The Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln Through His Words.

The Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln Through His Words. By Ronald C. White Jr. (New York: Random House, 2005. Pp. xxiv, 448. Paper, $15.95, ISBN 0-8129-7046-2; cloth, $26.95, ISBN 1-4000-6119-9.)

This is a difficult book to classify. Though it contains passages of narrative, it is not a narrative history; and though the book does have some elements of biography, it is not really "a portrait of Lincoln." Rather, Ronald C. White has chosen to concentrate on Lincoln's words and their historical contexts, both in the immediate and in the longer view. He also presents some careful textual analyses. While occasionally referencing other speeches, White builds his chapters around eleven of Lincoln's more important utterances. This allows White to digress, for instance, into a brief treatment of the career of Horace Greeley, which helps us more fully to understand Lincoln's famous reply to that well-known editor and writer. The advantage of this technique is the flexibility it gives the author in choosing whatever material is relevant to explain the particular speech in question. Thus even the specialist will learn much from following White on his winding paths. Indeed sometimes the book proceeds in the manner of biblical commentary, citing short verses from Lincoln and explaining their backgrounds and significances. But White maintains a remarkably light interpretive hand. Unlike biblical commentary, White is generally content to let the reader write his or her own sermons.

This light touch is both a strength and a weakness. The book is very readable, and, for the beginner, it is an excellent place to start. But for those who get their bearings by the stars of scholarly debate, White gives an enriched sense of the terrain but no map. Only occasionally does White engage historiographical debate head-on, and then, as with his comments on David H. Donald (pp. 273-75), this reader would have liked to hear a bit more of White's own opinions. White's two main interpretive points are, first, that Lincoln's speeches and letters need to be read first and foremost as oratory, oratory meant to be read slowly and carefully; and secondly, that Lincoln consistently returned to the theme of God's omnipresence in both private and public discourse in ways that cannot be dismissed as mere political manipulation or as evidence of a passive personality. White is at his best on this latter point, but he left me wanting more, rather than less, of his analysis.

Another possible angle of critique would be that White chose to concentrate on the presidential years. If readers find this guide to Lincoln's later writings helpful, perhaps a prequel is in order. In many ways, Lincoln's earlier words are fraught with even more interpretive difficulty than these later speeches.

Monographs are now appearing that concentrate in greater detail on each of Lincoln's great speeches and letters. Indeed White himself has written such a book on his second inaugural address. The present book is a good place to start for each of the speeches. Because all eleven speeches are reprinted in full in the appendix, the actual text runs to 308 pages. This book might form the core around which an undergraduate course on Lincoln as president could be built.

STEWART WINGER

Lawrence Technological University