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The Portable Abraham Lincoln
Celebrate the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth with this new edition of his greatest speeches and writings
Abraham Lincoln endowed the American language with a vigor and moral energy that has all but disappeared from today's public rhetoric. Lincoln's writings are testaments of our history, windows into his enigmatic personality, and resonant examples of the writer's art. The Portable Abraham Lincoln contains the great public speeches - the first debate with Stephen Douglas, the "House Divided" speech, the Gettysburg Address, the Second Inaugural Address - along with less familiar letters and memoranda that chart Lincoln's political career, his evolving stand against slavery, and his day-to-day conduct of the Civil War. This edition includes a revised introduction, updated notes on the text, a chronology of Lincoln's life, and four new selections of his writing.
Abraham Lincoln endowed the American language with a vigor and moral energy that has all but disappeared from today's public rhetoric. Lincoln's writings are testaments of our history, windows into his enigmatic personality, and resonant examples of the writer's art. The Portable Abraham Lincoln contains the great public speeches - the first debate with Stephen Douglas, the "House Divided" speech, the Gettysburg Address, the Second Inaugural Address - along with less familiar letters and memoranda that chart Lincoln's political career, his evolving stand against slavery, and his day-to-day conduct of the Civil War. This edition includes a revised introduction, updated notes on the text, a chronology of Lincoln's life, and four new selections of his writing.
369 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1992
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Abraham Lincoln
2,426 books1,995 followersAbraham Lincoln was the sixteenth president of the United States from 1861 and led the country during the Civil War.
Lincoln, a moderate, navigated a contentious array of factions with friends and opponents from the Democratic Party and Republican Party. He exploited mutual enmity of the factions, carefully distributing political patronage, and appealed to the American people.
Lincoln closely supervised the strategy and tactics in the war effort, including the selection of generals, and implemented a naval blockade of the trade. He suspended habeas corpus in Maryland and elsewhere, and averted British intervention by defusing the Trent Affair. He issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared free all enslaved persons in states "in rebellion against the United States." It also directed the Navy to "recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons" and to receive them "into the armed service." Lincoln promoted the thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished slavery, except as punishment for a crime.
Lincoln managed his own successful re-election campaign and sought to heal the war-torn nation through reconciliation. On April 14, 1865, just five days after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, he attended a play at theater of Ford in Washington, District of Columbia, with Mary Todd Lincoln, his wife, when Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Boothe fatally assassinated him.
Lincoln is remembered as a martyr and a national hero for for his efforts to preserve the union and abolish slavery. Popular and scholarly polls often rank Lincoln as the greatest president in American history.
Lincoln, a moderate, navigated a contentious array of factions with friends and opponents from the Democratic Party and Republican Party. He exploited mutual enmity of the factions, carefully distributing political patronage, and appealed to the American people.
Lincoln closely supervised the strategy and tactics in the war effort, including the selection of generals, and implemented a naval blockade of the trade. He suspended habeas corpus in Maryland and elsewhere, and averted British intervention by defusing the Trent Affair. He issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared free all enslaved persons in states "in rebellion against the United States." It also directed the Navy to "recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons" and to receive them "into the armed service." Lincoln promoted the thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished slavery, except as punishment for a crime.
Lincoln managed his own successful re-election campaign and sought to heal the war-torn nation through reconciliation. On April 14, 1865, just five days after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, he attended a play at theater of Ford in Washington, District of Columbia, with Mary Todd Lincoln, his wife, when Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Boothe fatally assassinated him.
Lincoln is remembered as a martyr and a national hero for for his efforts to preserve the union and abolish slavery. Popular and scholarly polls often rank Lincoln as the greatest president in American history.
