ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 11, 1996 TAG: 9602090118
SECTION: BOOKS PAGE: F-4 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: BOOK REVIEW
SOURCE: REVIEWED BY NELSON HARRIS
LINCOLN. By David Herbert Donald. Simon & Schuster. $35.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Donald has produced another remarkable biographical work in his current best-seller, "Lincoln." Donald's 600-page text on the life of Abraham Lincoln is an engrossing survey of Lincoln's life from his Kentucky boyhood through his supreme political achievement in being elected president.
One will not find here the Lincoln of fable and third-grade history lessons. Instead, Lincoln emerges as a complex, articulate political operative within Illinois and in the birthing of the national Republican Party. Lincoln's engagement of his political opponents, most notably Stephen Douglas, would challenge any notion that politics in Lincoln's day was more simple or civil than it is today.
The author certainly respects his subject, but he does not shy away from showing Lincoln in some of his more vulnerable moments and musings. For example, Donald provides ample evidence that Lincoln wavered on the Emancipation Proclamation; flirted with the notion of colonizing blacks; was not initially respected by the top brass of the Union Army; presided over a fractured and, at times, disloyal cabinet, and was prone to long spells of depression. All of this was further exacerbated by the fact that during his presidency, Lincoln sought to govern in the midst of disunion and was even criticized by the "radical" and "conservative" elements within his own party, neither of which he completely satisfied. The political division between his closest advisers mirrored the split that existed in the North: Was the Civil War being fought to abolish slavery or to preserve the Union?
Donald seems to give credit to the fact that Lincoln gained a second term to the strategic military victories of Grant and Sherman that came just a few months before the presidential election of 1864. Donald's assessment of the 1864 political climate contains an increasingly popular peace movement fueled by the Union's inability to stop the Confederate military. As Union casualties increased, the populace's appetite for war decreased. Thus Grant's successful assault on and around Richmond and Sherman's torching of Georgia provided Lincoln the necessary political tinder to rekindle the North's war furnace.
While Lincoln battled on a variety of political fronts, Donald makes the reader acutely aware of Lincoln's struggles at home. The premature deaths of his young sons, Willie and Tad, and the subsequent despondency of his wife, Mary, left Lincoln often isolated and emotionally drained. The book's photographs of Lincoln provide ample visual evidence of the physical toll exacted upon Lincoln by both his personal and political problems.
For those who know little about Lincoln, this biography would provide a comprehensive look into the life of our 16th president. For those who think they already know everything about Lincoln, perhaps it is time to read again.
Nelson Harris is minister of Ridgewood Baptist Church
LENGTH: Medium: 58 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Abraham and Tad Lincolnby CNB