What did Lincoln read?

[Gene C]

Sorry to hear of your loss Bill.

Here is the text of the poem from Abraham Lincoln Online

http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/linc...n/knox.htm

[Eva Elisabeth]

(05-05-2014 12:51 AM)LincolnMan Wrote:  The poem is especially on my mind as three people that I've known for a long time passed way this past week- none of them related to me. Life truly is short and to be valued for every heartbeat we have.

I'm very sorry to hear this, Bill!
I wonder if Lincoln also read Robert Herrick's "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time" (Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying...)

[LincolnMan]

Thank you Gene and Eva. I'm really in touch with my inner Lincoln today...

[LincolnMan]

I thought maybe Lincoln may have been reading a McGuffey Reader, but then I realized it wasn't published until he was in adulthood. Still, I bet he was familiar with it. It would have contained popular poetry and literature of the day.

[Gene C]

Lincoln's Youth by Louis Warren devotes a fair amount of his book on what Lincoln read as a youth, and the importance those books may have had on influencing his character.

[LincolnMan]

That is a book I don't have. It's been referenced several times here on the Forum. Maybe I can pick one up when in Springfield.

[LincolnToddFan]

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.

[L Verge]

Do we know if he ever studied past Presidential administrations or voiced opinions on earlier Presidents?

[HerbS]

Laurie,It is my guess that he was "Sharp Enough" to do that.

[LincolnToddFan]

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.

[HerbS]

I found that the most admired president was-George Washington[In Lincoln's Farewell address to the people of Springfield-1861].He admired-Thomas Jefferson because of his thoughts of-Euclid.He enjoyed-Shakespeare,Poe,O.W.Holmes,and Whitman.What a brilliant man AL was!

[HerbS]

Bill,Sorry about your loss,I have traveled that road.Herb

[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*.

[L Verge]

"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."

Taking the slavery issue out of the picture, I wonder what Mr. Lincoln thinks now from the great beyond about the sexual escapades of quite a few Presidents while in the highest office in the land? Talk about immoral and detrimental to the country...

[Liz Rosenthal]

(05-20-2014 11:29 AM)L Verge Wrote:  "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."

Taking the slavery issue out of the picture, I wonder what Mr. Lincoln thinks now from the great beyond about the sexual escapades of quite a few Presidents while in the highest office in the land? Talk about immoral and detrimental to the country...

I'd say that the general topic of sexual escapades of married U.S. presidents is kind of irrelevant to what we're discussing. When I mentioned the *amorality* of Jefferson's conduct vis-à-vis his slaves, I was not referring necessarily to the extramarital nature of the conduct, but the conduct of a slaveowner who imposes himself sexually on his slaves, where, by the very nature of their status as slaves, they have no power to say "no," nowhere to go to get away from further advances by the slaveowner, and no one to turn to for protection or assistance. Moreover, in imposing himself sexually on a slave, the slaveowner was almost certainly causing the slave's pregnancy, thus creating a new slave in the process - another human being by whom the slaveowner would profit, and whose status would forever be labeled as mere property, with no rights whatsoever. Even if Jefferson had been a bachelor, this problem would have remained. His personal conduct in taking advantage of his slaves sexually, and the conduct of thousands of other slaveowners in doing the same, was detrimental to the millions of slaves subject to their owners, detrimental to the health and well-being of society in general, and detrimental to the professed belief in the United States of America as a "free country."

The reason that Jefferson's conduct was a particular problem here, and one probable reason why Lincoln had disdain for Jefferson as a person, was that Jefferson was among the greatest proponents of his time of republicanism, and freedom of thought, expression, religion and all the rest, and on top of that, was anti-slavery in his views... while behaving abominably in private. Also, Jefferson's later change of heart about the need to place slavery on a path to extinction may have been somewhat opportunistic on his part and quite disillusioning for an idealist like Lincoln. And, thus, we return to the topic of this thread, which is "What Lincoln Read," and, by extension, whom he admired, and why or why not.