Land of Lincoln by Andrew Ferguson, an editor at the Weekly Standard, is by far the best book, not just the best nonfiction book, I’ve read all year. Confusedly inspired by protests in Richmond over the dedication of a Lincoln statue, Ferguson, who was a Lincoln buff as a child, begins his journey of humorous enlightenment by pondering the question “Who was the real Abraham Lincoln and how does he affect America and Americans today?”
As Ferguson points out early in his book, there are an unlimited number of books on Lincoln, many of them analyzing his psyche. There are books claiming he was bipolar, books claiming he was gay, books claiming that if he were alive today he’d be a liberal, books claiming he was religious, books claiming he was agnostic, and so on. Basically, every special interest group out there wants to claim that Lincoln is just like them. Probably the best conclusion that Ferguson came to in his travel is that no one really knew or knows the real Abraham Lincoln; he simply didn’t share enough of his personal self in his written words or the things that have been recorded about him. He seems to have been an excellent politician in that he said just enough without admitting anything. As a result, there are many conflicting stories about Lincoln whether it’s tales past down from the people who knew him or historians who made assumptions based on the facts they discovered. For example, Lincoln’s law partner didn’t care for Mary Todd and so did not write favorably about her in his biography of Lincoln and as a result Mary Todd has been often much abused by historians who use that biography and the books based on it as a source.
What I loved about the book was the charming humor Ferguson displayed as he approached his attempt to relive part of his childhood by discovering the Lincoln the man, not the myth. I loved the people he met along the way from the Sons of the Confederacy, who believe Lincoln was a traitor and a racist, to the Asian restaurant owner with the Lincoln shrine, who believes Lincoln is the source of his success, to the Abe Presenters (ie. Impersonators) at the convention in Santa Claus to the Abe Collectors to the designers of the “Disney-fied” Lincoln museum and so many more. Then Ferguson tries to recreate a family vacation he took as a child with his own family, including two reluctant preteens with all the sarcasm that goes with them, and what he learns is that as time marches on, history isn’t what it used to be.
As I read the book, it was a journey for me too. As a Lincoln buff myself and having read Dale Carnegie’s Lincoln the Unknown several times, I thought I had a good grasp on who Lincoln was. However, I found myself surprised by the number of details about Lincoln’s life that aren’t part of the “collective memory” of the general public and I pondered over points-of-view that hadn’t occurred to me before. I also found myself rushing to further research “the facts” as presented or to remind myself of the events discussed.
The fact is that there is no way in today’s society to separate Abraham Lincoln the man from Abraham Lincoln the myth. He’s become a symbol of something gone right, of something to be proud of whether he intended to do it when he was campaigning for the office of the Presidency or not. Lincoln has come to stand for the concept that all men are created equal; he’s come to embody a unified country, an everyman, and a symbol of civil rights. He’s a martyr for America. Heck, he is America. If it weren’t for him, America would not be what it is today.
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