After writing several other acclaimed studies of Lincoln and other aspects of Civil War–era history, Guelzo returns to update this important early work for a second edition. Since its original publication in 1999, Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President has garnered numerous accolades, not least the prestigious Lincoln Prize. The sixteenth president emerges as a creative yet profoundly paradoxical man-possessed of deep moral and religious character yet without adherence to organized religion. Through masterful and original scholarly work, Guelzo relates the outward events of Lincoln’s life to his inner spiritual struggles and sets them both against the intellectual backdrop of his age. Guelzo’s exploration of Lincoln’s reputation is both accessible and thought provoking.The story of Abraham Lincoln’s faith and intellectual life-updated and revised with a new preface-from the three-time winner of the Lincoln Prize and best-selling Civil War–era historian Allen Guelzo.Īllen Guelzo’s peerless account of America’s most celebrated president explores the role of ideas in Lincoln’s life, treating him as a serious thinker deeply involved in the nineteenth-century debates over politics, religion, and culture. Guelzo responds to critics of Lincoln’s lack of racial empathy by noting that the president was “the wrong man for expressions of empathy on almost any subject.” Addressing the controversy surrounding demands for reparations for descendants of slaves, Guelzo also illustrates his conviction that students of history must not allow simplicity to crowd out complexity, pointing out the issues that make identifying the affected class a challenge. Guelzo carefully parses and contextualizes Lincoln’s statements and personality, noting that the “problem with our apprehension of Lincoln’s antislavery is that he seems to have gone about it in what we would regard as a bafflingly obtuse fashion.” For example, Lincoln did not view slavery as primarily a racial issue, but as a political and economic one.
He begins with a review of the significance of emancipation, and the evidence, which he finds compelling, that Lincoln was deeply committed to ending slavery.
Guelzo (Gettysburg: The Last Invasion), a professor of the Civil War era at Gettysburg College, argues that understanding why Lincoln still merits the title of Great Emancipator is essential to healthy race relations in the U.S., explaining his rationale with three lectures he gave at Harvard in 2012.
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