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February 10, 2024In a lot of ways, a century's worth of civil rights makes it somewhat hard to discern a lot of the motivations behind the civil war. Much of Lincoln's writings are as one might expect, reflecting the fact that for as long as he could recall he had been opposed to slavery and supporting the idea that the statement in the Declaration of Independence that all men were created equal applied regardless of skin colour: "in five of the then thirteen states... free negroes were voters, and, in proportion to their numbers, had the same part in making the Constitution that the white people had... colored persons were not only included in the body of ‘the people of the United States,’ by whom the Constitution was ordained and established; but in at least five of the States they had the power to act, and, doubtless, did act, by their suffrages."
These sort of ideas were debated as Lincoln stood for the Senate, with his opponent Senator Douglas, arguing that "this new doctrine preached by Mr. Lincoln and his party will dissolve the Union if it succeeds. They are trying to array all the Northern States in one body against the South, to excite a sectional war between the free States and the slave States, in order that the one or the other may be driven to the wall." It's the same sort of idea Mary Cheshunt propounded in her diaries, that Lincoln was a tyrant who had forced the confederate states out of the Union. In practice though, it's not really an idea that stands-up. To the contrary, Lincoln's essential argument is that the Missouri compromise had been badly undermined as new slave states had been admitted to the Union and that the Dred Scott decision was undermining the ability of Free states to keep slavery out.
When Lincoln wrote that he thought that ultimately slavery would either be endemic in the Union or that it would be extirpated entirely, he was essentially opposing a remorseless trend towards the expansion of slavery. In this sense, Lincoln might well have agreed with Heather Richardson's argument that conservatism is a radical extremist movement that has incessantly agitated against the principles the United States was founded on: "you say you are conservative—eminently conservative—while we are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the sort. What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried? We stick to, contend for, the identical old policy on the point in controversy which was adopted by “our fathers who framed the Government under which we live;” while you with one accord reject, and scout, and spit upon that old policy."
Far from being a doctrinaire emancipationist, Lincoln is often extremely pragmatic about the slave states: "Nebraska is urged as a great Union-saving measure. Well I too, go for saving the Union. Much as I hate slavery, I would consent to the extension of it rather than see the Union dissolved, just as I would consent to any GREAT evil, to avoid a GREATER one." Towards the end of his life, he looked at the readmission of southern states that were likely to seek to constrain the rights of former slaves with an equally dispassionate stance: "the question is not whether the Louisiana government, as it stands, is quite all that is desirable. The question is “Will it be wiser to take it as it is, and help to improve it; or to reject, and disperse it?” At least, some of this comes back to the rationale was Lincoln's opposition to slavery. He does seem to have found it abhorrent in principle, but he equally seems to have felt it was a way to undermine the overall dignity of labour and to create a form of feudal aristocracy in the United States: "The whole nation is interested that the best use shall be made of these territories. We want them for the homes of free white people. This they cannot be, to any considerable extent, if slavery shall be planted within them." In a lot of ways, he was as concerned the slavery was invidious to the white population as he was that it was inhumane to the black population.
That does mean that his support for the civil rights of African Americans was fairly circumscribed. He was clear to Douglas that "Let it not be said I am contending for the establishment of political and social equality between the whites and blacks. I have already said the contrary... Senator Douglas remarked, in substance, that he had always considered this government was made for the white people and not for the negroes. Why, in point of mere fact, I think so too." This leads to some aspects of his views that are deeply unpalatable to a modern header. Most obviously, he spent a great deal of time examining the possibility that African Americans could be deported to another country, along the lines of what had already happened in Liberia: "It is better for us both, therefore, to be separated. I know that there are free men among you, who even if they could better their condition are not as much inclined to go out of the country as those, who being slaves could obtain their freedom on this condition... Applications have been made to me by many free Americans of African descent to favor their emigration, with a view to such colonization as was contemplated in recent acts of Congress. " He considers a scheme to establish a colony in Central America, which only fails doe to lack of support from the local governments.
