And There Was Light by Jon Meacham
In this age of divisiveness and political crises, we may learn a lot from a president who presided over a divided nation. Abraham Lincoln was at the height of American strength when obstinate secessionists refused to back down in a conflict of visions based on power, wealth, race, identity, and religion. He was reviled and praised, hated and praised, and excoriated and venerated. He represents both the potential and the constraints of the presidency.
And There Was Light by Jon Meacham
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Lincoln is either seen as the greatest American president—a distant icon—or as a politician who was more motivated by calculation than by conviction. He was both well-known and elusive at the same time. This insightful new portrait reveals a very human Lincoln to us—a flawed individual whose moral opposition to slavery, which is crucial to the history of justice in America, began as he was raised in a community of antislavery Baptists; who insisted that slavery was a moral evil; and who sought, as he put it, to do right as God gave him to see the right.
The life of Abraham Lincoln is chronicled in this book, from his frontier Kentucky birth in 1809 to his leadership during the Civil War to his tragic assassination in 1865, including his rise to power, his education, his relationships, his struggles with depression, his failures in politics, his growing spirituality, and his unwavering belief that slavery must end. Lincoln’s biography serves as an example of the ways and means of politics in a democracy, the origins and persistence of racism, and the power of conscience to influence events in a country that was influenced by the bravery of the enslaved of the era and by the heroic witness of Black Americans.
Although the book is technically a biography of Abraham Lincoln, it is really more of a commentary on Lincoln’s values, the obstacles he had to overcome to become president of the United States after growing up on a frontier farm, and most importantly, how those values clashed with the dominant social issue of the time, slavery. Lincoln’s moral character, sense of justice, and desire to “improve his condition” are all traits that coincide with the nation’s fight to uphold the revered Declaration of Independence phrase, “all men are created equal,” as he goes through life. These phrases served as the essence of Americanism in Lincoln’s eyes.
Slaveowners in the South held a different perspective, particularly after the Missouri Compromise made it plain that the federal government viewed slavery as nothing more than “an unavoidable evil” whose growth should be restrained. Slavery was transformed by the slave powers into “a positive good” and “a national benefit,” rather than an evil.
Meacham displays Lincoln’s development as a politician as well as in his humanity as he walks us through his life. Lincoln never portrays slaveowners as evil, but he does assert unequivocally that slavery is unethical. His opposition to slavery is growing, and he is working to find a means to stop it from spreading further so that it can eventually be abolished. But, he is aware that the Constitution limits the federal government’s ability to act. Under a platform of limiting expansion while doing nothing to end slavery in states where it already existed, he eventually wins the presidency. Due to the slave powers’ refusal to give up, there was still secession and conflict.
