THE LINCOLN MYTH
Hesseltine, William B.
The Lincoln Myth LINCOLN THE UNKNOWN, by Dale Carnegie. Perma Giants. 305 pp. 95 cents. LINCOLN'S SECRETARY: A Biography of John G. Nicolay, by Helen Nicolay. Longmans. 363pp. $5. LINCOLN AND THE...
...Here is the Ann Rutledge story, the shrewish Mary Todd, the village strong man, the purposeful abolitionist—all wrapped up with that charming capacity for superficiality which has made the author so justly famous...
...902 do...
...In form, his erudite-appearing volumes seem designed as a Yankee answer to Freeman's Lee...
...Perhaps, too, this man of sorrows would have been a little saddened by the nature of the Lincoln literature which, 84 years later, continued to pour from the presses...
...Perhaps as good a sample of the Lincoln myth as can be had at a quick glance is the reissue of Dale Carnegie's Lincoln The Unknown...
...First published in 1932 and now made available for 95 cents, the 300 page book is uncontaminated by scholarship and breezily devoid of pedantry...
...Abingdon-Cokesbury...
...If-he-were-alive-today and could keep his sense of humor, Lincoln probably would be amused...
...1.25...
...Lincoln Fellowships ntM P* devotions, Republican orators in-fjfeae the near-forgotten liturgy of llMar party, Chicago Tribune artists draw the Great Emancipator in Cassandra-like poses, and partisans proclaim anew that "if-he-were-alive-today" he would support Norman Thomas, World Government, Col...
...If - he - were - alive - today, Lincoln would, indeed, find much to amuse him...
...Mc-Clellan, and there's a downright fascination in the vigor and venom which the author expends upon this ancient contention...
...12.50...
...Volume 2 deals primarily with Lee's ineptitude at Gettysburg...
...Nicolay pronounced Lincoln an unchurched Christian, which, in substance, is about what Lincoln thought of himself...
...That, of course, was Grant...
...LINCOLN FINDS A GENERAL: A Military Study of the Ci'w'l War, by Kenneth P. Williams...
...In fact, his animosity towards "Little Mac" produces a new viewpoint—he winds up praising the soldierly qualities of General John Pope...
...As Lincoln's biographer, Nicolay was as completely convinced of the Great Emancipator's righteousness as he was of the accuracy of the multiplication table...
...McCormick, Harry Truman, Bob Taft, or Alger Hiss...
...LINCOLN AND THE BIBLE, by Clarence E. Macartney...
...Carl Sandburg wrote an appreciative biography of Oliver Barrett, a truly great collector of Lincolniana, the Huntington Library published the excited documents concerning Allen Pinkerton's spurious "Baltimore Plot," and Rufus Wilson continued to edit with love and devotion the exhausting "Uncollected Papers...
...The pontifical footnotes with disputatious disquisitions and the cranky appendix support the illusion...
...Reviewed by William B. Hesseltine ABRAHAM LINCOLN had a sense of humor—a fact that appears to be overlooked each February...
...The war over Lincoln's religion has resembled the tug over Lincoln's politics...
...Miss Nicolay, like all Lincoln lovers, deals a bit with the perennial problem of Lincoln's religion...
...But in substance the work is a trite recitation of communications between commanders in the East and headquarters in Washington...
...But the atheists have claimed him for their own, and the religionists have argued with them for Lincoln's soul...
...It tells, essentially, the "Herndon story" of Lincoln's rise from the gutter to greatness...
...96 pp...
...The theme of Volume 1 is the incompetence and villainy of Gen...
...The most pretentious recent addition to Lincoln lore is the military "history" (Lincoln Finds a General) by an Indiana professor of mathematics...
...Annually the Lincoln season brings forth an astonishing assortment of folderol about the martyred President...
...Helen Nicolay's biography of her father has something in it of John G. Nicolay's own adoration of Abraham Lincoln...
...But for the most part, the Lincoln literature of 1949 was uninspired and uncritical...
...Only in an introductory chapter of Volume 1 and a few final pages of Volume 2 does the author indicate that Lincoln (who, need it be said, was his own commander) found a general...
...2 vol...
...For 1949 was not a great year in Lincoln literature, and there were few scholarly efforts to assess the man or his age...
...Kenneth P. Williams has yielded to the ever fascinating temptation to "armchair" the strategy of the Civil War...
...Critics of the Nicolay and Hay 10-volume Abraham Lincoln: A History have variously alleged that the President's one-time secretaries suppressed documents, inserted their own partisan interpretation, capitalized on their association with the White House, kept documents from competent historians, and wrote under the jealously critical eye of Robert Lincoln...
...Miss Nicolay's skilled, disingenuously direct narrative of her father as a German immigrant youth, an Illinois country printer, secretary, consul-general in Paris, and finally marshal of the Supreme Court while he labored unceasingly at his book, presents, by implication, a positive denial of all such criticisms...
...Mac-millan...
...Latest broadside on the side of the angels (who seem to be winning at the moment) is C. E. Macartney's Lincoln and the Bible which demonstrates, in 96 pages, that Lincoln knew, read, and frequently quoted from Holy Writ...
Vol. 14 • March 1950 • No. 3
