Abraham Lincoln and the Union Part 10

At the same time, a futile attempt was made upon the life of Seward.

Booth temporarily escaped. Later he was overtaken and shot. His accomplices were hanged.

The pa.s.sage of sixty years has proved fully necessary to the placing of Lincoln in historic perspective. No President, in his own time, with the possible exception of Was.h.i.+ngton, was so bitterly hated and so fiercely reviled. On the other hand, none has been the object of such intemperate hero-wors.h.i.+p. However, the greatest of the land were, in the main, quick to see him in perspective and to recognize his historic significance. It is recorded of Davis that in after days he paid a beautiful tribute to Lincoln and said, "Next to the destruction of the Confederacy, the death of Abraham Lincoln was the darkest day the South has known."

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

There are two general histories, of conspicuous ability, that deal with this period:

J. F. Rhodes, "History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850", 7 vols. (1893-1906), and J. B. McMaster, "History of the People of the United States", 7 vols. (1883-1912). McMaster has the more "modern" point of view and is excellent but dry, without any sense of narrative. Rhodes has a somewhat older point of view. For example, he makes only a casual reference, in a quotation, to the munitions problem of 1861, though a.n.a.lyzing with great force and candor such const.i.tutional issues as the arrests under the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. The other strong points in his work are its sense of narrative, its freedom from hero-wors.h.i.+p, its independence of conventional views of Northern leaders. As to the South, it suffers from a certain Narrowness of vision due to the comparative scantiness of the material used. The same may be said of McMaster.

For Lincoln, there is no adequate brief biography. Perhaps the best is the most recent, "Abraham Lincoln", by Lord Charnwood ("Makers of the Nineteenth Century", 1917). It has a kind of cool detachment that hardly any biographer had shown previously, and yet this coolness is joined with extreme admiration. Short biographies worth considering are John T. Morse, Jr., "Abraham Lincoln" ("American Statesmen" Series, 2 vols., 1893), and Ida M. Tarbell, "Life of Abraham Lincoln", 2 vols. (1900).

The official biography is in ten volumes, "Abraham Lincoln, a History", by his secretaries, John G. Nicolay and John Hay (1890). It is a priceless doc.u.ment and as such is little likely to be forgotten. But its events are so numerous that they swamp the figure of Lincoln and yet are not numerous enough to const.i.tute a definitive history of the times. It is wholly eulogistic. The same authors edited "The Writings of Abraham Lincoln" (Biographical Edition, 2 vols., 1894), which has since been expanded (1905) and now fills twelve volumes. It is the definitive presentation of Lincoln's mind. A book much sought after by his enemies is William Henry Herndon and Jesse William Weik, "The History and Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln", 8 vols. (1889; unexpurgated edition). It contains about all we know of his early life and paints a picture of sordid ugliness. Its reliability has been disputed. No study of Lincoln is complete unless one has marched through the "Diary" of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy, 3 vols. (1911), which is our most important doc.u.ment showing Lincoln in his Cabinet. Important sidelights on his character and development are shown in Ward Hill Lamon, "Recollections of Lincoln" (1911); David Homer Bates, "Lincoln in the Telegraph Office" (1907); and Frederick Trevor Hill, "Lincoln as a Lawyer" (1906). A bibliography of Lincoln is in the twelfth volume of the latest edition of the "Writings".

The lesser statesmen of the time, both Northern and Southern, still, as a rule, await proper treatment by detached biographers. Two Northerners have had such treatment, in Allen Johnson's "Stephen A. Douglas" (1908), and Frederic Bancroft's "Life of William H. Seward", 2 vols. (1900).

Good, but without the requisite detachment, is Moorfield Storey's "Charles Sumner", ("American Statesmen Series", 1900). With similar excellences but with the same defect, though still the best in its field, is Albert Bushnell Hart's "Salmon P. Chase" ("American Statesmen Series", 1899). Among the Southern statesmen involved in the events of this volume, only the President of the Confederacy has received adequate reconsideration in recent years, in William E. Dodd's "Jefferson Davis"

(1907). The latest life of "Robert Toombs", by Ulrich B. Phillips (1914), is not definitive, but the best extant. The great need for adequate lives of Stephens and Yancey is not at all met by the obsolete works--R. M. Johnston and W. M. Browne, "Life of Alexander H. Stephens"

(1878), and J. W. Du Bose, "The Life and Times of William Lowndes Yancey" (1892). There is a brief biography of Stephens by Louis Pendleton, in the "American Crisis Biographies". Most of the remaining biographies of the period, whether Northern or Southern, are either too superficial or too partisan to be recommended for general use. Almost alone in their way are the delightful "Confederate Portraits", by Gamaliel Bradford (1914), and the same author's "Union Portraits"

(1916).

Upon conditions in the North during the war there is a vast amount of material; but little is accessible to the general reader. A book of great value is Emerson Fite's Social and Industrial Conditions in the North during the Civil War (1910). Out of unnumbered books of reminiscence, one stands forth for the sincerity of its disinterested, if sharp, observation--W. H. Russell's "My Diary North and South"

(1868). Two newspapers are invaluable: The "New York Tribune" for a version of events as seen by the war party, "The New York Herald" for the opposite point of view; the Chicago papers are also important, chiefly the "Times" and "Tribune"; the "Republican "of Springfield, Ma.s.s., had begun its distinguished career, while the "Journal" and "Advertiser" of Boston revealed Eastern New England. For the Southern point of view, no papers are more important than the Richmond "Examiner", the Charleston "Mercury", and the New Orleans "Picayune".

Financial and economic problems are well summed up in D. R. Dewey's "Financial History of the United States" (3d edition, 1907), and in E. P. Oberholzer's "Jay Cooks", 2 vols. (1907). Foreign affairs are summarized adequately in C. F. Adams's "Charles Francis Adams"

("American Statesmen Series", 1900), John Bigelow's "France and the Confederate Navy" (1888), A. P. Martin's "Maximilian in Mexico" (1914), and John Ba.s.sett Moore's "Digest of International Law", 8 vols. (1906).

The doc.u.ments of the period ranging from newspapers to presidential messages are not likely to be considered by the general reader, but if given a fair chance will prove fascinating. Besides the biographical edition of Lincoln's Writings, should be named, first of all, "The Congressional Globe" for debates in Congress; the "Statutes at Large"; the "Executive Doc.u.ments", published by the Government and containing a great number of reports; and the enormous collection issued by the War Department under the t.i.tle "Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies", 128 vols. (1880-1901), especially the groups of volumes known as second and third series.