Book Review: Abraham Lincoln in the Post-Heroic Era

Abraham Lincoln in the Post Heroic Era: History and Memory in Late Twentieth-Century America by Barry Schwartz (University of Chicago Press, 2009), hardcover, 410 pages

More than 140 years since his death, Abraham Lincoln is enjoying a renaissance of sorts. Not only is the publishing industry producing several Lincoln-related titles each year, but recent ad campaigns have portrayed the 16th president in a completely new role: television salesman. This recent exposure, however, does not necessarily correspond to a heightened recognition or appreciation of Lincoln, as Barry Schwartz makes clear in "Abraham Lincoln In the Post-Heroic Era." This is the second volume examining the history of Lincoln's legacy, covering the period from the Great Depression to the present. (The previous volume, "Abraham Lincoln and the Forge Of National Memory," surveyed the years from Lincoln's death in 1865 until the 1920s.)

As might be expected, Schwartz studies the portrayal of Lincoln in artwork, editorial cartoons, statuary, and popular written materials, particularly newspaper and magazine articles. More than this, though, Schwartz uses the results of several surveys conducted over more than a half-century and consults dozens of school textbooks in an attempt to determine and trace Lincoln's prestige through this period. By several measures, Lincoln's reputation peaks during the World War II-era and declines thereafter, with a particularly steep drop during the 1960s and 1970s.

Schwartz's argument is compelling, if complex and sophisticated. Partially, he believes there is less need for Lincoln's unifying reputation in this post-modern age as compared with the World War II-era. Beyond that, he agrees with other scholars who see a post-heroic age which began some time between Kennedy's assassination and the Watergate break-in. Schwartz notes that this decline is not only in Lincoln's reputation, but in the reputations of other key historical figures as well. Whether due to postmodern ideas about equality, the probing for and uncovering of gritty details in the lives of historical figures, or a change in focus in the national narrative, the differences between the 1940s Lincoln in the 1980s Lincoln are radically different.

During this period, one particular aspect of Lincoln's legacy has come to the forefront, overshadowing many of the traits that previous generations had celebrated: Lincoln as precursor to racial equality. While this might be expected during the Civil Rights Era, it has developed in the decades since to the point where most of Lincoln's actions are seen through the lens of the Emancipation Proclamation and minority rights – even the Gettysburg Address, which Schwartz promises to discuss at length in a future volume.

In light of an overarching narrative that traces the rise and fall of Lincoln's prestige, the concluding chapter is unexpected and surprising. Having explored Lincoln within the sociological theory of collective memory, which suggests that each generation adapts beliefs and memories of previous generations to its own needs, Schwartz suggests that the person of Abraham Lincoln has developed its own inertia and stands outside of this adaptation process, at least in part. Perhaps only a self-perpetuating memory of Lincoln can withstand the winds that cut heroes down to size in the post-heroic era.

For the most devoted students of Lincoln, though, this may be more disheartening than hopeful. As Schwartz writes about Lincoln's present legacy in American cultural memory:

"As each generation modifies beliefs held by its forebears, an assemblage of old beliefs remains and coexists with the new, including old beliefs about the past itself. Lincoln therefore remains the man of the people and the man above the people, The Savior of the Union and emancipator of its slaves, the embodiment of rugged individualism and the welfare state, the personification of humor and sorrow, iron will and compassion. That is the man we knew yesterday; that is the man we know today.

"However, these continuities do not restore the Lincoln of the 1930s and 1940s, the man Americans looked up to and emulated. He is now less the Savior of the Union, less the rugged individualist, less the man of sorrow and humor, less the man of steel and velvet. He is now a smaller man, known by more, adored by fewer, emulated by fewer still." (263)

Such devoted students of Lincoln, however, will need to read Schwartz's book, a towering contribution to the nascent study of Lincoln's legacy. Mixing strong research, well-crafted prose, and a great amount of nuance, this volume describes the complex evolution of the memory of Abraham Lincoln, evident in popular culture and scholarship alike.

