And There Was Light:Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle by Jon Meachem- 2022- 1268 pages

 And There Was Light:Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle by Jon Meachem- 2022- 1268 pages

"In life, Lincoln’s motives were moral as well as political—a reminder that our finest presidents are those committed to bringing a flawed nation closer to the light, a mission that requires an understanding that politics divorced from conscience is fatal to the American experiment in liberty under law. In years of peril he pointed the country toward a future that was superior to the past and to the present; in years of strife he held steady. Lincoln’s life shows us that progress can be made by fallible and fallen presidents and peoples—which, in a fallible and fallen world, should give us hope." - Jon Meachem 

Born - February 12,1809 - Hodgenville, Kentucy into a poor uneducated family 

November 4,1842- Marries Mary Todd

Served Four Terms as a Representative in The Illinois House of Representatives

March 4, 1847 to March 3, 1849- serves as a congressman from Illinois- in the Republican Party

Admitted in 1836 to the Illinois Bar

March 4, 1847 to March 3, 1849 - serves as Illinois Representative in U.S. Congress 

March 1, 1861- Begins his term as president of the United States- he ran on an anti-slavery platform which alarmed slave owners in the southern states.

December 20, 1860- South Carolina succeeds from the union

 By February 1, 1861 Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia and Texas have all succeeced 

February 9, 1861 -Jefferson Davis elected President of the Confederacy.

On April 12, 1861 -Confederate troops fire on Fort Sumter

April 12, 1861 to May 26, 1865- The American Civil War (sometimes called The War Between the States)--The number of soldiers who died between 1861 and 1865, generally estimated at 620,000, is approximately equal to the total of American fatalities in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish American War, World War I, World War II, and the Korean War, combined.

Assassinated: April 15, 1865, - Washington DC by John Wilkes Booth

This book is a masterpiece of historical biography. I wish all teachers of American history would be required to read this work.

Meachem shows us in detail the conditions of his upbringing. Lincoln had very little formal education but while in his early twenties he became an avid reader of Shakespeare, The King James Bible and then well known political treatises. American politics was divided into two camps, those who wanted the national government to abolish slavery and those who wanted the states to regulate this. Slaveholding states were made wealthy by Cotton plantations which required lots of enslaved workers to be profitable. Abolitionists cited the words of Thomas Jefferson to support their views:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed"

On the other side slave holders quoted scriptures from the bible advising slaves to obey their masters.

Lincoln did strongly believe slavery should be ended. However, as Meachem documents clearly, he felt African descendants were intrinsically inferior to whites and he wanted freed slaves transported out of the country. Above all he wanted the Union to survive.

In his alternative history, The People's History of the United States Howard Zinn there is an account of the war for different from either the fantasies of Gone with the Wind or presentations of Lincoln as another Abraham.

"The participants in the American civil war on both sides fell for the drum beats of patriotism.  The wealthy could buy their way out of military service.  Southern soldiers come across as complete dupes, owning no slaves  or land but seeing it as their duty to die for those who did while wealthy slave owners set the war out.  Zinn details how after the south lost, laws were passed to keep ex-slaves in subjugation.  Poor whites were made to think they were superior to African Americans and did not understand that the elite cared nothing about them" from my post 

Meachem shows us the tribulations Lincoln went through during the war. He quotes extensively from some of his famous speeches. We learn of his at times tumultuous marriage and his wife's mental issues, his tremendous grief over the deaths of his sons.

The book is more than just a biography, it is a portrait of an era.

"Abraham Lincoln did not bring about heaven on earth. Yet he defended the possibilities of democracy and the pursuit of justice at an hour in which the means of amendment, adjustment, and reform were under assault. What if the constitutional order had failed and the Union had been permanently divided? What would have come next? A durable oligarchical white Southern slave empire, surely strengthened and possibly expanded, would have emerged from the war; and, as Lincoln saw, the viability of popular self-government would have been in ruins."

The states that formed the Confederacy all voted for trump. They have passed laws designed to make it difficult for the descendants of enslaved persons to vote. Several of the states rank at the bottom in Education, income of population and numerous other factors. Their leaders are obsessed over trans persons and idiotic anti "woke" agenda. This is a direct legacy of slavery.

I am very glad I read this wonderful biography. I have Meachem's biography of Andrew Jackson on my Amazon wish list 

Mel Ulm