More than any other American before or since, Abraham Lincoln
had a way with words that has shaped our national idea of
ourselves. Actively disliked and even vilified by many Americans
for the vast majority of his career, this most studied, most
storied, and most documented leader still stirs up controversy.
Showing not only the development of a powerful mind but the ways in
which our sixteenth president was perceived by equally brilliant
American minds of a decidedly literary and political bent, Harold
K. Bush's "Lincoln in His Own Time" provides some of the most
significant contemporary meditations on the Great Emancipator's
legacy and cultural significance. The forty-two entries in this
spirited collection present the best reflections of Lincoln as
thinker, reader, writer, and orator by those whose lives
intertwined with his or those who had direct contact with
eyewitnesses. Bush focuses on Lincoln's literary interests,
reading, and work as a writer as well as the evolving debate about
his religious views that became central to his memory. Along with a
star-struck Walt Whitman writing of Lincoln's "inexpressibly sweet"
face and manner, Elizabeth Keckly's description of a bereaved
Lincoln, "genius and greatness weeping over love's idol lost," and
William Stoddard's report of the "cheery, hopeful, morning light"
on Lincoln's face after a long night debating the fate of the
nation, the volume includes selections from works by famous
contemporary figures such as Hawthorne, Douglass, Stowe, Lowell,
Twain, and Lincoln himself in addition to lesser-known selections
that have been nearly lost to history. Each entry is introduced by
a headnote that places the selection in historical and cultural
context; explanatory endnotes provide information about people and
places. A comprehensive introduction and a detailed chronology of
Lincoln's eventful life round out the volume. Bush's thoughtful
collection reveals Lincoln as a man of letters who crafted some of
the most memorable lines in our national vocabulary, explores the
striking mythologization of the martyred president that began
immediately upon his death, and then combines these two themes to
illuminate Lincoln's place in public memory as the absolute
embodiment of America's mythic civil religion. Beyond providing the
standard fare of reminiscences about the rhetorically brilliant
backwoodsman from the "Old Northwest," "Lincoln in His Own Time
"also maps a complex genealogy of the cultural work and iconic
status of Lincoln as quintessential scribe and prophet of the
American people.
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