Friday, March 29, AD 2024 10:14am

Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association

Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We, of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.

Abraham Lincoln, Annual Address to Congress, December 1, 1862

 

Some of the best writing about Abraham Lincoln appear in the pages of the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association.  I have never been disappointed when I have read a copy.  Go here to read about it.  The volumes are available to read online.  Go here to look at them.  A small sample of the quality of writing you can expect to encounter.  The late Don Fehrenbacher on the anti-Lincoln tradition in American history:

Soon, however, a more aggressive challenge to that image did come from another quarter—that is, from what amounted to a revival of the radical wing of the anti-Lincoln tradition. The Old Left, including Socialists and Communists, had assimilated Lincoln to its ideals and aspirations. But the New Left and the black power militants of the 1960s found little in him to admire. Compared with a Wendell Phillips or a Charles Sumner, he seemed unheroic, opportunistic, and uninspired by deep moral commitment. Instead of the “Great Emancipator,” suggested I. F. Stone, he might better be called the “Great Equivocator.” [40] This “tragically flawed figure,” said Lerone Bennett, Jr., a senior editor of Ebony magazine, “shared the racial prejudices of most of his white contemporaries.” On every issue related to blacks, he was “the very essence of the white supremacist with good intentions.”[41] He came to emancipation reluctantly, under radical pressure, and, indeed, according to some cynics, may have “is sued the Proclamation to forestall more forcible action by Congress.” [42] That is, his real intention may have been to prevent effective emancipation.

Go here to read the rest.  For anyone with a passion for History, and good writing on History, the Internet is an endless treasure trove if one knows where to look.

Discover more from The American Catholic

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading

Scroll to Top