Abrahm Lincoln: A Constitutional Biography. (Book Reviews).

Abraham Lincoln: A Constitutional Biography. By George Anastaplo. (Lanham, Md., and other cities: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., c. 1999. Pp. x, 371. $35.00, ISBN 0-8476-9431-3.)

None of the titles under review claims to be a comprehensive biography of Abraham Lincoln. Instead, each offers a unique lens through which readers can inform their view of America's most emblematic president.

A professor of law at Loyola University at Chicago, George Anastaplo has written a "constitutional biography" that explores Lincoln's legal and political thought. This collection of previously published essays--which he says "could well be subtitled A Dialogue on Prudence" (p. 9)----comprises the fruit of the long scholarly conversation he has had with Lincoln regarding states-manship. His grasp of Lincoln as a political thinker of the highest order enables him to convey the essential Lincoln that eludes many specialists.

All of the essays are consistently insightful and thought-provoking, offering sensible interpretations of Lincoln's political craft. They also include more than their share of substantive footnotes, which are themselves rewarding to read. Essays in the first half of the book address how America influenced Lincoln's political thought, from the Declaration of Independence and the Northwest Ordinance to the common law and slavery. In the second half, Anastaplo looks at Lincoln's understanding and practice of American self-government government as displayed in his most memorable speeches and proclamations. From the "House Divided" speech of 1858 to the Second Inaugural Address of 1865, he shows how Lincoln's thought shaped America; for example, Anastaplo's exegesis of the Emancipation Proclamation is a thoughtful explication of Lincoln's political prudence regarding the nexus between slavery, the president's constitutional authority, and the progress of the Civil War. Anastaplo's reflections pay Lincoln the highest compliment: they show how, by taking Lincoln seriously as a political theorist and practitioner, readers can take their own responsibilities as citizens more seriously.

Once when asked about providence and the Union war effort, Lincoln is said to have replied that he hoped to have God on his side but that he must have Kentucky. In Lincoln of Kentucky Lowell H. Harrison presents a life of Lincoln critically tied to his native state. Although this focus might appear too parochial for a useful portrayal of our sixteenth president, Harrison is careful to juxtapose Lincoln's Kentucky bona fides with more familiar episodes from both his and the young republic's life.

Although we have only one recorded speech Lincoln gave in Kentucky, Harrison highlights the myriad connections Lincoln maintained with his old Kentucky home. From best friend Joshua Speed, to wife Mary Todd (not to mention Ann Rutledge and Mary Owens), to law partners John Todd Stuart, Stephen T. Logan, and William Herndon, to his "beau ideal of a statesman," Henry Clay (p. 79), all were Kentucky-bred and hence abiding reminders of his birthplace. Add the pivotal role Kentucky played as a proclaimed "neutral," albeit unionist, slave state during the Civil War, and Lincoln's private and public lives seem to converge in the state he left when he was eight years old.

While Harrison relies a bit too often on secondary sources for judgments about Lincoln, the preface and bibliographic essay that frame the book show both economy and discernment, especially helpful for those unfamiliar with the salient historiography. For those new to Lincoln scholarship, Harrison offers a safe introduction to the man and his political project--with an enlightening regional spin to boot. Moreover, Harrison's close examination of Lincoln's wartime policies toward Kentucky helps to account for the state's ardent southern sympathy during Reconstruction, providing an ironic coda to the Lincoln-Kentucky connection.

Inside the White House in War Times is yet another product of what has become a cottage industry for Michael Burlingame: keenly edited and footnoted reprints of the writings of President Lincoln's earliest commentators. Burlingame now adds the memoirs of William O. Stoddard to his previously published editions of writings by Lincoln's principal secretaries, John G. Nicolay and John Hay, and journalists Noah Brooks and Walter B. Stevens.

Initially hired as a clerk to sign Lincoln's name to land patents, Stoddard soon joined the inundated Nicolay and Hay as chief mail sorter. Nicolay and Hay would later publish their ten-volume Abraham Lincoln: A History (New York, 1890) in the same year that Stoddard published his book, but Stoddard's was the more personal memoir. Now coupled with his "White House Sketches" (first published in 1866 as a newspaper series but long forgotten), the observations of Lincoln's "third secretary" give Lincoln enthusiasts an-other firsthand look at Lincoln as president.

Burlingame's introduction is relatively brief but sufficient to the volume's purpose. Nevertheless, beginning with his controversial but noteworthy Inner World of Abraham Lincoln (Urbana, 1994), Burlingame has almost single-handedly rehabilitated the use of "reminiscence material" by Lincoln's contemporaries--long considered by Lincoln purists to be of dubious value because of their anecdotal and idiosyncratic character. As we await Burlingame's three-volume biography of Lincoln, today's students of Lincoln would do well to peruse this and other collections of writings by Lincoln's closest observers with care.