His image today is part of America, from the penny to Mount
Rushmore, but in his own day Abraham Lincoln was as much reviled as
he was revered, and he remained a controversial figure up to the
time of his assassination. Now one of our preeminent authorities on
Lincoln charts his rocky road from obscure western politician to
national icon.
In Lincoln Seen and Heard, Harold Holzer probes the development
of Lincoln's image and reputation in his own time. He examines a
vast array of visual and documentary sources to demonstrate the
president's impact both on the public and on the historical
imagination, enabling us to see the man from Illinois as his
contemporaries saw him.
Holzer considers a wide range of images -- prints, portraits,
political cartoons -- to reveal what they say about Lincoln. He
shows the ways in which Lincoln was depicted as Great Emancipator
and as commander-in-chief, how he was assailed in cartoons from
both sides of the Mason-Dixon line, and how printmakers both
memorialized and capitalized on his assassination. Sharing dozens
of historic reproductions, Holzer writes with unabashed enthusiasm
as he unravels the symbolic meaning and the message of these images
and explains their relation to political and military events of the
time.
Holzer also takes a closer look at Lincoln's oratory, the words
of a man often ridiculed for his manner of speaking and homespun
image. He shows how Lincoln's choice of words in the Emancipation
Proclamation was actually designed to minimize its humanitarianism
and argues that the myth of his failure at Gettysburg has been
unfairly exaggerated. Through this provocative collection, Lincoln
emerges not only as a leader dependent uponhis public image but
also as an active participant in its development. Lincoln Seen and
Heard helps us distinguish man from myth, while offering a superb
introduction to the work of one of our most provocative Lincoln
scholars.
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