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Title: Lincoln's Virtues: An Ethical Biography
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Manufacturer: Vintage
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| Lincoln's Virtues: An Ethical Biography by Vintage William Lee Miller's Brilliant Exploration of the morality of Abraham Lincoln shines with gem-like clarity | William Lee Miller is an academic who writes in an understandable style. In "Lincoln's Virtues" the historian examines in clinical detail the ethical cosmos of the railspiltter from the West who rose to the White House in the nation's darkest hour.
Miller shows that Lincoln held two principles as sacred to those virtues enunciated in the Declaration of Independence: the Union which was indissoluble and predated the formation of states; the right of every American to be free. Lincoln fought hard for the black race in a racist society beyond a 21st century person's ken. He thought slavery wrong from an early age and will live forever for his authorship of the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 and support of the 13th amendment to the Constitution freeing slaves.
Lincoln as a congressman in the 1840s opposed the Mexican War as unjust. He was an enemy of the Polk administration's Manifest Destiny hubris. As a Whig politician for most of his career his great hero was Henry Clay of Ky. who managed to get the Compromise of 1850 passed. Lincoln deplored the Kansas-Nebraska act of 1854 which nullified the Missouri Compromise of 1820. The Kansas-Nebraska Act was the brainchild of Lincoln's racist 1858 opponent for the Senate in Illinois: Stephen A. Douglas. With Kansas-Nebraska it became possible for slavery to be extended into the territories entering the Union. Lincoln also opposed the Dred Scott decision and the fugitive slave act.
Miller shows how skillful a politican Mr. Lincoln was as he sought political power while at the same time moving the country forward to a more just and democratic society. His strong defense of the Constitution and the Union led to the waging and winning of the Civil War. Miller's portrait of Lincoln makes clear to this reader why he is our greatest president!
Lincoln is sometimes been attacked for racism but those critics who cast aspersions on him fail to realize the type of white supremacist society in which he was immured.Without Lincoln the United States as we know it would probably not have survived the major challenges of secession by eleven states and a horrific civil war.
Lincoln, teaches Miller, was a kind man who abhorred cruelty to animals and human beings. The sixteenth president was merciful to soldiers who fell asleep on guard duty. Had he lived, reconstruction in the southern states would no doubt have been less severe than it was. Lincoln rarely held grudges grasping the moral if not the doctrinal teaching of Christianity. He had the skills of a great author/poet. Lincoln's speeches soar higher and probe deeper into the American psyche than do those of any other American Chief Executive.
This outstanding book should be read in tandem with the author's second volume on Lincoln entitled "President Lincoln." Read these books slowly and absorb their content. One wishes their was an Abraham Lincoln to cast his stovepipe hat in the presidential ring in the current frenzied contest for the Oval Office! | | Lincoln's Virtues: An Ethical Biography by Vintage Lincoln's Virtues: An Ethical Propaganda | This book describes the age and circumstances Lincoln grew up and ruled in. It does this with great detail and numerous of small accounts and that's what makes it interesting to read.
Throughout the book suggestions are made of Lincoln's thoughts and at some point this gets annoying, as there are no survivors to tell the tale of the man they knew. And how good do you have to know someone who's living to judge him on his virtues, let alone someone long gone.
The ethical propaganda makes me deduct one star from this wonderful written book that can teach us a lot about the times and the decission making in our lifes. Whether Lincoln's virtues were based on the ones William Lee Miller writes about is something we'll never know... | | Lincoln's Virtues: An Ethical Biography by Vintage Great book | | Instead of a passive retelling of Lincoln's life, Miller examines Lincoln's choices, and how they made him the great man he became. Highly recommended. | | Lincoln's Virtues: An Ethical Biography by Vintage Meet Abraham Lincoln, the politician | This is a fascinating read. Lincoln deserves to be on Mt Rushmore.
I was impressed with Lincoln's ability to run the political rat race, all the way to presidency, and yet keep his moral torch so bright.
Lincoln's Virtues is a unique biography, because it focuses on Abraham Lincoln's political and philosophical ideas instead of the chronological history described in typical biographies. Most Americans know Lincoln lived in a wooden cabin, led the North to victory in the Civil War, and emancipated the slaves. However, not many know how shrewd a politician Lincoln was, and how effective a debater he was.
The book analyzes Lincoln's speeches with a focus on how he was able to stand for his beliefs while at the same time not alienate the mainstream public. His speeches were not as zealous and emotionally charged as the New England abolitionists' were; however, his moderate stance was the most practical and effective way to achieve the emancipation. While he made compromises, he never abandoned his core values. He believed all men were created equal and that one should always do the right thing. This book vaulted Lincoln to the top of my `most admired people' list.
Besides learning Lincoln's beliefs and virtues, the reader will enjoy the great political debates decorated with wit and humor. The writing by author Miller is vivid and animating: you just traveled back in time to 1859 and are sitting in the auditorium listening to the speech by the great man from Illinois.
| | Lincoln's Virtues: An Ethical Biography by Vintage He was a Godly Man. | Edmund Wilson wrote that more rubbish has been written about Lincoln than any other America, except Edgar Allen Poe. Almost 4,000 volumes by 1939 had been published. At times, it is hard to know what to believe. Last year, the History Channel dwelled on his melancholia trying to prove that it was he and not his wife, Mary Todd, who was mentally deficient. In one of the absurd publications, Abraham Lincoln was measured "by the mostulates of Kipling's "If." He was not a practicing Christian, but he certainly was a believer while dealing with the Civil War and residing in the White House. I'm not sure that John Wilkes Booth was religious, but it is possible he considered Lincoln an infidel because of what the Union forces did to our beloved South.
