Lincoln Harvest
Hesseltine, W. B.
BOOKS Lincoln: A New Harvest By William B. Hesseltine Abraham Lincoln, by Benjamin P. Thomas. Knopf. 548 pp. $5.75. Lincoln The President: Midstream, by J. G. Randall. Dodd, Mead. 467 pp. ...
...Veterans in Politics...
...Ignoring Lincoln Finds A General, a military study of the civil war, Vol...
...More successful in conveying the spirit of the times is another picture-book, Divided We Fought, which brings together a competent historian and several expert photographers in a highly satisfying combination...
...University of Illinois Press...
...II Despite this opinion, another European-born Lincoln enthusiast has devoted his American career to the pictures of Lincoln...
...Lincoln unpretentious, and promptly detected the doctrinaire arrogance of Sumner...
...He shows Greeley's attempted interference in Illinois politics and their different approaches to the Chicago convention...
...542 pp...
...Constitutional Problems under Lincoln...
...Kenneth P. Williams {Lincoln Finds a General) has produced the third volume of his quest for Lincoln's general...
...It is narrative rather than analytical, but it is a thoroughly sound introduction for the novice in Lincolniana...
...Williams has done what few military historians have attempted: He has gone to the original sources to examine the contemporary record...
...Lincoln on canvas and many photographs too," wrote the Marquis, "but neither . . . reproduces, or is ever likely to reproduce, the expression of his face, still less will either suggest his true psychology...
...Divided We Fought...
...Turning from Congress, Randall discusses relations with the governors and with local politics, and deals at length with the war powers of the President—a subject he thoroughly explored in an earlier book...
...The amity was only verbal and formal...
...But during the Civil War there was an anonymous amity between the two governments...
...A Pictorial History of the War 1861-1865, by David Donald, Hirst D. Milhollen, Milton Kaplan, and Hulen Stuart...
...Only one of these books carries the story of the Civil War beyond the surrender of Lee and the death of Lincoln...
...Stefan Lorant first read of Lincoln while in a Nazi concentration camp...
...Impressions of Lincoln and the Civil War, by the Marquis Adolphe de Cham-brun...
...It was nine decades after the Emancipation Proclamation, four score and seven after Appomattox brought forth upon this continent a new nation, and the wonder of the people about the war, the men who fought it, and about the figure of the man who led it seemed only to increase...
...The first of these has a variant title, "Lincoln finds . . . , but it belongs definitely to the "Lincoln-and" genus...
...Harper...
...and the Czar and his officers scorned democracy...
...Lincoln and the Russians, by Albert A. Woldman...
...but he was not quite so good as Kenneth Williams and Harry Williams each make out...
...He writes editorial comments to show Grant's startling strategic insights and superb accomplishments as a field commander at Belmont, Forts Henry and Donelson, and Shiloh...
...IT WAS a great year for that branch of literature—comprised of varying parts of history, folklore, patriotic theology, and prose-poetry—known as Lincolniana and Civil War-iana...
...The Czar refused to join France and England in pressing for mediation between North and South, and the Russian fleet wintered in American waters just in case England attempted to aid rebellious Poles...
...Both feared and suspected England...
...The 1952 offering is the third in the series and finds Lincoln Midstream of the Civil War...
...Mathematics Prof...
...There are even a diminishing few of us holdouts against the self-acclaimed experts who guess McClellan couldn't really be as bad as the W^illiamses say he was...
...The tale is dramatically told, and adds up to an argument against hysteria in international relations and for an obsolete concept once known as neutrality...
...It is an interesting volume, handsomely executed, but it probably confirms the Marquis de Chambrun's judgment that neither camera nor canvas can reproduce Lincoln's spirit...
...Macmillan...
...256 pp...
...Those volumes surveyed the war in the east with a high degree of malice toward everyone, especially George B. McClellan and all historians who had found a moderate word for Little Mac or a critical suggestion about professional soldiers...
...His career illustrated Russian tolerance...
...Random House...
...Leading the new crop of Lincoln and Civil War books is Benjamin Thomas' one-volume Abraham Lincoln...
...Ill Turning from military to civilian politics, the newest Lincoln-and book explores the relations of Lincoln and Editor Horace Greeley...
...such one-volume works as Dale Carnegie's and Emil Ludwig's Lin-colns, the publisher ballyhooed the book as the first one-volume Lincoln since Lord Charnwood...
...Lincoln and the Russians by Arthur A. Woldman, seems to argue that two antipathetic political systems can live peaceably together...
...Putnam's...
...It is clear enough that however much of a politician or a military genius Lincoln may have been, he was not the leader of legislation...
...The theme of the book is summarized in one chapter happily titled "The Grand Army of the Republican Party...
...Among the observers who had an opportunity to see Lincoln from a fresh point of view was the Marquis de Chambrun who came to the United States late in 1864 looking for a job and eventually wound up as counsel for the French legation...
...7.50...
...296 pp...
...Grant was good, of course, (after all, he won the war —and what other test of a general is there...
...3. Grant's First Year in the West, by Kenneth P. Williams...
...Perhaps the most valuable portion of the book is the appendix wherein the author undertakes a critical discussion of the 100 known photographs of Lincoln...
...One wonders, indeed, if news photography has made any notable progress since Brady hurried his wet plates into a covered-wagon darkroom...
...During the war Lincoln and the politicians learned to use the soldier vote, and after the war veterans and politicians repeated the ritual of saving the Union each election day...
...311 pp...
...452 pp...
...523 pp...
...Withal, the comparison brings out much in the character of the two men and furnishes a running commentary on Lincoln's problems with the Republican radicals...
...For the more advanced student, there are J. G. Randall's volumes on Lincoln the President...
...But not even he could find fault with the reproductions...
...In the 90-odd years since Fort Sumter more than 5,000 Lincoln books, articles, poems, dramas, and sermons have appeared in print, and no one has counted or compiled the titles on the Civil War...
...Volume three deals with Grant's first year in the west, and the tone has changed to one of rapturous admiration...
...It is a well-written job which, by virtue of the author's capacity to stick to his subject instead of chasing off after "Lincoln-ands," presents a wholly credible picture with a minimum of idolatry and mythology...
...It remains, as the Southerners say, "The War," and its ramified implications make it, inescapably, the central theme of American history...
...Atlantic Impact, 1861, by Evan John...
...Lincoln, Charles Sumner, and others have an illustrative value...
...A common enemy...
...Lincoln and Greeley, by Harlan Hoyt Horner...
...Mary Dearing's Veterans in Politics throws some additional light on the continuing interest in the Civil War...
...7.50...
...The book ends with an inconclusive and extraneous chapter on the purchase of Alaska...
...175 pp...
...More color could have been added by exploring the strange career of the American minister at The Czar's court—the fabulous Cassius M. Clay of Kentucky...
...It is Knopf's second best-selling Lincoln book of the year...
...2.75...
...I have seen many attempts to portray Mr...
...A Picture Story of His Life, by Stefan Lorant...
...Harry Williams' Lincoln and His Generals is the other), and the book-jacket seemed to run it for the stunt-of-the-year award...
...The photographers have made new prints from the negatives of Brady and other photographers, and have drawn freely upon the sketches of the "war artists" who followed the armies...
...Language difficulties impeded him, and he got most of his facts wrong, but his personal observations of Lincoln, Mrs...
...Americans of the Civil War period had no use for Czarist autocracy...
...Macmillan...
...Other aspects of the Civil War— with more or less focus on Lincoln —are found in some of the new "Lincoln-and" books...
...Now he has produced a full-scale picture-biography replete with documents, cartoons, paintings, sketches, and photostated newspaper columns ranging from the marriage bond of Lincoln's parents to a suppressed snapshot of Lincoln in his coffin...
...Soon after he arrived in America a dozen years ago, his small book of Lincoln photographs was published...
...He found Lincoln dwelling on Macbeth in the last moments of the war, thought Mrs...
...He compares their respectively humble beginnings, their equally unsatisfactory Congressional careers, their diverse attitudes on the slavery issue...
...World...
...10...
...But he does not let the record speak for itself...
...The veterans' organizations, and the politicians who used the veterans, kept alive the issues and the memories...
...There was never any mystery about it in the first two volumes—Lincoln was going to find Grant...
...The reason...
...3.75...
...Perhaps the most significant aspect of the volume is its fresh revelation of Randall's common-sensical approach to Lincoln...
...Anecdotal in content, it deals largely with the Lincolns in the White House, Lincoln's story-telling, and the impressions of visitors...
...There is a discussion of Lincoln's relations with Congress and with its odd and interesting personalities...
...Copious extracts from these dispatches make up most of Lincoln and the Russians...
...There was no "road to reunion" for the veterans, and perhaps they did more than anyone else to keep anti-Southern stereotypes alive even to this day...
...He traces Greeley's steady opposition to Lincoln and to Lincoln's policies, his abortive peace mission, his opposition to Lincoln in 1864, and his editorial adulation after Lincoln's death...
...The Story of the G.A.R., by Mary H. Dearing...
...Actually, the book has greater merits than condensation...
...585 pp...
...Skillful editing reduced the number of illustrations to 500, and only a captious critic could quarrel with the selections...
...Dearing's careful scholarship, lucid style, and incisive analysis make her book richly rewarding and highly suggestive...
...In Atlantic Impact, 1861 British novelist Evan John surveys the Trent affair which almost, so they say, led to war with England...
...The Civil War remains the greatest experience of the American people...
...The Russian ambassador, "Baron" Stoeckl, filed regular dispatches, filled with apt observations and caustic commentary...
...Some of Lincoln's problems concerned foreign affairs...
...In letters to his wife he likened Ben Butler to Louis Napoleon, described the war ruins of Richmond, and deplored the revengeful spirit of the North after victory...
...Louisiana State University Press...
...Author Horner (Lincoln and Greeley) displays a remarkable ambivalence by professing an admiration for each of these conflicting characters...
Vol. 17 • February 1953 • No. 2
