![]() ![]() The darkness of early 19th-century America was vividly embodied by enslaved Blacks herded in chains down his native Kentucky roads.Īt 23, Lincoln formally entered the political arena running for office in Illinois to feed his great ambition "of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem." Meacham expertly peels back the historic to reveal the familiar in his coverage of the swirl of politics, largely unchanged to this day. schools" and any books he could hungrily consume thereafter. The light that powered this desire was the gift of literacy acquired in what Lincoln called "A.B.C. It is little wonder that Lincoln sought to deliver more fairness in an unfair world. Rather, this account of his hardscrabble youth is less an any-boy-can-be-president morality tale than a foundation of Lincoln's personal values and empathy informed by crushing poverty and loss. ![]() ![]() Meacham does not portray Lincoln's back story as mere iconography - the log cabin, the backwoods education, the rail splitting. Fueling the national disaster was the "Big Lie" of Lincoln's day - that slavery was a justifiable institution. ![]() Jon Meacham's excellent new biography, "And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle," illuminates how Lincoln's personal growth and travails enabled him to lead a nation along a fitful evolution toward freedom despite a catastrophic rebellion that denied it. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |