and Bell splitting the vote in the South, Lincoln won most of the North and carried the Electoral College to win the White House .

He built an exceptionally strong cabinet composed of many of his political rivals, including Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edward Bates and Edwin M. Stanton .

Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War

After years of sectional tensions, the election of an antislavery northerner as the 16th president of the United States drove many southerners over the brink. By the time Lincoln was inaugurated as 16th U.S. president in March 1861, seven southern states had seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America .

Lincoln ordered a fleet of Union ships to supply the federal Fort Sumter in South Carolina in April. The Confederates fired on both the fort and the Union fleet, beginning the Civil War . Hopes for a quick Union victory were dashed by defeat in the Battle of Bull Run (Manassas) , and Lincoln called for 500,000 more troops as both sides prepared for a long conflict.

While the Confederate leader Jefferson Davis was a West Point graduate, Mexican War hero and former secretary of war, Lincoln had only a brief and undistinguished period of service in the Black Hawk War (1832) to his credit. He surprised many when he proved to be a capable wartime leader, learning quickly about strategy and tactics in the early years of the Civil War, and about choosing the ablest commanders.

General George McClellan , though beloved by his troops, continually frustrated Lincoln with his reluctance to advance, and when McClellan failed to pursue Robert E. Lee’s retreating Confederate Army in the aftermath of the Union victory at Antietam in September 1862, Lincoln removed him from command.

During the war, Lincoln drew criticism for suspending some civil liberties, including the right of habeas corpus , but he considered such measures necessary to win the war.

Emancipation Proclamation and Gettysburg Address

Shortly after the Battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg), Lincoln issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation , which took effect on January 1, 1863, and freed all of the enslaved people in the rebellious states not under federal control, but left those in the border states (loyal to the Union) in bondage.

Though Lincoln once maintained that his “paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery,” he nonetheless came to regard emancipation as one of his greatest achievements and would argue for the passage of a constitutional amendment outlawing slavery (eventually passed as the 13th Amendment after his death in 1865).

Two important Union victories in July 1863—at Vicksburg, Mississippi, and at the Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania—finally turned the tide of the war. General George Meade missed the opportunity to deliver a final blow against Lee’s army at Gettysburg, and Lincoln would turn by early 1864 to the victor at Vicksburg, Ulysses S. Grant , as supreme commander of the Union forces.

In November 1863, Lincoln delivered a brief speech (just 272 words) at the dedication ceremony for the new national cemetery at Gettysburg. Published widely, the Gettysburg Address eloquently expressed the war’s purpose, harking back to the Founding Fathers, the Declaration of Independence and the pursuit of human equality. It became the most famous speech of Lincoln’s presidency, and one of the most widely quoted speeches in history.

Abraham Lincoln Wins 1864 Presidential Election

In 1864, Lincoln faced a tough reelection battle against the Democratic nominee, the former Union General George McClellan, but Union victories in battle (especially General William T. Sherman’s capture of Atlanta in September) swung many votes the president’s way. In his second inaugural address, delivered on March 4, 1865, Lincoln addressed the need to reconstruct the South and rebuild the Union: “With malice toward none; with charity for all.”

As Sherman marched triumphantly northward through the Carolinas after staging his March to the Sea from Atlanta, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House , Virginia , on April 9. Union victory was near, and Lincoln gave a speech on the White House lawn on April 11, urging his audience to welcome the southern states back into the fold. Tragically, Lincoln would not live to help carry out his vision of Reconstruction .

Abraham Lincoln’s Assassination

On the night of April 14, 1865, the actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth slipped into the president’s box at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., and shot him point-blank in the back of the head. Lincoln was carried to a boardinghouse across the street from the theater, but he never regained consciousness, and died in the early morning hours of April 15, 1865.

Lincoln’s assassination made him a national martyr. On April 21, 1865, a train carrying his coffin left Washington, D.C. on its way to Springfield, Illinois, where he would be buried on May 4. Abraham Lincoln’s funeral train traveled through 180 cities and seven states so mourners could pay homage to the fallen president.

Today, Lincoln’s birthday—alongside the birthday of George Washington —is honored on President’s Day , which falls on the third Monday of February.

Abraham Lincoln Quotes

“Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time.”

“I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.”

“I am rather inclined to silence, and whether that be wise or not, it is at least more unusual nowadays to find a man who can hold his tongue than to find one who cannot.”

“I am exceedingly anxious that this Union, the Constitution, and the liberties of the people shall be perpetuated in accordance with the original idea for which that struggle was made, and I shall be most happy indeed if I shall be a humble instrument in the hands of the Almighty, and of this, his almost chosen people, for perpetuating the object of that great struggle.”

“This is essentially a People's contest. On the side of the Union, it is a struggle for maintaining in the world, that form, and substance of government, whose leading object is, to elevate the condition of men—to lift artificial weights from all shoulders—to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all—to afford all, an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life.”

“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

“This nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

HISTORY Vault: Abraham Lincoln

A definitive biography of the 16th U.S. president, the man who led the country during its bloodiest war and greatest crisis.

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Make Your Own List

History Books » American History » Books on American Presidents

The best books on abraham lincoln, recommended by ted widmer.

He came from humble beginnings and never went to high school. Going into the presidency, he had limited political experience and lacked business, legislative and military achievements. The one thing he did not lack was a moral compass, says historian and author Ted Widmer . He picks the best books on the ups and downs and Shakespearean-style plot twists that were the life of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States.

Interview by Eve Gerber

Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington by Ted Widmer

Lincoln's Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words by Douglas L Wilson

Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America by Garry Wills

Emancipating Lincoln: The Proclamation in Text, Context, and Memory by Harold Holzer

They Knew Lincoln by John E Washington

1 Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington by Ted Widmer

2 lincoln's sword: the presidency and the power of words by douglas l wilson, 3 lincoln at gettysburg: the words that remade america by garry wills, 4 emancipating lincoln: the proclamation in text, context, and memory by harold holzer, 5 they knew lincoln by john e washington.

T here are more than 16,000 books about Abraham Lincoln, America’s 16th president. You’ve agreed to choose the best reading about Old Abe and I insisted that we discuss your thrilling Lincoln on the Verge among the five. Before we hit the books, please introduce our international audience to Abraham Lincoln.

His surprising literary capacity, which few knew about when they voted for him, was key to the impact he had. As president, he delivered extraordinary public addresses that are Shakespearian in some ways and biblical in other ways.

He’s emotionally interesting. Abraham Lincoln has more highs and lows than perhaps any other president. He’s very strong, but vulnerable also. That makes him an attractive central figure for a history book. And he’s tragically struck down at the moment of his greatest triumph, immediately after winning the Civil War . That seems almost like a plot twist out of Shakespeare . So he continues to fascinate.

When Abraham Lincoln ran for president in 1860, his supporters highlighted his bootstraps biography. His rise from a log cabin in Kentucky to the White House is astonishing. What are those basic biographical facts?

Your riveting book, Lincoln on the Verge, focuses on Abraham Lincoln at the precipice of his presidency. Please tell us about the book and the importance of that period you write about.

It’s a story about Abraham Lincoln’s 13-day train trip to his inauguration. We tend to have a static image of Lincoln, posed in a photograph or standing stiffly in a daguerreotype. But he was a man of action. I wanted to show him moving.

Along his train trip to Washington, Lincoln is meeting thousands of people every day. He’s improving his ability to sway people with a speech. Trying to keep the country together was physical as well as intellectual work. He was shaking tens of thousands of hands to keep America from falling apart. It was a physical ordeal but one that he was well-qualified for. We don’t think of Abraham Lincoln as a young man, but he had just turned 52 and he was still vigorous.

“There’s so much to admire about Abraham Lincoln”

This journey also shows America in all of its different shadings. It’s a country that is different, not only between North and South, but between the northern, southern, western and eastern parts of individual states. Southern Ohio is really different from Northern Ohio. Pennsylvania is very diverse. Following Lincoln on this trip through America allows me to show the complexity of the country in the nineteenth century.

America is clearly complicated in 2021 too. Reading about the dramatic differences between nineteenth century Americans, from one region to the next, still resonates today.

One of the things that made the book so gripping for me is how efficiently and effectively you explained what a dangerous moment it was for America’s democracy. Can you encapsulate that aspect of the book?

That too felt resonant to me because of all the upheaval we passed through in 2020. Democracy was not working well in 1860, in DC and around the world. The federal government wasn’t very effective and the lame duck president, James Buchanan, was lame in every way. He was imbecilic in meetings. Southern slave interests had controlled the US government almost without exception since 1789. The vast majority of free people in this huge and complicated country did not want to be governed by slaveowners and their representatives in Washington.

In Congress, disagreements boiled over, resulting in abolitionist Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner nearly being paralyzed after he was brutally beaten by a South Carolinian congressman. Congress was not functioning. There was barely any compromise or negotiation.

1860 is really the end of an era. It’s the failure of the first chapter of American history . They tried a form of democracy from 1789 to 1860. When Lincoln was elected, half the country wouldn’t accept it and so they seceded. That was a sign of an inconsistent commitment to democracy on their part.

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Lincoln had gargantuan challenges. It was up to him to reunite the country. But if he won the war by just crushing the South in a bloodbath, he couldn’t have brought the country back together and it would have been far harder for the country to function as a democracy again. So, he wants to win by persuading all of the people that democracy is worth the gargantuan effort to preserve the union.

Around the world, people have their eye on the U.S. because democracy is failing all over. Germany’s 1848 revolution has failed. In France, likewise, a revolution in 1848 has failed. In Italy , popular uprisings were faltering. So, if American democracy had completely collapsed, it could’ve been the final nail in the coffin for democracy. If Lincoln had failed, democracy might have been seen as just another strange utopian movement.

One of your recommended books is about the strength that made Abraham Lincoln such an effective president. Tell us about Lincoln’s Sword by historian Douglas Wilson.

Douglas Wilson is a superb Lincoln scholar, based at Knox College in Illinois. He’s an extremely close reader of Lincoln. Lincoln’s words are very important because they are kind of scripture for Americans. Sometimes the words are hard to pin down because three or four people hearing a Lincoln speech might each write them down differently. Douglas Wilson meticulously verifies every word spoken and helps us to understand Lincoln’s writing process. With all of the most famous Lincoln speeches, Wilson tells us why the speech needed to be given, the process of writing the speech, and the various iterations of the speech. His intense literary focus is exciting. Every time I read Douglas Wilson’s work, I feel re-energized by Lincoln’s words.

According to Richard Norton Smith, Wilson “reconstructs the man by deconstructing his words.” What does Abraham Lincoln’s writing reveal about him?

That leads us to a Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Garry Wills about one of Lincoln’s most powerful speeches, delivered in 1863 at the dedication of a cemetery for war dead. Tell us about Lincoln at Gettysburg.

It’s a wonderful book that concentrates all of the author’s formidable erudition on a single short speech. The Gettysburg Address is only 272 words. It probably took him three minutes to say. Wills makes the moment crackle with electricity. He explains how Lincoln wrote the address, on the way to Gettysburg. He deconstructs the speech itself and contextualizes it. All of American history was pivoting, in these three minutes, from a states-based way of thinking about our society to a nation-based way of thinking. In this speech, Lincoln re-dedicated the United States to citizenship for all of its people. Up until this point, African-Americans were largely excluded from citizenship. In this speech, Wills shows Lincoln is realigning the stars of our country to make us a federal union that is stronger than the states and dedicated to the rights of all of citizens, including African-Americans. It was a big step forward.

The phrase from those 272 words that has resounded ever since is “a new birth of freedom.” What does that phrase mean?

Next is Harold Holzer’s Emancipating Lincoln: The Proclamation in Text, Context and Memory . The Emancipation Proclamation declared that, as of New Year’s Day of 1863, enslaved people in the rebelling states would be free “thenceforward, and forever free; and the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.”

It’s hard for me to pick a single Harold Holzer book because there are so many, and they’re all so good. Emancipating Lincoln is very cogent and relatively short. Three chapters from three talks he gave at Harvard, about what made the Emancipation Proclamation such a remarkable document. The Emancipation Proclamation had more of an impact on policy and law than Lincoln’s speeches, which are far more familiar to students of history.

“His surprising literary capacity…was key to the impact he had”

And Holzer is also restoring how hard it was for Lincoln to do that. That is important because we sometimes take him for granted, or worse, take potshots at him. Recently statues of him have been torn down and his name has been stripped from public schools. It is possible to find imperfect things that were not racially sensitive to our pitch-perfect ears. But what Harold Holzer brilliantly demonstrated is that emancipation was politically difficult to achieve, and had a huge impact, as African-Americans, in particular, understood. It’s a beautiful small book that restores Lincoln to what was probably his most important role, the role of the emancipator, the man who ended slavery.

In his introduction, Holzer casts Emancipating Lincoln as a reply to “harsh revisionist scholarship” that stripped Lincoln of credit for abolition and “the new birth of freedom” he called for at Gettysburg. Revisionism, needless to say, is nothing new. One of the statues you’re referring to was across the river from me in Boston. The only text my middle schooler receives, in a social studies class focused on 1860 onwards, casts Lincoln as a cynical politician who was adamantly opposed to equal rights for Black Americans. How and why has Lincoln’s reputation risen and fallen in the 158 years since he signed the Emancipation Proclamation?

That statue was built after Lincoln died; he had nothing to do with it.  It’s troubling in many ways, the body language is wrong but, still, we should proceed cautiously, and listen to the voices of Lincoln’s time.

Finally, please tell me about the last Abraham Lincoln book on your list, John E. Washington’s They Knew Lincoln.

It’s a great book and an unusual book, first published in 1942 by an African American teacher who grew up in the shadow of the Capitol. The book was recently republished with an excellent introduction by historian Kate Masur. John E. Washington gathered a lot of fantastic oral history and documents to tell the untold story of the African Americans who knew Lincoln.

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Black Americans from many walks of life came into contact with Lincoln. There were African Americans working in the White House. He was friendly with a young man named William Johnson who worked in the Treasury Department. His barber back in Illinois, William De Fleurville, was born in Haiti and they knew one another well.  The stories in this book deepen our understanding of Lincoln and his presidency. It wasn’t just white men in blue uniforms; there were many African Americans playing important roles behind the scenes.

By reconstructing the lives of the African American people who knew Lincoln is Washington originating social history of the sort that became popular in the 1960s?

I’m sure we could find earlier examples of social history. For instance, there are really interesting books written about the experience of average soldiers in the American Revolution. But despite the efforts of historians like W.E.B. Dubois, there had not been enough work focused on the African Americans during the civil war. This book helps to fix that imbalance and shows how much Lincoln’s presidency depended on the aid he received from others in his extended household.

Last question: As you pointed out earlier, like the thirteen days you wrote about in Lincoln on the Verge , the United States just passed through a period between presidencies when democracy was under great strain. What lessons does Lincoln’s life offer about how the present president, Joe Biden , can deal with the divisions in America? What lessons does Lincoln’s life offer for all leaders?

There’s a great lesson to be learned from Lincoln’s efforts to speak to all Americans. Lincoln always takes pains to speak to the South.  He always was striving to “bind up the nation’s wounds,” as he said in the second inaugural. To survive, the United States needs presidents who are focused on the entire country, not just the party or interest groups that elect them. I’m encouraged that President Biden has been that way so far.

