Illustrated, notes, bibliography, index, 351 pp., 2010, Southern Illinois University Press, www.siupress.com, $32.95.

Among the names of 19th century personalities that most people would recognize are Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin. While they never met, and lived on different continents, both in many ways shared similar family relationships and held similar religious, social and scientific beliefs.

Both were born on the same day, lost their grandfathers before they were born, suffered the loss of their mothers before becoming teenagers, displeased their fathers with their vocational choices, took voyages to slave-holding areas that led them to hold anti-slavery views, had an interest in scientific progress, were self-educated in their occupational fields of choice, belonged to no formal religious organization, and experienced the loss of young children to disease.

They differed in that Lincoln was born into a poor, illiterate family and sought center-stage while Darwin was born into a prosperous, literate family and preferred to shun the limelight.

James Lander’s story is how two men, of vastly different social backgrounds, arrived at the conclusion that slavery was evil and must be abolished.

This story line is developed by discussions of the political, religious and scientific world that surrounded them and how they interacted with this world. This placing of Lincoln and Darwin into the society in which they lived adds greatly to an understanding of how their thought processes matured. 

The heart of the book is about race relations — are all men equal or are some races superior to others? In telling this tale, the author focuses on the scientific approach that was used by Lincoln and Darwin to answer this question.

As they wrestled with this question, both faced powerful antagonists: Stephen Douglas for Lincoln and Louis Agassiz for Darwin. How they both confronted the arguments presented by these antagonists provides a keen insight into the character of both men.

It needs to be noted that Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species only arrived in America during the winter of 1859-1860, too late to impact the Lincoln-Douglas debates, but in time to become part of the ideological struggle for people’s minds during the war years and into Reconstruction. Lincoln and Darwin’s account of race relations includes the Emancipation Proclamation and the proposed establishment of ex-slave colonies in Africa and Central America.

An underlying current in the book is Lincoln’s interest in scientific inventions and improvements of society. Here we see Lincoln as a lawyer participating in patent cases, patenting his own invention, and seeking improved weapons for the war effort. Most fascinating is seeing Lincoln and his cabinet trying to harness the American scientific community into a partnership with the Federal government.

This book has little to say about Civil War battles. However, it contains much material that gives a keen and unusual insight into the shaping of Lincoln and a far greater understanding of Darwin as a human being as he comments on slavery and the Civil War.

In telling his tale, the author also provides excellent background information on how America’s present social and political dogma evolved. Those seeking to understand how contradictions within the religious, scientific and political world can shape a person will find much of interest in this book. 

Reviewer: Charles H. Bogart

Charles H. Bogart has a BA in history from Thomas More College and an MA in urban planning from Ohio State University. He is the historian for Frankfort, Kentucky's Fort Boone Civil War Battle Site.