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February: Illinois Black Laws are repealed.

February 3: Hampton Roads conference takes place.

February 22: Tennessee approves a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery.

March 3: Lincoln signs bill freeing wives and children of black soldiers.

Signs the bill establishing the Freedmen’s Bureau.

March 4: Gives his second inaugural address.

April 9: General Robert E. Lee surrenders at Appomattox Court House, Virginia.

April 11: In the last speech before his death, Lincoln favors limited black suffrage in the South.

April 14/15: Lincoln is assassinated.

December 18: Thirteenth Amendment is ratified; slavery is abolished.

Abbreviations Used in Notes

ALP

Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress

ALPLM

Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Springfield, Ill.

BD

Theodore C. Pease, ed., The Diary of Orville Hickman Browning (2 vols.; Springfield, Ill., 1927)

CG

Congressional Globe

CP

John Niven, ed., The Salmon P. Chase Papers (5 vols.; Kent, Ohio, 1993–98)

CW

Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (8 vols.; New Brunswick, N.J., 1953–55)

CWH

Civil War History

GP

Sidney Howard Gay Papers, Rare Book and Manuscripts Library, Columbia University

HL

Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif.

JAH

Journal of American History

JALA

Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association

JIH

Journal of Illinois History

JISHS

Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society

JSH

Journal of Southern History

LC

Library of Congress

LTP

Lyman Trumbull Papers, Library of Congress

NA

National Archives

OR

U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (70 vols.; Washington, D.C., 1880–1901)

RG

Record Group

WD

Howard K. Beale, ed., Diary of Gideon Welles (3 vols.; New York, 1960)

Notes

Preface

1. Andrew Boyd, A Memorial Lincoln Bibliography (Albany, 1870).

2. Richard N. Current, The Lincoln Nobody Knows (New York, 1958), 12; T. J. Barnett to Samuel L. M. Barlow, June 6, 1863, Samuel L. M. Barlow Papers, HL.

3. For the perils of using “recollected words” attributed to Lincoln, see Don E. Fehrenbacher and Virginia Fehrenbacher, eds., Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln (Stanford, 1996); and Don E. Fehrenbacher, “The Words of Lincoln,” in John L. Thomas, ed., Abraham Lincoln and the American Political Tradition (Amherst, Mass., 1986), 31–49.

4. See Douglas L. Wilson, Lincoln’s Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words (New York, 2006).

5. The Works of Charles Sumner (15 vols.; Boston, 1870–83), 4: 10–11.

6. See, for example, William Lee Miller, Lincoln’s Virtues: An Ethical Biography (New York, 2002), 151, 181, 192, 228; Joseph R. Fornieri, “Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation: A Model of Prudent Leadership,” in Ethan Fishman, ed., Tempered Strength: Studies in the Nature and Scope of Prudential Leadership (Lanham, Md., 2002), 127–32; Jean Bethke Elshtain, “Forward,” in Kenneth L. Deutsch and Joseph R. Fornieri, eds., Lincoln’s American Dream (Washington, D.C., 2005), ix; Allen C. Guelzo, “Lincoln and the Abolitionists,” Wilson Quarterly, 24 (Autumn 2000), 66–69. A significant recent counter to this point of view is James Oakes, The Radical and the Politician: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics (New York, 2007).

7. CW, 5: 318, 389.

8. Miller, Lincoln’s Virtues, 105; Chicago Tribune, April 12, 1865; Peter Lassman and Ronald Speirs, eds., Max Weber: Political Writings (New York, 1994), 352–59, 369.

9. Matthew Pinsker, “Lincoln Theme 2.0,” JAH, 96 (September 2009), 432–33.

10. Chicago Daily Tribune, May 15, 1858.

11. “Introduction,” in Joseph R. Fornieri and Sara V. Gabbard, eds., Lincoln’s America, 1809–1865 (Carbondale, Ill., 2008), 3.

1 “I Am Naturally Anti-Slavery”

1. CW, 7: 281. We know little of Lincoln’s early life. In David Donald’s biography,