Rating: 
Summary: Long-winded is an Understatement!
Review: Okay, I admit it: I am a fan of Lincoln's. I was disposed to like this book. It's really not a BAD book, for it's very well researched, and Miller does know his subject well. However, his prose style is musty, circumlocutious, windy in the extreme, and almost deaf to any coherent narrative of Lincoln's life. The perspective on "virtue"--a subject I find fascintating--is also strained to the maximum. In all due respect, this author has been speaking to star-struck undergrads for a bit too long. A good editor might have saved all this research; as it is, it's a longish, flawed book on a great subject.
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Summary: The Morality of the Great Emancipator: Trashes Revisionists
Review: Perhaps no figure in American history has been the subject of more mythology, legend and revision than Abraham Lincoln. He has been elevated to the status of Christ-like martyrdom. He has been called a white supremacist and a racist. Revisionists of the right have accused him of fomenting war to promote mercantile interests. His motives and morality have been questioned. His commitment to the anti-slavery cause has been questioned. But who was the real Abraham Lincoln? What were his true thoughts on the great issue of the day? How did the prairie born son of illiterate pioneers become the most revered man in American History?In this wonderful new book, William Lee Miller examines, not so much the events of Lincoln's life as the evolution of the character of the man historian Paul Johnson calls "a kind of moral genius." The book covers the years from Lincoln's birth until his inauguration in 1861. In particular, Miller examines how Lincoln's politics can be squared with his morality. Using Lincoln's own words, Miller effectively refutes the revisionists of both the right and the left and restores Lincoln to his rightful place as an American giant and irrepressible foe of slavery. Miller is an unabashed admirer of Lincoln. Through careful scholarship and relentless logic, the author dissects Lincoln's words and actions, explores his motivations and raises and disposes of revisionist arguments. He does so in an amusing and folksy style that clearly reveals his affection and fascination with this greatest of all Americans. All of the positive traits associated with Lincoln are shown to be true. In speech after speech, Lincoln is revealed to be an intractable foe of slavery. Miller's exploration of Lincoln's character show a living politician to be sure, but a politician who clearly sees the elective process as a path to his moral goals, namely the containment and end of slavery. Lincoln is revealed to be unusually conciliatory and non-vindictive. For example, he placed Edwin Stanton in his cabinet despite Stanton's support for his Southern Democratic opponent and despite the fact that Lincoln was personally humiliated by Stanton years earlier. Not many presidents would do that. It reveals much about Lincoln's character. Miller has no patience for arguments that attack Lincoln's character because he was not a morally pure abolitionist. Miller places Lincoln's pragmatism in its proper context, given the opinions of the electorate Lincoln faced in Illinois and then nationally. He also shows how Lincoln's pragmatic approach was in fact the moral and ethical method to solving as intractable a problem as American slavery. He contrasts Lincoln's pragmatic moral approach with that of Stephen Douglas who Miller contends lacked any morality at all. During the vital six years between 1854 and Lincoln's election as President, Lincoln is shown to have developed a comprehensive and consistent moral perspective on slavery. He thought it a terrible evil and planned for its ultimate destruction. But Lincoln recognized that immediate abolition was not possible so the platform of the Republican party, which Lincoln helped build, was limited to the demand that slavery not be permitted in the territories. Douglas had no belief that slavery was immoral and would have allowed its spread to the territories to preserve the peace and the union. As Miller shows, there is no evidence that slavery was anything but Lincoln's prime concern from 1954 on. The Civil War was fought because the Southern states could not abide the election of a president determined to halt the spread of slavery. As Lincoln put it to Alexander Stephens after his election as president, "you think slavery is right and ought to be extended; while we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. That I suppose is the rub."
A key component of Lincoln's thinking that distinguishes him from many of his allies of the day is his magnanimity, most famously reflected in his "malice towards none..." second inaugural. Miller shows how this magnanimity was a key component of Lincoln's moral thinking. Lincoln always argued that slavery was an American, not merely a Southern problem. He never personally condemned the Southerners who supported slavery but instead tried to understand them and his program always called for accommodating their fears and concerns. In this book, Abraham Lincoln is revealed as a truly great American and a most moral man who proved to be a brilliant leader. He comes across, not as a saint but as a living breathing human being with desires and passions but with a real commitment to justice. This book should really be read by all college students as an example of how an American politician can be effective and still remain committed to his core principals. The brilliant scholarship and lively style makes it a must read for anyone with an interest in American history. I expect this book will be on many university history department reading lists.
