Lincolns Campaign Biographies

During the 1860 and 1864 presidential campaigns, Abraham Lincoln was the subject of over twenty campaign biographies. In this innovative study, Thomas A. Horrocks examines the role that these publications played in shaping an image of Lincoln that would resonate with voters and explores the vision of Lincoln that the biographies crafted, the changes in this vision over the course of four years, and the impact of these works on the outcome of the elections. Horrocks investigates Lincoln’s campaign biographies within the context of the critical relationship between print and politics in nineteenth-century America and compares the works about Lincoln with other presidential campaign biographies of the era. Horrocks shows that more than most politicians of his day, Lincoln deeply appreciated and understood the influence and the power of the printed word. The 1860 campaign biographies introduced to America “Honest Abe, the Rail Splitter,” a trustworthy, rugged candidate who appealed to rural Americans. When Lincoln ran for reelection in 1864, the second round of campaign biographies complemented this earlier portrait of Lincoln with a new, paternal figure, “Father Abraham,” more appropriate for Americans enduring a bloody civil war. Closing with a consideration of the influence of these publications on Lincoln’s election and reelection, Lincoln’s Campaign Biographies provides a new perspective for those seeking a better understanding of the sixteenth president and two of the most critical elections in American history.

In a major publishing event, this fascinating volume restores and explains the most decisive campaign biography in U.S. history. In 1860, the original book catapulted Abraham Lincoln to the White House by dramatically warning of slavery's threat to American democracy. More than a century later, the New York "Times" still praised the original campaign biography as "most authoritative and influential." The book spawned an enduring legend: From poverty and tragic loss, a small boy rises to become a mighty crusader for justice. In this radiant expanded edition, Boston Hill Press skillfully restores and illustrates Mr. Lincoln's only major autobiographical effort. (He secretly wrote the initial manuscript. Under his direction, John Locke Scripps, a founder of the Chicago "Tribune," polished and expanded it into a national bestseller.) This restored edition reveals the potent political messages and campaign strategies that the candidate slyly wove into the story of his life. This is no dusty reprint; pithy modern commentary provides often breathtaking insights. Dramatic campaign speeches reverberate again. Rare photographs and posters depict an intense, clean-shaven youthful candidate, as he was then, before he became the bearded sage of our history books. Readers gain fresh perspective on a heartbreaking childhood and an early career as a fearless moral crusader. (Of exceptional interest is a jaw-dropping campaign appearance before a potentially hostile crowd of 12,000 people. Against all odds, Mr. Lincoln brazenly defies incendiary race-baiting by his opponent, the formidable incumbent U.S. Senator Stephen Douglas.) Above all this remarkable book reminds us that Abraham Lincoln was a living legend well before his presidential deeds. He was the American experience incarnate: humble birth in a log cabin; Huck Finn boyhood; self-made man; proverbial country lawyer; passionate antiwar protester; hopelessly idealistic reformer; and hardened crusader for justice. This book implicitly addresses the central question of all elections: How do we recognize a great statesman, before the glory? As such, "Vote Lincoln!" is still mandatory reading for modern voters seeking "the next Abraham Lincoln." This is a revised and expanded edition of the first restored edition released for the Lincoln Bicentennial Year of 2009. This expanded 2010 version contains more commentary and illustrations. The volume has over 75 black-and-white photographs, engravings, lithographs, and other illustrations. Several images depict Abraham Lincoln's famous tanned complexion, earned by riding horses as a country lawyer. Other images depict family, friends, opponents, and historical events.

