Redeeming the Great Emancipator

Lincoln In A World Come Of Age

Named after a famous African American historian and Harvard professor, the Nathan Huggins lectures bring distinguished scholars to Harvard to deliver a series of three lectures on topics related to African American history. Allen Guelzo's book, "Redeeming the Great Emancipator" (2016) is based on the Huggins Lectures he delivered in 2012 under the title "Abraham Lincoln in 1862: Year of Jubilee". Guelzo, the Henry Luce Professor of the Civil War Era at Gettysburg College, has written widely on the Civil War, the Battle of Gettysburg, Lincoln, the Reconstruction Era, and American Religion.

In his Huggins Lectures, Guelzo examines changing views over the years about Lincoln and about the Emancipation Proclamation. The book crosses narrow disciplinary lines and is a work of theology and philosophy as much as history.

Guelzo argues eloquently that Lincoln's reputation as the Great Emancipator has been unfairly diminished particularly during the middle to latter part of the 20th Century. Guelzo finds many reasons for this. Some of these reasons are historical as Guelzo examines how and why the goals of Emancipation largely failed after the Civil War. But the primary reason for deflationary views of Lincoln lies in what Guelzo terms a "world come of age". A world come of age, for Guelzo, looks for simplicity on matters of historical complexity. It is skeptical of explanations and of human motivations and of efforts to rise to heroic stature, preferring a policy of grievance. As Guelzo writes about one version of a coming of age view of Lincoln:

"Coming of age does not necessarily mean maturity; there is a faux-maturation which comes of age in the loosening of trust, the reduction of causality to nothing-but, the confusion of nobility with perfection, the obliteration of American exceptionalism and its replacement with American deceptionaiism."

Guelzo both develops and rejects the coming of age view of Lincoln with an ultimate focus on Lincoln's religious, transcendent vision. In the first chapter "The Unwanting of Abraham Lincoln" Guelzo develops of range of views held on Lincoln during his life and following his assassination ranging from the heroic to the critical. The latter views criticized Lincoln's efforts to free the slaves and to grant rights to the former slaves. As time passed, Lincoln would be criticized as more interested in saving the Union for whites than in freeing the slaves. Lincoln was criticized as a racist and as a politician who did little to advance the cause of African Americans.

The second chapter of the book "The Antislavery World of Abraham Lincoln" has two parts. In the first part, Guelzo examines Lincoln's attitudes towards slavery and towards African Americans. Although brief, Guelzo's account is measured. He finds strong indications in speeches throughout his life that Lincoln had the prejudices against African Americans that were common in the America of his day. Guelzo finds as well that Lincoln hated slavery, always spoke against it, and worked indefatigably within the constraints of his position to abolish it. Lincoln took as his primary source the Declaration of Independence with is "self-evident" truth that "all men are created equal" with inalienable rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ." The Emancipation Proclamation was based on Lincoln's belief that these rights were common to all and were violated by holding human beings in slavery. Guelzo finds that the quest for simplicity rather than complexity in studying Lincoln's views on Emancipation overlooks the nature of his accomplishment, and he gives as an illustration a lengthy discussion of the current movement for reparations for slavery, either through legislation or through the courts. The discussion is excellent in itself but possibly somewhat off-topic. Guelzo ties the discussion in with his subject by showing the great sacrifice in blood and treasure made to bring the Civil War to a successful conclusion and how the determination to stay the course might have eluded lesser men than Lincoln. In his Second Inaugural Address, as Guelzo points out, Lincoln spoke unforgettably about the sacrifices occasioned by the war through the judgment of Providence.

In his final chapter, "Lincoln's God and Emancipation", Guelzo examines the difficult question of Lincoln's religious convictions. Lincoln never joined a church and was not a believer in any religious denomination. Still, Guelzo finds, that Lincoln as a strong belief in providence, in a Creator, and in a natural law separate from the enactments of human governments. Lincoln said, and Guelzo accepts his explanation, that at the time of the Proclamation he had made a promise to God to end slavery and its evils and offenses against divine law. Guelzo finds that Lincoln's reliance on Transcendence is difficult to accept for a world come of age as both the political left and right search for alternative explanations for Lincoln's heroic action. As Guelzo passionately writes:

"For in a world come of age, a world which has become conscious of itself and grown self-confident to the point where we may all get along perfectly well in all questions of importance without fathers and mothers, without communities, without people whom we do not like or do not wish to acknowledge, we balk at the notion that we owe anything to others, or that would become as little children."

In the Preface to the book, Guelzo writes: "Lincoln is a piece of African American history as much as Civil War history; and the fate of African Americans is tied to the fate of all other Americans. .... For ultimately we are indeed all in this together." In these Nathan Huggins lectures, Guelzo works historically and philosophically to restore Lincoln as the Great Emancipator from the vicissitudes of a world come of age. In his melding of history, philosophy and religion and in his transcendent vision. Guelzo, as does Lincoln, has much to teach.

Robin Friedman