What did Lincoln read?

[Liz Rosenthal]

(05-17-2014 10:50 AM)LincolnToddFan Wrote:  Bill, I am sorry to hear that you are suffering the loss of people you cared for. It's the worst experience of being human, isn't it?

As for AL, I was surprised to learn that notwithstanding his great intellect his reading seemed confined mostly to law, the Bible and Shakespeare. It appears that he did not read widely, but read deeply.

Other than the law, he is said to have had an encyclopedic grasp of Scripture and Shakespeare which by itself is very impressive.

I just saw this thread now and would also like to extend my sympathies to Bill for his losses. I'm sorry, Bill.

Regarding AL's reading, he spent a lot of time reading newspapers, which were almost all political publications in those days, either pro-Democratic or pro-Whig (or, later, pro-Republican). He had to be up on everything that was going on, and who all the important players were. I think that this stood him in good stead not only in his rise in Illinois politics and on the road to the White House, but his vast knowledge of the political landscape also helped him greatly in the White House. He knew who he had to deal with on any given topic, whose support he needed, and how to get that support.

The idea that AL did not read "widely" but did read "deeply" seems to have come from Herndon. While I agree that whatever Lincoln read he almost literally devoured, I'm not so sure how accurate Herndon's impression was of the breadth of Lincoln's reading. There were a lot of books that Lincoln doesn't seem to have felt were worth his time - the hagiographies of "great men," for example, which Herndon seemed to put a lot of stock in himself - and Lincoln wasn't into fiction, per se, but was apparently well-informed about technological and scientific advancements. Also, many Lincoln scholars believe that Lincoln was also well-read in the oratory of ancient Greece, judging from the structure and style of the Gettysburg address.

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(05-17-2014 12:13 PM)LincolnToddFan Wrote:  AL idolized Washington and Jefferson.

As for his opinion of his immediate predecessor James Buchanan...all we know is that he felt that his pet cat Tabby deserved to eat from the same golden tableware as Buchanan did.

So we can draw our own conclusions I guess.

I think that Lincoln greatly admired Jefferson's political philosophy - and it would be hard to say otherwise, given AL's emphasis on the importance of the Declaration of Independence to the founding principles of the Republic - but he doesn't seem to have thought much of Jefferson as a man. My impression is that he may have found Jefferson a bit hypocritical on the slavery question, as Jefferson had been anti-slavery as a young man (while owning slaves, of course), but later seemed to have had a change of heart on the slavery question. It's possible also that people, including Lincoln, were generally aware of Jefferson's sexual escapades with some of his slaves. Admittedly, such things were rather common amongst the slaveowners, but perhaps this amoral conduct really stuck in one's craw when the person engaging in it publicly represented himself as a great humanitarian and forward-looking thinker.

I doubt that Lincoln thought well of Buchanan. AL would have been his usual gentlemanly self in meeting Buchanan pre-Inauguration for a tour of the White House, and would have been just as gentlemanly in riding in the carriage with Buchanan on the way to taking the Oath of Office on Inauguration Day. But judging from the things that Lincoln said and wrote during the "Secession Winter," the period in which one southern state after another took action to secede from the Union in response to Lincoln's November 1860 election, he apparently viewed Buchanan's *inaction* as the South slipped away *treasonous*.