The 13th Amendment to the Constitution declared that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Formally abolishing slavery in the United States, the 13th Amendment was passed by the Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified by the states on December 6, 1865.In the immortal words of Joe Biden this was a “big f**king deal”. If you have not seen the movie Lincoln please go see it. I cannot remember the last time that I have enjoyed a movie so thoroughly. Daniel Day-Lewis is spectacular. For two and a half hours he was LINCOLN, more so than the original. The supporting cast is absolutely superb. David Strathairn plays William Seward and Sally Fields plays Mary Todd. James Spader shows up as one of the men who has the job to strong arm lame duck senators into voting for the 13th Amendment. He was hilarious. The movie made me laugh and moved me to tears of joy and pain. Even though I knew, obviously, that the 13th Amendment had passed I was on the edge of my seat with stomach clenched and my heart in my throat watching the vote. If it had been a sporting event and not a movie theater I would have rung the rafters with my shouts of exultation when the final votes are tallied. Rachel Maddow said recently something that still resonates with me. “But here is the thing about rights-they’re not actually supposed to be voted on. That’s why they are called rights.” Amazing that we are still discussing rights in this country. Every time we bring up an initiative in this country regarding the rights of some of our citizens I just have to shake my head. It is or at least it should be self-evident. I’m rarely going to say this, but watching the movie first actually enhanced my reading experience. The movie is based on the Doris Kearns Goodwin book Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, but I found whole dialogue scenes lifted from Gore Vidal's book. Let’s just say that Steven Spielberg probably read this book before filming the movie. William Seward who gave wise counsel to his rival during the war.Abraham Lincoln to maintain peace in his own party and to keep an eye on his enemies appointed his rivals to the cabinet. The two most ambitious were William Seward who served as Secretary of State and Salmon P. Chase who served as Secretary of the Treasury. Their plotting and scheming were sometimes a source of amusement to Lincoln, when discovered resignations were offered, but Lincoln refused to accept. When greenback money was introduced Chase’s ambitions got the better of him.”You know ,” said Lincoln, “I asked Mr. Chase why he had put himself instead of me on the one-dollar bill, clearly the most in use of the two denominations, and he said, ‘As you are the President, you must be on the most expensive bill; and I on the less.’” Salmon P. Chase providing the image for the $1 greenback.There is something FISHY about Chase. Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury.Lincoln was much more politically savvy than his rivals expected. He outwitted them at every turn and planted devious traps for them. He did the same to his Democratic challengers. He used his knowledge of the law to bend the law and in one of the more controversial moments of his term in office he suspended habeas corpus and threw thousands of agitators in jail. His homespun mannerisms and his penchant for storytelling certainly hid his steely determination. I had always thought of Lincoln as a reluctant politician, but that was part of his brilliance concealing the ambition that made him a man who burned with desire to be reelected. Seward’s respect for Lincoln continued to grow as the war continued. Chase never seemed to learn that he was over-matched by Lincoln, although I did have a soft spot for Chase’s hobby of collecting signatures. Every time he would find a new one he was as excited as I am when I find a book I thought I’d never find. Vidal planted me squarely at the table during cabinet meetings. I came away from these meetings with the smell of cigar smoke in my hair and the pungent taste of bourbon on my tongue. As much as I want to have sympathy for Mary Todd Lincoln I found it more and more difficult as Vidal revealed more of her character. She was a shopaholic before they knew what to call it. As it became harder for her to get money out of congress and her husband, she started exchanging political favors for money. She was easily slighted and exacted vicious revenge. Lincoln’s clerks who had to deal with her money concerns and her frequent embarrassing outbursts referred to her as the Hellcat. She did suffer from debilitating migraines usually brought on by stress. She would throw childish fits ratcheting Lincoln’s own stress levels higher when the union most needed him concerned about the national interest. Both of them suffered from frequent bouts of melancholy and rarely seemed able to help each other to be happy. Lincoln had problems with his generals. He even fired some of them more than once. His first choice for command of the Union army was Robert E. Lee, probably the first man in history who was offered the command of two armies fighting against each other. When Lee chose his state over his country Lincoln went with Irwin McDowell who proved very ineffective. Then:George McClellan referred to as “The Great American Tortoise” because of his inability to engage the enemy. A problem that would plague a series of union generals. The one positive contribution McClellan made to the war effort was he proved to be an excellent trainer. He turned a ragtag army into a drilled and efficient machine. He was fired, rehired and fired again. General George B. McClellan, a disappointing fighter, but a dangerous Democratic opponent.John Pope firedAmbrose Burnside fired General Joe Hooker the man who lent his name to prostitution.Lincoln had great hope for “Fighting Joe" Hooker and for a while it looked like he finally had a general that wanted to fight. Hooker was knocked unconscious when a Confederate shell hit a pillar of the porch on which he was standing, and the pillar had fallen on him, and he had been unconscious for hours. Once recovered, he had given up drink and without drink there was, everyone said, no