Perhaps the most thought-provoking exhibit at the Ford’s Theater Society Center for Education and Leadership in Washington, DC, is a 34-foot tower of books relating to Abraham Lincoln. Surrounded by a spiral staircase, visitors can take in some 6,800 volumes written about our sixteenth president. The scope and breadth of scholarship exhibited in this tower is mind-bending when you consider that it reflects only a small portion of the written word on Lincoln, with new volumes published each year exploring his life, death, and legacy.
Among the most recently published volumes adding to our understanding of Lincoln and his times is A Great and Good Man, edited by noted Lincoln scholar Jonathan W. White and William J. Griffing. In this volume, editors White and Griffing have compiled a collection of more than 200 accounts penned by Lincoln’s contemporaries. Where many Lincoln volumes rely on the same, oft-published period narratives, A Great and Good Man offers previously unpublished—and unvarnished—accounts, culled from letters sold on eBay online marketplace and made available on Griffing’s incomparable Spared & Shared website.
Civil War soldiers were among the most literate to take the field to that point in history, producing millions of letters each month which continue to surface in attics, basements, and private collections. What started as a retirement project for Griffing, Spared & Shared has to date published thousands of transcribed letters and diaries from soldiers and civilians, both north and south, enhancing our understanding and interpretation of the Civil War era. Griffing’s website provided an irresistible well of accounts seemingly begging for broader publication.
The book is arranged in ten chapters, following Lincoln from his 1858 debates with Sen. Stephen A. Douglas to his death in 1865. While so many nineteenth century notables only expounded on their views and interactions with Lincoln in the years following his death, most accounts in this volume were memorialized while Lincoln was yet living, offering raw emotions and scrutiny unsoftened by assassination and passing years.
Some common themes quickly emerge from these otherwise disparate accounts. Lincoln’s looks and personal appearance were often critiqued, especially when compared to popular engravings or photographs. Political biases shine through, measuring the execution of the war against policy, emancipation, and conscription. Accounts of doubt and concern in the spring and summer of 1864 over Lincoln’s prospects for reelection give way to confidence in the fall, with one writer suggesting, “The result of this election to the rebs has inflicted upon them more damage than the capture of 2 Richmonds would.”
The closing accounts from 1865 reflect sorrow and indignation over Lincoln’s assassination. One unidentified soldier from the 105th Pennsylvania predicted that Andrew Johnson may be “a greater man for the times than Mr. Lincoln, but he never will be loved as he was…they loved him for his goodness—not his greatness.” Lincoln, he reasoned, “had a great & good heart.”
A Great and Good Man is a valuable new addition to the growing scholarship on Abraham Lincoln. Griffing’s work on Spared & Shared demonstrates the vastness of Civil War content yet untapped. Readers will take away from this volume a deeper understanding of how Lincoln was observed in real time.
Jon-Erik Gilot is curator of the Captain Thomas Espy Grand Army of the Republic Post.