Judging Lincoln
By Frank J. Williams; foreword by Harold Holzer; epilogue by John Y. Simon
(January 2009 Civil War News)

Illustrated, notes, bibliography, index, 202 pp., 2002. Southern Illinois University Press, 1915 University Press Dr., Carbondale, IL 62901, $17.95 plus shipping.

Reviewer: Ted Alexander
Ted Alexander is a historian and author of more than 100 articles for various publications and several books. He is Park Historian at Antietam National Battlefield.

Review:
Scholars have consistently rated Abraham Lincoln as our top president. Indeed, if books are any indicator in this measurement, more than 17,000 separate titles have been published on the subject of our 16th President.

Needless to say the world is not short of Lincoln scholars either. One of this country’s leading experts on this subject is Frank J. Williams. He is chief justice of the Supreme Court of Rhode Island, yet over the years has earned a reputation as an important figure in the Lincoln field.

Williams is the author or editor of more than nine books on Lincoln. He is also founding chairman of the Lincoln Forum and serves on the United States Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission.

Williams has spent a lifetime studying Lincoln. This book with its nine essays showcases 25 years of scholarship on the subject. Each essay covers a different topic related to Lincoln, who, in the author’s words, “remains the central figure of the American experience, past, present, and future.”

The lead essay examines Lincoln’s role as the leading cultural icon in American history, both in popular and political culture. Many modern presidents have sought to “get right with Lincoln,” as his allure transcends partisan politics.

John F. Kennedy consciously imitated Lincoln’s farewell to the people of Springfield in his farewell to the people of Massachusetts prior to entering the White House. Both Johnson and Nixon compared their burden of Vietnam with Lincoln’s struggle to save the Union. Williams concludes of Lincoln,  “His performance in the White House set the standard of presidential and democratic leadership.”

As Williams aptly points out, “There is plenty of Lincoln to go around,” and his image even transcends ideology. Dr. Sun Yat-sen and Gandhi are just two of many political leaders around the world who were inspired by our 16th President.

This essay also examines the love-hate relationship that Lincoln endures in the African-American community. In this regard Lincoln “has had his ups and downs,” from “Great Emancipator in the wake of the Civil War” to “racist” in the contemporary writings of Lerone Bennett.

The second essay examines the women in Lincoln’s life. In this the reader is provided the obligatory discussion of relationships with stepmother, Ann Rutledge, Mary Todd etc. Yet, each was important. Williams contends, “because of his ability to recognize and utilize both masculine and feminine qualities in his character and conduct, Lincoln became and remains the role model for democratic leadership.”

Several essays focus on Lincoln as commander in chief. Williams states that Lincoln often meddled in military affairs at “the wrong time.” A case in point was his badgering of Gen. George G. Meade following the battle of Gettysburg.

While the Union commander pursued Lee’s defeated army with an Army of the Potomac that had suffered horrendous casualties and was short of supplies, horseflesh and ammunition, Lincoln attempted to direct Meade’s operations from inside “the beltway” in Washington. Overall, the author gives credit to Lincoln as an evolving commander in chief who “would grow into America’s finest political leader.”

One of the most interesting essays in the book deals with the 1864 election. Seventy-eight percent of the soldiers voted for Lincoln. The pre-Hatch Act machinations exercised by the Lincoln government to get out the vote make some of the election intrigue of very recent American history look like exercises in virtue.

Government employees were urged to get out and campaign and vote “correctly.” In Indiana, troops stationed there from out of state were invited to cast their votes for Lincoln. Northern newspapers such as the New York Tribune accused Democrats of digging up unmarked soldiers’ graves to secure more names for the ballot list.

Conversely, other publications charged that Union officers opened absentee ballots in camps and destroyed those for McClellan.

Other essays look at Lincoln’s role in molding the 13th Amendment and how his leadership stacked up to Roosevelt’s and Churchill’s in World War II. The concluding essay surveys the history of Lincolniana collecting.

In Judging Lincoln, Frank Williams has produced an engagingly written collection of essays that will have broad appeal to both Lincoln scholars and American history buffs.