Rating: 
Summary: An Intellectual and Religious Biography of Lincoln
Review: Biographies of Abraham Lincoln have tended to fall into two broad categories. The first category consists of biographies of the "subjective" Lincoln. These biographies are based largely on the many anecdotes and stories people told about Lincoln's life, typically during the early years in Illinois and concentrate on trying to explore Lincoln as a man (He remains an enigma.)The second category of Lincoln biography is the political. This biography focuses on Lincoln's public actions, typically during or shortly before his Presidency and draws on the lengthy public record available during the Civil War years. This type of biographical approach tends to give short shrift to the personal approach.In his "Abraham Lincoln, Redeemer President" Allen Guelzo points out these two approaches to Lincoln studies (p.472) and says that his book is an attempt to combine the personal and public approaches to Lincoln. Professor Guelzo, Dean of Templeton Honors Colledge and Professor of History at Eastern Universtiy, writes a primarily intellectual biography; but he tries to explore the degree to which Lincoln's thought formed his political actions. Professor Guelzo devotes a great deal of attention to establishing Lincoln's political identity as a whig -- an admirer of both Henry Clay and Daniel Webster. From his early days in public life, Lincoln was interested in promoting economic opportunity by encouraging the free market. He supported ambitious programs of public works and public education, to develop transportation infrastructure, (canals, roads, and railroads) and to promote the growth of industry and of a middle class. The whig approach emphasized public virtue, public morality, the value of hard work, and a unified United States. Guelzo effectively contrasts Lincoln's Whiggish beliefs with the agrarian beliefs of the Jefferson-Jacksonian democrats with their commitment to a nation of agrarian, self-sufficient yeomen and farmers. (Lincoln's father was such a yeoman, and Lincoln wanted none of it for himself.) Professor Guelzo traces the beginnings of Lincoln's opposition to the expansion of slavery, in the early 1850's. to his desire to promote the development of upwardly mobile capitalist workers. He tended to see agrarianism as slavery slightly disguised. Lincoln never lost his whig commitments, according to Professor Guelzo, even after the party disbanded and Lincoln became a leader of the Republican party. Professor Guelzo also studies the nature of Lincoln's religious beliefs and the importance Lincoln gave to religous questions. As is the case with Lincoln's economic rebellion against his father, Professor Guelzo finds the beginnings of Lincoln's religious thought in a youthful rebellion against the Calvinism and predestinarian beliefs of his father. Lincoln found he could not believe in the revealed God of the Bible, although he knew the Bible well. He could not accept the doctrine of predestination, but he came close to it in a secular way. During most of his life, Lincoln was a determinist who believed that people had little independent choice in what they did but acted in response to outside factors which they did not control. According to Professor Guelzo, Lincoln also tended towards the englightenment of John Locke and towards the utilitarianism of Mill and Bentham. His politics and Presidency, of course, have distincly pragmatic characters. Throughout his life, Lincoln remained outside the fold of organized religion. According to Professor Guelzo, Lincoln's thought developed as Lincoln confronted at deepening levels the difficulty of the Civil War. The beginning of this development was the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates where Lincoln vigourously attacked the morality of holding slaves. Lincoln's thoughts on providence, for Professor Guelzo, were instrumental in Lincoln's decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln told his cabinet he had made a promise "to his maker" to issue the Proclamation and that he could not do otherwise. (pp 341-42.) Guelzo continues his treatment of providential themes in Lincoln with his discussion of the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural Address. There is also a great deal in the book that discusses Lincoln's handling of the War, the border states, his generals, and the Army. Professor Guelzo's intellectual and religous themes sometimes get lost in these discussions, and we are reminded that Lincoln was a pragmatist, a leader and a consummate politician. The picture of Lincoln's religiosity that emerges from Professor Guelzo's study has a distinctly modern flavor. (Professor Guelzo sees it as high Victorian.) Lincoln was a person who sought religous belief but could not find his way to an organized religion of his day. He was not, in his mid and late life, content simply with materialism and skepticism but rather developed his own religious thought based upon a rather loosely defined notion of providence and redemption. As personal as his thought was, it helped shape our nation. Lincoln's life, as Professor Guelzo presents it, seems to be a paradigm of many people today who reject organized religion in favor of a search for what many call spirituality. On a political level, Guelzo's account of Lincoln stresses that the United States is and has become a unified Nation and that Americans should see themselves, for all their diversity and differences as part of a unified people. I also see the book as a reminder of the value of hard work and economic effort. Professor Guelzo has written a thoughtful, provocative study of Lincoln the man, the thinker, and the President.
