Books: The Many Lincolns

THE LINCOLN READER (564 pp.)—Edlt-ed by Paul M. Angle—Rutgers University Press ($3.75).

U.S. university presses usually mosey along about their useful, traditional business, publishing scholarly biographies, monographs on the pterodactyl or .the mud turtle, studies in the. syntax of Middle English or Middle High German prose. But some of them are broadening their lists, and now the young, enterprising Rutgers University .Press has gone streaking off on its own to corral a Lincoln volume for which almost any big-city commercial publisher would have mortgaged his corporate soul. The Book-of-the-Month Club has made it its February choice,* and 500,000 copies are in print.

The Lincoln Reader is a kind of patchwork-quilt biography, expertly and tidily done. Editor Paul M. Angle,* a Chicago historian and bibliographer, has taken extracts from 65 authors, great and small, and worked them into a running narrative of Lincoln’s life.

Carl Sandburg’s Prairie Years and War Years are drawn upon, as are the biographies by Lord Charnwood, Beveridge, Tarbell, etc. But some of the most vivid passages are from rarely read 19th Century sources, among them Donn Piatt’s Memories (1887), Elizabeth Keckley’s Behind the Scenes (1868). Sample glimpses:

¶ Abraham Lincoln sits at home as his young sons clamber over him; they “patted his cheeks, pulled his nose and poked their fingers in his eyes.” The sons were roughnecks: “Willie and Tad . . . rifled the drawers and riddled boxes, battered the points of my gold pens against the stairs, turned over the inkstands on “the papers. … I wanted to wring the necks of these brats and pitch them out of the windows.”

¶ A sculptor comes to Springfield to take plaster impressions of Lincoln’s hands. He suggests that something be held while the cast is being made. Lincoln vanishes into a woodshed, is heard sawing away, reappears with a carefully trimmed piece of broomstick. The sculptor protests that any old object would have served. “Oh, well,” says Lincoln, “I thought I would like to have it nice.”

¶ A few days before his assassination, Lincoln visits ruined Richmond in the company of some Union officers. He is immediately recognized by Negroes, who kneel before him, singing hymns. He js “much embarrassed,” but listens respectfully, then makes a little speech. Finally he says, “There, now, let me pass on; I have but little time to spare,” walks away slowly up the hot, dusty street, carrying “his hat in his hand, fanning his face,” from which the sweat trickles.

* Only other Book-of-the-Month selection from a U.S. university press: Wa-Kon-tah (Oklahoma), co-choice for November 1939. The Literary Guild has never picked a university press book. * Not to be confused with Iowa Poet Paul Engle (American Song, West of Midnight).