Lincoln’s political genius lay in his ability to harness this unruly bunch, impose his will upon them, and ultimatly use them to achieve his goals to win the war and reunite the country.  This is familiar territory to anyone who has read a lot of Lincoln but Kernes does a great job of making the case in one authoritative work.  One thing that struck me was how Lincoln foreshadowed Teddy Roosevelt’s admonition to walk softly and carry a big stick.  Lincoln consistenly spoke softly, almost never failing to treat those under him with consideration and respect.  But when it came time to get out the big stick, he could show the steel under his softer exterior.  One of the measures of Lincoln’s success is how often he achieved his goals without having to resort to such measures.  It was very common for those who opposed the President to end up liking and respecting him even after being defeated by him.

To help make her point, Kearnes provides biographies of several rivals who lost the nomination to Lincoln but wound up in his cabinet including Seward, Chase, Edward Bates, and Edwin Stanton (who didn’t run against Lincoln but had a very low opinion of him at first).  I found this valuable;  my knowledge of these poeple was a little sketchy.

Another thing that stuck me in reading this book was not really relevant to the thesis but still got my attention.  I knew that death was more prominant in the 19th century but was unaware of how prevalent it was.  Almost all the major figures in the book had lost a child.  Several had lost two or more.  In a ghastly 20-year period, Chase lost three wives to disease and complications associated with childbirth.  Stanton was known as a irritable man who went out of his way to antagonize people but, as a young man, he was known as a cheerful, happy sort.  Then, in the course of a year, he lost his wife, child, and younger brother.   Those who knew him all agreed that the experience changed him forever.  I’m not really going anywhere with this; it just struck me.

Having worked my way through this book slowly but surely, I think I’m going to relax and read fiction for awhile.  More on that later.

Her current favorite is Jane’s Animal Expedition.

What with Nicole being pregnant and both us craving a little room to spread out, we decided to take the plunge and get a king-size bed.  I’ve driven through counties that were smaller than this thing.  It took a couple of nights to get used to it but we are sleeping a lot better now.

Rayna has been her usual busy self.  She is getting more verbal all the time and it’s getting easier to pick out words:  milk, ball, puppy, etc.  She’s been saying “mine” a lot.  She plays outside a lot; we got her a small ball and she likes to kick and throw it up and down the sidewalk.  She also gets a kick out of putting rocks in her mouth.    We put a booster seat on one of the dining room chairs and she now has her meals at the table like a big girl.  I think she likes feeling more like a part of things.

I’ve been reading The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara.  It tells the Gettysburg story from the perspective of several of the men, in blue and gray alike, who were there.  Although it’s a novel, the historical research is outstanding and Shaara doesn’t invent too much.  Leaving aside the history, it’s also a great novel and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1975.  I first discovered it as an undergrad and have returned to it frequently over the years.  The battle, as you may already know, was fought on July 1-3, 1863–every year, around the 4th of July, I try to make some time to reread the book and reflect.  Each time, I come away with new insights and perspectives.  If you want to know a little about the Civil War but only want to read one book, make it this one.

I’ve been working on Lincoln by David Herbert Donald for several weeks.   I first read this back in 1995 when it was originally published, but attempts to use Lincoln to justify actions by the Bush administration and it’s supporters got me thinking about the 16th President and it seemed like a good time to revisit the topic.

In researching his book, Donald went back to the primary sources and attempted to write based on what Lincoln “knew, when he knew it, and why he made his decisions.”  Therefore, there is not as much hindsight or analysis as you sometimes see in presidential bios.  His approach is instructive and you really end up with a feeling for how Lincoln thought.

You also get a feeling for how his personality affected his decisions.  According to Donald, Lincoln had a passive personality and was more comfortable reacting to events than trying to shape them proactively.   At one point in the war, Lincoln stated that “events have controlled me.”

This is a good book for those who want to get past our modern stereotypes and actually get to know the real Abraham Lincoln.  He was not as “nice” as we sometimes make him out to be and many people don’t realize what a skillful (and ruthless) political operator he was.  Despite all this, he was an essentially decent man who lead us through the greatest crisis we’ve ever faced as a country.  Donald’s book provides a better understanding of how he did it.

Hubris by Michael Isikoff and David Corn is the latest book examining the war in Iraq. Written by a pair of journalists from Newsweek and The Nation (respectively), the book focuses on the process by which the Bush administration decided to go to war with Iraq and sold the nation on the idea. What emerges is a pretty clear picture of a group of people who decided on a course of action and then started looking for justifying evidence. It’s not pretty and if you can read this without becoming upset, you are either not paying attention or determined not to accept the idea that the Bush administration has done anything wrong.

Before you write this off as just another piece of anti-Bush propaganda, let me point out that the book doesn’t spend much time on the President himself. While the authors never come out and say it, they imply pretty strongly that the President accepted the selling job of his people and was as surprised as everyone else when no weapons of mass destruction were found. This is rather the story of those serving the President, starting with Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney. There are others who also don’t come off well; Congress (both parties) completely blew it when it came time to ask tough questions about the shaky evidence being used to justify war. The media also completely failed to do their job and mostly just repeated the garbage being spread by the administration (I’m looking at you, Judy Miller).

In a way, this is all irrelevant now. The war happened, we destroyed the Iraqi government, and now we’re struggling with the aftermath. the fact that the war was never justified has been overtaken by the events. Nevertheless, it’s worth remembering how we got here. If nothing else, maybe we’ll think a little harder next time.

Arthur’s Britain by Leslie Alcock provides a good overview of British history from the 4th to 7th centuries. This was the period in which the original inhabitants of Britain gradually gave way to settlers/invaders from northern Germany. If the legends of King Arthur were actually based on a real person (a matter of considerable controversy among scholars), he would have lived during this period.

Alcock is a former professor of archeology at the University of Glasgow and is a recognized authority on this subject. Besides a simple narrative of events, he devotes many pages to an examination of the evidence historians have to use in their studies. These fall into two categories: written documents from the time (and later documents that drew upon them) and archaeological evidence. Both are scanty; there are less than 20 surviving documents known to be written at the time and most of them are fragmentary. This makes it impossible to say we KNOW much of these events. All we really have are guesses. Educated guesses, to be sure, but still guesses.

I’d be lying if I said this was a fast read but it serves as an invaluable introduction to the history of England during this important period. SCAers with early period British, Saxon, Irish, or Pictish personas should find it useful, particularly for the illustrations of artifacts that have been excavated from various archaeological sites.

One word of warning: This book was originally published in 1971 and there have been a lot of developments in the field since then. Several of Alcock’s conclusions have been challenged by new scholarship. In the 2001 edition that I’m reading, Alcock does not revise any of his text to reflect this. He does, however, mention it in a new preface and provides a supplementary bibliography for readers who want to pursue alternative viewpoints.