Jefferson, Lincoln, and the Unfinished Work of the Nation

Jefferson, Lincoln, and the Unfinished Work of the Nation PDF Author: Ronald L. Hatzenbuehler
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 0809334909
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
This book describes the views of two of our nation's greatest presidents and explains how these views provide valuable insight into modern-day debates. The first extended examination of the ideas of both Lincoln and Jefferson, it provides readers with a succinct guide to their opinions that still resonate today.

Lincoln at Gettysburg

Lincoln at Gettysburg PDF Author: Garry Wills
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439126453
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
The power of words has rarely been given a more compelling demonstration than in the Gettysburg Address. Lincoln was asked to memorialize the gruesome battle. Instead, he gave the whole nation "a new birth of freedom" in the space of a mere 272 words. His entire life and previous training, and his deep political experience went into this, his revolutionary masterpiece. By examining both the address and Lincoln in their historical moment and cultural frame, Wills breathes new life into words we thought we knew, and reveals much about a president so mythologized but often misunderstood. Wills shows how Lincoln came to change the world and to effect an intellectual revolution, how his words had to and did complete the work of the guns, and how Lincoln wove a spell that has not yet been broken.

The Gettysburg Address

The Gettysburg Address PDF Author: Abraham Lincoln
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504080246
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 9

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Book Description
The complete text of one of the most important speeches in American history, delivered by President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. On November 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln arrived at the battlefield near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to remember not only the grim bloodshed that had just occurred there, but also to remember the American ideals that were being put to the ultimate test by the Civil War. A rousing appeal to the nation’s better angels, The Gettysburg Address remains an inspiring vision of the United States as a country “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

Writing the Gettysburg Address

Writing the Gettysburg Address PDF Author: Martin P. Johnson
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700621121
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Four score and seven years ago . . . . Are any six words better known, of greater import, or from a more crucial moment in our nation’s history? And yet after 150 years the dramatic and surprising story of how Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg Address has never been fully told. Until now. Martin Johnson's remarkable work of historical and literary detection illuminates a speech, a man, and a moment in history that we thought we knew. Johnson guides readers on Lincoln’s emotional and intellectual journey to the speaker’s platform, revealing that Lincoln himself experienced writing the Gettysburg Address as an eventful process that was filled with the possibility of failure, but which he knew resulted finally in success beyond expectation. We listen as Lincoln talks with the cemetery designer about the ideals and aspirations behind the unprecedented cemetery project, look over Lincoln's shoulder as he rethinks and rewrites his speech on the very morning of the ceremony, and share his anxiety that he might not live up to the occasion. And then, at last, we stand with Lincoln at Gettysburg, when he created the words and image of an enduring and authentic legend. Writing the Gettysburg Address resolves the puzzles and problems that have shrouded the composition of Lincoln's most admired speech in mystery for fifteen decades. Johnson shows when Lincoln first started his speech, reveals the state of the document Lincoln brought to Gettysburg, traces the origin of the false story that Lincoln wrote his speech on the train, identifies the manuscript Lincoln held while speaking, and presents a new method for deciding what Lincoln’s audience actually heard him say. Ultimately, Johnson shows that the Gettysburg Address was a speech that grew and changed with each step of Lincoln's eventful journey to the podium. His two-minute speech made the battlefield and the cemetery into landmarks of the American imagination, but it was Lincoln’s own journey to Gettysburg that made the Gettysburg Address.

Congress at War

Congress at War PDF Author: Fergus M. Bordewich
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 045149444X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 493

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Book Description
The story of how Congress helped win the Civil War-placing a dynamic House and Senate, rather than Lincoln, at the center of the conflict.

Jefferson, Lincoln, and the Unfinished Work of the Nation

Jefferson, Lincoln, and the Unfinished Work of the Nation PDF Author: Ronald L. Hatzenbuehler
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 0809334909
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
This book describes the views of two of our nation's greatest presidents and explains how these views provide valuable insight into modern-day debates. The first extended examination of the ideas of both Lincoln and Jefferson, it provides readers with a succinct guide to their opinions that still resonate today.