Book Review: Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory

Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory by Barry Schwartz (University of Chicago Press, 2000), hardcover, 382 pages

Over ten years ago, while visiting Washington DC, several people and I decided to walk down to the National Mall late at night.   Mostly, the streets were empty, until we arrived at the Lincoln Memorial after 11 pm.  More surprising than the number of people that early March night were the fact that there were two tour buses full of tourists visiting at that late hour.  Even then, I wondered what attracted so many people, at all hours, to climb the marble steps to stand at the foot of the seated, yet imposing, Lincoln.

In the vast amount of Lincoln-related literature, few people have attempted to answer the question of Lincoln's prominence in the almost 150 years after his death.  The most comprehensive attempt, as yet, is a two-volume work mapping Lincoln's legacy from his assassination to the present.  Written by sociologist Barry Schwartz, who previously researched George Washington's legacy, Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory is the first volume.

Focusing on the period between Lincoln's assassination in 1865 and the 1924 dedication of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC, Schwartz details the increasing influence and prominence of Lincoln's legacy, particularly during the Progressive Era.  Unlike other assessments, including Merrill Peterson's argument in his 1994 book Lincoln in American Memory that Lincoln's prestige rose sharply in the wake of his assassination and continued upward, Schwartz has a more sophisticated argument.  While there was an initial surge of Lincoln-related material in the months following his assassination, Schwartz argues that Lincoln's legacy didn't really begin to rise until the 20th Century, about two generations after his death.

Schwartz's overall view of the rise, plateau, and the dramatic rise of Lincoln in national memory is persuasive, particularly in the final chapters of his book.  Unfortunately, the narrative is almost crippled by the insistence that Lincoln's prestige was virtually nil until the moment he was cut down by an assassin's bullet.  While it is true that Lincoln was a divisive figure during an highly divisive era, and as such rabidly opposed by legions of people, including many in the North, and only tolerated by others, including many leading Republicans, there were people who admired his leadership and recognized his influence.

Part of this analysis seems to be due to Schwartz working back from the 1920s to 1865 and struggling to comprehend the period from 1870 to 1900.  Citing the work of others, especially Michael Kammon, he argues that the late 19th Century seems an ideal time for Lincoln's prestige to rise dramatically.  Since it does not, he struggles to explain the delay, and implicitly suggests that it stems from greater antipathy toward Lincoln by those of his generation than usually recognized.

One of the prime pieces of evidence Schwartz cites to develop this argument is a comparison between Lincoln's legacy and that of George Washington during the late 1800s.  By most measures, including many quantitative ones like number of articles in newspapers and magazines, Washington is more influential than Lincoln during the last decades of the 19th century.  However, the amazing thing is the frequency with which Lincoln is mentioned compared to Washington.  Even before the Progressive Era, Lincoln's reputation is clearly on the rise in national memory because he stands outside of Washington's shadow in ways that other influential Americans of the period, even Andrew Jackson, do not.   (This is apparent even in 1865, if one compares the image of Washington in eulogies of Lincoln to that in eulogies preached following the deaths in office of William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor.)

Entering the 20th century, though, Schwartz's work is almost breath-taking.  After detailing how different parties and social movements tried to appropriate parts of Lincoln's biography to support their cause -- even the socialists -- Schwartz details how the prestige of Lincoln surpassed even Washington's reputation as a model for national unity, especially in the years of World War I and the years thereafter.   In particular, Schwartz takes great care to describe how Lincoln's unifying image was a composite of parts that were not entirely reconcilable, a point vividly displayed in the contrasting memorials to Lincoln in Washington DC and at the site of his Kentucky birthplace.

There is much to admire in this well-researched and well-written book, particularly in the final third of the text.   Using collective memory, a sociological concept that only occasionally appears in books outside that field, Schwartz gamely attempts to see the legacy of Lincoln both from the perspective of the use of the Lincoln image and reputation and from the evident reception of such usage -- the latter being much more challenging.  That he mostly succeeds is a testament to his precision of thought and scholarly craft that he brings to the project.