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Summary: The answer to stupid Lincoln books
Review: Right now you can read two similar Lincoln debunking books from opposite ends of the spectrum-- Lerone Bennett's Forced Into Glory, in which Lincoln is a racist who didn't want to do anything for black people, and neo-Confederate Thomas diLorenzo's The Real Lincoln (talk about a presumptuous title!) in which Lincoln is a "national socialist" for prizing the Union over states' rights and waging total war. (DiLorenzo seems to forget who declared war, or maybe whiny victimhood is the form Suth'n honuh takes in the 21st century.) Despite the fact that they're as far apart as Frederick Douglass and Jefferson Davis, the two authors wind up twisting the same quotations, ignoring the obvious counterarguments (diLorenzo actually says Lincoln didn't believe in the Declaration of Independence-- when Lincoln made speech after speech about it!) and painting a surprisingly similar picture of Lincoln as a genocidal, powermad tyrant who cared nothing for the black man and used slavery as an excuse for his own ends. (Gore Vidal, what hath you wrought by trying to knock Sandburg's plaster saint off the shelf?) Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, there is this book, by the author of the fascinating and lively Arguing About Slavery. It is almost exactly a halfway point between two of the best Lincoln books of the 1990s, combining a biographical portrait grounded in David Herbert Donald's extremely reliable biography with the kind of close textual study that Garry Wills brought to the Gettysburg Address. Miller's goal is to explicate Lincoln's moral choices, in what he said and-- this is critical-- in what he did, as a politician trying to simultaneously and honorably pursue a personal ambition as well as advance the causes he believed in (national improvement first, then abolition). Though he is not attempting to answer fringe writers (Bennett does get a mention in a note, Miller being amazed to find him comparing Lincoln unfavorably to the notably more racist Lyman Trumbull), you will find everything here you might need to dispose of their one-sided, selective portraits, usually in Lincoln's own words. What Miller understands and others don't is the overall context from which Lincoln arose and in which he acted; here is a Lincoln who, though raised in a society which took white superiority for granted, not only was able to communicate the principles of equality to racist audiences (well enough that he led them to war for them) but to a considerable extent rid himself of racism personally. And where diLorenzo would have you believe that the South merely asked to be leave meekly, only to suffer the full force of Lincoln's megalomaniacal anschluss, Miller reminds us of the reality of the political situation in which Lincoln rose to power, with the Compromise of 1850 dead at the hand of Slave Power ambition, the prospect of new slave states popping up all over, collusion in every branch of government (Douglas with the South in Congress, Buchanan in the White House and Taney's Supreme Court) and the likelihood that slavery would, within a short time, have established itself legally in every state of the union. (No states' rights person like diLorenzo ever answers the Northerner's complaint, that the Southern-backed federal Fugitive Slave Law forced slavery upon every state, even those whose Constitutions forbade it.) In Miller's telling, here is a man who, in his own phrase, cultivated the better angels of his nature. It is an inspiring story for those not already too far gone in partisan foolishness. It is The Real Lincoln, whose glory was not forced but self-realized.
Rating: 
Summary: Why the fascination?
Review: There's likely been no other American so widely dissected as Abraham Lincoln. Author after author has explored Lincoln's outer world to the point of exhaustion. It's only understandable, then, that the fashion lately seems to be an exploration of his inner one. So we have a spate of books in the last few years that explore Lincoln's psyche, his religion, his sexuality,his relation with his family--and now, with Miller's new book, his moral character. Miller tells us that he wants to begin afresh by forgetting the Lincoln myth and tracing the moral development of Lincoln in order to see where he winds up. But of course this is an impossibly objective position to attain, and the fix is in from page one: the reader knows--and so does Miller--who's going to win the race. Lincoln predictably emerges as a complex individual who rises to historical prominence not just because he grew into an astute statesperson, but also because he was a virtuous human being. The first alone would have given him power; both together give him greatness. Most of Miller's tracing of the inner life of Lincoln isn't particularly new, although it is pleasingly systematic. But two characteristics of his approach are worth noting. First, Miller obviously admires his main character without falling into the hagiography that bedevils so many books on Lincoln. Second, Miller's thesis that the contours of Lincoln's moral character are shaped by his earnest efforts to repudiate his backwoods heritage is both novel and persuasive. This argument alone would make the book a worthy read. But what the book doesn't do--and perhaps no single book can do this--is explain why it is that we simply can't seem to get enough of Lincoln. Lincoln is a sort of national icon. The fascination with him is apparently endless. Miller's book will contribute to the on-going fascination.
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Summary: Cunning of Reason, and for good reason
Review: This excellent pondering sort of biographical portrait pulls away from the revisionist corrections to the mythical Lincoln and restores him to the man of history that he was, a gawky beanstalk from the Hoosier wilds who appeared from nowhere at the right time with a thin resume, when politics as usual was insufficient, a man who could hold an axe at arm's length, self-educated himself by reading and reading, and who didn't really fit predictably into his environment, a stranger in a strange land. This portrait is far better than the mythical version, and makes complete sense, in an historical period we fail to reconstruct in our minds, one in which slavery was still embedded in the constitution and no political speech could manage its PR without reckoning with that now totally bizarre Fact. Change, when it is essential, where change can be impossible, found its man. Is there any more to explain about Lincoln's deft and nearly shifty-eyed unconscious cunning, as he slips past the impossible barrier, emerging after 1854 as the great debater with Douglas, and then against all odds quite suddenly the President on the dread threshold of the most decisive turning point in American history, the day the note came due on the Declaration of Independence. A man for the ages.
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Summary: How did it happen?
Review: This is a fascinating look at how an untutored and barely educated frontier man developed an exquisite sense of compassion and empathy when others in similar circumstances did not. It is sort of a moral developmental history of Lincoln, which does not fail to recognize his mistakes and his sometimes painful failures as well as his successes. I do not know that anyone can truly chart the evolution of thinking and belief of a person as briliant and complicated as Lincoln, but Miller makes a truly thoughtful and convincing attempt. I know of no other book on Lincoln that comes close to this.
Rating:
Summary: How did it happen?
Review: This is a fascinating look at how an untutored and barely educated frontier man developed an exquisite sense of compassion and empathy when others in similar circumstances did not. It is sort of a moral developmental history of Lincoln, which does not fail to recognize his mistakes and his sometimes painful failures as well as his successes. I do not know that anyone can truly chart the evolution of thinking and belief of a person as briliant and complicated as Lincoln, but Miller makes a truly thoughtful and convincing attempt. I know of no other book on Lincoln that comes close to this.
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Summary: Scholarly Work on the Development of a Moral man
Review: This is a very scholarly work on the development of Lincoln's ethics as a man and a politician. The book is a deep study of Lincoln's writings and influences, the books he read, the candidates (Henry Clay) that he favored and the influences in his life such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. I would recommend for those unfamiliar with the detail of Lincoln's life to read a primer as Miller brings forth information in such detail that the reader has to have more than a baseline of familiarity with Lincoln. As a scholar, Miller uses some phrases and language that reflect my limited education and caused me to occasionally keep a dictionary near by. I found that midway through the book that this need was less so. In summary, the author notates the severe disadvantages that Lincoln had with a large and poor family, little schooling and s little opportunity for higher education and without the finer things in life such as well fitted clothing that must have caused more attention to Lincolns height and ungainly lean look. In spite of any set backs caused by losing future elections, even in cases where Lincoln had the inside track such as the Senate vote of 1855, Lincoln maintains a humility along with a sincere interest in staying on the high ground ethically. As Miller points out through extensive study of Lincoln's history, writings and course of study, Miller does well to describe the development of Lincoln's virtues. Miller notes that Lincoln is not politically naïve, he starts out an as industrious politician dealing with matters of economy but also graduates as a leading member of the Whig Party in his State and eventually a leader of the Republican Party. Lincoln is astute in that he disagrees with the Know Nothings but instead of criticizing them waits for their collapse so that their better followers may enjoin the new Republican Party. Miller frames Lincoln's successfully arguments about the evils of slavery and the intent of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Miller points out that Douglas and the growing State of Illinois gave Lincoln a National platform to espouse his views. After reading the passages from the debates (Lincoln initially engineers), I see Lincoln's argument more clearly that the Nebraska Act and popular sovereignty was absolutely wrong in that the Act allowed a small population to determine a national issue about the expansion of slavery into the territories. Miller also notes that Lincoln in his time stressed that slavery was wrong in clear, logical arguments with a point that anyone at anytime could be enslaved but his best argument was simply, that it was wrong and in violation of the Declaration of Independence. I am most impressed with not only Lincoln's stand against slavery, irregardless of his occasional carefulness about equality of the races for those times, but his strident ability to defend his position and impress those that heard him speak. His Humility is incredulous that he does not make those that defeated him or snubbed him his enemies but enlists them for the betterment of his party and the installation of his national Government. My favorite passage in the book deals with Stanton's initial meeting with Lincoln, where Lincoln is virtually used as a local boy for a case in his State but never taken serious as a true partner in the case. Lincoln later has no deliberation in later making Stanton his Secretary of War. Lincoln was not condescending to those that disagreed with him, he recognized that differences in geography and environment made men think differently but not necessarily evil. I agree with Miller, that the second Inaugural was his greatest speech, only Lincoln after four years of war could say "with malice toward none".
Rating:
Summary: Great and Kind Human
Review: This is a very unique biography of Abraham Lincoln. As described in all the other reviews, this book focuses on Lincoln's ethical character. After reading this book, the reader should feel like we have so much more to give to this world that we live in. We should continue to develop ourselves so we can contribute to make this world a better place. Lincoln believed he could do that by proving to the rest of the world that democracy can survive and prosper. Everyone knows Lincoln was a kind and humble man. But the author not only describes Lincoln's ethical nature but provides many examples that proves to us time and time again what a wondersful exceptional man Abraham Lincoln really was. Everyone living in a free country should thank Abraham Lincoln for his ethical dedication.
Rating:
Summary: Great and Kind Human
Review: This is a very unique biography of Abraham Lincoln. As described in all the other reviews, this book focuses on Lincoln's ethical character. After reading this book, the reader should feel like we have so much more to give to this world that we live in. We should continue to develop ourselves so we can contribute to make this world a better place. Lincoln believed he could do that by proving to the rest of the world that democracy can survive and prosper. Everyone knows Lincoln was a kind and humble man. But the author not only describes Lincoln's ethical nature but provides many examples that proves to us time and time again what a wondersful exceptional man Abraham Lincoln really was. Everyone living in a free country should thank Abraham Lincoln for his ethical dedication.
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