Lincoln also provides an example of action. Although he was a little slow coming out of the box, when the South attacked Fort Sumter, he responded with alacrity, raised the Northern Army and ramped up an overwhelming military response. While leading the war, he signed the Morrill Act in 1862, which expanded our public education system with land grant colleges. He signed the Homestead Act, which helped immigrants and ultimately freed slaves start new communities in the West. He helped the railroad and telegraph stretch across the country. He did not hesitate in using the powers of the presidency to act boldly and push actions through Congress that he believed would help Americans. That has also been true of Joe Biden to date.

So far, Biden’s combination of unifying rhetoric and focused action has been impressive and yes, Lincolnian.

February 12, 2021

Five Books aims to keep its book recommendations and interviews up to date. If you are the interviewee and would like to update your choice of books (or even just what you say about them) please email us at [email protected]

Edward (Ted) Ladd Widmer is a historian, author and librarian who served as speechwriter in the Clinton White House. He is a professor at Macaulay Honors College, part of City University of New York.

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My Journey Through the Best Presidential Biographies

The Best Biographies of Abraham Lincoln

28 Saturday Jun 2014

Posted by Steve in Best Biographies Posts , President #16 - A Lincoln

≈ 66 Comments

Abraham Lincoln , Allen Guelzo , American history , Benjamin Thomas , biographies , book reviews , Carl Sandburg , David Donald , David S. Reynolds , Doris Kearns Goodwin , Eric Foner , James McPherson , Michael Burlingame , presidential biographies , Presidents , Pulitzer Prize , Richard Brookhiser , Ronald White , Stephen Oates

Of the sixteen presidents whose biographies I’ve read so far, none have offered the variety of choices of Abraham Lincoln. Of the dozen Lincoln biographies I read, two were Pulitzer Prize winners, one is the second best-read presidential biography of all time, and six held the distinction of being the definitive Lincoln biography at one time or another.

No president before Lincoln required as much of my time, either – it took me over 3½ months to read all twelve biographies. Together, they contained nearly 9,500 pages – almost twice as many as the president with the second-tallest stack of biographies in my collection (Thomas Jefferson with about 5,000 pages).

Given this enormous time commitment, it’s fortunate Lincoln was both a fascinating individual and a masterful politician. His life story is as interesting as anyone’s (president or otherwise), and he proved far more impressive than most of the first fifteen presidents.

* The first Lincoln biography I read was Michael Burlingame’s masterful two-volume “ Abraham Lincoln: A Life ” published in 2008. This 1,600 page jewel is actually the condensed version of the much longer original manuscript that is  only available online  (free!). Although daunting for a new Lincoln admirer and probably more detailed than most readers will desire, this biography is extremely descriptive and consistently insightful.

Particularly well-covered is the crushing poverty of Lincoln’s youth, his “colorful” relationship with Mary Todd, the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 and the Republican convention of 1860. Because of its extensive breadth and depth of coverage this may not be the perfect introduction to Lincoln for some readers. But for anyone interested in Lincoln, this an excellent – perhaps unrivaled – second or third biography of Lincoln to read. ( Full review here )

* Next I read Ronald White’s 2009 “ A. Lincoln: A Biography .” Often described as the second best single-volume biography of Lincoln (after David Herbert Donald’s 1995 biography) I was not disappointed. Although fairly lengthy (at nearly 700 pages) it is entertaining to read and easy to follow. The author never leaves the reader stranded in a sea of confusing details, and to provide incremental clarity and context he has embedded a large number of maps, charts, illustrations and photographs at appropriate points within the text.

Compared to Burlingame’s excellent description of Lincoln’s youth, however, White provided less insight into this early phase of Lincoln’s life. And because White focused so intently on the development of Lincoln’s legal and political careers he provided far less perspective on Lincoln’s family life than Burlingame. What was mentioned of the volatile Mary Todd Lincoln was also far more generous than her treatment at the hands of many other Lincoln biographies. Overall, White’s biography proved an excellent, if not perfect, introduction to Lincoln. ( Full review here )

* David Herbert Donald’s widely acclaimed “ Lincoln ” was my next biography. Ever since its publication in 1995 this biography has maintained a passionate and loyal following and is often considered the best single-volume biography of Lincoln ever . Donald’s biography provided me the first truly captivating view of the interactions between Lincoln and his cabinet members. I also found the author’s description of Lincoln’s hunt for the presidency (including the Republican nominating convention of 1860) absolutely terrific.

But because I expected perfection from this biography, I was disappointed to find the author’s writing style to be that of an accomplished historian rather than a great storyteller. In addition, Donald occasionally shifts gears without warning between chronological and topic-focused progression. Finally, I had hoped to meet the same colorful, intellectual and intriguing Abe Lincoln in this biography that I had met in others…and by a small margin I did not. But overall, David Donald’s “Lincoln” is an exceptionally worthy biography and can be recommended without hesitation. ( Full review here )

*Stephen Oates’s 1977 “ With Malice Toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln ” was the fourth biography of Lincoln I read. When published, Oates’s biography was the first comprehensive look at Lincoln in almost two decades and replaced Benjamin Thomas’s 1952 biography of Lincoln as “the” definitive work on Lincoln. Unfortunately, a little more than a decade after this book’s publication, Oates was accused of plagiarizing Thomas’s biography.

Shorter than the other biographies of Lincoln I had read, “With Malice Toward None” was more efficient with my time but at the cost of ignoring many of the interesting details found in other biographies. And while the author’s writing style is pleasantly informal, it occasionally seems less serious as well. I also found Oates’s descriptions of a number of Lincoln’s most important personal and political friendships lacking, and the author misses the opportunity to provide his own explicit judgments as to Lincoln’s actions and legacy. Overall, a good but not great introduction to Lincoln. ( Full review here )

*Benjamin Thomas’s 1952 biography “ Abraham Lincoln ” was next on my list. This was the first comprehensive single-volume biography of Lincoln in the thirty-five years following publication of Lord Charnwood’s 1916 Lincoln biography. This book immediately feels like one written by a natural storyteller rather than a historian (though Thomas was both). Descriptions of both people and events are usually brilliant and make for an enjoyable reading experience. In addition, the author’s final chapter (mostly Thomas’s observations of Lincoln as president) proves extremely interesting.

Less perfect is Thomas’s lack of focus on Lincoln’s family, his adequate but not excellent review of the Lincoln-Douglas debates and the Republican convention of 1860, and his seemingly perfunctory summary of Lincoln’s cabinet selection process. But overall I was surprised at how much I enjoyed Thomas’s sixty-two year old biography of Lincoln and for me it ranks at or near “best-in-class”. ( Full review here )

*Next, and for more than a month, I read Carl Sandburg’s two-volume “ Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years ”  (published in 1926) and his four-volume “ Abraham Lincoln: The War Years ” (published in 1939). The latter was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in history, and the six volumes together totaled about 3,300 pages.

Although it is unsurprising that the author of the first two volumes was a poet, the final four volumes could easily have been written by an Ivory-tower academic. The former is often lyrical and lucid while the latter is more often needlessly verbose and tedious. Sandburg’s combined works are impressive in scope, but uneven in focus and he often has difficulty separating the important from the trivial.

“The Prairie Years” is excellent at transporting the reader to Lincoln’s place and time, describing his surroundings and the local culture wonderfully. But the series is not an ideal biography of Lincoln’s early years.  For its part, “The War Years” is an exhaustingly comprehensive account of Lincoln’s presidency (a great deal can be exposed in 2,400 pages, after all) but is frequently difficult to follow and consistently dense and difficult to read. One almost gets the sense Sandburg expected to be paid by the page.

Although it was an astonishing undertaking at the time, Sandburg’s six volumes compare poorly to other Lincoln biographies I’ve read in terms of efficiency with the reader’s time, effectiveness at delivering potent information to the reader, and maintaining a consistently interesting experience. I’ve not read Sandburg’s distilled single-volume version of these six books, but although the original six volumes are occasionally interesting and informative, more often they are just taxing. (Full reviews here and here )

* Next I read Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “ Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln .” This is one of the most popular presidential biographies of all time and was written by a Pulitzer Prize winning author (though for her biography of FDR, not Lincoln). Published in 2005, Goodwin’s rationale for the book was Lincoln’s decision to select his presidential rivals for key positions in his cabinet. The story of their relationships with each other is marvelously well-told.

Much of the time “Team of Rivals” is really a multiple biography of Lincoln, William Seward, Edward Bates and Salmon Chase. Goodwin weaves a narrative which is entertaining and often masterful. Unfortunately, left behind in the effort to write a book focused on Lincoln’s cabinet is adequate emphasis on Lincoln’s youth and pre-presidency; the reader is rushed through these years in order to focus on the book’s  raison d’etre.

But in many respects, “Team of Rivals” is truly exceptional. Probably no other biography provides a more interesting and more thoughtful review of Lincoln’s interactions with his key advisers, and Goodwin resists the temptation to allow her biography of Lincoln to devolve into a tedious review of the Civil War. Overall, this is a very good book for a new fan of Lincoln, but it is a great book for someone seeking an entertaining and informative narrative about his team of advisers. ( Full review here )

* Eric Foner’s “ The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery ” was published in 2010 and received the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for history. Although included on my list of best biographies, it proves far less a biography of Lincoln than a treatise on his views of slavery. Although this is a topic well-covered in other Lincoln biographies, Foner dissects it with greater-than-average focus and effort. His analysis is generally clear and articulate, although the text can be tedious rather than interesting at times. And despite professing itself to be “both less and more than another biography” it is not a biography at all. For that reason, I declined to provide a rating for this book. ( Full review here )

* James McPherson’s “ Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief ” was next on my list. This 2008 biography focuses on Lincoln’s role as the nation’s commander in chief during the Civil War. McPherson is best known, of course, for authoring the highly-regarded “ Battle Cry of Freedom ” which may be the best one-volume work ever published on the Civil War.

Because of McPherson’s exclusive focus on Lincoln’s presidency there is virtually no introduction to the man at all. While the author clearly chose this approach in order to provide a unique cast to his biography, no analysis of Lincoln can possibly be complete without conveying key basic elements of Lincoln’s background. And while McPherson claims no other Lincoln biography has ever focused adequately on his role as commander in chief, I find this argument less-than-convincing. Rather than seeing Lincoln from a new perspective, McPherson shows Lincoln from  only one perspective. ( Full review here )

* Next-to-last on my list was Allen Guelzo’s “ Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President ” published in 1999. Often described as an “intellectual biography” this book quickly takes on the feel of an academic paper written by a history professor rather than a biography written by a novelist. Through its earliest pages, and not infrequently throughout, it resembles a political and philosophical treatise rather than a biography. The book seems geared to an academic, not a broad, audience.

The best feature of this book is Guelzo’s epilogue which is one of the best concluding chapters of any presidential biography I’ve ever read. For an impatient but determined reader, this section of Guelzo’s biography should be read first…and possibly three or four times. But for someone seeking an ideal introduction to Abraham Lincoln or a fluid narrative of his life from birth to death, I would look elsewhere. ( Full review here )

* The final biography I read on Lincoln was Lord Charnwood’s 1916 “ Abraham Lincoln .” This biography was only added to my list recently when I was able to obtain a ninety-six year old copy…and couldn’t resist the urge to see Lincoln through the eyes of a British baron.

By far the most interesting and insightful portion of this book is its first sixty pages. Here, Charnwood reviews for his presumably British audience the history of the United States up to the time of Lincoln’s presidency. These pages are worth reading by anyone interested in US history.

The remainder of the book is often beautifully written, but barely adequate as an introductory biography. This is due at least in part to the book’s age and comparatively limited primary source material available to the author when this biography was written nearly a century ago. ( Full review here )

– – – – – – – – – – –

[Added Nov 2020]

I recently read David S. Reynolds’s new release “ Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times .” This self-described cultural biography is hefty (932 pages of text), informative and excellent at placing Lincoln within the context of the political, economic and social cross-currents of his era. However, it pre-supposes a familiarity with Lincoln and his times, fails to humanize him, largely ignores his personal life (though his wife receives significant attention) and brushes past several significant historical events which would receive attention in a more traditional biography.

This book can be recommended to Lincoln aficionados seeking a deeper understanding of how he navigated his era, but cannot be recommended for someone seeking a comprehensive introduction to Lincoln’s life and legacy.  ( Full review here )

[Added Feb 2022]

I just finished reading Richard Brookhiser’s “ Founders’ Son: A Life of Abraham Lincoln ” published in 2014. Although its subtitle and marketing efforts are both suggestive of a biography, this book’s mission is something altogether different (and, for the right audience, intriguing): It seeks to explore Lincoln’s lifelong efforts to perpetuate the work of the Founding Fathers and to connect his actions to his understanding of their true intentions.

Unfortunately, this book is neither a dedicated biography nor a focused exploration of Lincoln’s political philosophy. Instead, it is a somewhat uncomfortable hybrid of the two which leaves the “whole” worth less than the sum of its parts. Readers seeking a traditional biographical experience (or even a cohesive introduction to the 16th president) need to look elsewhere, and dedicated fans of Lincoln will the narrative interesting…but with an excess of conjecture and speculation. ( Full review here )

[Added Mar 2023]

Jon Meacham’s widely praised “ And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle ” was published in the fall of 2022. Like many other recent books on Lincoln, this one is marketed (at least implicitly ) as a biography…and the publisher claims that it “chronicles the life of Abraham Lincoln.” But while the 421 page narrative does follow the broad contours of Lincoln’s life – from cradle to grave – most of its energy is directed toward the exploration of Lincoln’s moral, religious and political views and closely observing his antislavery commitment.

Supported by more than 200 pages of end notes and bibliography, this is one of the most best-researched books on a president I’ve ever read. And it is extremely successful in its goal of enlightening the reader as to the sources, and evolution, of Lincoln’s attitude toward slavery. Readers already familiar with the fascinating texture of Lincoln’s day-to-day life will find this book a rewarding supplement. But anyone seeking a thorough, comprehensive and colorful introduction to Lincoln’s life and legacy will need to look elsewhere for a more “traditional” biography . ( Full review here )

Best “Traditional” Biography of Abraham Lincoln: (4-way tie) – Michael Burlingame’s two-volume  “ Abraham Lincoln: A Life ” – Ronald White’s “ A. Lincoln: A Biography ” – David Herbert Donald’s “ Lincoln ” – Benjamin Thomas’s “ Abraham Lincoln: A Biography ”

Best “Non-Traditional” Lincoln Biography: – Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “ Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln ”

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66 thoughts on “the best biographies of abraham lincoln”.

June 29, 2014 at 8:13 pm

So, Team of Rivals being the second best read presidential biography, what’s the first?

June 30, 2014 at 5:29 am

“John Adams” by David McCullough, though I often wonder what percentage of books that are purchased are ever really read cover-to-cover. Both of these bios are pretty captivating so I imagine a high percentage of folks who start actually do get through them…

January 26, 2016 at 3:23 pm

A British view of Lincoln: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06ycr4x#play

January 27, 2016 at 7:34 am

Fascinating and well worth a listen – thanks!

March 14, 2016 at 2:48 am

Fantastic information. Thanks!

March 14, 2016 at 5:46 am

Thanks and welcome!

March 20, 2016 at 10:06 am

I am a university student in England and am currently doing an essay on the cause(s) of the American Civil War. I am fascinated with American history and politics, and this post is very helpful. I’ll be getting Donald’s biography out of the university’s library tomorrow to use for research, but may come back to it and some of the above mentioned biographies once I graduate. I’ll definitely read some of your other reviews of Presidents when I have some spare time. Any advice for a book/chapter about Lincoln in the ’50s leading up to the conflict? My focus is on the Lincoln, Debates and historiography.

