Prelude to Greatness: Lincoln in the 1850's (review)

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS Prelude to Greatness: Lincoln in the 185ffs. By Don E. Fehrenbacher. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962. Pp. ix, 205, $4.75.) For historians of nineteenth century America the reputation of Professor Fehrenbacher as a thoughtful student of bodi die Lincoln dieme and the issues that led to civil war has been firmly established, largely through his articles which have appeared over the past decade in various leading historical journals. This volume comprises an extension of this previous effort into a small volume of essays on Lincoln's relationship to the party revolution of the 1850's. The book is biography only in the narrowest sense. Its concern with issues and events, rather than personalities, provides many occasions for analysis seldom found in purely biographical studies. Fehrenbacher introduces diis volume widi a brief survey of Lincoln's political career to 1849. It is significant that after Lincoln's return to private life that year from one term in the United States House of Representatives he held no public office until, twelve years later, he became President of the United States. Yet the nomination of this apparently unsuccessful Illinois politician by the Republican national convention in 1860 was no accident. He was a front runner from the start and was nominated easily on the third ballot. The issues and circumstances of the fifties which catapulted Lincoln into national prominence are the subject of this volume. Perhaps the central question in Lincoln's career that led to his nomination was whether, after 1854, he was motivated by political opportunism or devotion to principle. This question is not resolved by this book, for the judgment of historians in such matters must be based on factors which transcend die facts themselves. Fehrenbacher, devoted to his principle, has tended to elevate Lincoln's argumentation, as embodied in his "house divided" speech, to the level of statesmanship. Whether Lincoln's intellectual contributions to the Republican cause merit such approbation is a matter of opinion. Lincoln's central argument, the one most needed for Republican success, the author makes clear, was the charge that only those who condemned slavery verbally really opposed its expansion. This gave Lincoln an enormous emotional and political advantage over his Democratic opponents. It is not demonstrable, however, that those Northerners who favored the doctrine of popular sovereignty anticipated the triumph of slavery in the tenitories any more than did the Republicans. If they skirted the moral issue, it was because the requirement of sustaining a national political party in the fifties limited dieir freedom of speech. Both Lincoln and Douglas were bidding for the votes of men whose opinions were known. What would have been Lincoln's argu442 mentation had he required Southern votes to win? Would he have condemned the institution of slavery in the name of principle and thus conceded all chance of victory? Lincoln managed to isolate the ultimate weakness of the national Democratic party, but at what price? If the nation in 1861 suffered the irony of dividing over an increasingly violent sectional feeling regarding the question of slavery expansion, amid the actual decreasing congeniality of slavery in the territories, Lincoln cannot escape responsibüity. For he above all other Republicans elaborated the notion that the Northern crusade for freedom alone would prevent the eventual triumph of slavery, not only in the territories, but also throughout the nation. One might justify Lincoln's preaching of the doctrine of total conflict as a matter of political privilege, but whatever the apparent validity of the case which he created to prove that die issue of 1858 was one of ultimate total victory or ultimate total defeat for die North in its struggle over the tenitories, it did not reflect much political reality. Of such doctrines wars are made, for they render compromise synonymous with appeasement and eventual defeat. If these observations question some of the author's approbation of Lincoln's actions during the late fifties, they do not question the quality and significance of this book. For Professor Fehrenbacher has demonstrated that subjects even as fully studied as the Lincoln theme can still benefit from diligent and judicious contemplation. His analysis of many trends of the decade, such...