Rating:
Summary: An Intellectual and Religious Biography of Lincoln
Review: Biographies of Abraham Lincoln have tended to fall into two broad categories. The first category consists of biographies of the "subjective" Lincoln. These biographies are based largely on the many anecdotes and stories people told about Lincoln's life, typically during the early years in Illinois and concentrate on trying to explore Lincoln as a man (He remains an enigma.)The second category of Lincoln biography is the political. This biography focuses on Lincoln's public actions, typically during or shortly before his Presidency and draws on the lengthy public record available during the Civil War years. This type of biographical approach tends to give short shrift to the personal approach. In his "Abraham Lincoln, Redeemer President" Allen Guelzo points out these two approaches to Lincoln studies (p.472) and says that his book is an attempt to combine the personal and public approaches to Lincoln. Professor Guelzo, Dean of Templeton Honors Colledge and Professor of History at Eastern Universtiy, writes a primarily intellectual biography; but he tries to explore the degree to which Lincoln's thought formed his political actions. Professor Guelzo devotes a great deal of attention to establishing Lincoln's political identity as a whig -- an admirer of both Henry Clay and Daniel Webster. From his early days in public life, Lincoln was interested in promoting economic opportunity by encouraging the free market. He supported ambitious programs of public works and public education, to develop transportation infrastructure, (canals, roads, and railroads) and to promote the growth of industry and of a middle class. The whig approach emphasized public virtue, public morality, the value of hard work, and a unified United States. Guelzo effectively contrasts Lincoln's Whiggish beliefs with the agrarian beliefs of the Jefferson-Jacksonian democrats with their commitment to a nation of agrarian, self-sufficient yeomen and farmers. (Lincoln's father was such a yeoman, and Lincoln wanted none of it for himself.) Professor Guelzo traces the beginnings of Lincoln's opposition to the expansion of slavery, in the early 1850's. to his desire to promote the development of upwardly mobile capitalist workers. He tended to see agrarianism as slavery slightly disguised. Lincoln never lost his whig commitments, according to Professor Guelzo, even after the party disbanded and Lincoln became a leader of the Republican party. Professor Guelzo also studies the nature of Lincoln's religious beliefs and the importance Lincoln gave to religous questions. As is the case with Lincoln's economic rebellion against his father, Professor Guelzo finds the beginnings of Lincoln's religious thought in a youthful rebellion against the Calvinism and predestinarian beliefs of his father. Lincoln found he could not believe in the revealed God of the Bible, although he knew the Bible well. He could not accept the doctrine of predestination, but he came close to it in a secular way. During most of his life, Lincoln was a determinist who believed that people had little independent choice in what they did but acted in response to outside factors which they did not control. According to Professor Guelzo, Lincoln also tended towards the englightenment of John Locke and towards the utilitarianism of Mill and Bentham. His politics and Presidency, of course, have distincly pragmatic characters. Throughout his life, Lincoln remained outside the fold of organized religion. According to Professor Guelzo, Lincoln's thought developed as Lincoln confronted at deepening levels the difficulty of the Civil War. The beginning of this development was the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates where Lincoln vigourously attacked the morality of holding slaves. Lincoln's thoughts on providence, for Professor Guelzo, were instrumental in Lincoln's decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln told his cabinet he had made a promise "to his maker" to issue the Proclamation and that he could not do otherwise. (pp 341-42.) Guelzo continues his treatment of providential themes in Lincoln with his discussion of the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural Address. There is also a great deal in the book that discusses Lincoln's handling of the War, the border states, his generals, and the Army. Professor Guelzo's intellectual and religous themes sometimes get lost in these discussions, and we are reminded that Lincoln was a pragmatist, a leader and a consummate politician. The picture of Lincoln's religiosity that emerges from Professor Guelzo's study has a distinctly modern flavor. (Professor Guelzo sees it as high Victorian.) Lincoln was a person who sought religous belief but could not find his way to an organized religion of his day. He was not, in his mid and late life, content simply with materialism and skepticism but rather developed his own religious thought based upon a rather loosely defined notion of providence and redemption. As personal as his thought was, it helped shape our nation. Lincoln's life, as Professor Guelzo presents it, seems to be a paradigm of many people today who reject organized religion in favor of a search for what many call spirituality. On a political level, Guelzo's account of Lincoln stresses that the United States is and has become a unified Nation and that Americans should see themselves, for all their diversity and differences as part of a unified people. I also see the book as a reminder of the value of hard work and economic effort. Professor Guelzo has written a thoughtful, provocative study of Lincoln the man, the thinker, and the President.