Excerpt from Life of Abraham Lincoln: This Campaign Biography Corrected by the Hand of Abraham Lincoln in the Summer of 1860 Is Reproduced Here With Careful Attention to the Appearance of the Original Volume In 1860 Howells, then a young man of twenty three, was working as an editorial writer on the Ohio State Journal at Columbus. Except for a book of poems, The Lives and Speeches of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin was the first of the one hundred and three books that Howells wrote during the years from 1860 to 1920. Though he attended neither high school nor university, Howells received degrees from six universities, including Oxford, and rejected offers of professorship in literature from Yale, Harvard and Johns Hopkins universities. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Hailed as the definitive portrait of the sixteenth president, Lincoln scholar Michael Burlingame's impressive two-volume biography has been masterfully abridged and revised. Sixteenth president of the United States, the Great Emancipator, and a surpassingly eloquent champion of national unity, freedom, and democracy, Abraham Lincoln is arguably the most studied and admired of all Americans. Michael Burlingame's astonishing Abraham Lincoln: A Life, an updated, condensed version of the 2,000-page two-volume set that The Atlantic hailed as one of the five best books of 2009, offers fresh interpretations of this endlessly fascinating American leader. Based on deep research in unpublished sources as well as newly digitized sources, this work reveals how Lincoln's character and personality were the North's secret weapon in the Civil War, the key variables that spelled the difference between victory and defeat. He was a model of psychological maturity and a fully individuated man whose influence remains unrivaled in the history of American public life. Burlingame chronicles Lincoln's childhood and early development, romantic attachments and losses, his love of learning, legal training, and courtroom career as well as his political ambition, his term as congressman in the late 1840s, and his serious bouts of depression in early adulthood. Burlingame recounts, in fresh detail, the Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln marriage and traces the mounting moral criticism of slavery that revived his political career and won this Springfield lawyer the presidency in 1860. This abridgement delivers Burlingame's signature insight into Lincoln as a young man, a father, and a politician. Lincoln speaks to us not only as a champion of freedom, democracy, and national unity but also as a source of inspiration. Few have achieved his historical importance, but many can profit from his personal example, encouraged by the knowledge that despite a lifetime of troubles, he became a model of psychological maturity, moral clarity, and unimpeachable integrity. His presence and his leadership inspired his contemporaries; his life story will do the same for generations to come.

Abraham Lincoln is considered one of the most wrote about people ever to live. Hundreds of people have sought to write about his incredible life. Collected here are 13 classic biographies about Lincoln. A table of contents is included to help easily find each work in the collection. "Abraham Lincoln: A History - Volume One" By John G. Nicolay and John Hay "Abraham Lincoln: A History - Volume Two" By John G. Nicolay and John Hay "Abraham Lincoln: An Horatian Ode" By Richard Henry Stoddard "Abraham Lincoln" By James Lowell "Abraham Lincoln" By Lord Charnwood "Abraham Lincoln: A Memorial Discourse" By T.M. Eddy "Abraham Lincoln: The People's Leader in the Struggle for National Existence" By George Haven Putnam "Abraham Lincoln and the Union: A Chronicle of the Embattled North" By Nathaniel W. Stephenson "The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln" By Helen Nicolay "The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln" By Francis Fisher Browne "The Life of Abraham Lincoln" By Henry Ketcham "A Man of the People" By Thomas Dixon "Story of Young Abraham Lincoln" By Wayne Whipple

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“If you read one book about Lincoln, make it A. Lincoln.”—USA Today NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • The Philadelphia Inquirer • The Christian Science Monitor • St. Louis Post-Dispatch. NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE CHRISTOPHER AWARD Everyone wants to define the man who signed his name “A. Lincoln.” In his lifetime and ever since, friend and foe have taken it upon themselves to characterize Lincoln according to their own label or libel. In this magnificent book, Ronald C. White, Jr., offers a fresh and compelling definition of Lincoln as a man of integrity–what today’s commentators would call “authenticity”–whose moral compass holds the key to understanding his life. Through meticulous research of the newly completed Lincoln Legal Papers, as well as of recently discovered letters and photographs, White provides a portrait of Lincoln’s personal, political, and moral evolution. White shows us Lincoln as a man who would leave a trail of thoughts in his wake, jotting ideas on scraps of paper and filing them in his top hat or the bottom drawer of his desk; a country lawyer who asked questions in order to figure out his own thinking on an issue, as much as to argue the case; a hands-on commander in chief who, as soldiers and sailors watched in amazement, commandeered a boat and ordered an attack on Confederate shore batteries at the tip of the Virginia peninsula; a man who struggled with the immorality of slavery and as president acted publicly and privately to outlaw it forever; and finally, a president involved in a religious odyssey who wrote, for his own eyes only, a profound meditation on “the will of God” in the Civil War that would become the basis of his finest address. Most enlightening, the Abraham Lincoln who comes into focus in this stellar narrative is a person of intellectual curiosity, comfortable with ambiguity, unafraid to “think anew and act anew.” A transcendent, sweeping, passionately written biography that greatly expands our knowledge and understanding of its subject, A. Lincoln will engage a whole new generation of Americans. It is poised to shed a profound light on our greatest president just as America commemorates the bicentennial of his birth.