A fine account of a brilliant piece of political strategy.
Neither biography nor history of the Civil War, this is an account of Lincoln’s tactics between the 1860 election and his announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862.
Historian Klingaman (The First Century, 1990) points out that the abolitionists, although heroes to us, were looked upon by most of their contemporaries as a noisy minority, irresponsible and perhaps crazy. Lincoln disapproved of them, knowing that most Northerners opposed slavery but usually despised Negroes nevertheless. The conflicts leading to the Civil War, in the author’s view, had less to do with abolition than with the spread of slavery to the West, where (alarmists feared) slave labor would depress wages and monopolize the cheap land. During his presidential campaign, Lincoln took pains to assure the South that he had no interest in abolition, and even after secession he believed the departed states would return if he could convince them that slavery would be legally protected. He was also obsessed with keeping the slaveholding Border States (Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and Delaware) from seceding. Unfortunately for Lincoln, however, the Republican leaders of the new Congress were enthusiastic abolitionists. The author draws a fascinating portrait of Lincoln’s political maneuvering during his first two years in office: on one side he fended off civic, congressional, and even cabinet pressure for immediate abolition; on the other, he faced growing antiwar sentiment, encouraged by the North’s persistent defeats. When the time seemed ripe, he issued the proclamation: a turgid, legalistic document announcing abolition as a strictly military measure (it abolished slavery only in rebel-held territory). Its reception was mostly bad: abolitionists considered it a feeble gesture, and there was widespread anger in the Midwest and Border States that the war was now “for the Negroes” instead of for the Union. Republicans did badly in the 1862 elections. Yet, as time passed, most anti-Negro Northerners accepted emancipation as a harsh but necessary measure to strike at the South, and Lincoln’s faith that the proclamation’s practicality and absence of moral fervor offered the only chance of success was eventually vindicated.
A fine account of a brilliant piece of political strategy.Pub Date: March 19, 2001
ISBN: 0-670-86754-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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