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The Fiery Trial Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery by Eric Foner (New York: W

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The Fiery Trial Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery by Eric Foner (New York: W REVIEWS 73 Sandusky, Ohio. Morgan, captured mind of a Confederate veteran grap- shortly after Porter, was imprisoned pling with defeat, fading glory, and a at the Ohio state penitentiary in world irrevocably altered by four Columbus-a site from which he and years of total warfare. Much more a handful of his men escaped just a than just a stellar primary account of short time later. Despite a botched Morgan's command, One of Morgan's escape attempt of his own, Porter sat Men sheds light on how an individ- in prison for nearly two years. By the ual soldier-and one involved in time of his exchange in 1865, the war numerous acts of irregular warfare, had virtually ended; Porter never saw no less-participated firsthand in the combat again. process of post-war commemoration Porter laments that as a child, he and remembrance. With all of the knew little of his ancestors' lives-in above in mind, the book comes high- many cases even lacking knowledge ly recommended to anyone-histori- of their names. To spare his own an or otherwise-interested in descendants a similar ignorance, he Morgan's command, the war in Ken- claims to have set his story to paper tucky and Tennessee, or memory of for the sake of posterity. Whether or the war. not Porter sought to be remembered by anyone other than his own off- MATTHEW C. HULBERT is a doctoral spring is questionable. Either way, his student in U.S. History at the Uni- memoir offers a clear glimpse into the versity of Georgia. The Fiery Trial Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery By Eric Foner (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010. Pp. xxi, 426. Maps, illustrations, notes, index. $29.95.) Notwithstanding the more than sixty tional biography of its most famous thousand books already written about figure. Instead, he engages one cru- the conflict, the sesquicentennial of cial dimension of the war-the debate the American Civil War has elicited over slavery and the adoption of a spate of new interpretations by lead- emancipation-by tracing Lincoln's ing scholars. Prominent among these thoughts about slavery from his youth is The Fiery Trial, whose author, Eric in Indiana to his final days in the Foner, is one of the most acclaimed White House. Rather than focus on U.S. historians of the past generation. Lincoln alone, however, Foner strives Foner's work offers neither a general to put Lincoln's views in the larger overview of the war nor a conven- context of antislavery ideology and 74 INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY activism. The result is an engaging was more than half over before Lin- overview, but not one that will offer coln began to think seriously about significant new insight to Lincoln race, according to Foner, who goes scholars. on to observe that the lateness of this Three key patterns emerge from shift tells us more about the context Foner's survey. First, Lincoln's think- of nineteenth-century America than ing about slavery changed profound- about Lincoln specifically. Finally, ly across his lifetime. Never a Foner emphasizes that as Lincoln's defender of slavery, Lincoln was nev- thinking on slavery and race changed ertheless in his mid-forties before he over time, he adopted new positions came to see the debate over the future and attitudes previously staked out of slavery as the preeminent issue in by abolitionists and Radical Republi- American politics. Until the passage cans. He objects to the view of the lat- of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, ter as too extreme to be effective Lincoln had devoted far more of his politically. On the contrary, "their agi- attention to the tariff than to the tation helped to establish the context implications of human bondage. As within which politicians like Lincoln he increasingly embraced the goal of operated" (p. xix). ending slavery thereafter, he nonethe- Though persuasive, these central less favored a scheme of gradual, findings are hardly new, and the work compensated abolition coupled with as a whole disappoints in several colonization-a program he only respects. Foner's narrative approach reluctantly abandoned with the makes for good reading but is short implementation of the Emancipation on analysis. One might argue as well Proclamation. Second, almost until that his chosen focus is too narrow. his death, Lincoln, like most white After observing in the preface that Americans of his day, separated the Lincoln was a private, often enigmatic issues of slavery and racial equality. man, Foner makes little effort to get Indeed, he tended to see the latter as inside Lincoln and seems content to a false issue that demagogues like delineate his evolving policy. Further, Stephen Douglas used to undermine he tells us little of the worldview that arguments for restricting slavery. Lin- motivated the Radical Republicans- coln was more liberal than most of odd for an author whose first book his contemporaries in insisting that was on the ideology of the Republi- the "inalienable rights" enumerated can Party-and he pays minimal in the Declaration of Independence attention to the Civil War itself, applied to blacks as well as whites, despite evidence that the conflict's and yet when elected president in monumental human cost dramatical- 1860 he still "found it impossible to ly altered Lincoln's thinking about the imagine the United States as a bira- kind of united America that should cial society" (p. 128). The Civil War emerge from the carnage. REVIEWS 75 ROBERT TRACY MCKENZIE, Professor of Town in the American Civil War History at Wheaton College, is author (2006). of Lincolnites and Rebels: A Divided Constructing Black Education at Oberlin College A Documentary History By Roland M. Baumann (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2010. Pp. xx, 418. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $65.00.) A History of Southland College The Society of Friends and Black Education in Arkansas By Thomas C. Kennedy (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2009. Pp. xii, 349. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $39.95.) Much has been written about the Both Roland M. Baumann's Con- white missionaries and philanthropists structing Black Education at Oberlin who went south after the Civil War to College and Thomas C. Kennedy's A help educate and often "Christianize" History of Southland College consider the newly freed black population. the work of missionaries and aboli- James D. Anderson, whose The Edu- tionists who were drawn to help the cation of Blacks in the South, 1865-1930 former slaves. Although neither (1978) made him perhaps the best school was a traditional historically known historian of the movement, black institution, the missionaries suspected missionaries' benevolence involved in both were interested in and attributed it to ulterior motives. educating African Americans to var- Johnnetta Cross Brazzell, who penned ious levels. an often-cited 1992 Journal of Higher Baumann and Kennedy use a vast Education article, "Bricks Without array of primary sources to illuminate Straw: Missionary Sponsored Black the complexities of white missionar- Higher Education in the Post-Eman- ies and their work during the nine- cipation Era," gave the missionaries a teenth and early twentieth centuries. bit more credit for their efforts, hail- Oberlin College was the first institu- ing their work at the historically black tion in the nation to admit African Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. American students, beginning in The truth is that the story is complex 1835. By the close of the Civil War, and varied, and that it depends on Oberlin had graduated over one hun- which missionaries, which institu- dred African American students, a fact tions, and which African Americans that the institution still includes in its one is discussing. online history and its admissions.
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