Book Review: Did Lincoln Own Slaves?

Did Lincoln Own Slaves?: And Other Frequently Asked Questions About Abraham Lincoln by Gerald J. Prokopowicz (Pantheon, 2008), hardcover, 352 pages

Today many websites have an FAQ section, where "frequently asked questions" are answered. Applying this concept to the life and legacy of Abraham Lincoln, historian Gerald J. Prokopowicz asks and answers countless questions about the sixteenth president, including the gem mentioned in the title. Prokopowicz, chair of the history department at East Carolina University, is well-suited to the task, having served for nine years at the (now closed) Lincoln Museum in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where he likely heard most of these questions too many times to count.

In roughly chronological order, Prokopowicz proposes and answers questions touching key aspects of Lincoln's life, including his childhood, his adult life in Springfield, his presidency, the Gettysburg Address, and his assassination. The inquiries offer a wide perspective, responding as often to questions that might be asked by a curious child as to those from adults who have a more in-depth knowledge of history.

Prokopowicz is a pleasant authority, answering questions in a lively and engaging manner, frequently sharing a refreshing sense of humor. This writing style, along with an intelligent ordering of many questions, creates a surprising "page-turning" quality to the book, in spite of its basic Q & A approach. I expect that many will find the book to be an excellent read.

The years of study behind Prokopowicz's answers is evident as he shares knowledgeable, and often thorough, replies to the inquiries. Other Lincoln experts may argue that he comes down on the wrong side of some of the current debates in Lincoln scholarship -- I certainly disagreed with his assessments a time or two -- but cannot deny that he does a credible job explaining the contours of such controversies.

One such example is the book's title question -- did Lincoln own slaves? Rather than simply offering the basic answer, which is no, Prokopowicz uses it as a way to frame his consideration of modern doubts about portraying Lincoln as "The Great Emancipator, which is certainly one of the key current debates in the Lincoln world.

Long-time students of Lincoln are unlikely to learn much new in this book, though it does provide a handy reference to many of the common questions. Instead, this is a work intended to provide a helpful resource to the more casual student of Lincoln, who doesn't want to thumb through a biography -- and doesn't entirely trust an Internet search -- to answer basic questions about the sixteenth president.

Book Review; April '65

April '65: Confederate Covert Action in the American Civil War by William Tidwell (Kent State University Press, 1995), paperback, 264 pages

In the late 1980s, three authors, two historians and a longtime American intelligence officer, offered a compelling new theory o the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.  Published in 1988, Come Retribution used lots of circumstantial evidence to show Confederate government involvement in the planning of the ultimately fatal attack against Lincoln, first conceived as a kidnapping, by the Confederate Secret Service.

William Tidwell, the intelligence officer among the group, follows up that substantial work with more evidence in April '65: Confederate Covert Action and the American Civil War.  In this case, he has dramatic evidence that suggests Confederate President Jefferson Davis was aware of the kidnapping plot and approved it.

Here, the case is again circumstantial.  There are few new bits of evidence about the Lincoln kidnapping/assassination plot itself, but there is new evidence regarding other covert operations which tantalizingly suggest parallels to the Lincoln plot.  Tidwell gives an overall mapping of covert operations in the Confederacy, considering how they were funded and how they were supervised and assessed.  The evidence suggests that there were no "lone wolves" among the Confederate operatives, implicitly and preemptively rejecting an argument that although Booth might have been an operate, in the case of the Lincoln plot he was acting of his own volition.

Much evidence points to the use of Confederate gold funding some of the kidnapping plot, including the possible payment of gold to John Wilkes Booth.  In this book, Tidwell documents the use of gold to fund all sorts of covert operations, and offers evidence that all such uses of Confederate gold required Davis' signature. This implies that Davis knew of, and approved of, some version of a plot against Lincoln in order to have issued a directive to the treasury to release some gold to involved operatives in Canada.  (This inference is not ironclad, however, given that the funding for the Secret Service in Canada was made in large payments designed to cover multiple operations.)

Tidwell is always careful to never overstate his conclusions, leaving them implied most often.  This is most obvious in the final chapter in which he details circumstantial evidence of the involvement of Mosby's raiders in the kidnapping plot.  Using parole information of certain of Mosby's companies, he discovers that several of them surrendered after others along a line related to Booth's escape route, shortly after Booth's death at the hands of pursuing US troops.  Alongside a few other extant orders, he traces the movements of many of Mosby's troops around Washington DC during the period of Lee's daring escape toward, and ultimate surrender at, Appomattox Court House.  Tidwell posits that these soldiers were detached to facilitate Booth's escape after either kidnapping or killing Lincoln.

