DAVID Herbert Donald, Professor Emeritus of History at Harvard, can easily add to the 6,000 or so books already written about Abraham Lincoln. He has worked on his subject for over 50 years and written extensively on it. This biography runs to 700 pages based on massive archives, including Lincoln's private papers. It is a well written product of immense research after a lifetime of academic thought and analysis. The style is undistinguished, sometimes angular and, in minor ways, curiously repetitive.
In his preface, the author describes his book as a "a biography from Lincoln's point of view using information and ideas that were available to him". He adds that it "seeks to explain rather than to judge" and aims at a portrait rather different from that of other biographies by focusing "closely on Lincoln himself, what he knew, when he knew it and "why he made decisions".
It is not a military history, Donald writes. "I have not described the campaigns and battles that Lincoln did not witness or "offered a broad philosophical (discussion of the origin of the (Civil War". These self-imposed restrictions limit the book's cope, but the approach does have some merits.
As a gifted biographer, Donald gives a vivid picture of his subject. Lincoln was self-taught. An early interest was in the structure and use of language. He walked six miles in the wilderness for a copy of an English grammar. He prepared his speeches carefully, seeking clarity and simplicity. From boyhood to his session in Congress, he was reputed to be good at anecdotes.
Politically, Lincoln's base was Illinois, though the experiences of his early years in Kentucky, and especially his parent's views on slavery, remained a life long influence. After his term in the Senate, he continued to be active in politics. "How hard, oh how hard it is," he is reported to have said to his law partner. Herndon, "to die and leave one's country no better than if one had never lived for it."
In 1850 he was advising Richard Yates, an ambitious young aspirant for the Senate, to be cautiously non-commital on the issue of slavery in territories acquired from Mexico; he should oppose any extension of slavery, but "of all political objects, the preservation of the Union stands number one". Later, he would admit slave states to the Union rather than see it dissolved. Donald's preoccupation with archival research to the exclusion of other insights precludes investigation of how concern for maintaining the Union became Lincoln's driving and abiding conviction.
In excluding sources other than (the archival, Donald also fails to explain convincingly the evolution of Lincoln's thinking on slavery. His recurring theme was Biblical warning that "a house divided against itself cannot stand". In his debates with Douglas, slavery had become "a moral outrage". Yet, as president, he was unwilling to end slavery unless doing so would preserve the Union. "If I could save the Union," he wrote in 1862, "without freeing any slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it. Donald is confusing on the debates with Douglas and far from clear in his conclusions as to their effect on Lincoln's reputation.
As he refuses to allow himself to draw on social or military history, Donald's treatment of the Civil War is a disappointment. He, makes no effort to assess its effects on the nation or to account for the emergence from it of Lincoln as America's greatest President. His restrictive methodology does serve its purpose, however, when he describes Mrs Mary Lincoln's extravagances on herself, and on the White House, and in discussing the President's relations with his Cabinet colleagues, his generals and the Supreme Court. In selecting a Chief Justice, the President wanted "a man deeply versed in the law, rather than an ideologue or theorist", one who would recognise that "the function of courts is to decide cases - not principles".
Professor Donald sometimes gives more emphasis than he intends to Lincoln's ill considered trifles in conversation. In the preface, he quotes the President's alleged maxim, "My policy is to have no policy." Yet, in the same paragraph, he has already agreed that what Lincoln meant was that he had a pragmatic approach to problems.
Lincoln, he writes, found in himself an essential passivity of character. "I claim," he said, "not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events controlled me." Donald's self denying ordinance of avoiding philosophical discussion prevents him from giving this confession the consideration it so obviously deserves.
General McClellan continued to be dilatory about launching his long awaited offensive even after he had taken charge of the whole army of the United States. His relations with the President and Congress rapidly deteriorated, but the President seemed to lack the will to dismiss him. On the other hand, Lincoln displayed decisive and remarkable strategic skills in managing his generals after Ulysses Grant was appointed Commanding General. If this conspicuous contrast in the President's intellectual capacities is explicable within the rem it of Donald's historical methodology, he chooses not to explain much less develop, it.
Professor Donald's book will be studied by specialist historians who will examine its narrow scholarly disciplines. It is likely to leave the general reader dejected and wishing for much more than his historical methodology can convey.
The gaunt figure emerging from this biography is not of the man of courage, intelligence and vision, who cared about public service and the weakest of his people, and who found his finest hour in his conduct of the Civil War. For Donald, Lincoln had luck on his side and achieved greatness in his
Gettysburg speech and little more.