longer a “Fighting Joe” Hooker but simply another incompetent Union general named Hooker. He had another issue that may have sapped some of his fighting strength. His headquarters looked like a brothel-casino. In fact, so addicted was Hooker and his immediate staff to the flesh that Washington’s army of prostitutes was now known as Hooker’s girls or, for short HOOKERS. George Meade firedThe victories, like a breath of fresh air were coming from the generals out west, Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan. Finally Lincoln appoints Ulysses S. Grant to command the Union army and the rest is history. It was a bad bet for the South to make, with 2/3rds of the population in the North it didn’t take much slide rule work to figure out that a prolonged war would simply result in the South running out of men to fight with. Some say the South might have won if they had fought a defensive war, just holding a line and letting the Yankees come to them. I have been a proponent of that theory as well in the past especially since the Union generals showed such a reluctance to fight their fellow countrymen. The blockade would have continued to squeeze down supply lines and with most of the manufacturing in the North, the sanctions would have continued to erode the ability of the South to fight effectively. Despite having the best generals, and they were truly providing inspirational leadership, and with a population that was determined to hang on to a way of life that was unsustainable; it is still really hard to concoct a scenario that would have resulted in the South winning the war. The Ancient, as his clerks referred to him, was intent on bringing the Union back together. ”Of course, Pennsylvania is our soil. But so is Virginia. So are the Carolinas. So is Texas. They are forever our soil. That is what this war is about and these damned fools cannot grasp it; or will not grasp it. The whole country is our soil. I cannot fathom such men.”And here we are living in a Union that Lincoln through guile and ruthlessness managed to hold together. Unfortunately the South did not get to benefit from the benevolence that Lincoln had planned for them during reconstruction. Highly recommended to read in conjunction with a wonderful movie. I have also reviewed another Gore Vidal book from the Empire series. Washington D. C. review
What a joy it was to re-read this novel twenty years after my first time.Gore Vidal’s a fine writer, and he could hardly have chosen a better subject. Lincoln appears near the top of most people’s lists of best-ever US presidents, and absolutely at the top of mine. Among his many admirable features, one that strikes me most is that, as the Union was beginning to fall apart, with the South quickly towards war, he travelled into hostile territory: he went to Washington DC, sandwiched between Maryland and Virginia. He did that because he’d been elected President, leading the Federal government, and that government had its seat in Washington, just as the President had his residence there. He therefore had to be there or fail in his duty. And yet, already on his trip in to the city, he faced an assassination threat.So Vidal starts the novel with Lincoln being sneaked in, unannounced and in disguise, an excellent opening to a story that will pit this strange, perhaps even uncouth, and yet somehow heroic figure against an array of forces that had to be greater than anything he could withstand and would eventually crush him (I’m sorry if that’s a spoiler: to anyone who wasn’t aware that Lincoln’s story did not have a happy ending, I can only say that the novel’s worth reading anyway).Lincoln stayed in the city throughout the Civil War. He secured his rear by ensuring that Maryland stayed in the Union (along with three other slave states: Delaware, Kentucky and Missouri), often resorting to measures of dubious constitutionality to achieve his aim. Vidal traces the conflicts through which he had to fight to achieve his goals, often with members of his own cabinet. Indeed, one of the most compelling aspects of the novel is the way it vividly recounts the battles he had with two leading members of his cabinet: first, his major rival William Seward, who’d been expected to win the Republican Presidential nomination until he saw it stolen from him by Lincoln, and went on to become his secretary of state and quickly his most loyal supporter; and second, another rival, Salmon Chase, his Treasury secretary and the architect of the greenback, a man forever devoured by his ambition for the presidency, an ambition shared by his captivating daughter Kate.The ups and downs of these conflicts aren’t simply a history lesson, but a powerful story made all the more intense by the changing narrative viewpoints: much of the story is seen through the eyes of Chase, for instance, or of Lincoln’s secretary John Hay, and strikingly through those of David Herold – this a great case of a bit part, one Shakespeare might have called merely the “second murderer”, since Herold was an obscure accomplice of John Wilkes Booth’s in Lincoln’s assassination (whoops, sorry: there’s that spoiler again).Beyond all these local adversaries, in Washington or even in his cabinet, Lincoln naturally faces the powerful enemy of the secessionist armies. And between him and them there stand his generals in the East, each as inept as the one before, failing to find the wherewithal or the courage to take on and defeat the armies of General Lee. Right up to the appointment of Grant.Meanwhile, on the domestic front, Lincoln had a wife bordering on insanity who was unable to control her own spending, often drifting across the borderline into downright criminality to feed her addiction. He also lost a young child during his White House years, so there was little to console him at home for the tensions of his public life.All these threads Vidal weaves into a pacy, gripping and inspiring novel that I enjoyed as much second time through as first. It really is a model of how to write a historical novel: closely researched and respecting the facts, but blending in finely honed fiction, with enough skill in storytelling to make sure it fascinates and engages the reader.
