Big Enough to Be Inconsistent: Abraham Lincoln Confronts Slavery and Race

Big Enough to Be Inconsistent: Abraham Lincoln Confronts Slavery and Race

by George M. Fredrickson
Big Enough to Be Inconsistent: Abraham Lincoln Confronts Slavery and Race
Big Enough to Be Inconsistent: Abraham Lincoln Confronts Slavery and Race

Big Enough to Be Inconsistent: Abraham Lincoln Confronts Slavery and Race

by George M. Fredrickson

eBook

$39.99  $42.00 Save 5% Current price is $39.99, Original price is $42. You Save 5%.

Available on Compatible NOOK Devices and the free NOOK Apps.
WANT A NOOK?  Explore Now

Related collections and offers


Overview

“Cruel, merciful; peace-loving, a fighter; despising Negroes and letting them fight and vote; protecting slavery and freeing slaves.” Abraham Lincoln was, W. E. B. Du Bois declared, “big enough to be inconsistent.” Big enough, indeed, for every generation to have its own Lincoln—unifier or emancipator, egalitarian or racist. In an effort to reconcile these views, and to offer a more complex and nuanced account of a figure so central to American history, this book focuses on the most controversial aspect of Lincoln’s thought and politics—his attitudes and actions regarding slavery and race. Drawing attention to the limitations of Lincoln’s judgment and policies without denying his magnitude, the book provides the most comprehensive and even-handed account available of Lincoln’s contradictory treatment of black Americans in matters of slavery in the South and basic civil rights in the North.

George Fredrickson shows how Lincoln’s antislavery convictions, however genuine and strong, were held in check by an equally strong commitment to the rights of the states and the limitations of federal power. He explores how Lincoln’s beliefs about racial equality in civil rights, stirred and strengthened by the African American contribution to the northern war effort, were countered by his conservative constitutional philosophy, which left this matter to the states. The Lincoln who emerges from these pages is far more comprehensible and credible in his inconsistencies, and in the abiding beliefs and evolving principles from which they arose. Deeply principled but nonetheless flawed, all-too-human yet undeniably heroic, he is a Lincoln for all generations.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780674033733
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Publication date: 07/01/2009
Series: The W. E. B. Du Bois Lectures
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 168
File size: 186 KB

About the Author

George M. Fredrickson was Edgar E. Robinson Professor of United States History, Emeritus, at Stanford University.

Table of Contents

Contents Preface 1. A Clash of Images: Great Egalitarian or Hard-Core Racist? 2. Free Soil, Free Labor, and Free White Men: The Illinois Years 3. Becoming an Emancipator: The War Years Notes Index

What People are Saying About This

Like all of Fredrickson's work, Big Enough to Be Inconsistent is marked by meticulous scholarship and a fair-minded evaluation of differing interpretations and pieces of evidence. It is balanced and insightful throughout.

Eric Foner

Like all of Fredrickson's work, Big Enough to Be Inconsistent is marked by meticulous scholarship and a fair-minded evaluation of differing interpretations and pieces of evidence. It is balanced and insightful throughout. --(Eric Foner)

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews