An Autobiography of Abraham Lincoln, consisting of the Personal Portions of his Letters,Speeches, and Conversations by Nathaniel Wright StephensonThe American Historical Review, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Apr., 1927), pp. 624-625Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1837787 .

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624 Reviews of Books

that hailed him as a champion, and in 1832-1833 renounced their alle- giance and became his most bitter opponents. There was all the more op- portunity for a distinct contribution on the period before I832, for which there was little matured research by others upon which one might lean. The present reviewer is all the more sensitive to this need because cir- cumstances compelled him to begin his own study of the Whig party in the South with the year I832.

ARTHUR C. COLE.

An Autobiography of Abraham Lincoln, consisting of the Personal Portions of his Letters, Speeches, and Conversations, compiled and annotated by NATHANIEL WRIGHT STEPHENSON. (Indian- apolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company. I926. PP. 5O0. $5.oo.) "AN autobiography of Abraham Lincoln " is an arresting title. Mr.

Stephenson, author of Abraham Lincoln and the Union and of a provoca- tive study of Lincoln's personal life, uses it in a volume of 468 pages, exclusive of index and tables-and justifies its use. The book is modelled, so the preface frankly tells us, after Napoleon's autobiography, by R. M. Johnson.

Mr. Stephenson had rich material from which to make his com- pilation. There is Lincoln's captivating autobiography carrying him up to i86o, his many letters, his state papers and public addresses beginning when he was but twenty-three and continuing until his death, when he was fifty-six. Mr. Stephenson has added a few well-authenticated conversations and stories. The result is the man's own effort to ac- count for himself, to express his feelings and views, to set forth his thinking, his hopes and fears, his faith and his mistrusts.

The book is helped materially by explanatory lines, separating the quotations at intervals and having the effect of titles in moving pictures. They not only carry the story intelligently to the reader but they give Mr. Stephenson an opportunity to hint at his own interpretation of the man. Through them he emphasizes his favorite theory that Lincoln first found himself in July, i862, when he determined to use his authority over McClellan, that up to this time he had been a suppressed and hesitant character. But Mr. Stephenson has already quoted documents which show Lincoln dominating Seward, defying the important body of radicals by overruling Fremont, defying Congress by appointing a Democrat in- stead of a Republican as head of the Army of the Potomac, and holding himself in stern check while he gave McClellan the chance to prove whether or not he was the man to lead the army to Richmond. This is not a record of hesitation. The writer believes that Lincoln's exasperat- ing delay in acting at this period was due to the conviction that a civilian executive should not interfere with a military commander until that com- mander had proved, both to him and the country, his inadequacy.

The method of handling personal material succeeds better than any biography in giving a vivid sense of the real state of the man's mind at

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Hafen: Overland Mail 625

critical periods. Thus, at the opening of I84I Lincoln was in deep de- pression over the breaking off of his engagement with Mary Todd; though he sets himself down as being "the most miserable man living" he is not too miserable to discuss politics in the same letter, to record that he had set his heart upon a certain appointment, and to fight hard and well against the passage of a bill that he did not like.

The multitude of questions which, throughout the Civil War, struggled for attention in his mind at every critical moment, comes out impres- sively in this handling. Take July of I863:-Shall he let Alexander Stephens come to Washington? Why had Meade let Lee escape into Virginia after defeating him at Gettysburg? Is there treason at work? Is Grant the coming man? At all events let us give thanks for our victory at Vicksburg. He must consider the new draft, the bad political situation in Missouri, how to placate a general who had gone from the White House in a huff because the President did not see him at the moment, where to find postmasterships for widows whose husbands had fallen, how to keep Mrs. Lincoln in good temper, the complications that the Emancipation Proclamation has brought, where to explain, how to interpret. There was no rest for his mind.

The book is impressive. Few men have written so little that is mean or common. Lord Charnwood's comment that Lincoln's letters prove him a gentleman is admirably supported by Mr. Stephenson's autobiography. There is one letter in it which challenges this judgment, a letter which he wrote to his friend, Mrs. Browning, in regard to Miss Owen,, who, after a completely disinterested courtship on Lincoln's part, had declined his offer of marriage. It is a crude and unworthy letter. Mr. Stephen- son has wisely included it, as he has everything that we have of Lincoln's that can be criticized. That is, it is an honest, not a hero-worshipping book, and a book which is not only a convenience but an illumination for Lincoln students.

A repetition of material occurs in one case, the same quotation being used on pages IO and 78. One begrudges the space when there is so much of interest left that might fill it.

The Overland Mail, i849-r869. By LE Roy R. HAFEN, Ph.D. (Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark Company. 1926. PP. 36I. $6.oo.) THE title of this book suggests post-riders, stage-coaches, highwaymen,

and Indian depredations. The book has a good deal to say about all of these things but it is not to be associated with Visscher's Thrilling and Truthful History of the Pony Express, Mulford's Bar 20 stories, or other Wild West literature designed for consumption along the Atlantic sea- board. Mr. Hafen has treated the Overland Mail as a " promoter of set- tlement " and as the "precursor of railroads" and he has brought out a serious and instructive book.

The Overland Mail, as the author conceives his subject, is the story of the transportation of the mails on all available routes to the Pacific Coast

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