Is there anything new to say about Abraham Lincoln? Apparently, there always has been. Bucknell University was honored on April 14th with the presence of Professor Allen C. Guelzo, the foremost leading Civil War and Abraham Lincoln historian. During his talk, Professor Guelzo outlined the long and contentious history of Lincoln biography. As the talk continued, Guelzo revealed that the art of crafting a Lincoln biography is more than merely listing the events of his life in chronological order, but that there is a more contentious debate on his character as it reflects the character of the nation he sought to keep united.
In Guelzo’s retelling of the process of crafting a Lincoln biography, he states that this process began immediately after Lincoln’s assassination. Josiah Gilbert Holland, a journalist and novelist from Massachusetts, traveled out to Springfield to begin writing a biography of the martyred President. Once there, he meets William Herndon, Lincoln’s old law partner. It is their collaboration that creates the first image of Lincoln for the public. Herndon tirelessly researched Lincoln’s life before the presidency, looking for details of his character that would lead him to the White House.
At the same time that Holland and Herndon were doing their research, Lincoln’s personal secretaries, John Hay and John G. Nicolay were compiling their own record on the life of Lincoln. However, where Holland and Herndon focussed their research on Lincoln’s life before the Presidency, Hay and Nicolay dived into the papers and records of the Lincoln presidency. This makes logical sense, as they were so close with Lincoln during this period. They were aided by Robert Todd Lincoln, the president’s son, who had control of his father’s papers. It is here, Guelzo makes clear, that two streams of Lincoln biography emerged. The first being the “Reminiscences of Lincoln” that was the style of Holland and Herndon, and the second being the “Presidential Lincoln” that was informed by the partnership of Hay and Nicolay with Robert Todd Lincoln. Of particular note, regarding the future writing of Lincoln biographies is that Lincoln’s papers were not officially released to the public until 1947, as was detailed in Robert Todd Lincoln’s will.
From this detailing of early Lincoln biography, Professor Guelzo then turns his attention to the early twentieth century and the process of progressive writers appropriating the biography of Lincoln for political ends. The most pointed example that he cites is the biograph James Garfield Randall, who portrays Lincoln as a progressive prophet. What is interesting is that there was still a strong progressive streak in Lincoln’s Republican party, but Randall was writing as a Progressive Democrat who was sketching Lincoln out as a precedent for the policies of President Woodrow Wilson. Progressives, however, turned on Lincoln after the First World War, abandoning him as the banner for their policies.
To wrap up his talk, Guelzo turns from these early efforts at Lincoln biography to the modern efforts. Efforts informed by the release of Abraham Lincoln’s personal papers in 1947, as detailed in Robert Todd Lincoln’s will. Guelzo highlights the biography of Benjamin Thomas’ 1952 biography of Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln: A Biography, as setting the gold standard for future Lincoln biographies. From this, he informs his audience that the two major trends in Lincoln biography are a focus on Lincoln’s law career, and an effort at the recovery of the ideological, conservative Lincoln. From the progressive appropriations of Lincoln’s image in the early 20th century, Lincoln scholarship has returned to Lincoln’s own Republican party, to make him out to be the sole figure of the political culture of that party. Guelzo cemented this claim in a post-talk Q&A session, where he states that Lincoln is still central to the political culture of the Republican party.
Whether there is anything new to be said about Lincoln must be met with the acknowledgement that our view of and need for Lincoln has evolved and shall continue to evolve along with the country he led out of disunion into liberty. Guelzo concludes his visit to Bucknell by cheerfully detailing the supportive, congenial community of Lincoln scholars that he proudly counts himself among.