President Lincoln was a man of character with ethics and virtues as are all great statesmen. Responsibility, practical wisdom, and realism, moral principles, conduct of "standing where one must" and doing what is right are just a part of his personality. Max Weber wrote about him:"the occasions on which he said "Here I stand; I can do no other." was not undertaken for a self-indulgent display of rectitude.
In his euloogy to Zachary Taylor in 1850, he said "The presidency is no bed or roses" and the former president "had found thorns within it." Another virtue: "self-sacrificing, long-enduring devotion to his duty" personifies Lincoln. Taylor "pursued no man with revenge" althought he had the opportunity to do so after the Mexican War. Lincoln praised people and looked for the best and not the worst in everybody. Magnanimity was one of his "prime virtues."
Sectional politics was not to his liking. He was aware that Southerners "will not so much as listen to us." That may have been so in 1865 but less than a hundred years later, we were memorizing "The Gettysburg Address" for school assignments, even in the South. He did not become our hero but he was someone we could respect -- after the fact. He had many good, upstanding principles and next to the Bible is the most quoted by the populace of this country. In Tennessee, near his beloved Kentucky, (Harrogate to be exact) is Lincoln Memorial University where the Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum, located on Cumberland Gap Parkway. In 1863, Lincoln put his finger on the Cumberland Gap area and suggested to General Howard, "can't we go through here and seize Knoxville." The general founded Lincoln Memorial University in 1897 as a "living memorial to" the president. There they observe the anniversary of his death, April 15, celebrate November 19 with a play entitled "The Ghost of Gettysburg" as a single actor delivers the Address; and December 5 (an annual event) an original play is performed with period music of Christmas with the Lincolns during the Civil War.
The museum is composed of three gallelries: Young, Mr. Lincoln (the wall of photographs contains a copy of every known photo of Lincolln as of 1939), politics and war with the election of Lincoln to the presidency and the dissolution of the U.S., then the tragic ending to Lincoln's life. The can Abraham Lincoln carried into Ford's Theatre that fateful night of his encounter with John Wilkes Booth is on display. After the assassination, be became the nation's (North and South) martyred leader. A mural replete with angels shows George Washington welcoming Lincoln into Heaven. At the museum store, I bought a small Confederate flag, what irony.
The author of this book, William Lee Miller, debunks many myths about the Civil War and Lincoln's part and his past. The Civil War was fought over States' rights, not slavery. Even with his Emancipation Proclamation, he did not end slavery. However, eight months after his death, the Constitution's 13th Amendment that "all men are created equal" was ratified. Mrs. Lincoln received a pension of $[...] for six months before her death July 16, 1882. The Licoln Tomb at Springfield was designed by Larkin Mead, Jr. On July 26, 1947, 18,350 items of Lincoln's papers were left in trust and opend to the public. Miller also wrote "Arguing About Slavery" in 1996. | | Lincoln's Virtues: An Ethical Biography by Vintage Product Description | William Lee Miller’s ethical biography is a fresh, engaging telling of the story of Lincoln’s rise to power. Through careful scrutiny of Lincoln’s actions, speeches, and writings, and of accounts from those who knew him, Miller gives us insight into the moral development of a great politician — one who made the choice to go into politics, and ultimately realized that vocation’s fullest moral possibilities.
As Lincoln’s Virtues makes refreshingly clear, Lincoln was not born with his face on Mount Rushmore; he was an actual human being making choices — moral choices — in a real world. In an account animated by wit and humor, Miller follows this unschooled frontier politician’s rise, showing that the higher he went and the greater his power, the worthier his conduct would become. He would become that rare bird, a great man who was also a good man. Uniquely revealing of its subject’s heart and mind, it represents a major contribution to our understanding and of Lincoln, and to the perennial American discussion of the relationship between politics and morality. | | Lincoln's Virtues: An Ethical Biography by Vintage Amazon.com | | William Lee Miller's Lincoln's Virtues is less an "event" chronology than the tracing of the moral and ethical core of Abraham Lincoln's beliefs, what Miller calls the man's "unintended preparation for greatness." Miller posits that Lincoln rightly deserves his nonpareil place in American history. But, he continues, Lincoln's greatness is best appreciated only when we realize he was merely mortal and therefore free to follow any number of courses of actions. Miller, through scores of eloquent exegeses of Lincoln's writings and speeches, explores the path--consistent, though evolving--this free agent took. Lincoln chose politics as his work. As a politician he was subject to the very real constraints of collective action. However, such was the man's "moral self-confidence," that the mantle of greatness alit on his shoulders alone. This is a revealing, delicate, and at times soaring work. It also presupposes its readers are much more than casually familiar with Lincoln's life and times. - -H. O'Billovitch |
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