"White skin notwithstanding, this is our first black President." Thus spake Toni Morrison, the first black American Nobel laureate for literature—and she wasn't talking about Abraham Lincoln. Back in the day, she and most black Americans might have spoken of Lincoln this way, with his portrait holding a place of honor in their homes. But decades of historical debunking, revisionist interpretation, and multicultural accommodations have made doubting "Lincoln the Emancipator" both an academic reflex and an increasingly commonplace opinion.

Allen C. Guelzo will have none of this. The Grace F. Kea Professor of American History at Eastern College and co-winner of the Lincoln Prize for his marvelous 1999 biography, Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President, seeks to shore up Lincoln's reputation by writing a magisterial account of how Lincoln's emancipation moment became America's emancipation moment. The candid reader of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation must conclude that while various individuals, organizations, and institutions set the stage for the liberation of four million black Americans, Abraham Lincoln proved to be abolition's indispensable man.

Guelzo argues that Lincoln deserves the title "Great Emancipator" not just because he freed and enlisted slaves as part of the Union war effort, but also because of his steadfast concern that whatever was done for the enslaved black be done with lasting results. Prior to the passage of the 13th Amendment in 1865, which was inconceivable before the Civil War, Lincoln thought the surest road to emancipation was for states to adopt gradual, compensated emancipation programs. But despite repeated appeals to the so-called "border" slave states throughout his presidency, which included financial incentives from the federal government, he was rebuffed. So by July of 1862, he drafted a federal alternative that he hoped would pass constitutional muster.

Guelzo's argument is summed up by his book's seemingly innocuous title. It was Lincoln's emancipation proclamation that produced "the end of slavery in America." The reader soon learns that other emancipation proclamations preceded Lincoln's. Guelzo examines three in particular: Gen. Benjamin Butler's "contraband" policy, Sen. Lyman Trumbull's confiscation act, and Gen. John Frémont's martial law declaration. He then shows how Lincoln's initial conception of a graduated, compensated emancipation by state governments measures up politically and constitutionally.

A key concern for Lincoln was the permanence of any emancipation that resulted from federal government action, especially in the context of war. Lincoln decided to proclaim emancipation only after a military stalemate, due in part to Gen. George McClellan's reluctance to fight, and the Border States' refusal to adopt gradual emancipation.

As in Redeemer President, Guelzo quotes liberally from Lincoln and his contemporaries, and makes extensive but judicious use of the reminiscences of Lincoln's contemporaries. He fleshes out the difficulties Lincoln encountered on the road to emancipation by enlisting a massive supporting cast who voiced widely varying opinions about the war's prosecution and the continuance of slavery. These sources are especially useful in Guelzo's presentation of how Lincoln dealt with the two chief obstacles of his presidency: McClellan's political ambition, and slavery's role in enabling the Confederate rebellion to persist (the slave economy allowed the war machine to keep going).

Lincoln's hesitation to emancipate slaves at the onset of the war stemmed from his belief that American self-government itself was in danger: "We already have an important principle to rally and unite the people in the fact that constitutional government is at stake. This is a fundamental idea, going down about as deep as any thing." He was at pains to figure out how to preserve a constitutional regime from the physical force of rebellious southerners as well as the rhetorical force of rebellious abolitionists. The former were unwilling to obey a duly elected Republican administration, while the latter were unwilling to support a constitutional union of freemen and slaveholders.

In short, Lincoln sought to rid the nation of slavery, but not at the price of free government. To act simply according to an abstract truth about the natural equality of human beings without respecting the coeval truth that a government should act only by the consent of the governed would be to undermine the rule of law that emancipated slaves would need for their protection. "Without the legal freedom conferred first by the Emancipation Proclamation," Guelzo argues, "no runaway could have remained 'self-emancipated' for very long." Freeing the slaves was always only half the battle. Providing "security for freedom," as Guelzo notes, was the main difficulty in devising any emancipation policy.

An important contention of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation is that Lincoln feared a federal court might revoke a wartime emancipation of slaves as an unconstitutional taking of private property under the prohibition of bills of attainder. With his "unrelenting judicial nemesis" Chief Justice Roger Taney on the Supreme Court, this was no idle threat. Guelzo argues that this was the main reason Lincoln repeatedly called upon states to initiate the "abolishment" of slavery instead of applying federal power unilaterally to the "peculiar institution."

This also supports Guelzo's defense of Lincoln's Proclamation against the charge that its lack of eloquence reflected a lack of conviction about freeing slaves—a criticism lodged most recently by Ebony magazine's executive editor Lerone Bennett in Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream (2000).1 Bennett writes, "What Lincoln did—and it was so clever that we ought to stop calling him honest Abe—was to 'free' slaves in Confederate-held territory where he couldn't free them and to leave them in slavery in Union-held territory where he could have freed them." Bennett's argument implies that what Lincoln should have done regarding slavery in Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware concerned only the military might of the president, and not the constitutional rights of loyal citizens. But this still leaves the claim that Lincoln waxed prosaic, not poetic, in his world-historic proclamation.

