Michael Burlingame

Abraham Lincoln has not wanted for biographers since his death, and every year new volumes about his life and presidency are added to shelves already groaning with them. Yet as Michael Burlingame notes at the start of this magnificent book, multi-volume studies of Lincoln’s life have been scarce of late, with the most recent one published decades ago. His biography is an effort to fill this gap by providing a comprehensive interpretation of Lincoln’s life, one that draws upon the show more enormous body of material accumulated about our 16th president to provide a deeper understanding of who he was and how he shaped our nation’s history.

The result is a breathtakingly thorough account of Lincoln’s life. In two volumes Burlingame traces Lincoln’s life from his early years on the Indiana and Illinois frontier to his tragic death on the eve of the Union’s victory over the Confederacy. Throughout his focus is resolutely on Lincoln, showing how he developed as a person and how that person sought to address the myriad challenges he faced throughout his life. In the process he draws out some fascinating insights, ones that reveal Lincoln as a man of principle and ambition, whose evolution into the “Great Emancipator” only came after a substantial career in the politics and the law.

Yet Burlingame also shows how despite considerable success as a Whig representative in the Illinois state legislature and a term in Congress, Lincoln was continually underestimated by many of his contemporaries, who dismissed him as a pleasant fellow who was not up to the challenges of the nation’s highest office. Such assessments ignored (and often enabled) Lincoln’s mastery of the political game, and Burlingame almost relishes recounting how he bested his opponents time and again. Where that mastery is best displayed, however, is on the issue of slavery, as Lincoln demonstrated throughout his career an ability to push his constituents to the limits in their opposition to the “peculiar institution” – and sometimes beyond them as well.

By the end of this book Burlingame leaves his readers with a profound appreciation of who Lincoln was as a person and how his personality shaped our nation’s history. Even those already familiar with Lincoln’s life will learn much from its pages, as Burlingame offers a perspective of his subject gained from a career spent studying the man. Nobody who wishes to understand in depth our nation’s 16th president can afford to ignore this book, which is unlikely to be surpassed soon for its breath of research and the depths of its analysis. show less

This is a nonfiction work that traces Abraham Lincoln’s relationships—from his courtship of Ann Rutledge and Mary Owens (the former dying, the latter rejecting him) through his presidency, assassination, and Mary Todd Lincoln’s departure from the White House. The book presents an overwhelmingly bleak portrayal of Mary Lincoln and the couple’s home life; across its 310 pages, virtually no positive qualities are attributed to her. While much of the material is familiar, the author show more provides far more detailed accounts. However, the citation method—placing sources in the back by page number and, when multiple references appear on a page, identifying them by the first three words of a phrase rather than a number—is cumbersome. Some sources also seem questionable, such as secondhand accounts involving private letters and observations passed through multiple individuals. Even so, the book reinforces the idea that politics has long been, and remains, a dirty, dirty business. show less

Michael Burlingame’s masterful two-volume work is inspirational as to the work involved by the author and insight it provides into the life of Abraham Lincoln. It is not always an easy read owing to the amount of detail provided and different accounts of events that serve to validate and give credibility to the author’s work. Burlingame’s work is more akin to that of a sculptor revealing that which is contained in the stone. Unlike other books that portray Lincoln one way or another, show more this work reveals Lincoln, showing his remarkable growth from his roots in poverty to his ultimate achievements as president. For this reason, at times, one is made to think about Lincoln a bit differently from what may be preexisting notions, producing a sense of apprehension only calmed as the events that follow continue their revealing of what Lincoln ultimately becomes. While these volumes are sufficiently large as to give the impression of completeness I frequently encountered areas of interest that spurred side excursions of internet searches resulting in a much longer overall read. In that regard, Burlingame’s notes are so vast the author elected to create abbreviated notes included at the end of each volume and to refer readers to an internet site at Knox College Lincoln Studies where the full text of the books and full note references are included. show less

First, I should note that I have read only the first 450 pages of this massive volume (about 1500 reading pages).
This book is a masterwork of collecting every single scrap of the historical record on Lincoln. Amazingly, Burlingame finds even *new* information about Lincoln. He obviously combed every early Illinois newspaper he could lay his hands on in order to discover any possible undiscovered Lincoln writings (which were often written anonymously). In the future, any Lincoln historian show more will need to reference this work.
That said, I found the writing to be more encyclopedic than entertaining. Lincoln's life can be fascinating, especially when written by inspired authors. This book was just a bit too dry for my taste. For the moment, I am putting it away, and will pick it up at a later date. I still want to read it, but I thought I'd read something else for awhile. show less