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This volume gathers the best previously unpublished and uncollected writings on Abraham Lincoln and Lincoln scholarship by one of his great biographers, Benjamin P. Thomas. A skilled historian and a masterful storyteller himself, Thomas was widely regarded as the greatest Lincoln historian of his generation. With these essays, he combines historical depth with narrative grace in delineating Lincoln's qualities as a humorist, lawyer, and politician.From colorful tall tales to clever barbs aimed at political opponents, Lincoln clothed a shrewd wit in homespun, backwoods vernacular. He used humor to defuse tension, illuminate a point, put others at ease -- and sometimes for sheer fun. From an early reliance on broad humor and ridicule in formal speeches and on the stump, Lincoln's style shifted in 1854 to a more serious vein in which humor came primarily to elucidate an argument. "If I did not laugh occasionally I should die," he is said to have told his cabinet, "and you need this medicine as much as I do."Thomas brings his deep knowledge of Lincoln to essays on the great man's tumultuous career in Congress, his work as a lawyer, his experiences in the courts, and his opinions of the

Author

Benjamin P. Thomas

Publisher

University Of Illinois Press

Published

2002

Language

EN

ISBN

9780252073403

Subjects

History, Biography, Memoir