Book Review: Fiery Trial Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery

Introduction

Eric Foner is a great American historian. His book on Reconstruction remains the standard and definitive work. This volume is the definitive study of Lincoln's evolving attitude toward slavery. Foner sets out the story in chronological order. He strikes a fine balance between the competing demands of completeness and concision and does so with both sound scholarship and narrative flair. To say this book reads well is an understatement.

Of course we read that Lincoln grew up in border areas and had limited and somewhat ambivalent dealings with blacks. He talked about blacks in language that makes us cringe. He could be patronizing and yet he was increasingly aware. And his initial stance on slavery, which originally owed much to his "beau ideal," Henry Clay, seems in retrospect hopelessly naive. For many years, he favored a combination of gradual emancipation rather than outright abolition, compensation of slave-owners, and colonization of slaves in another nation rather than integration here. Bizarre as colonization seems to us now, among opponents of slavery it was for decades considered the only realistic option once slaves were emancipated. Even in the North, it was all but unthinkable that blacks could be integrated and enjoys social, legal and political equality.

Summary

It is widely understood that Lincoln's attitude toward blacks and slavery evolved, as did his insight into how to govern a divided nation in the midst of a war that almost daily threatened to arrive at his very doorstep. No president has ever had to respond so quickly to such immense domestic crises or to maintain his footing as he tried to win a war, keep states in the union, maintain the long view with respect to eventual reunification, preserve relations with foreign powers, contend with a nest of rivals in his own cabinet, address military advances and concomitant political changes, and through it all, develop a nuanced and principled position on slavery and the role of black people in society as well as in the Union army.

Lincoln could be startlingly candid. One of the most famous instances of his candor is the observation that he had not controlled events: events had controlled him. But his responses to the constantly shifting course of events and to the manifold ramifications of every development were almost unerring. We who already know the script may be inclined to discount how tricky and complex this process was for Lincoln. But Foner will not let us be complacent. Revealing how deftly Lincoln met each change of circumstance, and not merely explaining Lincoln's evolving perspective on slavery, is the real contribution of Foner's superb volume.

As the war progressed, it became clear to those who saw slavery up close for the first time that it was far more abhorrent than they had ever imagined. And as slaves rushed to Union lines, Union commanders often improvised to find ways to deal with their arrival and their status. For an agonizingly long time, Lincoln officially supported the ...