Lincoln

Thinkin’ about “Lincoln”

Featured image I wrote the post below when the film Lincoln was released in 2012. I thought some readers might find it of interest today. My purpose here was to take up the movie in the context of Richard Hofstadter’s famous essay on Lincoln — an essay which is all that bright high-school students may ever learn about him. I have inserted links to the publisher’s pages of the books cited. We »

A genius for friendship

Featured image Abraham Lincoln stands not only as America’s greatest president but also as its greatest lawyer. At the time of his election to the presidency in 1860 he was the most prominent practicing lawyer in the state of Illinois. As a politician and as president, Lincoln was a profound student of the Constitution and constitutional history. Perhaps most important, Lincoln was America’s indispensable teacher of the moral ground of political freedom »

Remembering Mr. Lincoln

Featured image Today is the anniversary of the birth of America’s great or greatest president, Abraham Lincoln. As a politician and as president, Lincoln was a profound student of the Constitution and constitutional history. Perhaps most important, Lincoln was America’s indispensable teacher of the moral ground of political freedom at the exact moment when the country was on the threshold of abandoning what he called its “ancient faith” that all men are »

The eternal meaning of Independence Day

Featured image On July 9, 1858, Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas gave a campaign speech to a raucous throng from the balcony of the Tremont Hotel in Chicago. Abraham Lincoln was in the audience as Douglas prepared to speak. Douglas graciously invited Lincoln to join him on the balcony to listen to the speech. In his speech Douglas sounded the themes of the momentous campaign that Lincoln and Douglas waged that summer and »

A genius for friendship

Featured image Abraham Lincoln stands not only as America’s greatest president but also as its greatest lawyer. At the time of his election to the presidency in 1860 he was the most prominent practicing lawyer in the state of Illinois. As a politician and as president, Lincoln was a profound student of the Constitution and constitutional history. Perhaps most important, Lincoln was America’s indispensable teacher of the moral ground of political freedom »

Remembering Mr. Lincoln

Featured image Today is of course the anniversary of the birth of America’s great or greatest president, Abraham Lincoln. As a politician and as president, Lincoln was a profound student of the Constitution and constitutional history. Perhaps most important, Lincoln was America’s indispensable teacher of the moral ground of political freedom at the exact moment when the country was on the threshold of abandoning what he called its “ancient faith” that all »

Uncancelled History: Abraham Lincoln

Featured image I have a happy memory of taking my two youngest daughters to hear Andrew Ferguson read from his then new book Land of Lincoln at Magers & Quinn Booksellers in the Uptown neighborhood of Minneapolis back in June 2007. Andy greeted us warmly and we all greatly enjoyed the reading. (To that happy memory I can join the current observation that Magers & Quinn is with us yet. It is »

Reflections of Lincoln

Featured image In the Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll (revised 1980 edition), Janet Maslin wrote the chapter on Bob Dylan. She included the photo of the folkie Dylan posing with a cigarette dangling from his lips and a guitar in his lap. Maslin supplied the caption: “The conscience of a generation, trying to smoke and sing simultaneously.” (The photo is accessible here.) Liz Cheney followed in Dylan’s footsteps with »

The eternal meaning of Independence Day

Featured image On July 9, 1858, Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas gave a campaign speech to a raucous throng from the balcony of the Tremont Hotel in Chicago. Abraham Lincoln was in the audience as Douglas prepared to speak. Douglas graciously invited Lincoln to join him on the balcony to listen to the speech. In his speech Douglas sounded the themes of the momentous campaign that Lincoln and Douglas waged that summer and »

The Lincolnian Zelensky?

Featured image Tucker Carlson has served a valuable service in giving voice to qualms that should ruffle the political consensus that has driven our support of Ukraine. He seeks to highlight uncomfortable facts that should belie the uniparty consensus, or at least make it more thoughtful. Last night he devoted his opening monologue — “Everybody is lying” (video) — to denouncing Ukraine President Zelensky as a tyrant. Tucker’s monologue was predicated on »

Lincoln with Chase(r)

Featured image Barton Swaim commends three new books in the popular history mode on Lincoln — by Brian Kilmeade, Brad Meltzer and John Avlon — in the Wall Street Journal’s Review section this weekend. Swaim recounts this anecdote lifted from John Avlon’s Lincoln and the Fight For Peace, with which Swaim concludes his review: On April 8, 1865, Lincoln visited Gen. Grant’s headquarters near Richmond and consoled wounded Union soldiers in a »

A genius for friendship

Featured image Abraham Lincoln stands not only as America’s greatest president but also as its greatest lawyer. At the time of his election to the presidency in 1860 he was the most prominent practicing lawyer in the state of Illinois. As a politician and as president, Lincoln was a profound student of the Constitution and constitutional history. Perhaps most important, Lincoln was America’s indispensable teacher of the moral ground of political freedom »

Remembering Mr. Lincoln

Featured image Today is of course the anniversary of the birth of America’s greatest president, Abraham Lincoln. As a politician and as president, Lincoln was a profound student of the Constitution and constitutional history. Perhaps most important, Lincoln was America’s indispensable teacher of the moral ground of political freedom at the exact moment when the country was on the threshold of abandoning what he called its “ancient faith” that all men are »

The eternal meaning of Independence Day

Featured image On July 9, 1858, Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas gave a campaign speech to a raucous throng from the balcony of the Tremont Hotel in Chicago. Abraham Lincoln was in the audience as Douglas prepared to speak. Douglas graciously invited Lincoln to join him on the balcony to listen to the speech. In his speech Douglas sounded the themes of the momentous campaign that Lincoln and Douglas waged that summer and »

Learning from Lincoln

Featured image Sean Wilentz is a historian of the leftist persuasion and also a principled opponent of the New York Times’s 1619 Project errors, distortions, and lies (my word, not his), now adopted as the orthodoxy of the Democratic Party. The problem is “A matter of facts,” he wrote in The Atlantic. He also signed off on the letter prominent historians sent to the Times challenging the project as ideological rather than »

Through Douglass’s eyes

Featured image The relationship between the former slave Frederick Douglass and President Abraham Lincoln provides deep insight into both men. Douglass’s recollection of his first meeting with Lincoln — “I shall never forget my first interview with this great man” — is a highlight of the 1892 version of Douglass’s autobiography (The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass). In the Claremont Review of Books celebration of the bicentennial anniversary of Lincoln’s birth »

A genius for friendship

Featured image Abraham Lincoln stands not only as America’s greatest president but also as its greatest lawyer. At the time of his election to the presidency in 1860 he was the most prominent practicing lawyer in the state of Illinois. As a politician and as president, Lincoln was a profound student of the Constitution and constitutional history. Perhaps most important, Lincoln was America’s indispensable teacher of the moral ground of political freedom »