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Lincoln's America: 1809 - 1865
To fully understand and appreciate Abraham Lincoln’s legacy, it is important to examine the society that influenced the life, character, and leadership of the man who would become the Great Emancipator. Editors Joseph R. Fornieri and Sara Vaughn Gabbard have done just that in Lincoln’s 1809–1865 , a collection of original essays by ten eminent historians that place Lincoln within his nineteenth-century cultural context.
Among the topics explored in Lincoln’s America are religion, education, middle-class family life, the antislavery movement, politics, and law. Of particular interest are the transition of American intellectual and philosophical thought from the Enlightenment to Romanticism and the influence of this evolution on Lincoln's own ideas.
By examining aspects of Lincoln’s life—his personal piety in comparison with the beliefs of his contemporaries, his success in self-schooling when frontier youths had limited opportunities for a formal education, his marriage and home life in Springfield, and his legal career—in light of broader cultural contexts such as the development of democracy, the growth of visual arts, the question of slaves as property, and French visitor Alexis de Tocqueville’s observations on America, the contributors delve into the mythical Lincoln of folklore and discover a developing political mind and a changing nation.
As Lincoln’s America shows, the sociopolitical culture of nineteenth-century America was instrumental in shaping Lincoln’s character and leadership. The essays in this volume paint a vivid picture of a young nation and its sixteenth president, arguably its greatest leader.
Among the topics explored in Lincoln’s America are religion, education, middle-class family life, the antislavery movement, politics, and law. Of particular interest are the transition of American intellectual and philosophical thought from the Enlightenment to Romanticism and the influence of this evolution on Lincoln's own ideas.
By examining aspects of Lincoln’s life—his personal piety in comparison with the beliefs of his contemporaries, his success in self-schooling when frontier youths had limited opportunities for a formal education, his marriage and home life in Springfield, and his legal career—in light of broader cultural contexts such as the development of democracy, the growth of visual arts, the question of slaves as property, and French visitor Alexis de Tocqueville’s observations on America, the contributors delve into the mythical Lincoln of folklore and discover a developing political mind and a changing nation.
As Lincoln’s America shows, the sociopolitical culture of nineteenth-century America was instrumental in shaping Lincoln’s character and leadership. The essays in this volume paint a vivid picture of a young nation and its sixteenth president, arguably its greatest leader.
- GenresHistory
256 pages, Hardcover
First published November 7, 2008
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December 5, 2008
Lincoln’s America: 1809–1865, edited by Joseph R. Fornieri and Sara Vaughn Gabbard (Southern Illinois University Press, 978-0-8093-2878-9) is a collection of ten original and new essays by historians from around the country. Although each of the essays include Lincoln in its title, the themes are less biographical, and more sociological; they examine the different ways society shaped the life and character of the 16th President of the United States.
In the essay “The Middle-Class Marriage of Abraham and Mary Lincoln,” Kenneth J. Winkle, Sorensen Professor of American History at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, paints a hugely interesting and very readable portrait of the America into which Lincoln was born, where families were economic units and more cloth was produced in American homes than in all the textile mills combined. In 1840, two years before Abraham and Mary married, 80% of all men living in their county were farmers. But just 20 years later that number had shrunk to only 39%. The dramatic shift away from farming affected people’s lives in ways that were unimaginable, and, for the U.S. uncharted. As Winkle writes, “Housekeeping became a science… and families, and women in particular, became consumers rather than producers.”
“The Middle-Class Marriage of Abraham and Mary Lincoln” by Kenneth J. Winkle is available for download in its entirety for the whole week.
ForeWord Book Club
In the essay “The Middle-Class Marriage of Abraham and Mary Lincoln,” Kenneth J. Winkle, Sorensen Professor of American History at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, paints a hugely interesting and very readable portrait of the America into which Lincoln was born, where families were economic units and more cloth was produced in American homes than in all the textile mills combined. In 1840, two years before Abraham and Mary married, 80% of all men living in their county were farmers. But just 20 years later that number had shrunk to only 39%. The dramatic shift away from farming affected people’s lives in ways that were unimaginable, and, for the U.S. uncharted. As Winkle writes, “Housekeeping became a science… and families, and women in particular, became consumers rather than producers.”
“The Middle-Class Marriage of Abraham and Mary Lincoln” by Kenneth J. Winkle is available for download in its entirety for the whole week.
ForeWord Book Club
Displaying 1 of 1 review