March 24, 2016 at 5:56 am

Oh my, you are really testing my memory! I think my first go-to source would be Michael Burlingame’s two-volume set (or the unabridged version which is available online free). If that isn’t a sufficient resource, I suspect his bibliography would be invaluable. Good luck!

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January 18, 2017 at 6:43 pm

Finally…finally I finished Lincoln: A Life. I didn’t check on page numbers, but I think this was either the third or fourth longest biography I have read so far. Overall, I thought Burlingame did a thorough job covering Loncoln’s life, including a decent synopsis on his life up to the presidency and his relationships with his wife and Cabinet officials. Interestingly, Steve expressed limited discussion about the Civil War, I feel there was too much discussion about the war and not enough about policy and legislation during his terms in office. I enjoy the policy discussions, for historical events like the war and the assination, I can read books specifically about them, the presidential biographies are seemingly the only place to find the wonky stuff. I have Team of Rivals as well, but that is on hold until I am through the list. Onto Jeffy D.

January 19, 2017 at 5:39 am

What are you going to read on JD? (Just curious as I plan my post-presidential reading and he’s certainly on that list!)

Team of Rivals was a great read though less “wonky” and policy-oriented…less a study of Lincoln’s presidency than a story of the fascinating characters who helped shape his administration. Easier (and more fun) to read than Burlingame’s but there was more raw info in the Lincoln: A Life (as one would suspect since it’s much longer).

January 23, 2017 at 8:21 pm

I went with Jefferson Davis, American by William Cooper. Although Davis was an important American, I did not feel like dedicating the time for Strode’s three volume.

March 9, 2017 at 6:24 am

I’d like to read my first book about Lincoln, but I don’t know which one to choose. Which one would you recommend of the following three: Ronald White’s “A. Lincoln: A Biography” David Herbert Donald’s “Lincoln” Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln”

Many thanks!

March 9, 2017 at 6:46 am

That might be the single toughest question you could have asked me (about presidential biographies, anyway). I really enjoyed all three immensely and you won’t go wrong no matter which you choose (and, indeed, you will almost certainly think you chose wisely!)

The first two are traditional, comprehensive biographies of Lincoln. I liked them both equally well and if choosing between them I would almost tell you to flip a coin – or read whichever is easier for you to get a copy of.

Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals” is only slightly less about Lincoln than the others but has the benefit of incorporating additional texture with mini-bios of Lincoln’s rivals for the presidency who subsequently ended up in his Cabinet. So while this one is slightly less about Lincoln than the others, it offers something extra in return.

If you could read *two* books on Lincoln, your first pick should be either Donald’s or White’s…followed by “Team of Rivals” which will mean even more to you having polished off a traditional Lincoln biography. Good luck!

March 12, 2017 at 4:24 pm

Thank you for your response! I’m going to buy “A. Lincoln: A Biography” first then!

April 18, 2017 at 10:14 am

I wanted to find a good Lincoln biography and came across your blog. Great list, thank you for such detailed descriptions of each book!

April 19, 2017 at 6:54 pm

I’m glad you found the site, and do let me know what you end up reading – and how you like it!

September 26, 2017 at 11:24 pm

First, I have been following most of your suggestions since Washington and now am spending a great amount on Lincoln.

I have read most of your suggestions on Lincoln including Sandburg’s. I really enjoyed Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.”

After Goodwin, I read Ida Tarbell’s 4 vol. set on “The Life Of Abraham Lincoln” written in 1895 and it was like reading the Lincoln portion of Goodwin’s all over again. I was really surprised how closely Goodwin followed Tarbell with the Lincoln portions of her work.

September 27, 2017 at 6:20 am

Thanks for your note – and for alerting me to Ida Tarbell’s series on Lincoln! I’m not sure how I missed it, but having been introduced to Tarbell during my journey through Teddy Roosevelt’s life I’m extremely intrigued / curious to get her take on Lincoln. Going on my follow-up list!

October 15, 2017 at 8:36 pm

In a world of endless writings on the presidents, your site is an invaluable resource! I’m so glad I found your reviews for both Lincoln and Washington. Choosing the “right” biography could be just as time-consuming as reading them all! I so appreciate your diligence and willingness to share!

October 16, 2017 at 6:28 am

Thanks! One of the things that has really struck me since I started is that new presidential biographies are published even faster than I can read and evaluate them…so this project seems like a “lifetime” journey. Still, once I’ve gotten through each of the presidents one time I do plan to try to stay current and read / review everything new (that seems high quality) as it is published…and all in an effort to help people figure out which is that one “almost perfect” biography for each president.

Do let me know if / when you read any that triggers a strong reaction on yor part, particularly if it’s something I didn’t have on my list-

November 7, 2017 at 1:45 pm

I’m so glad I swerved into your site/blog some months ago, it has been a great help! By accident, I have been reading presidential bios this year as well. By accident, I mean that I read “1776” by David McCullough and it made me want to know more about Geo. Washington. Fortunately, I chose the one by Ron Chernow and that really got me hooked – his style was easy and his prose is wonderful. I have since read John Adams by McCullough, Jefferson by Meacham, Madison by Cheney ( and the Letters of Dolly Madison by her grand-niece was very good), Monroe by Harlow Giles Unger, skipped J. Quincy Adams, then Jackson by H.W. Brands. I wasn’t that interested in what I considered less well known presidents, so after Jackson I chose the Pulitzer prize winning book “Impending Crisis” by David Potter, which covers Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler, Polk, Taylor, Filmore, Pierce, and Buchanon to the brink of the Civil War. So, as you can see, I will be up to Lincoln and the Civil War soon. Of all these so far, I am still taken by how wonderful Chernow’s bio of Washington was, which included the details of the Revolutionary war. I have been using your reviews since Thomas Jefferson. I am limited to audiobooks so not always your recommendations but your reviews nevertheless have been my guide. Is there a single book that will include Lincoln’s early life as well as go thru the Civil War like Chernow’s did so beautifully? Or, should I read one bio focused primarily on Lincolns life and another about the Civil War? I noted your recommendation of James McPhersons “Battle Cry of Freedom.” Ronald White’s “A. Lincoln” and Donalds “Lincoln” are both on Audible, as is McPherson’s “Battle Cry of Freedom”

November 13, 2017 at 11:35 am

Your (audio) adventure sounds great! But you didn’t expect me to let you get away too easily with skipping over JQA, did you? 🙂 As you may have noticed, I thought he was an absolutely fascinating historical figure (if not an exceptional president) and although I didn’t uncover a “superb” biography of him, there are a couple that are pretty good.

As far as Lincoln is concerned, none of the biographies I read really reminds me of Chernow’s bio of Washington (stylistically or organizationally) but I thought several of them were fantastic. I think either White’s or Donald’s, in particular, will serve your purpose quite well. I would also note that only after I read a great biography of Ulysses S. Grant did I really fully appreciate and understand the Civil War more completely. Lincoln’s bios do a fine job, but only once you see the war from Grant’s perspective, too, do things come into even sharper focus. I’m sure once I read a biography of Robert E. Lee or Jefferson Davis I will have an even richer appreciation of the conflict, but I’m not quite there yet(!)

November 15, 2017 at 7:09 pm

By the time I got to JQA’s presidency, I felt I had read all the highlights of his life and career, from the bio’s of John Adams certainly, but also from Jefferson, Madison and Monroe. Little did I know then that as I went on he would be a thorn in the side of presidents Jackson to Polk! Based on what you said, after I read Lincoln and perhaps something on the Civil War, my brain will be so frazzled JQA will be less familiar and I’ll read him. I am Cherokee, and have been most disappointed that basically nil in the bio’s I’ve read to far is about Indians. Even with Jackson, from other books I know about different wars that Indians helped him with that made him famous, but not mentioned in his bio. If you are ever interested in one Cherokee’s dealing with ALL the Presidents from Washington to Jackson ( his name was Ridge), read John Ehle’s Trail of Tears. Before you reject it as I almost did ( don’t we all know about the TOT?), it’s 2/3’s about the Cherokee Nation from about a century before the TOT from the point of view of The Ridge, or Major Ridge as he later became known after Jackson promoted him. That is, if you ever finish this project! Anyway, if you know of any books about Indians dealings with early presidents, please advise. I didn’t know reading presidential bios was a “thing” but I guess it is. I spent 2016 just reading all of Fitzgerald and Hemingway’s novels and short stories, and several bios of each (and the Lost Generation). It’s fun to get into a subject and just rip it to shreds. Jeff Collins New Orleans

November 17, 2017 at 10:24 am

None of the biographies I’ve read (of Jackson or Wm Henry Harrison…or anyone else for that matter) seemed to focus on Indians to any significant (and balanced) degree. But your endorsement of “Trail of Tears” comes as no surprise since I’ve been told in the past that it’s an excellent book. Definitely on my bucket list!

February 24, 2018 at 12:16 pm

I just found this piece from a Google search for “best biographies of Lincoln” after re-watching the wonderful but historically flawed film “Abe Lincoln In Illinois”. Thank you so much for your insight into these books and your honest opinions about them. I am off to purchase two of them to read!

February 25, 2018 at 12:53 pm

Thanks for your comments, but you can’t leave me in suspense: which two are you going to read!?! Almost no matter which you choose, I expect you’ll really enjoy reading about Lincoln. He is a biographer’s dream subject in so many ways…

March 2, 2018 at 4:56 am

I read Burlingame online for the first 12 chapters because I wanted the detail on the early years. I then got the two abridged Burlingame books from the library and binge-read them. I found them very enjoyable. I also read Team of Rivals twice, because I got more out of it the second time. With that as a background, I picked up Lincoln in the Bardo with no expectations. It was a knockout to me how well it fit within the historical accuracy of Lincoln’s life, family, and times while being wildly creative and thought-provoking. I was left pondering insights gained through the characters that I could have only arrived at via the combination of this novel and my extensive reading of Lincoln and my resulting admiration of him. Truly extraordinary work of fiction about Lincoln that I would only recommend to someone who had done the background reading to get the book’s full impact.

March 5, 2018 at 7:06 am

I’m not sure why (perhaps because I’m writing this on a Monday morning?) but I found your comment about binge-reading Burlingame’s two-volume (1,600 pg) series amusing. Probably 10% of the biographies I have read were so good I would love to cheat and re-read them on the side – both for fun and to pick up on nuances I may have missed the first time through.

I am intrigued by historical fiction (from an entertainment perspective) but haven’t ever tackled the genre. Lincoln in the Bardo sounds intriguing – and like something I’m going to have to try on the side at some point. Sounds like Saunders really did his homework before letting his imagination run?

August 20, 2018 at 9:30 am

What do you think of Gore Vidal’s Lincoln?

August 20, 2018 at 11:13 am

I haven’t read it, nor have I read anything that falls into the category of “historical fiction.” I’ve heard it’s captivating but I don’t know much beyond that…

August 20, 2018 at 11:38 am

Thank you. Just finished B. Thomas. Excellent. My first Lincoln, based on your advice. What a man. Thinking of Charnwood 60 pages, Guelzo’s epilogue and then Burlingame. I have read one of each prez starting with Washington. I’m thinking about broadening out to other major figures during the period from Revolutionary to Civil Wars and then on up the ladder. Have you done that; read Whitman or Irving for example, works by them of bios of?

August 21, 2018 at 11:46 am

What I haven’t done these past five years is read any non-fiction books other than presidential biographies. But I have been assembling a list of biographies of folks I encountered during this process who are, many times, as compelling as the presidents. My ever-evolving list of people & biographies is located under the “What’s Next” tab at the top of the page… If you have thoughts/suggestions for who I’ve missed, let me know.

August 21, 2018 at 12:10 pm

Thanks for the reference to “What’s Next”. I’ll look. Halfway through Charnwood as of last night and you are right, it is a great short history of early America, especially remarkable as seen through the eyes of an englishman. Stopping at Lincoln and the Civil War seems a perfect point of reference to review and reassess the origin and evolution of America.

August 21, 2018 at 4:33 pm

i’d just suggest the major cultural figures for the arts, science, philosophy and business. Looks like you have a good list going in that direction.

April 4, 2019 at 6:59 pm

Dear Steve, I have read a lot of Lincoln biographies, including most of those on your list. However I keep coming back to Life of Lincoln by William Herndon, his old law partner and friend, and Jesse Weik, published in 1888. I found this first-person account thorough, anecdotal and charming. Indeed Herndon was widely criticized for the informality of his book as Lincoln was by then being widely mythologized. If you’ve read it I would welcome your comment. Marc Mishkin Lakewood, Colorado

April 5, 2019 at 5:08 am

Marc, I haven’t yet read it but it is definitely on my “follow-up” list – along with the series by Hay & Nicolay! I haven’t heard from very many people who’ve read it, so I’m delighted to hear you recommend it so highly. Lincoln has probably been my favorite president from a biographical perspective so I’m looking forward to read about him from some of his contemporaries.

June 15, 2019 at 12:41 pm

Thanks for this info. Would you have any thoughts on “Lincoln-a life of power & purpose” by Carwardine?

June 16, 2019 at 12:09 pm

Sorry, I haven’t read that one. But I’ll be interested to see if anyone who has can share their thoughts-

April 1, 2020 at 8:59 pm

Man, I really would love to dive into Michael Burlingame’s series. I emailed him about the differences between the uncut version and the print version. His answer was that it was a “fuller” version with footnotes. I wasn’t sure if by fuller he meant extra narrative text i.e. dvd deleted scenes or just footnotes included. I’d prefer reading the print version but feel as if I’d miss extra detail. For those that have read the uncut let me know.

July 4, 2020 at 11:05 am

Steve; Rarely do you fail to mention a significant presidential biography, but I noticed you did not mention this highly-praised Lincoln Prize Winner from 2003: Lincoln, A Life of Purpose and Power, by Richard Carwardine. I have been trying to get back to reading the book, which has been on my shelf for at least the past decade. I have perused enough of it to advise it is a VERY serious scholarly book.

“Carwardine combines a new perspective with a compelling narrative to deliver a fresh look at one of the pillars of American politics. He probes the sources of Lincoln’s moral and political philosophy and uses his groundbreaking research to cut through the myth and expose the man behind it.”

August 6, 2020 at 1:45 pm

Steve: I am trying to understand what Lincoln’s thinking was concerning refusing to let the South secede at the start of the Civil War. Specifically, if not abolishing slavery but saving the Union was Lincoln’s initial motivation, then why was preserving the Union so vital to him that he was willing to have the nation fight over it. Which biographies that you’ve read deals most deeply into this issue?

August 7, 2020 at 10:32 am

I have to be honest – too much time has elapsed for me to remember that specifically, but what I can tell you is that you ought to find the free, online version of Michael Burlingame’s series (the online version is much longer than his printed two-volume series) and see if it suits your need. I’ll be somewhat surprised if it doesn’t (since it’s so detailed)…

August 30, 2020 at 6:46 pm

For those who love historical novels, Gore Vidal’s “Lincoln”, and William Saffire’s “Freedom” are enjoyable reads.

December 11, 2020 at 5:34 pm

Any comments on Life of Lincoln-Phebe A. Hannaford 1883-Belford, Clarke & Co Chicago

December 11, 2020 at 5:56 pm

I haven’t read it. As I recall it is hard to find copies and it was less a biography than a series of essays or character sketches. If you’ve read it I would love to know what you thought-

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May 30, 2021 at 7:26 am

Among the most enjoyable Lincoln books are William Lee Miller’s two volume bio: “Lincoln’s Virtues” and “President Lincoln”. Both these books are highly laudatory (as are most books about Lincoln) and Lincoln’s Virtues particularly looks at Lincoln’s rise from 1854-1860 very closely. Miller is an engaging writer who looks at the 1850’s arguments over slavery from various angles, concluding that Lincoln was a skillful politician who artfully expressed views on slavery that were both radical and politically viable. Miller, who also wrote “Arguing About Slavery”, a book about the gag rule that focused on J. Q. Adams attack on it, is obviously quite steeped in the national argument that resulted in the Civil War.

I totally agreed with the commenter above who touts Carwardine’s short one volume book on Lincoln. For someone who doesn’t really have a lot of time to read biography this is the best one volume to get at the heart of who Lincoln was and is beautifully written.

Lastly (and believe me, I could go on), I would recommend Giants, a dual biography of Lincoln and Frederick Douglass by John Stauffer. These two men are my favorite figures in American history and this book shows why they had such an affinity towards each other: both autodidacts who insisted on following their own judgement while maintaining a keen ear for the political realities of their times. A very enjoyable read.

None of this is to downplay the amazing accomplishment of Mr. Lloyd in reading so many presidential biographies and then writing well written and helpful reviews about each one. This is a major accomplishment. I just wanted to make sure that folks knew about these books.

January 29, 2022 at 4:50 pm

Thank you about your review. I will choose David Hebert book 🙂 I’m also interested about American Civil War. Can you indicate a book?

January 29, 2022 at 4:53 pm

Good luck and happy reading! I think you’ll like the David Herbert Donald book.

Since I read so many biographies of Abraham Lincoln (and Ulysses S. Grant) I haven’t felt the need – and haven’t really had the time – to read a book or series dedicated to the Civil War. But I do own, and intend one day to read, the famous three-volume series by Shelby Foote . It might be a bit more than you want to tackle, but it’s what I plan to read at some point.

January 24, 2023 at 4:49 pm

Battle Cry of Freedom, by James McPherson, is an incredible one-volume work on the Civil War and a Pulitzer Prize winner. I highly recommend it if you are still interested in that topic.

February 3, 2022 at 6:14 pm

Lincoln and Garfield are my two favorite presidents to research. I don’t see it mentioned, but one of the books I have enjoyed the most is, “Lincoln’s White House: The People’s House in Wartime”, by James B. Conroy. I’ve read it twice even though I have a full library of books I am overdue to read. Hope you get the chance to check it out.

February 4, 2022 at 5:07 am

Your mission was successful: I’m checking it out! It’s not clear to me that it will be “enough” biography to really fall under my mission on this site, but it looks interesting enough that I’ve got in on order and can’t wait for it to arrive!

October 22, 2022 at 11:24 am

Just wanted you to know how much I’ve enjoyed your website over the years. If I’m at a book store and come across a presidential bio I have not read before, I always pull up your site to see if you have reviewed it and if so, what you thought. I’m currently writing my dissertation on President Lincoln’s view of human dignity and I’m sure I’ll be hopping over here frequently to get a survey of your thoughts as I am working. Thank you!

October 22, 2022 at 1:02 pm

Thanks for your note, and I’m a little bit jealous you get to spend so much time with Lincoln! (But…only a little bit jealous as the thought of writing a dissertation right now might make me break out in hives). I’m curious what the most helpful sources have been so far for you – books, journal articles, correspondence, etc, or whether it can’t really be narrowed down as everything is potentially a source of insight?

January 9, 2023 at 1:00 pm

What about Harry Jaffa’s Crisis of the House Divided? It’s the finest intellectual biography of Lincoln – and perhaps of any President – I have read.

January 10, 2023 at 5:29 am

I looked at this a while back and concluded it was too narrowly focused to read as part of my early effort, but it does seem like an interesting “intellectual” analysis of the Lincoln-Douglas debates which I should probably get to at some point.

January 10, 2023 at 7:30 am

Yes, I would strongly encourage you to read it! Otherwise, I love your presidential biographies ratings. I got a lot out of them.

January 24, 2023 at 4:51 pm

Time to add Jon Meacham’s “And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle” to your follow-up list for Lincoln.

January 25, 2023 at 8:08 am

Yes, I’ve got it on my short list but haven’t gotten around to formally adding it to the master list. I need to do that. Now that he’s got this Lincoln book out of the way perhaps Meacham can get back to James and Dolley Madison?!? 🙂

June 9, 2023 at 1:00 am

Fantastic compilation and great work as always! As a lover of all things Lincoln, I have thoroughly enjoyed your list here. I would be remiss to not bring up one of my favorite books on Lincoln which I sadly did not see on your list: Dale Carnegie’s Lincoln the Unknown. If you have not already read or considered it, I humbly recommend it. A short biography, Carnegie’s book is supremely readable and carries an old-school, endearing charm to it. Its best quality is that it manages to efficiently capture the magic of Lincoln’s character–and what made him a good person–in a way that sometimes can get lost in a lot of the other more verbose biographies. It is both enlightening, heartwarming, inspiring in good measure, and I recommend it as the first book to anyone wanting to learn more about Lincoln’s character. If you do consider it, I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did.

Thanks for all your hard work and dedication to learning!

Karna Patel

June 10, 2023 at 5:14 am

Thanks so much for the recommendation! I looked back at my notes and it seems I skipped this one b/c I already had a long list of Lincoln bios and Carnegie’s seemed a bit short. I’ll have to take another look! (And there can never be too many biographies of Lincoln, can there?!?)

July 1, 2023 at 8:43 pm

In looking over your blog (which is excellent, by the way) I noticed you mention Ida M. Tarbell. That got my attention as I am in the process of writing a full biography of Tarbell. While her book is obviously much older than many, it still has a great deal of value. Especially her “In the Footsteps of the Lincolns” which started as newspaper columns and then became a book.

Of course, Tarbell is best known for her expose on John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil, but she often said that she most enjoyed working on Lincoln. “He was the only man I could spend five years with and never be bored,” she once said. My book will focus on all aspects of Tarbell’s life, but especially her work on Lincoln.

Keep up the good work!

January 2, 2024 at 1:09 pm

I just saw that Michael Burlingame released an abridged, single-volume edition of his work in October of 2023. Curious if that will address some of the issues you highlighted in your review.

January 2, 2024 at 7:55 pm

I think it’s interesting that Burlingame was not the person who did the editing or abridgement. It was done by another professor named Jonathan White.

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Ten Best Abraham Lincoln Biographies

Overwhelmed by the sheer number of Abraham Lincoln books ? Don’t know where to start ?

10. honor’s voice: the transformation of abraham lincoln by douglas wilson.

This Lincoln biography explores the early years of Lincoln’s political career. “As Douglas L. Wilson shows us in Honor’s Voice, Lincoln’s transformation was not one long triumphal march, but a process that was more than once seriously derailed.”

*** What is your favorite Abraham Lincoln biography ?

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C. Christopher Smith

C. Christopher Smith is the founding editor of The Englewood Review of Books . He is also author of a number of books, including most recently How the Body of Christ Talks: Recovering the Practice of Conversation in the Church (Brazos Press, 2019). Connect with him online at: C-Christopher-Smith.com

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Abraham Lincoln

February 12, 1809–April 15, 1865

Abraham Lincoln was an American political leader during the 19th century. Rising from humble beginnings, Lincoln was elected as the 16th president of the United States in 1860. Lincoln's election prompted the secession of several Southern states and eventually the beginning of the American Civil War. Lincoln served as president and commander-in-chief throughout most of the conflict before an assassin's bullet tragically cut his life short on April 15, 1865.

On March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln became the 16th President of the United States. Elected to a second term in 1864, Lincoln died in office on April 15, 1865, from a gunshot delivered by assassin John Wilkes Booth the night before. Image Source: Wikimedia.

Abraham Lincoln Biography

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. He is widely considered one of the greatest American presidents and is revered for his leadership during the Civil War and his efforts to abolish slavery. Lincoln was a member of the Republican Party and was known for his strong moral character, his eloquence, and his determination to preserve the Union. During his presidency, Lincoln faced many challenges, including the secession of Southern states and the outbreak of the Civil War, but he remained committed to preserving the Union and ending slavery. He delivered some of the most famous speeches in American history, including the Gettysburg Address, in which he redefined the Civil War as a struggle for the preservation of the principles of liberty and equality.

Quick Facts about Abraham Lincoln

• Date of Birth: Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, in a one-room log cabin on his family’s farm, named “Sinking Spring,” in Hardin County, Kentucky.
• Parents: Lincoln’s parents were Thomas and Nancy (Hanks) Lincoln.
• Date of Death: Lincoln died on April 15, 1865, at age 56, in Washington, DC.
• Buried: Lincoln is buried in Lincoln’s Tomb, in Oak Ridge Cemetery, in Springfield, Illinois.
• Nickname: Lincoln’s nicknames were “Honest Abe,” “The Great Emancipator,” and “The Rail Splitter.”

Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, in a one-room log cabin on his family’s farm, named Sinking Spring, in Hardin County, Kentucky. Lincoln was the second child of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks. Early in Lincoln’s life, his family enjoyed considerable prosperity, but legal problems involving land ownership prompted his family to move to Indiana in December 1816. Less than two years after being uprooted, Lincoln’s mother died on October 5, 1818. A little over one year later, Lincoln’s father married Sarah Bush Johnston on December 2, 1819. Lincoln received little formal education during his youth, but his stepmother taught him how to read and encouraged him to learn on his own. The two remained close until the end of Lincoln’s life.

In March 1830, when Lincoln was a young man, his family moved to a new farm in Illinois. Not wishing to become a farmer, Lincoln moved to New Salem, Illinois, in July 1831. While living there, he engaged in several occupations, including ownership of a general store, which eventually led him into bankruptcy.

Early Career

In 1832, Lincoln served briefly as a captain in the Illinois militia during the Black Hawk War , but he never engaged in combat. During the same year, he ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the Illinois General Assembly. Following his loss, Lincoln served as New Salem’s postmaster and as a county surveyor. During that time, he also began studying law independently. Still active in politics, voters elected Lincoln to serve in the Illinois General Assembly in 1834, and they re-elected him in 1836. As a member of the Whig Party, Lincoln supported a free-soil position, opposing both slavery and abolitionism.

Lawyer and Marriage

In 1836, Lincoln joined the Illinois bar. A year later, he moved to Springfield, Illinois, and began practicing law. Voters re-elected Lincoln to the Illinois General Assembly in 1838 and 1840. While living in Springfield, Lincoln met Mary Todd, the daughter of a wealthy slave-holder from Lexington, Kentucky. In 1840, the couple became engaged, but they canceled the wedding, set for January 1, 1841, when both parties became apprehensive. They later resumed their romance and wed on November 4, 1842.

National Politics

Lincoln’s career in national politics began in 1842 when Illinois voters elected him to the United States House of Representatives. While serving in Washington, Lincoln introduced a plan to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. He also voted to censure President James K. Polk for usurpation of powers regarding the Mexican-American War in 1848—a vote that later seemed inconsistent with some of Lincoln’s own actions during the American Civil War.

Lincoln-Douglas Debates

After completing his term in Congress, Lincoln returned to Springfield to practice law in 1849. Voters re-elected him to the Illinois General Assembly in 1854, but he declined to serve because he was pursuing a seat in the United States Senate. Lincoln’s Senate bid was unsuccessful, but he tried again in 1858, running against incumbent Stephen A. Douglas , author of the Kansas-Nebraska Act . When Lincoln accepted the Republican nomination for the Senate seat at the state convention on June 16, 1858, he addressed the sectional division plaguing the United States, asserting that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” Lincoln and Douglas engaged in a series of seven debates across Illinois during the late summer and fall of 1858. Although Douglas won the election in November, the debates, which focused primarily on slavery, enhanced Lincoln’s national reputation and bolstered his reputation among Republicans.

President Lincoln

U.s. president-elect.

On May 18, 1860, delegates to Republican National Convention held in Chicago, selected Lincoln as their party’s candidate for President of the United States In November, Lincoln received only 39.8% of the popular vote, but his 180 electoral votes were enough to defeat three other candidates, including Stephen Douglas.

Southern Rebellion

The Southern response to Lincoln’s election was quick and electric. On December 20, 1860, delegates to a secession convention in South Carolina voted to secede from the Union because they viewed Lincoln’s hardline stance against the expansion of slavery as a threat to their way of life. By the time Lincoln became president on March 4, 1861, six other states had voted to secede. Despite attempts to resolve sectional differences—most notably the Crittenden Compromise —Lincoln faced a constitutional and military crisis the day he took office. Events rapidly spiraled toward war when South Carolina demanded that federal soldiers evacuate its military installation at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. After weighing several options, including abandoning the fort, Lincoln informed the governor of South Carolina of his intentions to resupply the fort. At 4:30 a.m. on April 12, artillery units from the newly formed army of the Confederate States of America, commanded by General P. G. T. Beauregard , began shelling Fort Sumter , touching off the American Civil War.

Commander-in-Chief

Lincoln’s response was swift and somewhat autocratic, especially considering his earlier criticisms of Polk. On April 15, without authority from Congress, Lincoln called on all state governors to send troops for the formation of a temporary force of 75,000 soldiers. That action had the unfortunate result of forcing states to choose sides, causing Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee to join the Confederacy. Further, Lincoln proclaimed a blockade against Southern ports on April 19, 1861. In perhaps his most controversial move, Lincoln suspended the constitutionally guaranteed writ of habeas corpus on April 27, 1861 . When Chief Justice Roger Taney, sitting as a federal circuit judge in the case of Ex parte Merryman , ruled that Lincoln had no constitutional authority to do so, the president ignored the Chief Justice’s ruling. Over the course of the next two years, the Lincoln administration and the Army imprisoned nearly 18,000 American citizens without bringing charges against them. Congress finally ended the controversy, but not the practice, bypassing the Habeas Corpus Act of 1863, which temporarily legitimized the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus.

Controversy also plagued Lincoln’s record as commander-in-chief. Despite having far more men and materials at their disposal, Union armies had little success during the early part of the war. A seemingly endless parade of commanders including Winfield Scott , Irvin McDowell , George McClellan , Henry Halleck , John Pope , Ambrose Burnside , and Joseph Hooker , had limited success against their Southern counterparts. The performance of Union armies in the Eastern Theater was inferior to that of the Confederate armies. How much of the failure resulted from poor generalship as opposed to the poor choice of generals is debatable. However, that changed when Union forces under the command of George Meade won the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863.

Emancipation

Lincoln’s political performance as president during the war was stellar. When support for the war waned as battlefield casualties mounted, he gradually shifted the focus of the war to the abolition of slavery. On April 16, 1862, Lincoln signed an act abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia. On January 1, 1863, Lincoln used his war powers to issue an executive order abolishing slavery in the states at war with the Union. The Emancipation Proclamation galvanized and reinvigorated Lincoln’s abolitionist supporters, transforming the war from an effort to preserve the Union to a higher moral cause.

Re-election

Despite continually rising casualty totals, public unrest elicited by the practice of conscription, and mounting criticism from Copperheads and the Northern press, Lincoln sustained his political base and won re-election in 1864—no small political feat.

Reconstruction

Even before Lincoln won re-election, he began planning his reconstruction policy to heal the nation’s wounds when the war ended. It is perhaps in this arena where Lincoln’s star shone brightest. On December 8, 1863, Lincoln announced his plan for the reunification of the nation, known as the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction . The plan advocated a full pardon and the restoration of property to all engaged in the rebellion, except the highest Confederate officials and military leaders. It also enabled states to form new governments and be readmitted to the Union when ten percent of the eligible voters had taken an oath of allegiance to the United States. Finally, the plan encouraged re-admitted southern states to enact plans to ensure the freedom of former slaves.

