Lincoln's Diplomacy

[Liz Rosenthal]

I've finally finished Diplomat in Carpet Slippers: Abraham Lincoln Deals with Foreign Affairs by Jay Monaghan. Generally, I enjoyed it. Monaghan was an excellent writer and could be funny at times, too. He shows that Lincoln was very involved in the details of foreign affairs through the duration of his presidency, Seward's supposed worldliness notwithstanding. Lincoln had to manage quite the balancing act, not just within his party and the North, but in handling the unique interests, outlooks and histories of various foreign nations, including some of the countries in Latin America.

But this book came out in 1945, prior to publication of the Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. A lot of Monaghan's characterizations of people, countries, ideologies, etc., is a bit dated; it would be nice to read something with a more modern sensibility, reflecting the inexorable march of time and events since 1945.

One would think that there might have been more information to glean about Lincoln's foreign policy upon publication of the Collected Works... and/or at least after each of the two supplements to the Collected Works came out. In general, there's been an explosion of Lincoln scholarship these last couple of decades. But I haven't run across any books similar in theme to Monaghan's, and I believe someone here on the Symposium indicated that the book remains the only one dealing with Lincoln's foreign affairs.

What are people's thoughts about this lack of a modern-day volume? Is anyone now researching and writing such a book?