Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and The War Years

Carl Sandburg

Reviewed: October 9, 1996

I borrowed the abridged, single volume from my parents during vacation 1994, read it starting in fall 1995, pushing to finish before vacation 1996 when I would return it. I had always wanted to read about Lincoln as an exploration of what it is to be an American.

Having returned the book, I don't have the ISBN or Library of Congress catalog numbers, or even the exact title, nor do I have the volume here to flip through and see what jumps back out at me. From memory, nearly two months after setting it down for the last time, I have many lingering impressions.

First, very little changes in the world, nothing about human nature. Lincoln had a vicious, uphill, unpopular battle throughout his presidency and before. The nation was in severe trouble and so was he. It is obviously Providential that he came through, and only barely that. I'm struck by the romanticism of Sandburg’s writing style. I don't know what his dates are, but it seems that he did this work in the 1930s and 40s. Lincoln, fulfilling his own prophecy, was made by the situation of his times. Unusual men like him are perhaps always around, but few find themselves in a pivotal point of history like this, and with the strength and brilliance on the spot to carry through, as a sturdy axle. After his work was done there was nothing more. As it happened there was very little time either.

I had forgotten that he was shot on Good Friday and died the next morning. The parallels of this weren't missed by all those Protestant ministers out there on Easter Sunday! The book ends with the closure of the grave back in Springfield, Illinois. "The prairie years, the war years were over." And so a great moment in history had passed and the world went on, a different place. We reflect on our own mortality.

"Honest Abe" is what they call him, but some of the tricks he pulled as a defense lawyer seemed to me to be on the edge of ethical. He was big hearted, however, but not unwise about it all. He could do nearly anything: manual labor, surveying, law, politics, or family. He didn't even attend the Chicago Republican Convention at which he was nominated to be President of the United States, but his writings and a few well-considered speeches set the stage for his popularity. Not even after his nomination did he appear. He didn't go to Chicago at all. Everybody knew that his persona as a myth was better than him actually showing up. Everyone wanted him to resign immediately when he arrived in Washington as President Elect. Many threatened to do it for him and some nearly succeeded. His hat was shot off more than once. Presidential security has come a long way since the 1860s. Who remembers the name of the first Vice President to Lincoln? I don't even now. Was it Hamlin, Hamilton, Hannibal?

By saving America while preserving the Constitution, Lincoln changed the world. In the 19^th century, actual slavery went from being socially normal to prohibited. Those of us living downstream from those events have little appreciation for the magnitude of that change and what it means to us today. In the next century, great world wars were fought between Social Darwinism and Christian concern for the weak and dispossessed. The latter won and so Lincoln is still a hero and his work still a milestone. It could be argued that somebody was going to do it eventually with the industrial revolution and all and that Lincoln led America in just "the right place at the right time." There was no guarantee, except perhaps divine, that it would come out as it did. Much since has not been so positive. Reconstruction is not really over even today and still we're arguing about whether or not Affirmative Action is a good idea. I don't pretend to know.

This was the genius of Lincoln against his times, the change he made in the world as seen through the Sandburg Filter. The effect these have had on me through the application of straight knowledge or indirectly to the spirit and soul, I can't begin to describe or know nearly in full. I am affirmed and directed by some. Perplexed by some (humor has, it would seem, changed very much in 135 years), chastised and guided by some. Indeed, greatness is not something to be aspired to, but, whatever the crises of life that swirls about me great or small, may God grant that I be as straight and true within it as was Abraham Lincoln!