Sources for Making our history
Citations to The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln’s multi-volume Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln remains the premier source for Lincoln documents. Conveniently, it is freely available online, text searchable, and can provide URLs that highlight Lincoln’s words. Therefore I have used it for almost every Lincoln quotation in the essays. Readers can click directly from the essays to documents in the Collected Works and find the highlighted quotes.
Citations to Other Sources
Quotations from other sources are also linked to webpages whenever possible. However, in some cases I quoted from published secondary sources that are not available online. Citation information to those sources is listed below in order of appearance in the essays. Readers can use the citations to check the quotes, investigate the context, or identify the primary sources used by the authors.
Corey Smith
“the brightest mind of the family, was studious, devoted to her duties of whatever character, and possessed a remarkably amiable and lovable disposition.” Douglas L. Wilson, “Abraham Lincoln, Ann Rutledge, and the Evidence of Herndon's Informants,” Civil War History 36 (Dec 1990), 314
“one of the great myths of American history.” Wilson, “Abraham Lincoln, Ann Rutledge, and the Evidence of Herndon's Informants,” 302
Billie Jean Theide
“name and image imbue diverse causes with qualities like integrity, wisdom, and unimpeachable Americanness.” Jackie Hogan, Lincoln, Inc.: Selling the Sixteenth President in Contemporary America, 5
William Blake
“men were joining the struggle of the decade as a reaction to the world around them, the depression, the organization of labor, the threat to their actual or potential freedom posed by the bellicose and expansive fascist powers, which were anti-labor, anti-Semitic, anti-intellectual, and almost anti-civilization.” Robert Rosenstone, “The Men of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion,” The Journal of American History, 54 (Sept 1967), 338
This silence is deceptive, the flowers a fraud/the stream polluted. To live here is a lie. Rosenstone, “The Men of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion,” 338
Judith Joseph
“the state-papers of no President have more controlled the popular mind.” Douglas L. Wilson, Lincoln’s Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words, 196
Alexander Martin
They prayed that God would bless him with “grace, mercy & peace” and expressed hope to meet him “in a better world” because they “never expect to meet your face on earth.” Fred Lee Hord and Matthew D. Norman, editors, Knowing Him by Heart: African Americans on Abraham Lincoln, 78
“earnestly praying that Abraham Lincoln might succeed, and that one day she and her boy might be free.” Hord and Norman, eds., Knowing Him by Heart, 290
“bearing in my heart a deep sense of personal indebtedness to this man, for I am a child of slaves.” Hord and Norman, eds., Knowing Him by Heart, 435
“that the simple stroke of the President’s pen” will not “knock the shackles off of every bondsman” & “the people” Hord and Norman, eds., Knowing Him by Heart, 72
“go into this war to affirm their manhood, to strike for liberty and country.” Hord and Norman, eds., Knowing Him by Heart, 101
“the past forty years.” Hord and Norman, eds., Knowing Him by Heart, 124
“self-liberation” of slaves who deserted plantations to join the Union army was matched subsequently by the “grim and tortured struggle of Negroes to win their own freedom.” Hord and Norman, eds., Knowing Him by Heart, 447
“to complete the work of the great emancipator” by achieving “Lincoln’s ideal of justice for all men regardless of color.” Hord and Norman, eds., Knowing Him by Heart, 364
“the fundamental tenets of the American government.” Hord and Norman, eds., Knowing Him by Heart, 365
“warmly endorse” a program “to make every American an American in full.” Hord and Norman, eds., Knowing Him by Heart, 431
Keenan Dailey
“He was of the Immortals,” John Hay wrote. “You must not approach too close to the Immortals,” so his “monument should stand alone…isolated, distinguished, and serene.” Merrill D. Peterson, Lincoln in American Memory, 206
Judith Mayer
“eyes began to sparkle, the mouth to smile, the whole countenance was wreathed in animation.” Richard N. Current, The Lincoln Nobody Knows, 5
“he was the most reticent, secretive man I ever saw or expect to see.” Current, The Lincoln Nobody Knows, 12
“shut-mouthed” Current, The Lincoln Nobody Knows, 12
“skill in parrying troublesome questions was wonderful.” Current, The Lincoln Nobody Knows, 11-12
“Christ died to make men holy; he died to make men free.” Current, The Lincoln Nobody Knows, 282
Jordan Fein
“No class of people feel his death as the colored people do, for we have lost the best friend we had on our earth, our great deliverer.” Fred Lee Hord and Matthew D. Norman, editors, Knowing Him by Heart: African Americans on Abraham Lincoln, 154
“We, as a people, feel more than all others that we are bereaved….He had taught us to love him.” Hord and Norman, eds., Knowing Him by Heart, 157
“Strong men cried like children, while the women were frantic with sorrow; for in the death of the President they realize the death of a friend—a father." Hord and Norman, eds., Knowing Him by Heart, 165
“We shall never look upon his like again.” Hord and Norman, eds., Knowing Him by Heart, 156
Mark Nelson
“could not afford to hang men for votes.” Michael S. Green, Lincoln and Native Americans, 83
Kelly Kristin Jones
“on the anniversary of our Lord’s great sacrifice, a mighty sacrifice himself for the sins of the whole people.” Merrill D. Peterson, Lincoln in American Memory, 8
“is one of those giant figures, of whom there are very few in history, who lose their nationality in death. They are no longer Greek or Hebrew, English or American; they belong to mankind.” Peterson, Lincoln in American Memory, 214
A General Guide to Sources
Many sources beyond those cited above informed my essays. Below I have briefly annotated some of the most important sources, including most of those listed above.