Unlike others in his administration and in Congress, Lincoln believed that a lenient approach would best help heal the nation’s wounds once the fighting ended. When Congress tried to impose much harsher terms on the South through the enactment of the Wade-Davis Bill in July 1864, Lincoln used the pocket veto to thwart his opponents. During his second inaugural address, presented on March 4, 1865, Lincoln eloquently expressed his desire

to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

Whether Lincoln could have consummated his vision of “malice toward none, with charity for all” will forever remain unknown. On April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth fired a bullet into the back of Lincoln’s head as the president attended a play at Ford’s Theater in Washington. Abraham Lincoln died at 7:22 a.m. the next morning.

National Mourning and Burial

Lincoln’s body lay in state in the White House for dignitaries on April 18. His funeral took place shortly after noon in the White House on April 19. The next day, the president’s casket lay in state at the Capitol, where roughly 25,000 visitors paid their last respects. On April 21, a train carrying Lincoln’s coffin, along with the body of his son Tad, who had died during Lincoln’s presidency, began the long trip back to Springfield, Illinois. The train’s route, which passed through hundreds of communities and seven states replicated, in reverse, Lincoln’s trip to Washington as the president-elect. Officials removed the coffin from the train to lie in state at ten locations along the trip.

Lincoln was buried at Oak Ridge Cemetery, near Springfield, Illinois, on May 4, 1865. Since that time, Lincoln’s body has been exhumed and reburied several times. Lincoln’s Tomb, in Oak Ridge Cemetery, has been the final resting place for Lincoln since 1901.

Significance of Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was an important historical figure because he served as the sixteenth President of the United States (1861-1865) and was the leader of the country during the American Civil War. Lincoln is widely regarded as one of the country’s greatest presidents and his legacy continues to shape American politics and culture. He is remembered for his efforts to preserve the Union, abolish slavery, and modernize the American economy. He is also remembered for his famous speeches, including the Gettysburg Address, in which he redefined the goals of the Civil War and transformed it into a struggle for the preservation of the American ideal of freedom and democracy. Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, just as the Civil War was coming to an end and the country was beginning to heal from the wounds of war. Despite his brief presidency, Lincoln remains an important figure in American history and continues to be widely revered for his leadership, his courage, and his commitment to American ideals.

• Written by Harry Searles

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Abraham Lincoln

The 16th President of the United States

The biography for President Lincoln and past presidents is courtesy of the White House Historical Association.

Abraham Lincoln became the United States’ 16th President in 1861, issuing the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy in 1863.

Lincoln warned the South in his Inaugural Address: “In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you…. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it.”

Lincoln thought secession illegal, and was willing to use force to defend Federal law and the Union. When Confederate batteries fired on Fort Sumter and forced its surrender, he called on the states for 75,000 volunteers. Four more slave states joined the Confederacy but four remained within the Union. The Civil War had begun.

The son of a Kentucky frontiersman, Lincoln had to struggle for a living and for learning. Five months before receiving his party’s nomination for President, he sketched his life:

“I was born Feb. 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families–second families, perhaps I should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks…. My father … removed from Kentucky to … Indiana, in my eighth year…. It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up…. Of course when I came of age I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher … but that was all.”

Lincoln made extraordinary efforts to attain knowledge while working on a farm, splitting rails for fences, and keeping store at New Salem, Illinois. He was a captain in the Black Hawk War, spent eight years in the Illinois legislature, and rode the circuit of courts for many years. His law partner said of him, “His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest.”

He married Mary Todd, and they had four boys, only one of whom lived to maturity. In 1858 Lincoln ran against Stephen A. Douglas for Senator. He lost the election, but in debating with Douglas he gained a national reputation that won him the Republican nomination for President in 1860.

As President, he built the Republican Party into a strong national organization. Further, he rallied most of the northern Democrats to the Union cause. On January 1, 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy.

Lincoln never let the world forget that the Civil War involved an even larger issue. This he stated most movingly in dedicating the military cemetery at Gettysburg: “that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain–that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom–and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Lincoln won re-election in 1864, as Union military triumphs heralded an end to the war. In his planning for peace, the President was flexible and generous, encouraging Southerners to lay down their arms and join speedily in reunion.

The spirit that guided him was clearly that of his Second Inaugural Address, now inscribed on one wall of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C.: “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds…. ”

On Good Friday, April 14, 1865, Lincoln was assassinated at Ford’s Theatre in Washington by John Wilkes Booth, an actor, who somehow thought he was helping the South. The opposite was the result, for with Lincoln’s death, the possibility of peace with magnanimity died.

Learn more about Abraham Lincoln’s spouse, Mary Todd Lincoln .

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Author Interviews

Lincoln prioritized democracy over his political future. a new biography explains why.

Rachel Treisman

Abraham Lincoln signed the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862. He issued the formal Emancipation Proclamation the following January. Lincoln was under tremendous pressure to withdraw emancipation as a precondition for peace talks with the Confederacy. Hulton Archive/Getty Images hide caption

Abraham Lincoln signed the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862. He issued the formal Emancipation Proclamation the following January. Lincoln was under tremendous pressure to withdraw emancipation as a precondition for peace talks with the Confederacy.

A politician is up for reelection, holding firm to their moral convictions — however politically unpopular — in the pursuit of preserving an endangered democracy. Sound familiar?

A new biography by historian Jon Meacham examines the oft-discussed life and legacy of former President Abraham Lincoln through a very specific lens. American presidents continue to lionize Lincoln as a role model, Meacham says — and he would know, as a biographer of George H.W. Bush and occasional speechwriter for President Biden.

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In And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle, Meacham wasn't just interested in looking at what Lincoln did — he wanted to know why he did it. He focused especially on the president's pivotal decision to prioritize emancipation measures above his own political future in the lead-up to the 1864 election.

Lincoln couldn't have known that summer that he — or the Union — would emerge victorious, as Meacham tells Morning Edition co-host Steve Inskeep. In fact, his party had done badly in the midterm elections, and he had even written a private note forecasting his own defeat. But he followed his anti-slavery convictions nonetheless.

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"Lincoln was a politician, but he was a politician who ultimately was driven by conscience," Meacham says. "This is my entire argument in the book. If he had solely been a cynical political creature, he would have made radically different decisions at critical points."

For example, Lincoln could have decided not to vocally oppose a compromise in the winter of 1860 that would have preserved slavery, arguably for decades, Meacham says. He could have chosen not to fortify and fight over Fort Sumter .

And, as the 1864 election loomed, he could have given in to demands to withdraw emancipation as a precondition for peace talks with the Confederacy. Henry Raymond, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, came to the White House in August to urge Lincoln to change his stance to improve his odds of reelection. (The only emancipatory measure in the country at the time was the Emancipation Proclamation, a wartime measure that had not yet been codified in the Constitution).

Historian Jon Meacham, pictured during a discussion on Capitol Hill on the anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack, has authored a new book about the life and legacy of President Abraham Lincoln. Al Drago/Pool/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Historian Jon Meacham, pictured during a discussion on Capitol Hill on the anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack, has authored a new book about the life and legacy of President Abraham Lincoln.

"He was under immense political pressure to say, 'We'll settle all that in due course,'" Meacham explains. "Well, guess what that meant: If the Confederacy came back, it would all be set and settled and slavery likely would have endured again. And Lincoln said no, that he had made his position clear. Ultimately, we would get the 13th Amendment a few months later, but he was willing to go down politically for that principle."

Lincoln's Evolving Thoughts On Slavery, And Freedom

Meacham adds that the lesson of Lincoln "is that if you send someone to the pinnacle of American power who has no conscience, who has no moral compass, then American democracy and the cause of liberty will suffer and possibly die."

Lincoln went on to win a second term (in an election that Meacham also notes included the first widespread use of absentee ballots). The Union soldiers stood with him, and the military tide turned. The following year saw the 13th Amendment — abolishing slavery — and, months later, Lincoln's assassination.

In an interview with Morning Edition , Meacham offers insights from the book and their relevance to readers today, more than a century after Lincoln's lifetime.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Meacham, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Andrew Jackson, has turned his attention to Lincoln in a new book. Random House hide caption

Meacham, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Andrew Jackson, has turned his attention to Lincoln in a new book.

Interview highlights

On how Lincoln approached the summer of 1864:

He believed that slavery was wrong. He believed that he was right. He fundamentally understood that politics could not simply be about the amassing and keeping of power: It was about the amassing, keeping and utilization of power ... And I think the utility of it for us is not that he's perfect, but that here's a frail human being who didn't always get everything right, who in that critical hour transcended his limitations, transcended his ambitions, transcended his appetites, to do the right thing. And fortunately, it was rewarded by events. But he didn't know that.

Democracy, are you OK? What recent history tells us about the state of politics

On how people mixed religion and politics then:

The religious imagery and points of reference suffused the American experience then in a way that was so striking that in the second inaugural [address ] ... one of the great pieces of writing ever in the history of the English language, what does Lincoln say? Lincoln says that the Civil War came because of slavery and because slavery was a sin, and that God himself seemed to be adjudicating the weight of that sin in real time. It's a remarkable thing for an American president to say.

So religion was both a rallying cry — it provided a predicate for the north, for the anti-slavery forces — and let us be very clear, and this is resonant today: It also provided an intellectual prop to slave owners who wanted to believe that slavery was divinely ordained.

On how that compares with the role of religion in American politics now:

What is perennially frightening is that in American politics, in American culture ... people do claim divine sanction for what they want to do. And if you claim divine sanction for what you want to do, that makes compromise very difficult. If you believe you are doing God's work ... unless you do it with an immense amount of humility, that becomes a stumbling block within a democratic context in a way that is very, very troubling. At the same time, religion has been one of the great forces for reform and liberty in the country.

Is America a democracy or a republic? Yes, it is

My view of this, which I think is also the way Lincoln articulated, was that religion is going to be part of the human experience, in the same way economics are always a part, or geography. And so the question is how do you manage and marshal religious feeling, not try to remove it.

It requires this, this interesting balance. ... And that's why I think it's so important to follow that Lincoln example of a humble recognition that no human being has a monopoly on truth, but that there is a moral intuition, there is a conscience and you want to do everything you can to be in accord with this universal law of treating others as you would be treated. And that may sound simplistic, but I firmly believe and I argue this, that that was Lincoln's moral vision. And it also has the virtue of being a durable political vision.

On whether Meacham thinks another U.S. civil war is imminent:

Tragically, I think we will see more of civil chaos. I think we are going to see it with violence. I do not believe we're going to see the massing of great armies in the way we did in the 19th century. But we are at greater risk of that kind of civil conflict far more, I believe, than we were even in the early 1930s during the Depression, when there was such a lack of confidence in our institutions.

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And part of it is that there is a passionate minority that is putting its own interests ahead of those of the nation. ... And without the capacity to both vote perhaps against your short-term interest, without the capacity to recognize that there is a larger force that requires your support of the Constitution over your narrow partisan interests, without that, then we will continue to descend into ever greater chaos.

But I'm fundamentally hopeful in this sense: We have stared into the abyss before, and just enough of us have decided to do the right thing. That doesn't mean that's going to happen again. And as Lincoln said about our better angels , those better angels won't prevail unless we enlist ourselves in the cause, too.

This interview was conducted by Steve Inskeep, produced by Lilly Quiroz and edited by Jacob Conrad.

• jon meacham
• American History
• Abraham Lincoln

The Best Books on President Lincoln

Which of the approximately 15,000 books written on President Lincoln should you read? In honor of our greatest leader Allen Barra picks the best reads.

Allen Barra

Matthew Brady/Buyenlarge/Getty

Two years ago, Paul Tetreault, director of Ford’s Theater in Washington, declared that there are more books written about Abraham Lincoln than any other person than Jesus Christ. The estimate then was over 15,000, nearly half of which were included in a tower of books to honor Abe . This makes the life and legacy of our 16th president intimidating to the newcomer, but here’s ten nonfiction works and one novel that will guide the novice through the halls of Lincoln lit.

Abraham Lincoln by Lord Charnwood (1916)

Godfrey Rathbone Benson, the first Baron Charnwood, was an Oxford educated philosopher, politician (both in the House of Commons and as Mayor of Lichfield) and historian whose biographies on both Lincoln (1916) and Theodore Roosevelt (1923) offer a foreign perspective of our greatest president: “When an English writer tells again this tale, which has been well told already and in which there can remain no important new facts to disclose, he must endeavor to make clear to Englishmen circumstances and conditions which are familiar to Americans.” In other words, Charnwood tells the story as if it had not been told before. This makes it an ideal beginning place for American readers nearly a hundred years after its publication. Available in several paperback editions and e-book.

Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America by Garry Wills (1993)

A Pulitzer Prize-winning account by our greatest political writer of how Lincoln wrote the 272 words that has become our country’s most important document since the writings of the Founding Fathers. No other work explains why the Gettysburg Address is the linchpin of Lincoln’s political thought and how it has affected American politics ever since.

Lincoln by David Herbert Donald (1995)

Generally regarded by aficionados as one of if not the best single-volume biography of Lincoln. Donald, who died in 2009, was praised by Eric Foner (professor of history at Columbia and author of The Fiery Trial; Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery ) for “Avoiding the two pitfalls that people fall into. One is just hagiography—you know [Lincoln] was born with a pen in his hand ready to sign the Emancipation Proclamation, and the other is the opposite, of course, [Lincoln was] just a racist or didn’t really care about slavery at all. Donald navigates between them.”

Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (2003) and Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief (2008) by James M. McPherson

Though it is not a biography of Lincoln, Battle Cry of Freedom is one of the best books about how Lincoln handled the crises of the War, from military to political to social situations. Doris Kearns Goodwin recommended this book on NPR a few years ago, saying that McPherson “is such a narrative genius …what he’s done is to mix together the battles, Lincoln’s leadership, the home front, the finances, the Cabinet, all together, but it drives forward as a story, and you don’t know until finally, perhaps, Atlanta, whether the North is really going to win this war.”

In Tried by War , McPherson maintains that Lincoln’s role as Commander in Chief has been underexamined.; he argues, convincingly, that the President’s violation of civil liberties was not so great as many actions taken by later chief executives in less critical circumstances. His operational device to his commanders was often perceptive—he seemed to have a firmer grasp of grand strategy than some of his generals, particularly McClellan. Though Lincoln was an amateur on the subject of war, McPherson believes he was our greatest war leader.

Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech That Made Abraham Lincoln President by Harold Holzer (2005) and Emancipating Lincoln—The Proclamation in Text, Context, and Memory (2012) by Harold Holzer

Holzer, perhaps our greatest contemporary Lincoln scholar, has written and edited numerous essential volumes, including Lincoln as I Knew Him: Gossip, Tributes, and Revelations from His Best Friends and Worst Enemies and Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter 1860-1861 . In Lincoln at Cooper Union he does for Lincoln’s 1860 speech what Garry Wills did for the Gettysburg Address. Holzer makes a convincing case that the speech not only made Lincoln the leading Republican candidate for president but defined the policies on which he was elected.

Perhaps Holzer’s most outstanding recent work is Emancipating Lincoln . Compact and precise—just 172 pages of text and 23 pages of notes—the book is a model of lucid historical writing. There is probably no important document in our country’s history that even Civil War students know so little about than the Emancipation Proclamation. Much of the story, it turns out, is in the back story. Lincoln, once convinced of both the economic and moral validity of freeing the slaves, agonized over the process, rewriting his proclamation three times. (He tested the waters, so to speak, by first abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia, ending, in Holzer’s words, “the incomprehensible anomaly that permitted slavery to exist in the capital of the United States until the second year of a pro-slavery rebellion against the government.”

Short on literary flourish, the Proclamation was long on impact. Its reputation in our own time has declined so much that the Proclamation “is now often viewed not as revolutionary but as delayed, insufficient, and insincere.” Holzer, though, makes a reasoned argument that the lack of fire in Lincoln’s prose was deliberate as he did not wish to enflame moderates and that, whatever it did not accomplish at the moment was largely irrelevant; once the Proclamation was made slavery was doomed. Perhaps Massachusetts Governor John A. Andrew said it best: “a poor document, but a mighty act.”

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin (2006)

It took 141 years after the death of Lincoln for a book to appear which put into detail his genius for reading character and establishing relationships. Lincoln found admirable traits in, among others, William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, and Edward Bates, Edwin M. Stanton, four men who not only sought the Republican nomination for president in 1860 but held Lincoln himself in contempt. (Stanton referred to the President as “a long-armed ape.”—and you thought Obama got no respect.) No other history has probed the backgrounds of Lincoln’s cabinet members in such depth nor revealed the machinations that Lincoln used to mold a winning team from such disparate players. ( Team of Rivals served as the historical basis for Spielberg’s film Lincoln. )

Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer by Fred Kaplan (2008)

Just when you thought there were no new angles to approach Lincoln from, Fred Kaplan, a distinguished professor emeritus of English at Queens College and, among others, author of The Singular Mark Twain, defined Lincoln through his own words, words that were shaped through early exposure to Shakespeare, the King James Bible, Aesop’s Fables, the writings of Thomas Jefferson, John Bunyon, the speeches of Henry Clay, Classical writers, and poets such as Thomas Gray and Oliver Wendell Holmes and others. “For Lincoln,” writes Kaplan, “words mattered immensely. His increasing skill in their use during his lifetime, and his valuation of their power, mark him as the one president who is both a national leader and a genius with language.” William Dean Howells called Mark Twain the “Lincoln of our literature. Lincoln, Kaplan claims, “was the Twain of our politics.” Kaplan, the editor and critic, and Lincoln, the writer, are a wonderful combination.

Lincoln and the World by Kevin Peraino (2013)

“There can be no new Lincoln stories,” one of the President’s former secretaries wrote in 1900, “the stories are all told.” And yet, as Kevin Peraino writes in his compelling book, Lincoln in the World, “One of the unexpected joys of studying Lincoln in the 21st-century is how much astonishing new material about him has come to light.”

Lincoln in the World focuses on several distinct challenges that defined “Lincolnian foreign policy.” As a young Congressman, he opposed President Polk’s aggressive policy towards Mexico and the subsequent war. (His enemies in Illinois dubbed him “the Benedict Arnold of our district.”) He struggled with his brilliant but irascible secretary of state, William Seward, to control the direction of foreign policy. His standoff with British prime minister Lord Palmerston over the Trent affair, in which U.S. sailors forcibly boarded a British ship to remove Confederate agents. Wisely, he decided to appease the British.) He also engaged in an ongoing chess match with Napoleon III over France’s interference in Mexico.

The thread that runs through each episode is Lincoln’s common sense, good judgment and, above all, patience. He often proved “more adept at the arts of diplomacy that then polished and gold-braided envoys of Europe.” Lincoln in the World isn’t the first work to point out Lincoln’s brilliance as a seminal foreign policy president, but it is the first to gather all the key episodes. Among the choice nuggets Peraino unearths is a letter to Lincoln from none other than Karl Marx, who congratulated him on “the triumphant war cry of your reelection.”

Lincoln by Gore Vidal (1984)

Probably the greatest fictional account of Lincoln’s presidency as well as Vidal’s best novel. Lincoln is seen mostly through the eyes of those who knew him—Vidal’s scholarship is admirable, and he seems to draw from every period source who came in contact with the man Vidal has described as “the American Bismarck.” In other words, the philosophy behind the fiction is that Lincoln did not so much preserve his country as create it, an idea that derives from Edmund Wilson’s Patriotic Gore (no relation to Vidal) but which Vidal brings to life. Vidal uses modern literary technique to bring period detail to life.

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And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle Hardcover – October 18, 2022

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• Print length 720 pages
• Language English
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• Publication date October 18, 2022
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House; First Edition (October 18, 2022)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 720 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0553393960
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0553393965
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.34 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.42 x 1.48 x 9.55 inches
• #10 in United States Executive Government
• #15 in American Civil War Biographies (Books)
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About the author

Jon meacham.

Jon Meacham is a Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer. The author of the New York Times bestsellers Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, Franklin and Winston, and Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush, he is a distinguished visiting professor at Vanderbilt University, a contributing writer for The New York Times Book Review, and a fellow of the Society of American Historians. Meacham lives in Nashville with his wife and children.

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The 25 best books about Abraham Lincoln

At least 15,000 books have been written about Abraham Lincoln , the 16th president of the United States. If you wish to learn about the man who led the North during the American Civil War and issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862 then you are not going to be restricted by choice. (AbeBooks alone has more than 67,000 copies of books with ‘Abraham Lincoln’ in the title).

No-one knows exactly how many books have been written about Honest Abe but in 2012 Ford’s Theatre Center for Education and Leadership in Washington DC constructed a 34-foot pillar of unique titles about Lincoln and it contained more than 15,000 books.

Books have been written about his childhood, his politics, his wartime leadership, his married life, his death, his speeches, his generals and admirals, his writing, his mental health and his legal career. There are biographies, history books, picture books, children’s books and fictional novels based on his life.

In recent years, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin has received a great deal of attention. In 2008, the then-Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama declared, if elected, he would want “a team of rivals” in his Cabinet. “I don’t want to have people who just agree with me. I want people who are continually pushing me out of my comfort zone,” he told Time Magazine. Obama, a keen reader, acknowledged the influence of Goodwin's book several times as he campaigned to become president.

Lincoln by David Herbert Donald, published in 1996, is also widely acknowledged as one of the better biographies of the man. Manhunt by James L. Swanson is a very readable book about the murder of the president, the motives of his killer John Wilkes Booth and the desperate manhunt over 12 days.

If you want to completely shake up history, then Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith might appeal (and that’s fiction by the way). Gore Vidal also wrote a historical novel about the man.

The best books about Abraham Lincoln

More essential reading lists

Abraham Lincoln

Michael Burlingame

This award-winning biography has been hailed as the definitive portrait of Lincoln. Named One of the 5 Best Books of 2009 by The Atlantic Named One of the 10 Top Lincoln Books by Chicago Tribune Winner, 2008 PROSE Award for Best Book in U.S. History and Biography/Autobiography, Association of American Publishers Winner, 2010 Lincoln Prize from the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College In the first multi-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln to be published in decades, Lincoln scholar Michael Burlingame offers a fresh look at the life of one of America's greatest presidents. Incorporating the...

This award-winning biography has been hailed as the definitive portrait of Lincoln. Named One of the 5 Best Books of 2009 by The Atlantic Named One of the 10 Top Lincoln Books by Chicago Tribune Winner, 2008 PROSE Award for Best Book in U.S. History and Biography/Autobiography, Association of American Publishers Winner, 2010 Lincoln Prize from the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College In the first multi-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln to be published in decades, Lincoln scholar Michael Burlingame offers a fresh look at the life of one of America's greatest presidents. Incorporating the field notes of earlier biographers, along with decades of research in multiple manuscript archives and long-neglected newspapers, this remarkable work will both alter and reinforce our current understanding of America's sixteenth president.

Volume 1 covers Lincoln's early childhood, his experiences as a farm boy in Indiana and Illinois, his legal training, and the political ambition that led to a term in Congress in the 1840s. In volume 2, Burlingame examines Lincoln's life during his presidency and the Civil War, narrating in fascinating detail the crisis over Fort Sumter and Lincoln's own battles with relentless office seekers, hostile newspaper editors, and incompetent field commanders. Burlingame also offers new interpretations of Lincoln's private life, discussing his marriage to Mary Todd and the untimely deaths of two sons to disease.

In volume 2, Burlingame examines Lincoln's presidency and the trials of the Civil War. He supplies fascinating details on the crisis over Fort Sumter and the relentless office seekers who plagued Lincoln. He introduces readers to the president's battles with hostile newspaper editors and his quarrels with incompetent field commanders. Burlingame also interprets Lincoln's private life, discussing his marriage to Mary Todd, the untimely death of his son Willie to disease in 1862, and his recurrent anguish over the enormous human costs of the war.

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The author knows more about Lincoln than any other living person.

Lincoln has, of course, been the subject of an extensive body of literature due to the unquestioned importance of his presidency, his remarkable rise from frontier hardship to commander in chief, and his composition of some of the great works of American statesmanship. Burlingame describes all of this in such an impressive fashion that even readers already very well-versed on Lincoln's life and the Civil War will find much of value here... Burlingame has set a very high bar for future students of the Great Emancipator... It is unlikely that [a study] will appear anytime soon that matches the breadth and depth of coverage found in Burlingame's study, or challenges its place as the outstanding multi-volume account of Lincoln's life.

Book Details

Volume I. Author's Note 1. "I Have Seen a Good Deal of the Back Side of This World": Childhood in Kentucky (1809–1816) 2. "I Used to Be a Slave": Boyhood and Adolescence in Indiana (1816–1830) 3.

Volume I. Author's Note 1. "I Have Seen a Good Deal of the Back Side of This World": Childhood in Kentucky (1809–1816) 2. "I Used to Be a Slave": Boyhood and Adolescence in Indiana (1816–1830) 3. "Separated from His Father, He Studied English Grammar": New Salem (1831–1834) 4. "A Napoleon of Astuteness and Political Finesse": Frontier Legislator (1834–1837) 5. "We Must Fight the Devil with Fire": Slasher-Gaff Politico in Springfield (1837–1841) 6. "It Would Just Kill Me to Marry Mary Todd": Courtship and Marriage (1840–1842) 7. "I Have Got the Preacher by the Balls": Pursuing a Seat in Congress (1843–1847) 8. "A Strong but Judicious Enemy to Slavery": Congressman Lincoln (1847–1849) 9. "I Was Losing Interest in Politics and Went to the Practice of the Law with Greater Earnestness Than Ever Before": Midlife Crisis (1849–1854) 10. "Aroused as He Had Never Been Before": Reentering Politics (1854–1855) 11. "Unite with Us, and Help Us to Triumph": Building the Illinois Republican Party (1855–1857) 12. "A House Divided": Lincoln vs. Douglas (1857–1858) 13. "A David Greater than the Democratic Goliath": The Lincoln-Douglas Debates (1858) 14. "That Presidential Grub Gnaws Deep": Pursuing the Republican Nomination (1859–1860) 15. "The Most Available Presidential Candidate for Unadulterated Republicans": The Chicago Convention (May 1860) 16. "I Have Been Elected Mainly on the Cry 'Honest Old Abe' ": The Presidential Campaign (May–November 1860) 17. "I Will Suffer Death Before I Will Consent to Any Concession or Compromise": President-elect in Springfield (1860–1861) 18. "What If I Appoint Cameron, Whose Very Name Stinks in the Nostrils of the People for His Corruption?": Cabinet-Making in Springfield (1860–1861) Notes Index Volume II. 19. "The Man Does Not Live Who Is More Devoted to Peace Than I Am, But It May Be Necessary to Put the Foot Down Firmly": From Springfield to Washington (February 11–22, 1861) 20. "I Am Now Going to Be Master": Inauguration (February 23–March 4, 1861) 21. "A Man So Busy Letting Rooms in One End of His House, That He Can't Stop to Put Out the Fire That Is Burning in the Other": Distributing Patronage (March–April 1861) 22. "You Can Have No Conf lict Without Being Yourselves the Aggressors": The Fort Sumter Crisis (March–April 1861) 23. "I Intend to Give Blows": The Hundred Days (April–July 1861) 24. Sitzkrieg: The Phony War (August 1861–January 1862) 25 "This Damned Old House": The Lincoln Family in the Executive Mansion 26. "I Expect to Maintain This Contest Until Successful, or Till I Die, or Am Conquered, or My Term Expires, or Congress or the Country Forsakes Me": From the Slough of Despond to the Gates of Richmond (January–July 1862) 27. "The Hour Comes for Dealing with Slavery": Playing the Last Trump Card (January–July 1862) 28. "Would You Prosecute the War with Elder- Stalk Squirts, Charged with Rose Water?": The Soft War Turns Hard (July–September 1862) 29. "I Am Not a Bold Man, But I Have the Knack of Sticking to My Promises!": The Emancipation Proclamation (September– December 1862) 30. "Go Forward, and Give Us Victories": From the Mud March to Gettysburg (January–July 1863) 31. "The Signs Look Better": Victory at the Polls and in the Field (July–November 1863) 32. "I Hope to Stand Firm Enough to Not Go Backward, and Yet Not Go Forward Fast Enough to Wreck the Country's Cause": Reconstruction and Renomination (November 1863–June 1864) 33. "Hold On with a Bulldog Grip and Chew and Choke as Much as Possible": The Grand Offensive (May–August 1864) 34. "The Wisest Radical of All": Reelection (September–November 1864) 35. "Let the Thing Be Pressed": Victory at Last (November 1864– April 1865) 36. "I Feel a Presentiment That I Shall Not Outlast the Rebellion. When It Is Over, My Work Will Be Done.": The Final Days (April 9–15, 1865) Acknowledgments Note on Sources Notes Index

Michael Burlingame, Ph.D.

with Hopkins Press Books

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth President of the United States, was born near Hodgenville, Kentucky on February 12, 1809. His family moved to Indiana when he was seven and he grew up on the edge of the frontier. He had very little formal education, but read voraciously when not working on his father’s farm.  A childhood friend later recalled Lincoln's "manic" intellect, and the sight of him red-eyed and tousle-haired as he pored over books late into the night.  In 1828, at the age of nineteen, he accompanied a produce-laden flatboat down the Mississippi River to New Orleans, Louisiana—his first visit to a large city--and then walked back home.  Two years later, trying to avoid health and finance troubles, Lincoln's father moved the family moved to Illinois.

After moving away from home, Lincoln co-owned a general store for several years before selling his stake and enlisting as a militia captain defending Illinois in the Black Hawk War of 1832.  Black Hawk, a Sauk chief, believed he had been swindled by a recent land deal and sought to resettle his old holdings.  Lincoln did not see direct combat during the short conflict, but the sight of corpse-strewn battlefields at Stillman's Run and Kellogg's Grove deeply affected him. As a captain, he developed a reputation for pragmatism and integrity.  Once, faced with a rail fence during practice maneuvers and forgetting the parade-ground instructions to direct his men over it, he simply ordered them to fall out and reassemble on the other side a minute later.  Another time, he stopped his men before they executed a wandering Native American as a spy.  Stepping in front of their raised muskets, Lincoln is said to have challenged his men to combat for the terrified native's life.  His men stood down.

After the war, he studied law and campaigned for a seat on the Illinois State Legislature. Although not elected in his first attempt, Lincoln persevered and won the position in 1834, serving as a Whig.

Abraham Lincoln met Mary Todd in Springfield, Illinois where he was practicing as a lawyer. They were married in 1842 over her family’s objections and had four sons.  Only one lived to adulthood.  The deep melancholy that pervaded the Lincoln family, with occasional detours into outright madness, is in some ways sourced in their close relationship with death. 

