'Honest Abe' Was Still a Politician

The Long Pursuit offers a fully realized portrait of the President who is so revered today, but who fought hard for his place in history

by Justin Bachman

Editor's Rating:

The Good: A satisfying read on a different era, with plenty of detail on Lincoln's political instincts

The Bad: Heavy reliance on the work of previous historians

The Bottom Line: A compelling look at Lincoln's character and political machinations during a difficult time

Reader Reviews

The Long Pursuit: Abraham Lincoln's Thirty-Year Struggle with Stephen Douglas for the Heart and Soul of America
By Roy Morris Jr.
HarperCollins; 256 pp; $24.95

Say what you wish about the naked ambitions of those who would be our next President, they've given us a fairly tame political season so far. Consider the fare to date: Suggestions that Senator Barack Obama's (D-Ill.) platform amounts to "change you can Xerox," Senator Hillary Clinton's (D-N.Y.) specter of a "red phone moment" in the White House that her rival would not suitably handle, and Senator John McCain's (R-Ariz.) discomfort at being endorsed by a Texas televangelist who considers the Roman Catholic church "the great whore" and a cult. Not exactly the stuff of political legend.

And certainly nothing like the 1856 White House contest, a three-party scrum that plumbed the depths of nastiness. In his new book, The Long Pursuit: Abraham Lincoln's Thirty-Year Struggle with Stephen Douglas for the Heart and Soul of America, Roy Morris Jr. recounts how the Democratic governor of Virginia described the Republican nominee as "a Frenchman's bastard whose mother was a strumpet in a Richmond brothel." Rivals to the Democratic candidate suggested that his lifelong bachelorhood was suspect; cartoonists did not hesitate to draw him in women's clothes. Democrats played shamelessly to the ugliest racism, Morris tells us, with young girls at one anti-Republican rally in Indiana marching in white dresses behind a banner that read, "Fathers, save us from n----- husbands."

That was also the first national race in which the U.S. had a look at what was to become the so-called Party of Lincoln soon after the ungainly lawyer from Springfield, Ill., helped form the Republicans from the political ashes of the Whigs. Lincoln, the U.S. President, has been revered for so long and with such vigor by popular history that it is easy to forget Lincoln, the self-educated backwoods lawyer. This Lincoln is a person few would readily recognize: a very human, very fallible, often morose, and habitually isolated man who was known to scrap like any other backroom pol in the heat of a campaign.

A Readable Account of a Bruising Battle

The 6-foot-4 Lincoln could bully. He could threaten. He could be petulant and petty when incensed. He was humble, but rarely shy: Years as a trial lawyer honed his skill for verbal combat, and his incredible intellect—not to mention sarcasm—could reduce opponents to shreds.

Yet for all his ambition, Lincoln was often in need of a foil, a cause or offense to stir him. That's why, were it not for Stephen Douglas, another attorney transplanted to Illinois, a fellow politician who had known far more political success in his career, Lincoln would never have become America's 16th and indispensable President, or seen the country through the bloody resolution of slavery. Morris offers a juicy look at Lincoln the brawling, calculating politician. It is an immensely personal, profoundly readable insight of how even our most august Presidents assume and inflict ample bruises on their way to Pennsylvania Avenue. Expect to see similar treatments of Lincoln this year, ahead of the bicentennial of his birth next February. Among them, Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America, by Gettsyburg College history professor Allen Guelzo and President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman by historian William Lee Miller.

The current rules of the game for Presidential candidates pale next to the fray of their predecessors. The 1856 campaign was the first time the newly formed Republican Party fielded a candidate, selecting the former Western explorer and California Senator John Frémont to face off against Democrat James Buchanan and former President Millard Fillmore, the choice of the Know-Nothing Party. It was also Lincoln's first real exposure to the melee of national politics. He was one Republican option for vice-president, and after being passed over went on to campaign widely for Frémont. The issue of slavery was at the fore, as an unfolding crisis about whether Kansas would be a free or slave state captivated the country.