The Papers of Abraham Lincoln is a documentary editing project whose editors are building a free online database of all documents written by and to Lincoln. Once complete, it will replace the Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln as the field’s most indispensable source. All documents are scanned, transcribed, annotated, and text searchable. Take it for a spin!
The Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association has been the journal of record in the field for over forty years. Like the Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln and Papers of Abraham Lincoln, it is freely available and text searchable. Its articles touch on almost every Lincoln subject imaginable. Explore it!
Jonathan W. White’s A House Built by Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House is a prize-winning examination of Lincoln’s treatment of black people in the White House during his presidency. White shows that Lincoln welcomed black visitors into the White House and treated them with dignity and respect. Lincoln’s actions broke sharply with prior presidential practice.
Fred Lee Hord and Matthew D. Norman’s Knowing Him by Heart: African Americans on Abraham Lincoln is a remarkable and important collection of writings by African-Americans on Abraham Lincoln. The documents span the antebellum era to the present, and highlight the great admiration that most African-Americans have expressed for Lincoln since the Civil War.
Douglas L. Wilson’s prize-winning Lincoln’s Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words is a stunning foray into how Lincoln used words to shape public opinion. Wilson reveals Lincoln’s masterful command of language, showing how he habitually and skillfully revised words to hone messages for specific audiences.
Jackie Hogan’s Lincoln, Inc.: Selling the Sixteenth President in Contemporary America is a pioneering sociological investigation into Americans’ sale and consumption of Abraham Lincoln. To Hogan, the Lincoln image shapes and illuminates Americans’ national identity. However, the image is idealized; Americans see in Lincoln primarily what they prefer to believe about themselves.
Richard N. Current’s mid-twentieth century classic The Lincoln Nobody Knows retains great value for those who desire to investigate Lincoln’s personality and politics. Current explores many enigmas that shroud our understanding of the man. Each chapter examines a specific subject, such as Lincoln’s religious views, and assesses evidence for different interpretations.
Merrill Peterson’s Lincoln in American Memory is a superb study of how Americans have remembered Lincoln from his death until the late twentieth century. Peterson traces five major archetypes of Lincoln and shows how different groups of Americans have appropriated Lincoln for different purposes at different times.
Michael S. Green’s Lincoln and Native Americans is a short but valuable study of the history of Lincoln and Native Americans. Green shows that while Lincoln never hated Indians, neither did he use his presidency to reform abuses in the federal government’s treatment of Indians.
Kate Masur’s prize-winning Until Justice Be Done: America’s First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction is a path-breaking interpretation of the interracial movement for racial equality in the northern states. Antebellum activists promoted civil rights for free black people, who faced highly discriminatory laws in most northern states. Shaped by this movement, the Republican Party created a legal basis for racial equality throughout the nation, most notably by passage of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Kenneth Winkle’s The Young Eagle: The Rise of Abraham Lincoln is a superb study of Lincoln’s pre-presidential years. Winkle’s extraordinary attention to the context of Lincoln’s environment informs every page of the book, leading him to illuminating conclusions about many aspects of Lincoln’s life. It is a wonderful social history.
My Making an Antislavery Nation: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Battle over Freedom situates Abraham Lincoln’s antislavery politics in the context of antebellum Illinois political economy. It argues that the Republican Party’s antislavery nationalism flowed from the ideas of the abolitionists and freesoilers who preceded them.