Lincoln, a self-described "prairie lawyer," focused on his all-embracing law practice in the early 1850s after one term in Congress from 1847 to 1849. He joined the new Republican party—and the ongoing argument over sectionalism—in 1856. A series of heated debates in 1858 with Stephen A. Douglas , the sponsor of the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act , over slavery and its place in the United States forged Lincoln into a prominent figure in national politics. Lincoln’s anti-slavery platform made him extremely unpopular with Southerners and his nomination for President in 1860 enraged them.

On November 6, 1860, Lincoln won the presidential election without the support of a single Southern state.  Talk of secession, bandied about since the 1830s, took on a serious new tone. The Civil War was not entirely caused by Lincoln’s election, but the election was one of the primary reasons the war broke out the following year.

Lincoln’s decision to fight rather than to let the Southern states secede was not based on his feelings towards slavery.  Rather, he felt it was his sacred duty as President of the United States to preserve the Union at all costs.  His first inaugural address was an appeal to the rebellious states, seven of which had already seceded, to rejoin the nation.  His first draft of the speech ended with an ominous message: "Shall it be peace, or the sword?" 

The Civil War began with the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter , South Carolina, on April 12, 1861.  Fort Sumter, situated in the Charleston Harbour, was a Union outpost in the newly seceded Confederate territory. Lincoln, learning that the Fort was running low on food, sent supplies to reinforce the soldiers there. The Southern navy repulsed the supply convoy. After this repulse, the Southern navy fired the first shot of the war at Fort Sumter and the Federal defenders surrendered after a 34-hour long battle. 

Throughout the war, Lincoln struggled to find capable generals for his armies.  As commander-in-chief, he legally held the highest rank in the United States armed forces, and he diligently exercised his authority through strategic planning, weapons testing, and the promotion and demotion of officers.  McDowell , Fremont, McClellan , Pope , McClellan again, Buell , Burnside , Rosecrans --all of these men and more withered under Lincoln's watchful eye as they failed to bring him success on the battlefield. 

He did not issue his famous Emancipation Proclamation until January 1, 1863 after the Union victory at the Battle of Antietam .  The Emancipation Proclamation, which was legally based on the President’s right to seize the property of those in rebellion against the State, only freed slaves in Southern states where Lincoln’s forces had no control. Nevertheless, it changed the tenor of the war, making it, from the Northern point of view, a fight both to preserve the Union and to end slavery.

In 1864, Lincoln ran again for President.  After years of war, he feared he would not win.  Only in the final months of the campaign did the exertions of Ulysses S. Grant , the quiet general now in command of all of the Union armies, begin to bear fruit.  A string of heartening victories buoyed Lincoln's ticket and contributed significantly to his re-election.  In his second inauguration speech , March 4, 1865, he set the tone he intended to take when the war finally ended. His one goal, he said, was “lasting peace among ourselves.” He called for “malice towards none” and “charity for all.” The war ended only a month later.

The Lincoln administration did more than just manage the Civil War, although its reverberations could still be felt in a number of policies.  The Revenue Act of 1862 established the United States' first income tax, largely to pay the costs of total war.  The Morrill Act of 1862 established the basis of the state university system in this country, while the Homestead Act, also passed in 1862, encouraged settlement of the West by offering 160 acres of free land to settlers.  Lincoln also created the Department of Agriculture and formally instituted the Thanksgiving holiday.  Internationally, he navigated the "Trent Affair," a diplomatic crisis regarding the seizure of a British ship carrying Confederate envoys, in such a way as to quell the saber-rattling overtures coming from Britain as well as the United States.  In another spill-over from the war, Lincoln restricted the civil liberties of due process and freedom of the press. 

On April 14, 1865, while attending a play at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., Abraham Lincoln was shot by Confederate sympathizer, John Wilkes Booth.  The assassination was part of a larger plot to eliminate the Northern government that also left Secretary of State William Seward grievously injured.  Lincoln died the following day, and with him the hope of reconstructing the nation without bitterness.

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Abraham Lincoln - Quotes Collection - Biography, Achievements And Life Lessons

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN - QUOTES COLLECTION BIOGRAPHY, ACHIEVEMENTS AND LIFE LESSONS ABOUT ABRAHAM LINCOLN Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, is one of the most revered figures in American history. Born on February 12, 1809, in a log cabin in Hardin County (now LaRue County), Kentucky, Lincoln rose from humble beginnings to become a symbol of leadership, integrity, and the enduring pursuit of justice. His life was marked by significant challenges, personal losses, and political triumphs, all of which shaped the course of a nation on the brink of collapse. QUOTES SAMPLES: "You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today." "The ballot is stronger than the bullet." "Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe." "Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be." "No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar."

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9 New Books We Recommend This Week

Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.

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Our recommended books this week include two very different kinds of memoirs — RuPaul’s “The House of Hidden Meanings,” about the drag icon’s childhood and path to superstardom, and Alexandra Fuller’s “Fi,” about the death of her 21-year-old son — as well as a biography of the art collector Isabella Stewart Gardner, a study of Germany’s self-reckoning after World War II, a look at what Abraham Lincoln’s era has in common with ours and a history of baseball in New York.

In fiction, we recommend a romance novel, a twisty detective story about translators on the hunt for a missing author and a stylish story collection from Amor Towles. Happy reading. — Gregory Cowles

FI: A Memoir Alexandra Fuller

In her fifth memoir, Fuller describes the sudden death of her 21-year-old son. Devastating as this elegant and honest account may be — and it’s certainly not for the faint of heart — it also leaves the reader with a sense of having known a lovely and lively young man.

“A sublime writer. … This book is a mesmeric celebration of a boy who died too soon, a mother’s love and her resilience.”

From David Sheff’s review

Grove | $28

WAKE ME MOST WICKEDLY Felicia Grossman

The second of Grossman’s fairy-tale-inspired romances set among Jewish families in Regency London finds the saucy scion of a disgraced family falling for a raven-haired criminal pawnshop owner. Based on “Snow White,” a fairy tale all about trust and betrayal, “Wake Me Most Wickedly” thrives in the space between what people hide and what they reveal.

“Rich and complex and a little discomfiting, this book prefers difficult questions and nuanced truths to comfortable reductions.”

From Olivia Waite’s romance column

Forever | Paperback, $9.99

TABLE FOR TWO: Fictions Amor Towles

Towles, known for his wildly popular books like “A Gentleman in Moscow,” collects six short stories set in New York around the new millennium. There’s also one story set in Golden Age Hollywood, a continuation of his novel “Rules of Civility.”

“There’s more here than high gloss. … Sharp-edged satire deceptively wrapped like a box of Neuhaus chocolates, ‘Table for Two’ is a winner.”

From Hamilton Cain’s review

Viking | $32

THE NEW YORK GAME: Baseball and the Rise of a New City Kevin Baker

What makes New York baseball unique, the novelist and historian argues in this insightful, beautifully crafted narrative — which concludes with the end of World War II — is its role as chronicler of cultural change. Whatever baseball’s roots in cow pastures and small towns, it came of age as an urban game.

“Baseball grew as New York City grew. … One hopes for a second volume from Kevin Baker, every bit as good as this one.”

From David Oshinsky’s review

Knopf | $35

THE EXTINCTION OF IRENA REY Jennifer Croft

Croft is an acclaimed translator, and won the 2018 Man Booker International Prize for her English translation of Olga Tokarczuk’s “Flights.” It seems fitting that her first novel is a detective story following a troupe of translators tracking down their missing author.

“Oh my mushrooms, ‘The Extinction of Irena Rey’ is incredibly strange, savvy, sly and hard to classify. I also couldn’t put it down.”

From Fiona Maazel’s review

Bloomsbury | $28.99

THE HOUSE OF HIDDEN MEANINGS: A Memoir RuPaul

The “Drag Race” superstar has already written three books, but from its black-and-white cover photo onward, this one is serious: A study in self-creation and survival that reveals a striver high on his own supply.

“RuPaul isn’t just famous, glamorous and funny; he’s interesting. … Less a memoir than a prophecy unpacked in reverse.”

From Saeed Jones’s review

Dey Street | $29.99

CHASING BEAUTY: The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner Natalie Dykstra

Isabella Stewart Gardner is best known today for the Boston museum that bears her name, but as Dykstra makes clear in her luminous new biography, the Gilded Age doyenne was herself a figure to be reckoned with. A daughter of wealth who married into more, the flamboyant Gardner quickly became the queen of haute bohemia — and in the process, one of America’s most serious collectors. A lively portrait of a moment, a woman and the power of art.

“Astutely situates her subject within Gardner’s growing web of connections. … But its deeper revelations have more to do with Gardner’s emerging attunement to the emotional affirmation to be found in art.”

From Megan O’Grady’s review

Mariner | $37.50

OUT OF THE DARKNESS: The Germans, 1942-2022 Frank Trentmann

Over the past eight decades, the public debates about guilt and suffering in the wake of World War II have structured civil society in Germany. Trentmann tracks the evolution of this moral awakening with a remarkably rich history of the country that runs from the Battle of Stalingrad to the War in Ukraine.

“Recognizes the costs and complexities of the quest for moral security. … As Trentmann captures, the post-1945 transformation has been remarkable.”

From Peter Fritzsche’s review

Knopf | $50

OUR ANCIENT FAITH: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment Allen C. Guelzo

In this beautifully written exploration of Abraham Lincoln’s thoughts on democracy, Guelzo argues that the president, who fought autocratic forces in the South while restricting civil liberties in the North, can help us figure out how to sustain a free society in the face of rising illiberalism today.

“Guelzo points out the ‘uncanny’ similarities between Lincoln’s time and ours. … Reveals the fragility of democracy in such moments. But its precarity can also be a strength.”

From Parker Henry’s review

Knopf | $30

Explore More in Books

Want to know about the best books to read and the latest news start here..

Salman Rushdie’s new memoir, “Knife,” addresses the attack that maimed him  in 2022, and pays tribute to his wife who saw him through .

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What can fiction tell us about the apocalypse? The writer Ayana Mathis finds unexpected hope in novels of crisis by Ling Ma, Jenny Offill and Jesmyn Ward .

At 28, the poet Tayi Tibble has been hailed as the funny, fresh and immensely skilled voice of a generation in Māori writing .

Amid a surge in book bans, the most challenged books in the United States in 2023 continued to focus on the experiences of L.G.B.T.Q. people or explore themes of race.

Each week, top authors and critics join the Book Review’s podcast to talk about the latest news in the literary world. Listen here .

‘Manhunt’ Finale Breakdown: Tobias Menzies on How They Pulled Off [Spoiler]’s Death and Building a Bromance With Abe Lincoln

Plus, director Eva Sørhaug reveals how she improvised on set to create emotional depth in the fast-paced historical epic.

By William Earl

William Earl

• ‘Sesame Street’ Writers Set New Contract, Avert Strike 59 mins ago
• ‘Manhunt’ Finale Breakdown: Tobias Menzies on How They Pulled Off [Spoiler]’s Death and Building a Bromance With Abe Lincoln 3 hours ago
• Which New Taylor Swift Songs Are About Matty Healy, Joe Alwyn or Travis Kelce? Breaking Down ‘Tortured Poets Department’ Lyric Clues 7 hours ago

SPOILER ALERT:  This article contains major spoilers for the finale of “ Manhunt ,” now streaming on Apple TV+ .

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“You’re reacting to other actors and what they’re giving you,” he says. “But part of Stanton’s job within the story is to be the audience’s compass. A big part of the show is him riding the various waves of this disaster and trying to process that. A lot of it is trying to strategize his way through situations while dealing with the loss of a friend, and his fears about what will happen to the country he is serving. You get that with a combination of the mind and the heart.”

Eva Sørhaug, who helmed the final three episodes of the series, says she facilitated the nuts and bolts of directing work in tandem with the actors to create the emotional depth that underlined “Manhunt.”

“It’s all about the performance and I want to catch it with the right tools,” she says. “In terms of what dances your way, I try to be quite open. We come to set with the plan, but then we see what the actors are doing and we can just throw that plan away and come up with a new one that is better for the story, and maybe also more efficient. You can’t see it until you shoot it. It’s just a bunch of theory. So we try to place the camera so we feel that experience.”

“It was quite instinctive,” he says. “Hamish and I naturally got along, so it’s quite a bit of the rapport between him and I as people. We didn’t massively plan it or talk a huge amount about it. In these flashback scenes, we had to establish the warmth and the feeling that was between these two men. To make sense of what’s the loss that Stanton is dealing with, we needed that to not just be political but personal as well. It’s very easy to like Hamish, he’s a very charming person.”

As the show began with Lincoln’s assassination, it ended with Stanton’s death as a Supreme Court nominee, passing away before being sworn into office. Menzies says he approaches death scenes from a practical standpoint.

“The boring answer is rooted in the specifics of how they’re dying against the circumstances in which they’re dying,” he says. “I think with death…it probably isn’t very true to life, but less is more. The story is doing a lot of the work for you.”

Sørhaug also says it’s pivotal to have the visual setup of the death match the emotional heft and complexity of the passing in the story.

“I think it’s the way you approach it,” she says. “You have to have a delicate hand and not be so concrete. Maybe it’s better to have it from behind than just see him falling over. Or like we did…some paper falls on the floor. It’s also about what kind of state of mind I go in with to do everything: Who’s scene is it? How does it feel to be the character in this scene? How is this meant to portray him visually, the way he feels? Then not to be too on the nose when it comes to the choking.”

Menzies recognizes that Stanton likely felt he didn’t accomplish all he had wanted to achieve at the time of his passing.

“He struck me as a very idealistic and ambitious politician who wasn’t easily satisfied,” he says. “I think if he’d been given a choice, he would have liked to have had more time. There’s a poignancy to viewers because we all know how long it took to deliver those voting and land rights. It took a further 100 years until the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. It would have broken Stanton’s heart to know that.”

Looking back on the series, Menzies — who has had roles in historical fiction projects like “The Crown,” “The Terror” and “Outlander” — says he is always intrigued by stories from a different time.

“Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, and I was amazed by the particulars of this story,” he says. “Even just go back to the beginning…Lincoln was killed in a theater in front of hundreds of people, but then that person jumped onto the stage. It’s strange and vivid and all that makes for very interesting territory and characters and worlds to step into.”

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A bet landed Abraham Lincoln in the Wrestling Hall of Fame

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He was born in the backwoods of Kentucky in the early 1800's. His family was dirt poor. His mother died when he was nine, and he had a difficult relationship with his father. He went to school "now and then," and it is said his entire schooling amounted to less than one year's attendance. As a result, he was mostly self-educated, and loved to read. Neighbours said he would walk for miles just to borrow a book.

Reading became a great pastime for him. He wasn't able to find many books, but fully absorbed every one he could get his hands on. By the time he turned 21, he stood six-foot-four. He was lanky, but muscular and powerful. He was noted for the skill and strength with which he could wield an axe. He was a rough and tumble frontier man.

He moved to Illinois and became a rail-splitter, allowing him to earn some money clearing land and building farm fences. About that time, he settled in a town called New Salem. There he got a job as a storekeeper.

On the side, this strapping young man liked to wrestle. And he was good at it. He would wrestle in county fairs and look for matches wherever the opportunity arose. By some accounts, he wrestled for a dozen years, from his early twenties to his early thirties, and only lost one single match. But maybe his most famous match happened as the result of a bet.

His boss boasted that his young employee was not only the smartest guy in town, but also the toughest. That comment riled a gang of toughs called the Clary's Grove Boys.

