Emancipating Lincoln: The Proclamation in Text, Context, and Memory

Name: Emancipating Lincoln: The Proclamation in Text, Context, and Memory
Author: Harold Holzer
ISBN: 0674068289

by Harold Holzer

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It’s hard for me to pick a single Harold Holzer book because there are so many, and they’re all so good. Emancipating Lincoln is very cogent and relatively short. Three chapters from three talks he gave at Harvard, about what made the Emancipation Proclamation such a remarkable document. The Emancipation Proclamation had more of an impact on policy and law than Lincoln’s speeches, which are far more familiar to students of history. “His surprising literary capacity…was key to the impact he had” And Holzer is also restoring how hard it was for Lincoln to do that. That is important because we sometimes take him for granted, or worse, take potshots at him. Recently statues of him have been torn down and his name has been stripped from public schools. It is possible to find imperfect things that were not racially sensitive to our pitch-perfect ears. But what Harold Holzer brilliantly demonstrated is that emancipation was politically difficult to achieve, and had a huge impact, as African-Americans, in particular, understood. It’s a beautiful small book that restores Lincoln to what was probably his most important role, the role of the emancipator, the man who ended slavery. That statue was built after Lincoln died; he had nothing to do with it. It’s troubling in many ways, the body language is wrong but, still, we should proceed cautiously, and listen to the voices of Lincoln’s time. If Frederick Douglass , who takes a backseat to no one as a courageous uncompromising witness for his people, were alive, he’d be appalled by those who assess Lincoln out of context. Douglass was skeptical when Lincoln won. Lincoln moved slowly against slavery at first. But four years later, when he saw what Lincoln had done, he was filled with praise for him. By 1865, after the Emancipation Proclamation and the North’s victory, and the second inaugural, and Lincoln’s final speech promising the vote for African-American veterans, it was clear that he had moved America a great distance.

Recommended by

Ted Widmer

"It’s hard for me to pick a single Harold Holzer book because there are so many, and they’re all so good. Emancipating Lincoln is very cogent and relatively short. Three chapters from three talks he gave at Harvard, about what made the Emancipation Proclamation such a remarkable document. The Emancipation Proclamation had more of an impact on policy and law than Lincoln’s speeches, which are far more familiar to students of history. “His surprising literary capacity…was key to the impact he had” And Holzer is also restoring how hard it was for Lincoln to do that. That is important because we sometimes take him for granted, or worse, take potshots at him. Recently statues of him have been torn down and his name has been stripped from public schools. It is possible to find imperfect things that were not racially sensitive to our pitch-perfect ears. But what Harold Holzer brilliantly demonstrated is that emancipation was politically difficult to achieve, and had a huge impact, as African-Americans, in particular, understood. It’s a beautiful small book that restores Lincoln to what was probably his most important role, the role of the emancipator, the man who ended slavery. That statue was built after Lincoln died; he had nothing to do with it. It’s troubling in many ways, the body language is wrong but, still, we should proceed cautiously, and listen to the voices of Lincoln’s time. If Frederick Douglass , who takes a backseat to no one as a courageous uncompromising witness for his people, were alive, he’d be appalled by those who assess Lincoln out of context. Douglass was skeptical when Lincoln won. Lincoln moved slowly against slavery at first. But four years later, when he saw what Lincoln had done, he was filled with praise for him. By 1865, after the Emancipation Proclamation and the North’s victory, and the second inaugural, and Lincoln’s final speech promising the vote for African-American veterans, it was clear that he had moved America a great distance."

Abraham Lincoln · fivebooks.com