Many with long-standing assumptions about the rise of Lincoln's reputation in national memory will find their theories significantly challenged, if not contradicted.  And while there are some limitations, overall the book is an important account of the transformation of Lincoln from divisive wartime president to unifying icon.

Scholar Merrill Peterson passes away

University of Virginia historian Merrill D. Peterson, famous for his many books on Thomas Jefferson, passed away last week. The Washington Post ran the obituary today.

Over his career, Peterson wrote on many other subjects, including his 1994 book Lincoln in American Memory. This book, a Pulitzer-Prize finalist, echoed Peterson's first book, the Bancroft Prize-winning The Jefferson Image in the American Mind. In that book, Peterson chronicled the evolution of Jefferson's reputation and stature in American history. In Lincoln in American Memory, Peterson carefully chronicled Lincoln's image, and its evolution, in the years since his assassination.

While others have written on the topic, such as Lincoln-historian Benjamin Thomas a couple of generations ago. But no recent study had taken on the daunting task of tracking Lincoln's reputation -- in books, in memorials, in advertising, etc. -- for the (then-) past 130 years.

Since Peterson's book, sociologist Barry Schwartz has written a two-volume history on Abraham Lincoln in cultural memory. Even so, Peterson's book is an invaluable addition to the Lincoln bookshelf. Personally, I would place it on any list of "essential" Lincoln books, as does The Abraham Lincoln Book Shop in Chicago, which I notice has been updated to include Harold Holzer's Lincoln President-Elect (which I'm currently reading and enjoying).

New Lincoln Books This Week

There are a couple of Lincoln books being released this week, though neither of them should be classified  as new.  The first is the 50th anniversary edition of a classic book about the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, and the second is yet another collection of Lincoln quotations.

Releasing April 15

Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, 50th Anniversary Edition by Harry V. Jaffa (University of Chicago Press, 2009, paperback, 472 pages)

As the bicentennial celebration of Abraham Lincoln's birth continues, it can be difficult to imagine that the Abraham Lincoln currently being described had a different reputation even fifty years ago.  Where Lincoln is now seen as the master politician, who mastered both  issues and people and expressed his ideas eloquently, in the 1940s and 1950s he was seen as the unlikely frontier lawyer turned president.  He might be recognized for his common sense, but he was seen as a careful orator who conformed to the expectations of his audience, rather than as a shaper of ideas.

In this light, the Lincoln-Douglas debates took on a far different meaning in Lincoln's life story.  Rather than an example of Lincoln arguing significant ideas with the incumbent senator Stephen Douglas, the debates were often seen as an example of Lincoln the wily politician seeking to trap Douglas.  Such thinking led many writers of the time, including some famous Lincoln scholars, to suggest that the Civil War could have been avoided if Lincoln (and others) had just toned down their rhetoric, allowing cooler heads to prevail.

Jaffa's study of the debates confronted this attitude, suggesting that there were very real philosophical issues at the core of the debates.  As Merrill Peterson writes in his 1994 survey of the shifting interpretation of Lincoln through the years Lincoln in American Memory:

In 1959 a young student of classical political theory, Harry V. Jaffa,  not only assailed revisionism but restored the central importance of the natural rights doctrine of the Declaration of Independence -- "this grand pertinacity," as Charles Sumner had called it -- in Lincoln's politics.  His book Crisis of the House Divided focused on the issues in the Lincoln-Douglas debates.  Beveridge and Randall, it may be recalled, had dismissed the debates as little more than curious folklore and narrowed the differences between the candidates to the vanishing point.  Jaffa pronounced this treatment "shocking."  The issue between free soil and popular sovereignty in Kansas was crucial because the free states could not abandon their position "without losing the root of the conviction which was the foundation of their freedom."  That root was the Declaration of Independence, which Lincoln transformed from a charter of individual liberty into something "organic and sacramental -- a kind of political religion."  It was prophetic and progressive, looking to the realization of freedom and equality for all.  Jaffa came to this interpretation not through American history but through the study of Plato's Republic under the natural law theorist and scholar Leo Strauss, at the University of Chicago.

