An engaging scholarly study of the dynamic links between Lincolns
image and the rapidly changing American culture during the six
decades after his assassination. Sociologist Schwartz (George
Washington, not reviewed) wants to test sociological theories with
historical evidence and bring history back into his own discipline.
Fortunately, he also knows how to tell a good story. One neednt
like sociology (which appears here only at the start and finish and
is spread on lightly anyway) to learn much from his engrossing
account of the sources of Lincolns changing reputation between 1865
and the 1920s. (A forthcoming second volume will bring the story up
to date.) Schwartzs approach differs from Merrill Petersons Lincoln
in American Memory (1994), which focused on the contents of
Lincolns image: Schwartz explores instead how public perception of
Lincoln waxed and waned as it did (the 16th President was by no
means universally admired during his lifetime). Drawing on a wide
variety of sources (art and statuary, schoolbooks and speeches, and
the efforts of reputational entrepreneurs), Schwartz shows that
Lincoln came to be revered as he was as much on account of the
needs of particular historical moments and groups in the population
as because of his own deeds and words. In other words, Americans
constructed Lincolns image in their own. Such an argument will not
surprise historians engaged in the scholarly industry of memory
studies. But it reminds us of the complex interdependence of fact,
memory, and culture. It also fills out our understanding of such
specific phenomena as North-South reconciliation, military
preparation, and race relations through the Progressive Era. And
true to its sociological foundations, it reveals how images grow
more from need than reality, and how reputations are as likely to
be imposed as achieved. Anyone who wishes to learn more of Lincoln,
the nation he helped govern, and the way memory serves social and
cultural functions will gain from this highly illuminating work.
(b&w illustrations not seen) (Kirkus Reviews)
Abraham Lincoln has long dominated the pantheon of American
presidents. From his lavish memorial in Washington and
immortalization on Mount Rushmore, one might assume he was a
national hero rather than a controversial president who came close
to losing his 1864 bid for reelection. In "Abraham Lincoln and the
Forge of National Memory," Barry Schwartz aims at these
contradictions in his study of Lincoln's reputation, from the
president's death through the industrial revolution to his
apotheosis during the Progressive Era and First World War.
Schwartz draws on a wide array of materials--painting and
sculpture, popular magazines and school textbooks, newspapers and
oratory--to examine the role that Lincoln's memory has played in
American life. He explains, for example, how dramatic funeral rites
elevated Lincoln's reputation even while funeral eulogists
questioned his presidential actions, and how his reputation
diminished and grew over the next four decades. Schwartz links
transformations of Lincoln's image to changes in the society.
Commemorating Lincoln helped Americans to think about their
country's development from a rural republic to an industrial
democracy and to articulate the way economic and political reform,
military power, ethnic and race relations, and nationalism enhanced
their conception of themselves as one people.
Lincoln's memory assumed a double aspect of "mirror" and "lamp,"
acting at once as a reflection of the nation's concerns and an
illumination of its ideals, and Schwartz offers a fascinating view
of these two functions as they were realized in the commemorative
symbols of an ever-widening circle of ethnic, religious, political,
and regional communities. Thefirst part of a study that will
continue through the present, "Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of
National Memory" is the story of how America has shaped its past
selectively and imaginatively around images rooted in a real person
whose character and achievements helped shape his country's future.
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