Review of "And There Was Light"

[Rob Wick]

Jon Meacham, And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle (New York: Random House, 2022) 676 pp.

I have long been a fan of Jon Meacham's work. Although I don't care for the concept of "presidential historian" (historian suffices as a description), Meacham has written some very good books on various presidents and periods of American history where a president has played a highly-important role. His book, The Soul of America, is my favorite of his works.

I was excited when I heard that Meacham was turning his attention to Abraham Lincoln. Marketed as a biography, the book is, in actuality, a meditation on Lincoln's emergence, both intellectual and moral, from his rough-hewn home at the Sinking Springs farm in Kentucky to the backwoods of the Indiana frontier to the point where Lincoln really began to come into his own, the environs of New Salem. Meacham then follows Lincoln on the path to Illinois legislator, United States Representative, failed U.S. Senate candidate, and finally, to the White House.

The unifying theme of the book is slavery and race relations. Meacham clearly shows Lincoln's growth throughout the years on the issue of slavery and, unlike many historians and biographers, doesn't whitewash (no pun intended) places where Lincoln fell short of the mark. In Meacham's view, Lincoln is neither a saint nor a sinner. He is, in his entirety, a human being subject to the same foibles and failures that any of us share.

I have to admit to some ambiguity toward this book. It took me several weeks to finish it, and that had nothing to do with Meacham's style or his arguments. I can't give voice to why I felt the way I did while reading it. For the average reader, Meacham's 421 pages of narrative will likely prove too in-depth, although, for the student of Lincoln, the nearly 200-plus pages of notes and bibliography provide evidence of his intellectual rigor and determination to tell an accurate story.

In his epilogue, Meacham ties in the preceding pages with the events that took place long after Lincoln's assassination. Noting that America has seemingly fallen short in its attempts to keep Lincoln's vision in place, Meacham doesn't blame Lincoln for dreaming too big but rather blames those who followed for not having dreams that were large enough. Lincoln showed society that a failure to live up to our democratic ideal during the Civil War would have, once and for all, ended the American experiment, which continues to hold true to this day.

In a trenchant phrase, Meacham writes, "Abraham Lincoln did not bring about heaven on earth. Yet he defended the possibilities of democracy and the pursuit of justice at an hour in which the means of amendment, adjustment, and reform were under assault. What if the constitutional order had failed and the Union had been permanently divided? What would have come next? A durable oligarchical white Southern slave empire, surely strengthened and possibly expanded, would have emerged from the war, and, as Lincoln saw, the viability of popular self-government would have been in ruins." (pg. 419)

Attempts to deify Lincoln do an injustice to his role in American history and our current society. Discussing the Lincoln memorial, Meacham writes, "If we look closely, though, we see a human face--a weathered Lincoln who gazes out not grandly but whose eyes are inclined slightly downward, looking less into the far distance than at all who come to him."

Overall, I gave this book three stars out of five. Maybe someday I can figure out why Meacham's book didn't completely resonate with me, but I still would suggest it to students of Lincoln.

Best
Rob

[David Lockmiller]

(01-29-2025 12:58 PM)Rob Wick Wrote:  Jon Meacham, And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle (New York: Random House, 2022) 676 pp.

In his epilogue, Meacham ties in the preceding pages with the events that took place long after Lincoln's assassination. Noting that America has seemingly fallen short in its attempts to keep Lincoln's vision in place, Meacham doesn't blame Lincoln for dreaming too big but rather blames those who followed for not having dreams that were large enough. Lincoln showed society that a failure to live up to our democratic ideal during the Civil War would have, once and for all, ended the American experiment, which continues to hold true to this day.

In a trenchant phrase, Meacham writes, "Abraham Lincoln did not bring about heaven on earth. Yet he defended the possibilities of democracy and the pursuit of justice at an hour in which the means of amendment, adjustment, and reform were under assault. What if the constitutional order had failed . . . ?

Lincoln showed society that a failure to live up to our democratic ideal during the Civil War would have, once and for all, ended the American experiment, which continues to hold true to this day.

Best
Rob

U. S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens ended the epilogue to his book, A Supreme Court Memoir - Five Chiefs, with this observation:

An Illinois lawyer named Abraham Lincoln shared Cephalus's thoughts* about justice and my views about sovereign immunity. In his State of the Union message of 1861, he said: "It is as much the duty of Government to render prompt justice against itself, in favor of its citizens, as it is to administer the same between private individuals."

* "Cephalus accepted Socrates' suggestion that justice consisted of speaking the truth and paying one's debts."

In terms of constitutional responsibility, this aphorism should apply to government officials, as well as citizens.