“To say he is ugly is nothing. To add that his figure is grotesque is to convey no adequate impression.” “He is destined to occupy in history…a quaintness, originality, courage, honesty, magnanimity and popular force of character such as have never heretofore…” These starkly different 19th century newspaper depictions describe one and the same man: Abraham Lincoln. Nearly 150 years after his death, Lincoln is universally considered our most beloved U.S. president. Yet in his own time, the reception he received at the hands of journalists was far more mixed. In this essential volume, noted Lincoln scholar Herbert Mitgang has painstakingly gathered the most thorough, wide-ranging collection of actual newspaper accounts that show how Lincoln was portrayed by northern, southern, and foreign newspapers. It reveals a far more beleaguered, less godlike, and finally a richer Lincoln than has come through many other biographies. While often revered in print, for example, he was just as often crucified, even by some newspapers in his home state of Illinois that portrayed him throughout his career as a joker instead of a thinker. Most shockingly, perhaps, one Houston paper wrote after his assassination: “From now until God’s judgment day, the minds of men will not cease to thrill at the killing of Abraham Lincoln.” For those only familiar with the “retouched” versions of Lincoln’s life, Abraham Lincoln: A Press Portrait offers an often surprising and wholly unsanitized account of how his contemporaries actually saw him before, during, and after the Civil War. It is must read for the serious scholar and Lincoln buff alike.

On the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's assassination, the editors of LIFE bring readers everything that has been left to us from the life of one of history's most iconic figures. His pictures, actions, words in his speeches and his private letters are analyzed and pointed inward toward the person, to help us understand the man: the heart and soul of the man. This book is about the artifacts that are left us all these years later (letters, speeches and particularly pictures) — things that LIFE can show that allow us to know this man more intimately. And so we, with help from experts and several famous commentators, will show them in our pages, and lead the reader to the clues about Lincoln's essence. Includes chapters such as: "Lincoln Pictured," an introduction by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. A narrative by Allen C. Guelzo, explaining the man and his image — how the image reflects the true man "Who Was Mathew Brady?" — the famous photographer, his life and times, his truths and deceptions (before and after shots from the Gettysburg battlefield, detailing how he moved things around — even bodies — for dramatic impact) The words of Lincoln, in an artifact presentation with removable letters and speeches on archival paper that bring the reader back to the times "The Camera and the White House" — A fascinating chapter on American Presidents and their visual image — Thomas McAvoy's secret snaps of FDR, FDR hiding his legs, JFK's manipulation of photography taken of him, etc. The "book within a book" — the likes of David McCullough, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Richard Norton Smith, Walter Isaacson, Jon Meachem, Macklemore, Brad Pitt, Maya Angelou, Zadie Smith, Gay Talese, Tom Wolf and more in answer to the question "When you see Lincoln's face, what do you see?"

Examines Abraham Lincoln's relationship with the press, arguing that he used such intimidation and manipulation techniques as closing down dissenting newspapers, pampering favoring newspaper men, and physically moving official telegraph lines.

This pathbreaking work argues that the major intellectual trend in China from the seventeenth through the early nineteenth century was Confucian ritualism, as expressed in ethics, classical learning, and discourse on lineage. Reviews "Chow has produced a work of superb scholarship, fluently written and beautifully researched. . . . One of the landmarks of the current reconstruction of the social philosophy of the Qing dynasty. . . . Chow's book is indispensable. It has illuminating analyses of many mainstream writers, institutions, and social categories in eighteenth-century China which have never previously been examined." --Canadian Journal of History "Chow's monograph moves ritual to center stage in late imperial social and intellectual history, and the author makes a powerful case for doing so. . . . Because the author understands the intellectual history of late Ming and Qing as the history of a movement, or successive movements, of fundamental social reform, he has also made an important contribution to social and political history as these were related to intellectual history." --Journal of Chinese Religion "Chow's book is an excellent contribution to recent scholarship on the intellectual history of the Confucian tradition and provides a balance for other studies that have emphasized ideas to the exclusion of symbols." --The Historian