His boss bet another man that his employee could beat the toughest member of that gang – a man named Jack Armstrong. Armstrong was the roughest and most feared member of the Clary's Grove Boys. So a date was set, and on the day, the entire town gathered to watch the wrestling match.

The two men stripped to the waist, and the wrestling began. The two were well matched, and the fight went on and on – and got rougher and rougher. Then, well into the fight, Armstrong used a painful, illegal move. That infuriated his young opponent, who then picked Armstrong up and threw him to the ground knocking him out.

That wrestler, the powerful fighter who beat Jack Armstrong that day, was Abraham Lincoln. That's why Abraham Lincoln is in the Wrestling Hall of Fame.

Question: Is that story true, or is it a lie?

The story is true.

A huge mural of that fight hangs on the wall inside the Wrestling Hall of Fame.

These days, it's getting more and more difficult to tell the truth from a lie. Over the decades, advertisers have often been accused of lying. But there is another side to that particular coin.

In focus groups, in surveys, and in polls, customers lie to marketers. Advertisers use that research to make important marketing decisions.

So what happens if the information advertisers use to produce products and create advertising campaigns is false?

For more on When Customers Lie to Marketers, click or tap the play button above to hear the full Under the Influence episode. Find more episodes on the CBC Listen app or subscribe to the podcast .

Doris Kearns Goodwin talks about the love of her life — and their unfinished love story with America

The historian and her late husband, richard goodwin, were among boston’s legendary power couples. her new book fulfills a promise to write the book he never got to finish..

If you ever want to see grown men melt when meeting their idol, just introduce them to Doris Kearns Goodwin.

I had the privilege of escorting the 81-year-old historian through the Globe newsroom after she appeared on my podcast to gab about her new book, “An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s.”

The reaction was priceless. You ’ d have thought they all just met Tom Brady.

Well, Kearns Goodwin is a G.O.A.T. in her own right , penning best-selling books about the lives of American presidents from Abraham Lincoln to Lyndon B. Johnson. Her current book mines the history of her own life with her late husband Richard Goodwin, a speechwriter to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Johnson, as well as to Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

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Count the Goodwins among the legendary power couples of Boston. The Globe featured their 1975 wedding on the front page describing the guest list as “a Great Society reunion” — a blend of “New Yorkian style, Washington power, and Boston brains.” Among the attendees: Senator Edward Kennedy, Boston Mayor Kevin White, and writers Norman Mailer and Hunter Thompson.

The couple settled in Concord, amassing more than 300 boxes of letters, speeches, and other memorabilia from Goodwin’s time working in Washington as a young White House aide in the 1960s . Only when he turned 80 in 2012 did he decide to open the boxes and relive those years.

“I knew that they had great stuff in them, but he said he just wanted to look ahead, not backward because the ‘60s had ended so sadly with the assassinations of Martin Luther King and his close friend Bobby [Kennedy], and the riots in the streets and the anti-war violence,” recalled Kearns Goodwin, who is this week’s guest on Globe Opinion’s “Say More” podcast.

Listen at globe.com/saymore and wherever you get your podcasts.

Over the next several years, the couple spent weekends poring over the files, which included handwritten letters from First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. The plan was for Goodwin to write a book, but then he was diagnosed with cancer. In the waning months of his life, Goodwin told his wife: “Don’t think I’ve forgotten our book project. I’ve not been much help lately, just promise to get it done.”

In 2018, Goodwin passed away at the age of 86.

A year later, Kearns Goodwin moved out of Concord and into a high-rise condo in Boston. But she kept her promise to finish his memoir, which was released Tuesday. The book is as much Kearns Goodwin’s love letter to her husband as it is about what the 1960s might teach us about the tumultuous times of today.

Goodwin worked on Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign under the tutelage of chief speech writer Ted Sorensen, and went to work in the White House after the election. After Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, Goodwin became part of the Johnson White House, writing some of LBJ’s pivotal civil rights addresses including the “We Shall Overcome” speech delivered after the violent attack on marchers in Selma, Ala. in 1965.

Unpacking the boxes gave her a portrait of her husband as a young man, one who was happy and cheerful — different from the man she married, one who could be a bit melancholy. Revisiting those files changed his temperament.

“In those last years, he derived such fulfillment from the feeling that the work he had done, the work the country had done, had really mattered, and it hadn’t been lost by the [Vietnam] War,” Kearns Goodwin said. “Even during the last days of his illness, everybody who knew him said, ‘Oh my God, he’s happier now than he’s been.’ "

Kearns Goodwin is the third scholar of American history I’ve interviewed since launching the Globe Opinion podcast last July — the others being Boston College historian Heather Cox Richardson and former Harvard president Drew Faust .

I’ve asked each of them what to make of the politically unsettling period we’re living in. Are we closer to an autocracy than ever before? Why is our democracy so fragile?

All three scholars, with their long lens on history, offered me hope. America has been through tough times before, they said, and each time we have lived up to the values this country was founded on. As Kearns Goodwin puts it, America itself is an unfinished story.

“Dick and I both believed so much in the ideals of the country and tried to work to bring us closer to the ideals — he through actual work, me through writing about the presidents who I think had brought us closer to our ideals,” Kearns Goodwin said. “It’s always an unfinished experiment. It’s like a relay race. You go forward and then you go backwards, then you go forward and backwards.”

That means democracy requires us to participate, not sit on the sidelines or flee the country .

“Every change that’s happened in our country in a positive way has come from the ground up,” reminded Kearns Goodwin. “Lincoln was called a liberator. He said, ‘Don’t call me a liberator.’ It was the anti-slavery movement and the Union soldiers that did it all ... there’s the civil rights movement, there’s the gay rights movement, the women’s movement. It always comes from the ground up. If people feel they can’t do anything about it, then we really are in trouble. The worst thing is for people to stand by and see something bad happening and feel that they’re helpless.”

Doris Kearns Goodwin will be at the First Parish Church in Cambridge on May 10 for a discussion and book signing. Details can be found at Harvard Book Store website.

Shirley Leung is a Business columnist and host of the Globe Opinion podcast “Say More with Shirley Leung.” Find the podcast on Apple , Spotify , and globe.com/saymore . Follow her on Threads @shirley02186

Shirley Leung is a Business columnist. She can be reached at [email protected] .

Screen Rant

Manhunt ending explained: what happened to stanton after the grand conspiracy trial.

Despite capturing John Wilkes Booth, the battle for justice and for Reconstruction was only just beginning for Tobias Menzies' Edwin Stanton.

• The grand conspiracy case failed due to unreliable witness testimony casting doubt on the evidence provided by Stanton.
• Missing pages from John Wilkes Booth's diary were burned by Stanton, leading to conspiracy theories about his potential involvement in the assassination.
• Mannhunt was really about the long-term effects of Booth's murder of Lincoln, particularly regarding Reconstruction.

The series finale of Manhunt saw Secretary of War Edwin Stanton attempt to bring justice to all those involved with John Wilkes Booth's assassination of Abraham Lincoln, with varying degrees of success. Manhunt episode 7 largely focused on the trial that began less than a month after Lincoln's death, during which Stanton brought charges of grand conspiracy against the last remnants of the Confederacy. While the testimony of brave individuals like Mary Simms and her brother Milo brought the conspiracy into focus, less reliable testimonials cast enough doubt on the evidence for the grand conspiracy to be declared inconclusive.

That was not the case for some of Booth's accomplices, like David Herold and Dr. Samuel Mudd. Herold, Lewis Powell, Mary Surratt and George Atzerodt all received a death sentence, while Mudd received life imprisonment. With the trial concluded, Stanton's attention shifted to Reconstruction, and more specifically to the man responsible for foiling it in President Andrew Johnson. Their differing viewpoints finally came to a head when Johnson attempted to remove Stanton from office, which resulted in Johnson's eventual impeachment. While Stanton continued to push forward, Johnson's vindictiveness prevented the country from moving forward as Lincoln originally desired.

Manhunt: What Really Happened To The Body Of John Wilkes Booth In Real Life?

Why stanton’s grand conspiracy case failed, the testimony of one unreliable witness played a major role..

As detailed in Manhunt episode 6 , Stanton and his allies knew going into the trial that grand conspiracy charges were probably too ambitious for the concrete evidence that they could provide. Their case would be made up of largely circumstantial evidence , and reliant upon first-person testimony and coded messages. It seemed as though they had a major break when Sanford Conover (Josh Stewart), the double agent who worked for both Agent Lafayette Baker (Patton Oswalt) and George N. Sanders (Anthoyn Marble), produced a letter from Jefferson Davis that seemingly confirmed the direct link between the Confederate Secret Service and Booth.

George Sanders was not directly named in the Lincoln assassination trial as he was in Manhunt ; rather, he was a suspected member of the "Confederate Clique" in Montreal.

Unfortunately for Stanton, Conover's testimony was largely invalidated by the defense for the conspirators. He was caught confusing dates, which was the opening needed to question the letter's validity given his status as a master spy and forger with seemingly no true loyalty. As opposed to being Stanton's "star witness", Conover cast a shadow on the validity of the entire conspiracy . While the special judges admitted that they believed Jefferson Davis was ultimately behind the assassination, they were unable to declare a guilty verdict for Davis, George Sanders, and John Surratt, Jr. "due to tainted evidence and technicalities."

The Significance of Mary & Milo Simms’ Testimonies Against Samuel Mudd

The two former slaves embodied all the brave men and women who testified in the trial..

Like the real Mary Simms , the Mary Simms depicted in Manhunt played a pivotal role in ensuring that the man who plagued her both as a slaver and an employer, Dr. Samuel Mudd, ​​​​​​received a just punishment for his role in Lincoln's assassination and Booth's subsequent flight south . Her brother's role in the show was less historically accurate, although his role was more of an amalgam of several different former slaves who testified in the conspirator trial. Mary Simms is also shown providing Louis Weichmann with the courage to reveal everything he knew, which ultimately resulted in a much stronger case for the connection between Booth and the Surratts.

What Was In Booth’s Missing Diary Pages?

The real pages were lost to history, but manhunt provides a potential answer..

In Manhunt episode 6, Edwin Stanton is directly shown tearing pages out of Booth's diary and burning them. The implication is that there was some sort of incriminating information on those pages that Stanton did not want revealed to the public . The missing pages are indeed historically accurate, although there is debate over how many pages were torn out of Booth's diary. Regardless of the number of pages, Manhunt doubled down on Stanton's involvement in their removal by having his assistant, Thomas Eckert, note that he had Stanton's hearth cleaned out, tacitly implying that he removed all traces of the pages.

If the public believed that Stanton or Lincoln had ordered the assassination of Davis first, that could galvanize the Confederacy all over again.

The pages have never been recovered, which has led to the rise of many different conspiracy theories. There is confusion over who had Booth's diary and for how long after Everton Conger removed it from Booth's body the night he died, implicating Stanton, Lafayette Baker and Conger himself in different capacities. Manhunt shows Stanton burning the pages, which gives credence to one of the most popular conspiracy theories: that Stanton himself was involved in the assassination somehow.

That clashes violently with how Stanton is presented throughout the show, so that seems like an incorrect assumption. The most likely explanation was already addressed; Stanton ordered the assassination of Jefferson Davis a year before , which is what spurred Booth's assassination of Lincoln. Such an order would almost certainly have involved Eckert, explaining why he helped Stanton dispose of the ashes that might have revealed Booth's motive. If the public believed that Stanton or Lincoln had ordered the assassination of Davis first, that could galvanize the Confederacy all over again, while also putting a permanent stain on Stanton's reputation.

Why President Andrew Johnson Removed Stanton From Office

The confederate-sympathizing president violated the law by replacing stanton..

Simply put, Andrew Johnson removed Edwin Stanton because he threatened his own plan for Reconstruction . While Lincoln, and therefore Stanton, sought to fully integrate freedmen and freedwomen into the Union with the Reconstruction Amendments, the former slave owner Johnson had no such intentions. His Confederate sympathies and racist tendencies yielded a Reconstruction plan that saw freed individuals treated little better than slaves , which he hid under the guise of not wanting to cause too much "unrest" in Manhunt . By removing Stanton as Secretary of War, he removed Lincoln's Reconstruction plan so that he could properly implement his own.

Andrew Johnson was just one vote short of the 2/3 majority needed to convict him in his impeachment trial, which would have resulted in his removal from the office of the President.

What Happened To Edwin Stanton After Manhunt

The former secretary of war's fight for justice was unfortunately short-lived..

In one of Manhunt 's final dramatic scenes, Edwin Stanton barricades himself in his office rather than allow himself to be removed by Johnson, which is true to history. Johnson's unlawful removal of Stanton eventually led to his impeachment, and Stanton was reinstated in short order. With Johnson remaining in office, however, he was never able to implement Reconstruction as Lincoln envisioned it . He sought an alternative means to change the country if he couldn't do it through the executive branch; he aspired to become a Supreme Court judge, which would allow him to affect real change across the country without Johnson's meddling.

As shown in Manhunt , Edwin Stanton did receive a nomination to the Supreme Court under President Ulysses S. Grant, which he accepted. Unfortunately, the real Edwin Stanton died before he was able to assume his position. Manhunt creator Monica Beletsky made a point to show the severity of Stanton's asthma throughout the show, and it was in fact respiratory failure that caused his death. Stanton's work and legacy was eventually realized in the form of the Reconstruction Amendments (13th, 14th and 15th), which abolished slavery, granted all people citizenship and equal protection under the law, and gave all citizens the right to vote.

The Real Meaning Of Manhunt’s Ending

It was never just about john wilkes booth and the man who hunted him..

The action of Manhunt was driven by Edwin Stanton's pursuit of John Wilkes Booth and his co-conspirators following the murder of President Abraham Lincoln, but the chase itself was not the central point; the series is truly about the long-term consequences of the assassination . By removing Lincoln as a factor, John Wilkes Booth directly prevented Reconstruction from playing out as it was originally intended. Despite the best efforts of the show's primary protagonist, Edwin Stanton, Reconstruction was stalled and warped so thoroughly from Lincoln's original vision that the effects were still being felt a century later.

Lincoln's first vision for Reconstruction, a moderate approach that would help the Confederate states rejoin the Union more swiftly, was proposed in 1863, two full years before the Civil War formally ended.

Without Lincoln in power to force the immediate and complete integration of newly freed American citizens, the core principles of the Confederacy were allowed to endure in the South , thanks in large part to the actions of President Andrew Johnson. Therein lies the importance of Mary Simms' character in Manhunt ; she provides the perspective of those people who were most affected by the assassination. The hatred, violence, and bigotry that black Americans have endured over the last 150 years can be directly traced back to the moment John Wilkes Booth put a gun to Abraham Lincoln's head.

By examining the well-known story of John Wilkes Booth's assassination of Abraham Lincoln through a lens of intrigue and conspiracy, Manhunt creator Monica Beletsky was able to unearth a largely untold side of the story. While many of the most dramatic points in the show are not historically accurate, they serve a greater purpose in the examination of the sociopolitical climate of America directly after the Civil War . The grand Confederate conspiracy, although never proven, shows how far back the deepest divides in our country go. Had Booth been unsuccessful, the United States might have been significantly more united.

Manhunt (2024)

Mahunt is an AppleTV+ mini-series focusing on the hunt for John Wilkes Booth after he assassinates Abraham Lincoln. Anthony Boyle stars as John Wilkes Booth alongside Tobias Menzies, Lovie Simone, and Will Harrison in the series created by Monica Beletsky.