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OxBlog — ABE LINCOLN WAS NO ABE LINCOLN (BUT BARACK OBAMA MIGHT BE): If you thought five books was a lot to review, try seven. Princeton historian Sean Wilentz takes on that challenge in a cover story for The New Republic. Wilentz begins by recounting a crude remark about "mulatters" (i.e. mulattos) that Lincoln made while stumping for Gen. Winfield Scott, his party's presidential candidate in 1952. Wilentz explains, My point in re-telling this story is not to try, yet again, to debunk Lincoln's reputation for probity and sagacity, and for perfect ...
Abe Lincoln was no Abe Lincoln (but Barack Obama might be)
The Moderate Voice —
If you thought five books was a lot to review, try seven. Princeton historian Sean Wilentz takes on that challenge in a cover story for The New Republic.
Wilentz begins by recounting a crude remark about “mulatters” (i.e. mulattos) that Lincoln made while stumping for Gen. Winfield Scott, his party’s presidential candidate in 1952. Wilentz explains,
My point in re-telling this story is not to try, yet again, to debunk Lincoln’s reputation for probity and sagacity, and for perfect enlightenment on racial issues… ...
There Might Have Been More on Gates's Mind Than Racial Profiling
Newshoggers.com —
... See, as one of a rash of books to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth, Gates, along with another author, Donald Yacovone, edited a book titled Lincoln on Race & Slavery. Also in the New Republic, this time the current issue of the magazine, is an authoritative and lengthy review of seven new books on Lincoln, including Lincoln on Race & Slavery. In fact, Who Lincoln Was, by respected historian Sean Wilentz, amounts to a crash course in current thinking on Lincoln. ...
A lot in common
Power Line —
University of Tennessee Professor Wilfred McClay points us to this interesting passage in Sean Wilentz's New Republic review/essay on recent Lincoln books:
One hears that the rhetoric that carried Obama to the White House is Lincolnesque, which it most certainly is not, either in its imagery or its prosody. One hears even that Obama is not just an extremely talented and promising new president but, as Henry Louis Gates Jr. writes, that he is "destined"--destined!--to be thought of as Lincoln's direct heir.
Barack Obama ...
Jefferson, LIncoln, Wilentz, Gates, and Slavery:
The Volokh Conspiracy —
... Sean Wilentz’ recently-published essay on Lincoln, historiography, politics (and many other things) is a magnificent piece of argumentative scholarship, well worth reading by anyone interested in Lincoln, US history, slavery, Thomas Jefferson, the Civil War, . . . One issue – tangential, admittedly, to the main debates, but interesting and important nonetheless – caught my eye. Wilentz had some stinging criticisms of Henry Louis Gates’ recent book ( Lincoln and Race and Slavery ), and Gates, ...
From The Pols Are Pols File . . .
TalkLeft —
The great historian Sean Wilentz: When [Franklin] Pierce ran for president in 1852, Lincoln, naturally, campaigned against him. . . . Lincoln limited himself to a long speech in Springfield . . . The speech did nothing to affect the outcome of the election, in Illinois or in the country at large. But it deserves to be remembered in these days of Lincoln idolatry, because it can be disturbing reading to anyone inclined to worship Father Abraham. [MORE . . .] . . . Lincoln attacked Pierce not as a slaveholders' ...