Guelzo responds that "the Proclamation is a legal document, and legal documents cannot afford very much in the way of flourishes. They have work to do." The occasion demanded not a full-throated rejection of slavery—for no one doubted Lincoln's view on this point—but a sober declaration of the president's authority. We are reminded that Lincoln's declaration of freedom to slaves in the rebellious states was not a speech per se, but an executive order intended to have legal and practical effect. As Lincoln's Gettysburg Address confirms with its call for a "new birth of freedom," there would be time enough for speeches on the subject.

Though Lincoln may not have spoken eloquently in his proclamation, the proclamation spoke eloquently of him. Its dry but careful prose reflected Lincoln's desire that his wartime emancipation withstand judicial scrutiny and invite public support of its legality.2 Guelzo demonstrates that Lincoln "never intended the Proclamation to be a substitute for a long-term legislative solution." That was left for the 13th Amendment, which Lincoln called "a King's cure for all evils."

En route to the White House for his first inauguration, Lincoln referred to himself as "an humble instrument in the hands of the Almighty." On Guelzo's reading, the Emancipation Proclamation resulted in part from an uncharacteristic appeal to God. "The idea of making policy on the basis of communications from the heavens was … foreign to Lincoln," Guelzo observes, but in September of 1862, Lincoln "made a solemn vow before God" that if Lee's army were driven out of Maryland, he would "crown the result by the declaration of freedom to the slaves."

Perhaps Guelzo puts too fine a point on Lincoln's decision to wait upon the Lord for a sign, "like Gideon of old." After all, according to Guelzo's own account, Lincoln had been mulling over an emancipation proclamation in July of 1862, and possibly earlier; it was simply a question of when, not if, he should issue the decree. Lincoln's divine appeal joined an earthly concern that any presidential action to free slaves not end up as mere ink on paper. The Union victory at Antietam on September 17 convinced Lincoln that his public words could be enforced by Union armies in the field. Already in the habit of appealing to both God and the American people for the success of his administration, Lincoln simply waited prayerfully for his army to make good on his vow to God. They did, and so he issued his preliminary emancipation proclamation on September 22, which took effect one hundred days later when no state then in rebellion returned to the Union.

Guelzo calls Lincoln "our last Enlightenment politician," highlighting his political prudence during a crisis that demanded nothing less than practical wisdom of the highest order. Unlike legislatures, which pass laws for general application, presidents must deal with specific, and, on occasion, extraordinary situations. They must apply universals to particulars. One could argue that this harks back more to Aristotle than to Locke, but Guelzo renders a meticulous and altogether persuasive account of how the Emancipation Proclamation was Lincoln's supreme act of political prudence. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation is now the definitive book on the defining act of Lincoln's presidency, what he called "the central act of my administration, and the greatest event of the 19th century." We will need no other in our lifetime.

Where Guelzo illustrates Lincoln's solitary statesmanship, David Herbert Donald explores Lincoln's closest friendships to see if any were "perfect" or "complete"—that is, friends who shared the same idea of the good and sought the same for each other.

A two-time Pulitzer-Prize winner and author of the mammoth 1996 biography Lincoln, David Herbert Donald examines whom Lincoln might have considered his friends. Widely recognized as the dean of Lincoln historians, Donald curiously leans on the findings of modern psychiatry to answer this question. He emphasizes the unlikely prospect of Lincoln developing mature, adult friendships because of "the absence of playmates" growing up—a lack due to the scarcity of young boys in the backwoods of Kentucky and Indiana, as well as Lincoln's onerous responsibilities as a farmhand to his father.

Like Guelzo, Donald exercises due diligence when citing reminiscence material, noting when a quote was uttered or penned to allow the reader to judge its veracity. As a biography of Lincoln's companions, "We Are Lincoln Men" proceeds swiftly and chronologically through possible early friendships in Kentucky (1809-16), Indiana (1816-30), and New Salem, Illinois (1830-36), then partnerships in Springfield, Illinois with Joshua Speed and William Herndon, alliances in the Republican Party with Orville Browning and William Seward, and daily interaction with White House secretaries John Nicolay and John Hay.

Donald believes Lincoln began his first real friendship when he arrived in Springfield to practice law and serve in the Illinois General Assembly. He was 28 years old when he rented a room from Joshua Speed (age 23) above Speed's store. They became immediate friends, sharing anti-Jacksonian Whig sympathies and a bed to boot. Their early friendship was so close that Donald found it necessary to address the possibility of Lincoln's homosexuality. Although he rejects the charge, Donald takes it seriously enough to footnote the obscure sources that assert it.

Donald offers much that confirms, and little that disputes, what Nicolay and Hay later wrote about Speed: namely, he was "the only—as he was certainly the last—intimate friend that Lincoln ever had." Unfortunately, Speed's marriage in 1842 returned him to Kentucky, where he made his home on a thousand-acre farm and began defending his right to own slaves! Speed even called himself a "political opponent" in letters to Lincoln, but he proved himself a vital Border State ally when he rallied support for the Union during Lincoln's presidency.

Herndon was Lincoln's junior law partner for 16 years, and—based in part on his own account—has often been seen as Lincoln's closest friend. Mining material newly available about Lincoln's law practice and early correspondence, Donald expresses greater skepticism about Herndon as Lincoln's confidante than he did in Lincoln's Herndon, his 1948 biography. He now posits that many of the anecdotal stories collected by Herndon for a biography of Lincoln "are recounted with too much circumstantial detail to be entirely credible." Adding that Lincoln and Herndon "were almost exact opposites in temperament," Donald concludes their relationship "was less intimate than what Herndon wanted his readers to believe—and perhaps less intimate than what he himself believed."

Orville H. Browning, probably the least familiar of Lincoln's friends to modern readers, was an early Whig ally who served as a sounding board for Lincoln the president. Donald shows that but for his political ambition and choice of Republican Party favorites (e.g., for Illinois Congressman, he supported Edward Bates instead of Lincoln), Browning might have become an adult "chum" to Lincoln.

William H. Seward, a New York Senator and frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president in 1860, might have fallen under the category of "Least Likely to Endear Himself to Lincoln." But after losing to "a little Illinois lawyer," Seward eventually became the self-appointed (and self-important) confidante of the president when Lincoln appointed him secretary of state. Through frequent reference to letters Seward wrote, especially to his wife, Donald presents a convincing case that Lincoln made Seward feel more useful than he actually was.

Alas, Donald's tone-deafness to Lincoln's political thought, the fatal flaw of his 1996 biography, resurfaces in his comparison of Lincoln's and Seward's views of the war's objective. Donald does not see that Lincoln viewed the main issue of the war as "a perplexing compound" of union and slavery. Whereas Donald, following Seward, sees union as the initial war aim, with emancipation taken up by Lincoln as a new war objective in 1863, Lincoln saw emancipation as a means to preserving the union. As Frederick Douglass observed of Lincoln, "Had he put the abolition of slavery before the salvation of the Union, he would have inevitably driven from him a powerful class of the American people and rendered resistance to rebellion impossible."

Lincoln never warmed to his second son Robert, so Donald presents Nicolay and Hay as Lincoln's surrogate sons. Compared with the accounts of others, their recollections of Lincoln's statements sound the most like their boss. Their assessment of Lincoln was spot on, as well: Hay, for example, wrote of Lincoln that "the old man is working with the strength of a giant and the purity of an angel." Lincoln trusted them enough to express opinions about his contemporaries with candor, but their relationship with him as president, employer, and father figure was too unequal to produce a complete friendship.

Finally, Donald considers other claimants to the title, "Lincoln's friend," and dismisses them quickly and convincingly—including Mary Todd Lincoln, whom he discounts partly because Lincoln "was never really comfortable around women."

"We Are Lincoln Men" does not tell us the most important things about Lincoln. For that, we must turn to his speeches and writings. But Donald has produced a useful primer on those who knew Lincoln best, bringing to life the men who shaped him personally but rarely, if ever, his political course of action. Though "Lincoln never had a chum," next to George Washington the American people never had so great a friend as they had in Abraham Lincoln.

Lucas E. Morel is associate professor of politics at Washington and Lee University, author of Lincoln's Sacred Effort: Defining Religion's Role in American Self-Government, and editor most recently of Ralph Ellison and the Raft of Hope: A Political Companion to Invisible Man (Univ. Press of Kentucky).

1. For a critique of Lerone Bennett's Forced into Glory, see Lucas E. Morel, "Forced into Gory Lincoln Revisionism," Claremont Review of Books (Fall 2000), pp. S12-S13, or www.claremont.org/writings/ 000901morel.html.

2. For a more extensive analysis of the Emancipation Proclamation as both informing and being limited by public opinion, see George Anastaplo, "The Emancipation Proclamation," in Abraham Lincoln: A Constitutional Biography (1999), and Harry V. Jaffa, "The Emancipation Proclamation," in Robert A. Goldwin, ed., 100 Years of Emancipation (1964).

Copyright © 2004 by the author or Christianity Today/Books & Culture magazine.
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