The author provides in-depth analysis of Lincoln’s career as president and on how his thoughts on the issues of slavery and the status of African Americans changed during the course of the war, right up to the Union victory. Meacham sets Lincoln’s development against the growing crisis of the slave states’ determination to maintain and expand the scope of slavery, a fight culminating in Lincoln’s election and the Civil War. The author also traces Lincoln’s evolution from bookish farm boy to trial lawyer to politician, a progression aided by the rise of the new Republican Party, whose views largely matched his own. Allusions to some of them cropped up in famous speeches later in his career. At the time, writes the author, Lincoln was “far more attracted to reading, thinking, and talking than he was to farming, rail-splitting, and hunting.” Meacham astutely examines the contents of some of those books we know he read, showing their influence on his thinking. As a young boy, the future president would memorize and repeat the sermons of local pastors, and he read voraciously even though, other than the Bible, not many books were readily available on the frontier.

Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Meacham follows Lincoln from his rural Kentucky roots to his assassination in 1865, paying close attention to the many influences on his ideas and values. A deeply researched look at Lincoln’s moral evolution on the issue of slavery.

Meacham and there was light