An Index To Abraham Lincoln Posts

Abraham Lincoln was the greatest American president because none faced such enormous challenges, none grew more in office and none reinvented the United States to the extent that he did. All of that and the fact that 2009 is the bicentenary of his birth is reason enough to publish posts each Sunday on the great man.

Series highlights:

BRILLIANT, HUMANE & RUTHLESS (10/4) More recent authors have disputed Lincoln's brilliance as commander in chief. Military affairs expert Eliot A. Cohen says that they're wrong. LINK

THE WAR WITHIN THE CIVIL WAR (9/27) Lincoln knew virtually nothing about Native American affairs, an ignorance driven by the commonly held view that the U.S. government should disenfranchise Indians of their land because they were barbarians. LINK

'HIS AMBITION WAS AN ENGINE THAT KNEW NO REST' (9/20) Historian Richard Shenkman debunks several Lincoln myths. LINK

HOLLYWOOD'S OBSESSION WITH LINCOLN'S LOVES (9/13) The great man -- and his loves -- have been played by an eclectic range of actors and actresses over the last century. LINK.

THE MONITOR-MERRIMACK SHOWDOWN (8/30) The battle between the ironclads settled nothing but did change navies forever. LINK

'STAND BY OUR DUTY' (8/23) Lincoln's Cooper Union speech was probably his finest. Yes, greater than the Gettysburg Address. LINK

WAS HE DISHONEST ABE? (8/9) Historian-economist Thomas DiLorenzo says that scholars criticize Lincoln at their own risk, but there is plenty of bad about the man along with the good. LINK

THE TRENT AFFAIR (8/2) In 1861, Lincoln had little to do with foreign affairs. This myopia was to exacerbate a crisis early in his presidency that could have transformed the war into an international conflict. LINK

COMPLEX & IMPERFECT (7/26) Historian Edna Medford argues that we do better for Lincoln and for the nation -- and for understanding of the Civil War -- if we view him in all of his complexity. LINK

THE BOOK THAT CHANGED LINCOLN & AMERICA (7/19) Uncle Tom's Cabin shook the U.S. like an earthquake when it was published in 1852. LINK

SLAVE COLONIES (7/12) Lincoln believed that he found a way to deal with the problems caused by slavery in sending blacks back to Africa to colonize Liberia, but hee was wrong. LINK

A TRUE GENIUS (6/28) Historian Shelby Foote says that there has never been a president who functioned like Lincoln did, and despite having no executive experience, he was a miracle at it. LINK

INSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE (6/21) Historian Harold Holzer leads an intimate walk-through of the very different presidential mansion of Lincoln's time. LINK

EVEN LINCOLN NEEDED A GOOD EDITOR (6/14) Guest blogger Michael Reynolds imagines how the Gettysburg Address might have turned out had the president had a good editor. LINK

MOST HANDS-ON COMMANDER IN CHIEF (6/7) The outcome of the Civil War in all likelihood would have been different had Lincoln not cajoled, taken over for and in some cases dismissed the generals who lacked his vision and courage. LINK

A SKIMPIER RESUME WOULD BE HARD TO FIND (5/31) David Herbert Donald, the recently deceased Lincoln biographer, writes that an inexperienced chief executive can cause the country immense heartbreak, but that with time and good common sense can grow into greatness. LINK

NOW ALIEN TO THE REPUBLICAN PARTY (5/11) Pete Abel writes in a two-part guest blog that while there are a few common traits between Lincoln and today's GOP, the differences are far more substantial. PART 1, PART 2

THE ASSASSINATION (4/22, 4/29, 5/4) It is rather amazing that so little is known about basic aspects of the assassination of John F. Kennedy while there is virtually no aspect of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln a century earlier that remains a mystery. PART 1, PART 2, PART 3

THE STRANGE BUT TRUE STORY OF THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS (4/5) It took fewer than three minutes to deliver the famous speech, but it was an afterthought on the day it was given and remained so into the next century. LINK

HOW VALID THE COMPARISONS? (3/29) With the nomination and election of Barack Obama, the comparisons to Abraham Lincoln have come fast, thick and furious. But do they hold up? LINK

A PATENTLY CLEVER PRESIDENT (3/22) That Lincoln was the only president to get a U.S. patent is not surprising when you consider that he was an inveterate tinkerer and had a lifelong fascination with mechanical things. LINK

A PRESIDENTIAL SCHOLAR ON LINCOLN (3/15) A wide-ranging interview with James Hilty on Lincoln's greatness, frailties and innate conservatism. LINK

A BUMPY RIDE TO HIS REWARD (3/8) There was a controversy over a photograph taken of Lincoln's open coffin, an attempt to steal his corpse and his body was exhumed an extraordinary 17 times. LINK

WAS THE GREAT EMANCIPATOR GAY? (3/1) No revisionist history of a famous person would be complete without a book on whether they were gay, or if they were gay whether they were bisexual, or if they . . . LINK

PRESIDENTIAL POWER GRABS (2/22) The infringements by Lincoln on civil liberties arguably were greater than during any period in American history, including the last eight years. LINK

EARLY ASSASSINATION PLOT (2/15) A March 1861 assassination plot was never carried out, but Lincoln's response to it sullied a carefully cultivated image of dignified courage. LINK

OH HE OF LITTLE FAITH (2/8) Beyond Lincoln's opposition to slavery there was no aspect of him more controversial than his spiritual bona fides. LINK

THE BOHEMIAN BRIGADE COMES THROUGH (2/1) Modern journalism can trace its roots to the Civil War, which because of the telegraph and steam locomotive was the first instant-news war, something of which Lincoln was very much aware. LINK

LINCOLN ON BLACKS & SLAVERY (1/25) His metamorphosis from a frontiersman who always opposed slavery but like most white Americans felt that blacks were unequal into the Great Emancipator was as complex as the man himself. LINK

LINCOLN'S CAUTION (1/18) Guest blogger Robert Stein writes that Barack Obama can learn much from the 16th president, who perhaps even more than wisdom and moral strength needed a highly developed political sense of the possible. LINK

THE FIRST TECHNOLOGY PRESIDENT (1/11) Arriving in Washington at the dawn of the age of the telegraph, Lincoln embraced this new technology of instantaneous communication with a passion and used it not just to communicate with his generals in the field during the Civil War, but to bend them to his will. LINK

LINCOLN LINCOLN BO BINCOLN (1/4) A substantial Lincoln mythology had taken hold in the American imagination even before his assassination in 1865. This canon of broad brush strokes and tall tales gave Lincoln his historic due but overlooked or willfully ignored the myriad complexities of our greatest president. LINK