What do You think about Lincoln (2000)?
I was really getting into this book big time. I was lugging it around with me everywhere, and at several hundred pages it was like carrying around a baby. No kindle or nook for me! It sparks interesting conversations though. How does that happen if you have a kindle? People don't see what you're reading. Anyway, people would often take notice of the huge book and make good natured remarks. Well, I think it characterized me as an intellectual!Regarding the book, I felt like I was there, in that place and time, with those people, and it was wonderful. Isn't that the greatest joy of reading? You experience a different time, place, you're there, and you didn't have to travel anywhere or get in a Time Machine! But in the middle of the book, it became about the battles, not so much about the characters and their stories and relationships and intrigues, etc. It became about the Civil War battles, and that's not what I get into. I need it to be personal, and about the people. So I lost interest, and stopped reading the book.
—Zev Friedman
I bought this for it's literary merits not realizing this is the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War. This is an utterly fascinating read with sterling research to put you there in a pivotal part of American and North American history. The interspersing of fictional characters with the real life ones via cracker jack research that puts you in the muddy streets of Washington DC when the Capital building had no dome and Lincoln was sneaking into town as President elect because of death threats. A man from Chicago becomes President during a divisive time. Remind you of anyone?
—Phil
A flattering blurb on the cover from Harold Bloom and one inside from Joyce Carol Oates certainly underlines this is a serious book; it's also an engaging and entertaining one, one that portrays the personalities and political machinations during the Civil War. Lincoln isn't just a celebrated American president, one considered one of the greatest in our history, he's still polarizing and controversial on both sides of the political divide. He's accused of trampling on rights from that of states to leave the union to individual rights such as due process of law. Vidal doesn't gloss over any of that. He depicts the Lincoln administration's suspension of habeas corpus, shutting down of opposing newspapers, institution of the draft and fiat money and Lincoln's scheme to remove freed slaves to a foreign colony. Vidal, though, does put all that ugliness in the context of the desperate struggle to hold the country together. His Lincoln is cunning, ambitious, driven, obsessed with holding the union together no matter what the personal or national cost and a master politician. The book's first part conveys just how precarious things were for Lincoln and the nation from the initial days of secession when he as President-elect had to sneak into Washington, a capitol surrounded on all sides by slave states on the brink of joining the conflict. The second part takes us from just after the first battle of Bull Run through Lincoln's attempts to find a general who'll energetically prosecute the war, the Emancipation Proclamation and Gettysburg. In the final Part Lincoln finds his general in Ulysses S. Grant and his destiny at Ford's Theater. The story is told through various perspectives--though never Lincoln's. We mostly follow the perspectives of two cabinet level secretaries with presidential ambitions, the imperialist Seward and abolitionist Chase, and two young men with opposing loyalties, John Hay, one of Lincoln's personal secretaries, and David Herold, drawn into the conspiracy to assassinate Lincoln. I read this novel having recently read The Killer Angels, an excellent novelization of the Battle of Gettysburg. This made a wonderful compliment, giving me a view of the entire war centering upon Abraham Lincoln. Serious as the book is, it takes a satirical view at times of its characters (and a cynical view of politics), and one of the more humorous scenes is when Samuel Chase meets with job-seeking Walt Whitman. The book has an exuberance in the gossipy way it presents the various ambitious quirky personalities that keeps the story from being depressing despite the tragic events it treats, from national to personal. The picture of the troubled and troublesome First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln, unstable from the beginning and further unhinged by her son's death, is particularly vivid and poignant. The novel is a fascinating portrait of a complex man and his presidency.
—Lisa (Harmonybites)