Although not as shocking as Come Retribution, this book furthers and supports the central thesis of that book that there was a larger Confederate operation behind the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth.  As with any circumstantial argument, the theory cannot be proven beyond doubt, butt the weight of the evidence makes the theory highly credible.  If I doubt a few of Tidwell's conclusions, I find his overall assessment compelling, particularly in light of the known details of Booth's escape from Washington using a network of Confederate agents.  Edward Steers, whose Blood on the Moon remains the best single volume on the assassination, also finds value in this research, incorporating some of it into his narrative.

In short, this book is a worthwhile addition to the large number of books on the Lincoln assassination.  Unlike other books that posit wild conspiracy theories, this one rarely argues beyond the evidence or stretches the evidence -- and credulity -- to make its claims.  At times a little dry (though less so than Come Retribution), it is always reasonable and coherent.  For the student of Lincoln's assassination, it is an important new argument.

Large Collection of Union Telegrams

According to The Los Angeles Times, the Huntington Library in California has announced that it has acquired a large collection of materials relating to Union telegraphy during the Civil War.  Reportedly preserved by Thomas Eckert, who ran the War Department Telegraph Office during the last part of the Lincoln presidency (and beyond), it includes 40 large albums of handwritten telegrams in chronological order.  There also are several codebooks that reveal more about the Union telegraph code words used during the war.

This resource, once made available to scholars, has the potential to significantly alter our understanding of the war effort, particularly related to military logistics.  There is also the distinct possibility that previously unknown Lincoln telegrams may be discovered.  James McPherson, award-winning Civil War historian, notes in an interview that "it would have enriched my work" on Lincoln as commander in chief.  It likely means that the recent book by Tom Wheeler, "Mr. Lincoln's T-Mail's," reviewed in November, is already outdated.

Even if no new Lincoln-dictated telegrams are discovered, the collection should impact our knowledge of Lincoln as a war-time leader.  It is well-documented that Lincoln generally read through all recent telegraphic traffic during frequent visits to the War Department Telegraph Office.  At the very least, this should allow great insight into what Lincoln "knew" as he made decisions from 1863-1865.  Of course, it will take some dedicated research, meaning time, before the full value and impact of this material is known.

Lincoln Check Found

Last weekend, it was revealed that someone had located a small collection of checks signed by famous people in bank storage, including one signed by Abraham Lincoln dated just two days before his death.  The sesquicentennial Civil War blog at The Washington Post, "A House Divided," has a nice entry about the check, including comments from Harold Holzer about its likely purpose.  Holzer rightly comments on the emotional importance of the artifact because it is from the final week of Lincoln's life.

Images of Lincoln's check, and a couple of other presidential checks found in the collection, are available from this Washington Post article.

Missing Pages of 1862 Message Located

This morning, I reread Lincoln's 1862 Annual Message to Congress in preparation for my annual Lincoln sermon.  In The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy Basler, there is a notation that the first two pages are missing and are reproduced from a periodical.

Imagine my surprise when I read this article at lunchtime, when a team from the Papers of Abraham Lincoln project announced that the first two pages had been located at the National Archives, along with a complete second copy, signed by Lincoln, of the 86 page message (handwritten, though evidently not by Lincoln himself).

While the discovery seems unlikely to alter anything -- there is no reference that the quoted passage differs in any way from the original handwritten pages -- it is nice to know that the complete document of this important state paper is now available for researchers and properly catalogued and preserved for posterity, "for a vast future also" that Lincoln mentions in the message's memorable conclusion.

Book Review: Lincoln for President

Lincoln for President: An Unlikely Candidate, An Audacious Strategy, and the Victory No One Saw Coming by Bruce Chadwick (Soucebooks, 2010), paperback, 416 pages

Prolific author Bruce Chadwick turns his attention to the climactic 1860 election in "Lincoln for President." As the title suggests, Abraham Lincoln is the primary focus, although the book offers a fairly comprehensive look at that decisive campaign which featured four main candidates. Like modern movie trailers that give away most of a film's surprises, Chadwick does not conceal his argument, succinctly given in the book's subtitle, "an unlikely candidate, an audacious strategy, and the victory no one saw coming."

Still, Chadwick offers an engaging narrative of the dramatic campaign, particularly relishing some of the behind-the-scenes maneuvering. He especially enjoys the wheeling and dealing, and even outright fraud, engaged in by Lincoln's unofficial campaign managers. Indeed, the circumstances surrounding the Republican convention draw much of Chadwick's attention, from the stacks of counterfeit entry tickets given to Lincoln supporters to the apparent promises made in return for the support of various delegations. In stark contrast to Doris Kearns Goodwin's famous argument, Chadwick believes that Lincoln's cabinet was the direct result of these convention deals, rather than the result of a governing philosophy. Although Goodwin is probably more correct, there is certain compelling evidence to support this alternate claim, such as Lincoln's ability to list his likely cabinet officers on election night.

