With Malice Toward None: A biography of Abraham Lincoln

Recently I've been reading a biography of Abraham Lincoln, and I'm really enjoying it. I've learned that he had depression and that he was incredibly self-conscious of his humble beginnings. Evidently, he hated farm work and manual labor, which was a big factor in him educating himself. He was a very successful lawyer and was well-read on the issues of the times--he read every newspaper he could get his hands on, so he was not limited to just his party's point of view.

I've also learned a lot more about the slave issue leading up to the time of the American Civil War. Many Northerners were opposed to the idea of slavery, but did not want to fight a war over it. Most Northerners were also White supremacists and did not like the idea of freed slaves flocking to the North. Abraham Lincoln was aware of these views, and did not initially make the Civil War a war over slavery even though he was very opposed to slavery and wanted to see it end. Lincoln gradually introduced more and more measures to facilitate the emancipation of the slaves to help the American people get used to the idea.

The Emancipation Proclamation didn't come along until January of 1863, two years after the Confederacy was formed. It also only freed the slaves in the Confederate states; the people in the slave states still part of the Union were still permitted to retain ownership of the people enslaved at the time. The 13th Amendment to the Constitution--freeing all slaves everywhere in the US--was adopted in December of 1865, several months after the end of the war, and practically three years after the Emancipation Proclamation.

The Union also experienced poor military leadership until about 1864, only a year before the end of the war. Prior to that time, the Northern generals consistently fought a defensive war, successfully repelling all of the Southern forays into Union land, but never pursuing Southerners into their lands, even though the Northern armies had better weapons and more men.

I enjoyed the biography from start to finish. I enjoyed the new information I got as I read it. Although it did not read like a novel (how many accurate biographies do?), it did not consist solely of dry, uninteresting facts. The biography itself is called "With Malice Toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln" by Stephen B. Oates. It comes highly recommended!