Abraham Lincoln and Civil War America: A Biography

Gienapp, William E. 'Abraham Lincoln and Civil War America; A Biography.' Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. The recently deceased, William Gienapp's brief biography of Abraham Lincoln is in great need to be revisited. Since the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth, nearly 50 new Lincoln books are set to come out, yet few will be as concise and well organized as Gienapps. While Gienapp offers few new quotations in his work, his use of them as well as more well known ones is unparalleled; making for a new and refreshing read. Along the same lines as James M McPherson's Tried by War, Gienapp (6 years earlier) attempted to explain "why this man [Abraham Lincoln] turned out to be such an extraordinary war leader." (x) Gienapp starts his book with Lincolns obscured early years. This section, nearly 80 pages worth of reading, seems characterless and stale. He merely follows the chronology of Lincoln, leaving the reader with an almost obsolete knowledge of the antebellum period. However, once Lincoln is elected president in 1860, the remaining of the book is a marvelous read. Gienapp devotes large sections of his book to tracing the development and concept of Total War. Believing that the Civil War was the first total war, Gienapp writes that by 1864, "the Union army had confiscated private property in the South, expelled disloyal civilians from Union lines, emancipated slaves, utilized black soldiers, and waged a grinding, all-out form of warfare. To this mix was now added the dimension of psychological warfare designed to break the will of southern civilians. This was the nineteenth-century equivalent of the strategy of total war." (177) Gienapp's definition of total war is near the best offered. Other than McPherson's 1996 essay "From Limited to Total War," Gienapp comes the closest to understanding the concept. However Gienapp seems to forget the importance that new technology plays in total war which seems odd when one reflects on Lincolns interests and support for new advancements in technology. By 1864, most Union soldiers were equipped with the seven shot repeating carbine rifle, giving them a distinct and deadly advantage over their southern opponents. Also the appearance of Ironclad warships helped to change naval warfare. This component is important within the evolution of Total Warfare. Following the trend of other historians, Gienapp heavily favors the war in the east. Gienapp also forgets about the harsh guerrilla warfare that was going on in Missouri and Kansas. Here, as Joseph Glatthar demonstrates in his Partners in Command, is were Grant, Sherman, Sheridan and Porter (the major proponents of the hard war concept) were first exposed to the ruthless type of war which would be required to dispel the rebellion. Curiously, Gienapp writes on several occasions that the Union never took any propaganda efforts to mobilize the public. This is not completely true, in an essay by William Hesseltine in 1935, Hesseltine con

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A short, but very well biography of Lincoln. It counts only 250 pages, but it gives an excellent overwiew and superb analyse of the life of AL. The bibliography is also very interesting. One of the best books about the 16th president. A must for a Lincolnhistorian.

William Gienapp's Abraham Lincoln and Civil War America answers a longstanding need for a biography of Lincoln manageable in size, accessible in style, and wise and balanced in content. Lincoln appers on every page of the book and is never lost sight of in the welter of events. He emerges from the text a real believable person, an individual and persuasive assessment of Lincoln's leadership abilities, the finest such appraisal avilable anywhere.

This book is a welcome addition ot the already crowded Lincolnia bookself. The author is the presumed successor to the retired David Herbert Donald at Harvard University. Gienapp has produced a highly readable and concise version of a Lincoln biography that can be completed on a moderately long airplane trip(and it's quite portable unlike most hardcover books). While relatively short,this book is a sufficiently thorough treatment of the Civil War Lincoln. I especially enjoyed the author's analysis of the politician Lincoln who mastered his rivals, both Republican and Democrat. This a good book for either a new Lincoln /Civil War "buff" or a good refresher for a scholar of the times.