Rating: 
Summary: Where is the Real Lincoln?
Review: Eerdmans should stick to theological tomes, rather than embarassing themselves with yet another propaganda piece for the Yankee cause. Guelzo fails to mention how Lincoln trampled upon the Constitution (Illegal arrests, Intimidation of duly elected leaders (e.g. Maryland State Legislature), and making war upon peaceful states which legally withdrew from the voluntary Union). A Government for the people, by the people vanished [Jeffersonian Constitutional Republic replaced with Consolidated Absolutism] with Lincoln's insistence that the Federal government existed before the States. The right of secession in America, beginning with the Declaration of Independence, was taught for decades until Sen. Sumner thundered from the Senate floor that this was a perpetual Union (Lincoln decided to carry this torch at the expense of 600,000 innocents). Lincoln's Emancipation proclamation was none other than a war measure (slaves were being used to build the capital and slaves were only declared free in Confederate held territory)encouraging slaves to revolt: this did not happen. Guelzo also fails to mention that slavery in the South was dying out and that roughly 10% of her people ever owned slaves. Guelzo failed to point out that the Emancipation Proclamation was illegal since it would have to take a Constitutional amendment to change the Constitution. Furthermore, his book fails to point out that the Emancipation had no jurisdiction in the Confederate States of America since the Southern states were no longer a member of the Union. I'm amazed at how people continue to admire a man who waged war on people who decided to follow in the footsteps of their fathers: Revolutionary War Heroes. The South was right, and the Northern propaganda machine is still filling the public mind with lies. If Abraham Lincoln embodies what a Christian is, then I'm not one, and evangelicals fascination with a man who was not converted until after Gettyburg is dangerous. Furthermore, I have no respect for a man who waged war on my native state: North Carolina.
Rating:
Summary: an accurate and highly readable portrait of a great man
Review: Gulezo, in his book, decides to concentrate on the intellectual and religious development of our sixteenth president. Since Gulezo readily admits that religion did not play a very important role in Lincoln's actions, I am not sure why he chose to highlight this area. With this criticism aside, Gulezo writes a highly readable and absorbing narrative of Lincoln's life. Like all good historians, Gulezo focuses his narrative without forcing opinions on the reader. After reading the book, it is abundantly clear that Lincoln remained a Whig moderate on the slavery issue. Gulezo correctly and intelligently seals the continuum between his Whiggish beliefs in the American System and his views toward slavery. He is not the phlegmatic opportunist of Hofstader nor the evil racist rumored but denied by Kearns-Goodwin and Spielberg. The most valid criticism of Lincoln, phrasing it as Barry Goldwater might, may be his moderation instead of his extremism in the pursuit of virtue; maybe it is a sin. In summary, it would be difficult for me to conceive of a better writen biography of Lincoln. After finishing this book, I was left with a much better understanding of this president.