These sort of ideas were debated as Lincoln stood for the Senate, with his opponent Senator Douglas, arguing that "this new doctrine preached by Mr. Lincoln and his party will dissolve the Union if it succeeds. They are trying to array all the Northern States in one body against the South, to excite a sectional war between the free States and the slave States, in order that the one or the other may be driven to the wall." It's the same sort of idea Mary Cheshunt propounded in her diaries, that Lincoln was a tyrant who had forced the confederate states out of the Union. In practice though, it's not really an idea that stands-up. To the contrary, Lincoln's essential argument is that the Missouri compromise had been badly undermined as new slave states had been admitted to the Union and that the Dred Scott decision was undermining the ability of Free states to keep slavery out.
When Lincoln wrote that he thought that ultimately slavery would either be endemic in the Union or that it would be extirpated entirely, he was essentially opposing a remorseless trend towards the expansion of slavery. In this sense, Lincoln might well have agreed with Heather Richardson's argument that conservatism is a radical extremist movement that has incessantly agitated against the principles the United States was founded on: "you say you are conservative—eminently conservative—while we are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the sort. What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried? We stick to, contend for, the identical old policy on the point in controversy which was adopted by “our fathers who framed the Government under which we live;” while you with one accord reject, and scout, and spit upon that old policy."
Far from being a doctrinaire emancipationist, Lincoln is often extremely pragmatic about the slave states: "Nebraska is urged as a great Union-saving measure. Well I too, go for saving the Union. Much as I hate slavery, I would consent to the extension of it rather than see the Union dissolved, just as I would consent to any GREAT evil, to avoid a GREATER one." Towards the end of his life, he looked at the readmission of southern states that were likely to seek to constrain the rights of former slaves with an equally dispassionate stance: "the question is not whether the Louisiana government, as it stands, is quite all that is desirable. The question is “Will it be wiser to take it as it is, and help to improve it; or to reject, and disperse it?” At least, some of this comes back to the rationale was Lincoln's opposition to slavery. He does seem to have found it abhorrent in principle, but he equally seems to have felt it was a way to undermine the overall dignity of labour and to create a form of feudal aristocracy in the United States: "The whole nation is interested that the best use shall be made of these territories. We want them for the homes of free white people. This they cannot be, to any considerable extent, if slavery shall be planted within them." In a lot of ways, he was as concerned the slavery was invidious to the white population as he was that it was inhumane to the black population.
That does mean that his support for the civil rights of African Americans was fairly circumscribed. He was clear to Douglas that "Let it not be said I am contending for the establishment of political and social equality between the whites and blacks. I have already said the contrary... Senator Douglas remarked, in substance, that he had always considered this government was made for the white people and not for the negroes. Why, in point of mere fact, I think so too." This leads to some aspects of his views that are deeply unpalatable to a modern header. Most obviously, he spent a great deal of time examining the possibility that African Americans could be deported to another country, along the lines of what had already happened in Liberia: "It is better for us both, therefore, to be separated. I know that there are free men among you, who even if they could better their condition are not as much inclined to go out of the country as those, who being slaves could obtain their freedom on this condition... Applications have been made to me by many free Americans of African descent to favor their emigration, with a view to such colonization as was contemplated in recent acts of Congress. " He considers a scheme to establish a colony in Central America, which only fails doe to lack of support from the local governments.
January 7, 2024
3.5. Dude was witty as hell. Would have been interesting to hear his opinion on Brown v Board
July 1, 2022
3 stars for editing of book. Order of letters/speeches doesn’t always flow. 5 stars for content.
November 6, 2017
Excellent writing. Lincoln was a REAL writer, probably the best writer of all the American presidents. This collection of his writings includes the more famous texts but also includes more obscure writings like letters to acquaintances and his "future" wife, his debates and speeches. The book presents them chronologically so by reading it you can see the evolution of Lincoln's thinking and being. You see a hopeful Lincoln progress into a resolved and depressed Lincoln who sees the inevitability of the Civil War and perhaps his own demise. You see in the text his evolution of philosophies of leadership and government, race relations, political ideology and his ability/inability to lead or even influence the nation. I loved his biblical allusions and dependence on God, though many argue he was nonreligious. It is interesting to reflect on Lincoln's popularity at the time of his administration and after his assassination. I highly recommend this book.
