As to the South, it suffers from a certain
Narrowness of vision due to the comparative scantiness of the
material used. The same may be said of McMaster.
For Lincoln, there is no adequate brief biography. Perhaps the
best is the most recent, "Abraham Lincoln", by Lord Charnwood
("Makers of the Nineteenth Century", 1917). It has a kind of
cool detachment that hardly any biographer had shown previously,
and yet this coolness is joined with extreme admiration. Short
biographies worth considering are John T. Morse, Jr., Abraham
Lincoln" ("American Statesmen" Series, 2 vols., 1893), and Ida M.
Tarbell, "Life of Abraham Lincoln", 2 vols. (1900). The official
biography is in ten volumes, "Abraham Lincoln, a History", by his
secretaries, John G. Nicolay and John Hay (1890). It is a
priceless document and as such is little likely to be forgotten.
But its events are so numerous that they swamp the figure of
Lincoln and yet are not numerous enough to constitute a
definitive history of the times. It is wholly eulogistic. The
same authors edited "The Writings of Abraham Lincoln"
(Biographical Edition, 2 vols., 1894), which has since been
expanded (1905) and now fills twelve volumes. It is the
definitive presentation of Lincoln's mind.
Pages:
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246