Rating:
Summary: an accurate and highly readable portrait of a great man
Review: Gulezo, in his book, decides to concentrate on the intellectual and religious development of our sixteenth president. Since Gulezo readily admits that religion did not play a very important role in Lincoln's actions, I am not sure why he chose to highlight this area. With this criticism aside, Gulezo writes a highly readable and absorbing narrative of Lincoln's life. Like all good historians, Gulezo focuses his narrative without forcing opinions on the reader. After reading the book, it is abundantly clear that Lincoln remained a Whig moderate on the slavery issue. Gulezo correctly and intelligently seals the continuum between his Whiggish beliefs in the American System and his views toward slavery. He is not the phlegmatic opportunist of Hofstader nor the evil racist rumored but denied by Kearns-Goodwin and Spielberg. The most valid criticism of Lincoln, phrasing it as Barry Goldwater might, may be his moderation instead of his extremism in the pursuit of virtue; maybe it is a sin. In summary, it would be difficult for me to conceive of a better writen biography of Lincoln. After finishing this book, I was left with a much better understanding of this president.
Rating:
Summary: Accessible and enjoyable intellectual biography for all
Review: Having never read anything of length on Lincoln I was hoping to find a book that not only told me the background behind what I did know, but would give me an entrypoint through which I could encounter the man who is so admired, but whose biography among the populace is more folk than fact. This book gave me just what I wanted. I was mesmerized by Guelzo's recounting of the rise of wage labor and how incredibly influential that idea was to Lincoln. Additionally, I found his treatment of the theme of Providence in Lincoln's life very helpful. This book would be of particular interest to those interested in politics, religious thought, as well as history, obviously.
Rating: 
Summary: Good biography from a fresh angle
Review: I liked the book a great deal. In light of many slants of past Lincoln books, and others about our founding fathers, I find Guelzo's interpretive method a refreshing try at giving reasons to events and actions of a great president. I tire of the religious claims and just as religious the secular claims of many of the great men of the past. A reviewer here just wanted the facts. Well, we have many books with just these. We need more that weigh other things to present us with possible motives for the actions we see as historical facts. There is no such thing as unbiased presentation. If it were closest as could be, how dry to read it would be. The thing I did not like about the book was how the author would not state the date of an event while trying to tie in one of a past circumstance. It made some events hard to follow. It should never be assumed that someone could remember or know. If he edits for another edition of the book, I hope he fixes this. Also there were lose ends that needed to be tied together. He mentioned curious happenings, but gave no reason why he mentioned them. What is wrong with the old device of telling the readers this or that will be answered as to its significance in a late chapter, etc.?
Rating:
Summary: Best Lincoln Biography of Ideas
Review: I've read, I suppose, 500 books and articles about Abraham Lincoln, but Allen Guelzo's Redeemer President is by far the best on the subject of the beliefs that animated the 16th President. Lincoln's ideas on politics, the economy and social relations -- and especially on religion -- are clearly (but not too simply) described, and Guelzo shows how these developed over time and influenced Lincoln's actions. The book is most satisfying because it presents a convincing portrait of Lincoln as he understood himself, and so makes him less enigmatic -- but no less complex -- than he is usually shown.
Rating:
Summary: Lincoln the Whig
Review: Like a typical biography, Redeemer President goes through its subject's life. But unlike most biographies, Redeemer President centers on the maturation of its subject's thinking. Guelzo shows how some of Lincoln's most famous ideas, such as his reliance on "the proposition that all men are created equal," was part of Whig orthodoxy. To trace Lincoln's development takes nothing away from his genius, of course. This was one of the most enjoyable biographies I have read on Lincoln. One might begin with Oates' With Malice Toward None for Lincoln's life as a great story. Then go to Donald's Lincoln for a more modern biography -- lots and lots of facts, but with little attempt to see Lincoln as a product of his own time. Both are very well written, but I prefer Guelzo's over either of them. If you like Guelzo's book on Lincoln's thought, you'll like A New Birth of Freedom by Harry V. Jaffa, which Guelzo calls "the greatest book on Lincoln's politics for another generation."
Rating:
Summary: Best recent single volume of Lincoln
Review: Lincoln without myth and hoopla. The author focuses on Lincoln's ideas. His seemingly contradictory beliefs in pre determination and the importance of hard work toward self improvement. Lincoln's political beliefs of the Rule of Law and the importance of providing economic opportunity to all. Lincoln's respect for the Declaration of Independece as a univerasal document. He understood the importance and fagile nature of a republic and that the arguments for Southern secession would destroy the repbulican experiment. Finally the author emphasized that Lincoln was a 19th century Whig and encourages further study of the Whig party.
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