June 5, 2023
"Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say for one that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition, is yet to be developed. I am young and unknown to many of you. I was born and have ever remained in the most humble walks of life. I have no wealthy or popular relations to recommend me. My case is thrown exclusively upon the independent voters of the county, and if elected they will have conferred a favor upon me, for which I shall be unremitting in my labors to compensate. But if the good people in their wisdom shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have been too familiar with disappointments to be very much chagrined."
October 23, 2020
A phenomenal book that really helps you to understand who Lincoln was as a person. Also, I believe writings/speeches are included that show Lincoln in a very human light, showing him at his best and at moments less than that. It is incredible how you can get to know someone when reading so much in their own words.
May 20, 2021
Great selection of Lincoln's letters and speeches, though perhaps some more robust editorial comments could have aided the reader more fully with respect to context and importance of these selected writings.
January 22, 2023
I haven’t read it all but what I have read is good.
December 30, 2012
I've been working through this one for awhile. A great collection of letters and speeches by Honest Abe, given in chronological order throughout. Certainly, many of the most famous bits are included (Gettysburg Address, 2nd Inaugural address, etc.) but there are many poignant, funny, pithy letters and smaller speeches included, as well. Oh--and there are plenty that were dry enough in their best Lincoln legalese that I struggled to get through them. I'll admit it, I did skim at least one or two of the longest excerpts. I laughed several times over some of the wry and biting commentary Lincoln gave in some of his debates with candidate Douglas. Those boys certainly gave each other a run for the money! Wonderful history, wonderful views as to the reality of the era in which Lincoln lived. It was great to finally finish this just a few weeks after seeing the wonderful film "Lincoln." Everyone should read something like this, all primary-source material, rather than (or at least in addition to) biographies about Lincoln by other authors. To get to know him better is to read his own words.
June 20, 2013
"Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say for one that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition, is yet to be developed. I am young and unknown to many of you. I was born and have ever remained in the most humble walks of life. I have no wealthy or popular relations to recommend me. My case is thrown exclusively upon the independent voters of the county, and if elected they will have conferred a favor upon me, for which I shall be unremitting in my labors to compensate. But if the good people in their wisdom shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have been too familiar with disappointments to be very much chagrined."
July 29, 2011
Superbly chosen collection of Lincoln's letters, speeches, notes, memos, orders, and other writings spanning 1832 to 1865. If you're just beginning your post-high school study of the Civil War period, then Delbanco's compact 330 page collection should be the third book you read, after a good one volume biography of Lincoln (David Herbert Donald would be a fine start) and after a standard one volume history of the Civil War (James McPherson will do).
September 2, 2017
I would've never expected this to be a pageturner, but somehow the editorial commentary, the choice of what to include, and the variety of letters and speeches themselves combined for a very interesting, comprehensive, and clear view of both Lincoln the man and Lincoln the president. This book did more to solidify my understanding of the factors leading up to the Civil War than any other thing I've read or studied.
June 2, 2009
The Portable Abraham Lincoln gives the reader a very good, clear picture of one of our most famous presidents. However, this is not a laudatory biography as we have all become accustomed to--it is a true picture of Lincoln in his own words, removing all of the praise and showing the man as he really was. I thoroughly enjoyed the selections in this book.
March 21, 2008
Turns out one of the top 4 or 5 greatest writers in American history actually served as president. Barack Obama? Please.
Here's a nice overview of some of Lincoln's writings.
Here's a nice overview of some of Lincoln's writings.
May 17, 2008
Lincoln's major speeches along with a fine essay by Andrew Delbanco.
June 2, 2009
Chronologically arranged, the book does include some minor writings, like letters that are occasionally of dubious interest, but for a compact collection of Ol' Abe's works, handy indeed.
August 22, 2008
another cool story of the life of a great historical figure.
March 11, 2016
Read Lyceum, Cooper Union, Douglas debate, first and second inaugural, and Gettysburg.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews