Lincoln Reconsidered Essays on the Civil War Era

by DONALD, DAVID HERBERT

• ISBN13: 9780375725326
• ISBN10: 0375725326
• Edition: 3rd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-02-13
• Publisher: Vintage

Summary

David Herbert Donald, Lincoln biographer and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, has revised and updated his classic and influential book on Lincoln and the era he dominated. WhenLincoln Reconsideredwas first published it ushered in the process of rethinking the Civil War that continues to this day. In the third edition, David provides two important new essays, on Lincoln's patchy educationwhich we find was more extensive than even the great man realizedand on Lincoln's complex and conflicted relationship to the rule of law. Together with a new preface and a thoroughly updated bibliographical essay,Lincoln Reconsideredwill continue to be a touchstone of Lincoln scholarship for decades to come.

Author Biography

David Donald is the author of many books on the Civil War era, including the classic text The Civil War and Reconstruction, written in collaboration with J. G. Randall, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War, as well as the biography Look Homeward: A Life of Thomas Wolfe.

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
Getting Right with Lincoln	3	(12)
The Folklore Lincoln	15	(16)
Toward a Reconsideration of Abolitionists	31	(13)
An Excess of Democracy: The American Civil War and the Social Process	44	(19)
Education Defective: Lincoln's Preparation for Greatness	63	(12)
Herndon and Mary Lincoln	75	(14)
Refighting the Civil War	89	(15)
The Radicals and Lincoln	104	(17)
Abraham Lincoln and the American Pragmatic Tradition	121	(12)
A Whig in the White House	133	(15)
Reverence for the Laws: Abraham Lincoln and the Founding Fathers	148	(16)
A. Lincoln, Politician	164	(17)
Bibliographical Essay	181	(14)
Index	195