The Life of Washington

The Life of Washington PDF Author: Mason Locke Weems
Publisher: Belknap Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
A John Harvard library edition which follows the text of the ninth (1909) printing is the first republication of the book since 1927, unique for its detailed commentary on Weems and other biographers of Washington.

And There Was Light

And There Was Light PDF Author: Jon Meacham
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0553393987
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 753

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer Jon Meacham chronicles the life of Abraham Lincoln, charting how—and why—he confronted secession, threats to democracy, and the tragedy of slavery to expand the possibilities of America. “Meacham has given us the Lincoln for our time.”—Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Winner of the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize • Longlisted for the Biographers International Plutarch Award • One of the Best Books of the Year: The Christian Science Monitor, Kirkus Reviews A president who governed a divided country has much to teach us in a twenty-first-century moment of polarization and political crisis. Hated and hailed, excoriated and revered, Abraham Lincoln was at the pinnacle of American power when implacable secessionists gave no quarter in a clash of visions bound up with money, race, identity, and faith. In him we can see the possibilities of the presidency as well as its limitations. At once familiar and elusive, Lincoln tends to be seen as the greatest of American presidents—a remote icon—or as a politician driven more by calculation than by conviction. This illuminating new portrait gives us a very human Lincoln—an imperfect man whose moral antislavery commitment, essential to the story of justice in America, began as he grew up in an antislavery Baptist community; who insisted that slavery was a moral evil; and who sought, as he put it, to do right as God gave him to see the right. This book tells the story of Lincoln from his birth on the Kentucky frontier in 1809 to his leadership during the Civil War to his tragic assassination in 1865: his rise, his self-education, his loves, his bouts of depression, his political failures, his deepening faith, and his persistent conviction that slavery must end. In a nation shaped by the courage of the enslaved of the era and by the brave witness of Black Americans, Lincoln’s story illustrates the ways and means of politics in a democracy, the roots and durability of racism, and the capacity of conscience to shape events.

The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery

The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery PDF Author: Eric Foner
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 039308082X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
“A masterwork [by] the preeminent historian of the Civil War era.”—Boston Globe Selected as a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times Book Review, this landmark work gives us a definitive account of Lincoln's lifelong engagement with the nation's critical issue: American slavery. A master historian, Eric Foner draws Lincoln and the broader history of the period into perfect balance. We see Lincoln, a pragmatic politician grounded in principle, deftly navigating the dynamic politics of antislavery, secession, and civil war. Lincoln's greatness emerges from his capacity for moral and political growth.

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln PDF Author: Allen C. Guelzo
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 9780802842930
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 532

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Book Description
This biography of the sixteenth president explores Lincoln's life and political career along with insights into his philosophy, religious views, and moral character.

Lincoln and the American Founding

Lincoln and the American Founding PDF Author: Lucas E. Morel
Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
ISBN: 0809337851
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
In this persuasive work of intellectual history, Lucas E. Morel argues that the most important influence on Abraham Lincoln’s political thought and practice was what he learned from the leading figures of and documents from the birth of the United States. In this systematic account of those principles, Morel compellingly demonstrates that to know Lincoln well is to understand thoroughly the founding of America. With each chapter describing a particular influence, Morel leads readers from the Founding Father, George Washington; to the founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and Constitution; to the founding compromise over slavery; and finally to a consideration of how the original intentions of the Founding Fathers should be respected in light of experience, progress, and improvements over time. Within these key discussions, Morel shows that without the ideals of the American Revolution, Lincoln’s most famous speeches would be unrecognizable, and the character of the nation would have lost its foundation on the universal principles of human equality, individual liberty, and government by the consent of the governed. Lincoln thought that the principles of human equality and individual rights could provide common ground for a diverse people to live as one nation and that some old things, such as the political ideals of the American founding, were worth preserving. He urged Americans to be vigilant in maintaining the institutions of self-government and to exercise and safeguard the benefits of freedom for future generations. Morel posits that adopting the way of thinking and speaking Lincoln advocated, based on the country’s founding, could help mend our current polarized discourse and direct the American people to employ their common government on behalf of a truly common good.