A. LINCOLN by RONALD C. WHITE, JR. (2009)

It is gratifying when all your preconceived notions about a famous man are confirmed. This biography corroborates my previously held opinion that Abraham Lincoln was probably the best president our fortunate country has ever elected. That the book is widely accepted as one of the best biographies of Lincoln and that it is obviously highly researched by a well-known historian allow me to accept it as factual. Even though it becomes obvious that White is a Lincoln fan, he does not hesitate to recount the instances of mistaken thinking or actions.

White spends little time in telling us about Lincoln's youth or personal details of his life. Lincoln was very reticent about such things and relatively little is known. Instead White concentrates on Lincoln's actions and writings as a politician and as president, basing his conjectures about the President's thoughts on what was done and said rather than on his own suppositions.

One unusual aspect of the book, and one that was particularly interesting to me, is that White spends a significant portion of the book in analyzing the rhetoric of Lincoln's speeches and writings. Lincoln was largely self-educated, but his mastery of the English language would seem to indicate the highest level of scholarship. That he was a voracious reader is well documented, and that his favorites included the King James Bible and Shakespeare comes as no surprise when one considers the rhetorical devices he utilized. One cannot help but be reminded that today we have a president who depends on television for his knowledge of the world and who has difficulty in forming a coherent sentence. Alas.

When one thinks of Lincoln, the first thought of most is naturally that he is the man who freed the slaves, but he did much more than that, his primary goal being to preserve the nation as one whole rather than as a loose confederation of independent states. It appears to me that he deserves all the accolades we have since awarded him.

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And he really was Honest Abe. Many who knew him, including even political enemies, remarked on the fact.