Hailed as the definitive portrait of the sixteenth president, Lincoln scholar Michael Burlingame's impressive two-volume biography has been masterfully abridged and revised. Sixteenth president of the United States, the Great Emancipator, and a surpassingly eloquent champion of national unity, freedom, and democracy, Abraham Lincoln is arguably the most studied and admired of all Americans. Michael Burlingame's astonishing Abraham Lincoln: A Life, an updated, condensed version of the 2,000-page two-volume set that The Atlantic hailed as one of the five best books of 2009, offers fresh interpretations of this endlessly fascinating American leader. Based on deep research in unpublished sources as well as newly digitized sources, this work reveals how Lincoln's character and personality were the North's secret weapon in the Civil War, the key variables that spelled the difference between victory and defeat. He was a model of psychological maturity and a fully individuated man whose influence remains unrivaled in the history of American public life. Burlingame chronicles Lincoln's childhood and early development, romantic attachments and losses, his love of learning, legal training, and courtroom career as well as his political ambition, his term as congressman in the late 1840s, and his serious bouts of depression in early adulthood. Burlingame recounts, in fresh detail, the Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln marriage and traces the mounting moral criticism of slavery that revived his political career and won this Springfield lawyer the presidency in 1860. This abridgement delivers Burlingame's signature insight into Lincoln as a young man, a father, and a politician. Lincoln speaks to us not only as a champion of freedom, democracy, and national unity but also as a source of inspiration. Few have achieved his historical importance, but many can profit from his personal example, encouraged by the knowledge that despite a lifetime of troubles, he became a model of psychological maturity, moral clarity, and unimpeachable integrity. His presence and his leadership inspired his contemporaries; his life story will do the same for generations to come.

When the American people went to war in 1861, the task and the duty of maintaining the foundation principles of the republican experiment were in jeopardy. The question of if, and how, these principles should be preserved was of pressing importance. The outcome of the war could require the republican government to be transformed in order to strengthen the union or, conversely, if the war created the revolutionary situation that at times seemed pending, new principles for the resulting new nation would have to be formed as it emerged from the destruction and dislocation of the war. These were the issues to bear on the Constitution during the Civil War. These were the dilemas facing President Lincoln. This book, by one of the nation's leading constitutional historians, analyzes the nature and tendency of American Constitutionalism during the nation's greatest political crisis. In a series of related essays, Herman Belz combines detailed narrative with probing judicial analysis of the political thought of Abraham Lincoln, his exercise of executive power, and the application of the equality principle which would become a central issue during Reconstruction. Belz's essays are interdisciplinary in their approach, combining history, political science, and jurisprudence to study the political and constitutional climate and the changes which occurred under Lincoln during and after the war. Belz studies Lincoln as the focus of both contemporary political controversy and subsequent historical debate over the conservative or revolutionary character of Civil War Constitutionalism. He explores the politically controversial nature of the equality principle that lay at the heart of the slavery struggle and its resolution in wartime emancipation.

This is the first comprehensive collection of remarks attributed to Abraham Lincoln by his contemporaries. Much of what is known or believed about the man comes from such utterances, which have been an important part of Lincoln biography. About his mother, for instance, he never wrote anything beyond supplying a few routine facts, but he can be quoted as stating orally that she was the illegitimate daughter of a Virginia aristocrat. Similarly, there is no mention of Ann Rutledge in any of his writings, but he can be quoted as saying when he was president-elect, “I did honestly and truly love the girl and think often, often of her now.” Did Lincoln make a conditional offer to evacuate Fort Sumter in April 1861? Did he personally make the decision to restore General McClellan to army command in September 1862? To whom did he first reveal his intention to issue an emancipation proclamation? Did he label the Gettysburg address a failure right after delivering it? Did he, just a few days before his assassination, dream of a president lying dead in the White House? All of these questions, and many others, arise from recollective quotations of Lincoln, and the answer in each instance depends upon how one appraises the reliability of such recollection.

A fascinating examination of the relationship between Lincoln's image, the printmaker's craft, and the political culture that helped shape them both, "The Lincoln Image" documents how printmakers both chronicled and influenced the president's transformation into an American icon. 106 photos.

A shrewd politician, Abraham Lincoln recognized the power of the press. He knew that, at most, a few thousand people might hear one of his speeches in person, but countless readers across the nation would absorb his message through newspapers. While he was always under fire by some hostile portion of the openly partisan nineteenth-century media, through the careful cultivation of relationships Lincoln successfully wooed numerous prominent newspapermen into aiding his agenda. Whether he was editing his own speech in a newspaper office or inviting reporters to the White House to leak a story, the President skillfully steered the Union through the perils of war by playing his own version of the public relations game.