Abraham Lincoln: The War Years 1861-1865. Carl Sandburg.

Abraham Lincoln: The War Years 1861-1865
Carl Sandburg
New York: Dell Publishing Co., Inc.
1924.

Why read it? Some truths about Lincoln during the war years: Lincoln was not focused on the institution of slavery. He was focused on preserving the Union. Lincoln was a man who seemed to live by common sense and who could memorably express it. Lincoln said he had no policy, that having a policy would have been bad for the country; he simply did what he thought was right from day to day. Lincoln was brutally insulted by members of the press who enjoyed completely unrestricted freedom of speech. His "Gettysburg Address" was denigrated and insulted as "dull, commonplace and silly." Lincoln's desire for magnanimous treatment of the defeated south was destroyed by his assassination, an assassination that had been fueled by the insults to his character in the press. Ironically, the biggest victim of the assassination was the South, on behalf of which, John Wilkes Booth pulled the trigger.

This second volume of Lincoln's biography emphasizes that, for Lincoln, the Civil War was strictly about saving the Union--and not about freeing the slaves. His reasoning is clear, if not clearly acceptable. The following sample ideas are about the character of Lincoln, but so many other incidents and quotes in the book deepen the reader's understanding of his complex character.

Sample ideas from the book:
Sumner emphasized the sin and guilt of the South while evading issues of sin and guilt in the North. Lincoln: "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists.... I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." Lincoln: "If a minority, in such case, will secede rather than acquiesce, they make a precedent which, in turn, will divide and ruin them: for a minority of their own will secede from them, whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such a minority." Lincoln: "Physically speaking, we cannot separate...cannot remove our respective sections from each other, nor build an impassable wall between them." Hawthorne: "...though I approve the war as much as any man, I don't quite understand what we are fighting for."

Lee: "If Virginia stands by the old Union, so will I. If she secedes, though I do not believe in secession as a constitutional right, nor that there is sufficient cause for revolution, then I will still follow my native State with my sword, and, if need be, with my life." Lincoln: "For my own part, I consider the first necessity that is upon us, is of proving that popular government is not an absurdity.... Must settle this question now--whether in a free government the minority have the right to break it up whenever they choose; if we fail, it will go far to prove the incapability of the people to govern themselves." "On a railroad train in central Kentucky one car held a company of troops going to a Union camp while in another car was a company of Confederates."

James Gordon Bennett, editor of the New York Herald: "The newspaper's function is not to instruct but to startle." "To friends of Sumner who in September '61 urged Lincoln to issue a proclamation giving freedom to the slaves, he said, 'It would do no good to go ahead any faster than the country would follow.' " Lincoln: "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery...." Lincoln: "In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God.... God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time.... Quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party...." Lincoln in a letter to a young girl who lost her father in the war: "In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares; the older have learned to expect it."

Quote: "For Abraham Lincoln it is lights out, good night, farewell--and a long farewell to the good earth and its trees, its enjoyable companions, and the Union of States and the world Family of Man he has loved."

Quote. Stanton: "Now he belongs to the ages."

Quote: "The prairie years, the war years, were over."