As might be guess from Peterson's description, Jaffa's book was highly controversial, both in its conclusions and in its philosophy, particularly in the 1960s.  However, it was also extremely influential, and in the years since most scholars have accepted Jaffa's underlying argument -- the Lincoln-Douglas debates were not just a show, but were quite substantive.

Jaffa's influence can be quite clearly traced to a more recent scholar like Allen Guelzo, whose writings focus on the development -- and especially the consistency -- of Lincoln's political philosophy.  This idea also informs the work of Harold Holzer, though Holzer also includes aspects of Lincoln's careful cultivation of his audience -- both are key parts to Holzer's argument in Lincoln at Cooper Union, for example.

For this 50th anniversary edition, Jaffa has written a new introduction.  I would imagine, though I have not seen the text, that it will comment on the controversies of the 1960s and also the recent controversies that arose from Thomas DiLorenzo and his ilk after Jaffa published a sequel, A New Birth of Freedom, in 2000.  While I have never read the book, I certainly know its reputation; it belongs in any serious Lincoln library.

The Words of Abraham Lincoln edited by Larry Shapiro (Newmarket Press, 2009, paperback, 128 pages)

On the other end of the spectrum is a book that will appeal to a much larger audience, a collection of Lincoln quotations, selected by History Book Club editorial director Larry Shapiro, who also penned an introduction.  According to the publisher information, all of the quotes are drawn from Lincoln's speeches and writings (probably The Collected Works), which at least should minimize the likelihood of doubtful Lincoln "quotations" being included.

Unlike other similar books, this one is actually part of an ongoing -- and small -- series of quotation books Newmarket has published over the last 20+ years, featuring such people as Martin Luther King, Albert Schweitzer, Desmond Tutu, and Ghandi.  As such, it probably is not a bad volume.  

New Lincoln Books This Week

January tends to be the prime month to release Lincoln-specific books, and the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth has quickened the pace of publishing. This week, there are several new books being released, including these two.

On January 13

A. Lincoln: A Biography by Ronald C. White, Jr. (Random House, 2009, hardcover, 816 pages)

This is White's third book on Lincoln, following his well received books on Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address (Lincoln's Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural) and Lincoln's speeches in general (The Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln Through His Words). I have read the first, but not the second. While White seems to have been accepted by most of the prominent Lincoln scholars, I found the first book underwhelming -- I was disappointed because I just don't think White's analysis of Lincoln's Second Inaugural matched the depth of Lincoln's writing.

Perhaps this biography is a worthy addition to the Lincoln bookshelf, but I would be more likely to recommend other new biographies: long (2000+ pages) by Michael Burlingame or short (less than 100) by James McPherson.

On January 15

Abraham Lincoln in the Post-Heroic Era: History and Memory in Late Twentieth Century America by Barry Schwartz (University of Chicago Press, 2009, hardcover, 410 pages)

This is the second volume of Schwartz' two-part look at the history of Lincoln's reputation since his assassination. The first book (Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory) covered the period from 1865-1920, while the new book documents the years from 1920 to the present.

I am excited to see Schwartz' new book. Currently, Merrill Peterson's Lincoln in American Memory is the standard about the impact and means of Lincoln's legacy since his assassination. Schwartz, who specializes in cultural memory, focuses his analysis more narrowly than Peterson by looking to see the meaning of Lincoln in American memory, rather than chronicling the manifestations of Lincoln's legacy.

Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory was an intriguing exploration of Lincoln's place in American cultural memory. While I think that Schwartz misrepresents Lincoln's reputation during his presidency (like many, he too easily buys into the argument that the unpopular Lincoln became a legend by being assassinated), the rest of his analysis is solid.