The story of the general election in 1860 is perhaps less exciting than that summer's Republican convention, in part because of the anti-climactic conclusion. Despite Chadwick's attempts to contextualize the uncertainty of the fall campaign, Lincoln's election never seems in doubt. Still, the account is worth reading, particularly for those unfamiliar with the consequential election. Aside from offering a clear retelling, Chadwick excels at offering portraits of the four main candidates and, notably, the motivations of those voters most likely to support them. As such, the Constitutional Union Party, usually an afterthought, has a compelling, if somewhat melancholic, presence in this narrative. On the other hand, the story of the split in the Democratic Party is only adequately told here.

As the title suggests, though, the ascendancy of Abraham Lincoln is the focus. Much as Harold Holzer in "Lincoln President-Elect," Chadwick describes candidate Lincoln as engaged and quietly active behind-the-scenes. In particular, Lincoln seems consistently worried about maintaining cohesion among the disparate parts of the Republican Party and responding to any perceived threats, which is largely why the Constitutional Union Party has a larger role in this book. He writes letters and, more importantly, dispatches personal confidants to deal with key Republicans throughout the North. Further, the political animal in Lincoln possesses an intimate knowledge of the electoral calculus necessary for victory, which is apparent in some of his correspondence.

This book is a pleasant addition to the bulging Lincoln library. Engagingly written, with a wonderful appreciation for the personalities of several of the key players, it will enlighten and entertain those seeking to learn more about the 1860 election than is covered in a history class. On the other hand, Chadwick hardly breaks new ground in any of the narrative, which is regrettable because he hints at potential analyses, such as a social history that focuses as much on the voters as on the candidates in the history-changing election.

Book Review: Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails

Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails: How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil War by Tom Wheeler (Harper, 2008), paperback, 256 pages

Abraham Lincoln's supreme political skill is an issue, if not the guiding theme, of countless biographies of the 16th president. His deft and usually compact style of language in his speeches and writings is well known, and has been the focus of renewed study in the last several years. All but unknown, and rarely mentioned, is Lincoln's fascination with science and technology throughout his lifetime. These three significant aspects of Lincoln's life overlap in Tom Wheeler's thought-provoking, if cheekily titled, "Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails: How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil War."

The telegraph, invented about a quarter-century before the start of the American Civil War, was just beginning to revolutionize communication in the late 1850s. Particularly useful to coordinate train traffic on railroads, newspapers began using the telegraph to share and print news even faster than railroads allowed. The government was slower to adopt the technology, but the onset of war encouraged its use by the War Department to facilitate troop and supply movements.

Wheeler contends that it was the young commander-in-chief, Abraham Lincoln, who best harnessed the capabilities of the telegraph. In the early months of the war, Lincoln was more prone to read telegraph traffic in the war office than to send and receive his own telegrams. When Stonewall Jackson's 1862 campaign in the Shenandoah Valley threatened Washington, however, Lincoln sent and received messages to ascertain the real threat to the capitol and to direct the military response.

The importance of Lincoln's telegrams in 1862 pales, though, beside what Lincoln learned in those days. After the spring of 1862, he increasingly used the telegraph to keep tabs on the far-flung Union armies. Through his variety of electronic notes -- some simple inquiries, some detailed directives -- he used the communications device to assert his authority as commander-in-chief in a way far beyond previous presidents. Not only were Lincoln's telegrams a persistent reminder to the generals of his desire to be informed about military movements, but also a way to insist that his political and military prerogatives be followed.

While this well-written book may show a different side of Lincoln's political genius to those unaware of his daily trips to the War Department Telegraph Office, the later chapters also offer a reassessment of Lincoln's leadership style. Most historians believe that Lincoln used any necessary means, including the telegraph, to deal with generals who frustrated him by their obstinacy or their lack of movement; once Grant and Sherman emerge as leaders who will act and follow Lincoln's direction, this conventional assessment goes, Lincoln had less need for oversight. Wheeler argues the opposite, showing that Lincoln's telegrams to Grant and Sherman were just as often filled with directives as those to earlier commanding generals. While Lincoln had less reason to attempt to micromanage maneuvers with Grant and Sherman, Lincoln still insisted that they follow his guidance on overall strategy and political matters, frequently using the telegraph to ensure that his wishes were known and followed.

Perhaps Wheeler's argument could have been augmented by a consideration of how Lincoln adapted the new technology and situation to his previous experience in party organizing and leadership in 1850s Illinois -- which would challenge the Marshall McLuhan dictum underlying Wheeler's book, that "the medium is the message." Still, this is a minor quibble with an otherwise strong book that is as informative as it is enjoyable to read. The reader will likely finish the book wondering if Lincoln's use of the telegraph was similar to, and possibly as significant as, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's skillful use of radio as president.