What Lincoln Believed: The Values and Convictions of America's Greatest President

"What Lincoln Believed" is part of a line of recent presidential biographies (Jefferson, Jackson) taking what some readers think is a hypercritical look at some of this country's leading political personalities. It's no exaggeration to say that "What Lincoln Believed" will, for many, be an eye-opener, especially those who haven't focused on our greatest president since high school. While I had been familiar with some of Lincoln's motivations for the Emancipation Proclamation as well as his Free-Soil views, this remarkable work brought to light numerous other facets of Abe's views on slavery including the relative rights of "free" slaves (his support of the Black Laws) and various details of his support for black colonization in both Africa and the Caribbean. While some reviewers believe author Lind went out of his way to excoriate Lincoln based on 20th Century views of race, my own belief is that he has very honestly widened the historical record on this shrewd, passionate and courageous man, ultimately paying him the highest tribute by comparing him to the leading figures of his day and explaining how Lincoln was the right man at the right time to preserve the Union and perpetuate the philosophical seeds of democratic republicanism - seeds that could easily have been cast aside as our nation continued to enter the world stage. "What Lincoln Believed" will make you rethink some of your assumptions about a legendary figure, but you will close the book still knowing that our sixteenth president was the person America needed at its darkest hour.

As I read this I found myself thinking of the old saying that you know when a politician is lying because his mouth makes noise. We like to think of Lincoln as the Great Emancipator. Mr. Lind is careful to point out that he was no slouch as a politician. You don't get elected to that office without being an accomplished professional politician. Perhaps the Great Emancipator is a title, a view that we hold of him several generations later. Mr. Lind spends a good bit of time on the definition of the United States as a nation vs. an alliance of sovereign states. Mr. Lind shows Lincoln's vision of the United States as a model of liberty and democracy for the world. Mr. Lincoln's model seemed to be that a state had the liberty to join the Union, but did not have the liberty to leave. I greatly enjoyed reading Mr. Lind's book. I do question some of his conclusions. They are based on the thinking of a man raised in a culture offset from Lincoln's by a hundred and fifty years.

Michael Lind's masterful political biography gives us the real Lincoln. No saint, he was a man whose views on race mirrored the Social Darwinism of his times. But Lincoln also believed deeply in American democracy. As Lind notes, without Lincoln the world would be a far different, and probably far worse, place than it is today. Lind's book is a great work of historical interpretation.

I enjoyed this book. The attempt to describe the character of Lincln in the context of his era was excellent, though I thought Lind at times got on his own soap box about race and how we as a country have been dealing with it. He does take Abe apart and bashs "historians" on their descriptions of him - who ever these "historians" are, but he also describes Abe in the global context on government theory - at the end Lind admits we were better off with Abe and with the diffcult situations he faced, the world and democracy couldn't have been in better hands. This should be a must read for anyone who is studing Abe or political science. It provides an overview of Abe, his era, and the impact his decisions had on the world. An excellent book - if the writer was able to avoid his soap book - I would have given it 5 stars.

An excellent read. An unbiased exposition of a pragmatic politician. Portrayed as he was, not a rewrite of history to meet a political agenda.