Home > Biography > General Biography > Lincoln at Home

Lincoln at Home: Two Glimpses of Abraham Lincoln's Family Life

List Price: $11.00

Save 10.0%

You Pay: $9.90

Want this eBook?Our eBook Library Software is required to purchase and download eBooks. Download it here.

Tell a Friend

Overview

As Lincoln led the nation into the Civil War, managing the Union war effort, issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, winning reelection in 1864, and planning the Reconstruction of the South, he also led a private life, defined by his close relationship with his wife and his devotion to his children. Lincoln at Home offers a view into the life of the family through their written correspondence. With a brief account of their years in the White House and the complete collection of all the known letters exchanged by Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, this elegant portrait defines the sixteenth president as a dedicated -- though often a desperately busy and distracted -- family man. Lincoln at Home is an intimate and rare glimpse of the president as husband and father, a cheerful man pinned to the floor while playing with his children, and a desolate man struck down by grief at the death of his son. Beyond this, we are shown a personal side of the man who managed one of the most difficult periods in American history.

Editorial Reviews

Harvard's Donald, two-time Pulitzer winner and author of the standard biography Lincoln, delivers a frustratingly brief discussion of a complex subject. The mere 32 pages of large-type prose that Donald dedicates to his theme are nowhere near adequate to the task of portraying the bittersweet intensities, banal intrigues and madness that so often defined life within the Lincoln family circle. Donald's essay (previously published in The White House: The First Two Hundred Years) is based on his inaugural lecture in the Presidential Lecture Series at the White House. As such it focuses on the well-known and not always interesting details of the Lincolns' domestic life in the executive mansion: Mary overspending, young Willie and Tad cavorting and Lincoln always tolerating. The second part of this volume is a scant collection of all known letters exchanged between members of the immediate Lincoln family, written by Abraham, Mary and eldest son, Robert. The letters between Abraham and Mary have all been previously published. Like those written by Robert, they do not tell us much. They tend to be brief and are invariably businesslike, and deal with mundane matters (the purchase of clothing, schedules for arrivals and departures, etc.). The price is steep for such slim content; readers seeking more than a glimpse of the Lincoln family should consult the excellent books dedicated more fully to this theme, the most conspicuous being Jean Baker's Mary Todd Lincoln. Agent, Ike Williams, Palmer and Dodge. 4-city author tour. (Nov.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of David Herbert Donald

David Herbert Donald is the author of Lincoln, which won the prestigious Lincoln Prize and was on the New York Times bestseller list for fourteen weeks, and of Lincoln at Home. He has twice won the Pulitzer Prize, for Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War, and for Look Homeward: A Life of Thomas Wolfe. He is the Charles Warren Professor of American History and of American Civilization Emeritus at Harvard University and resides in Lincoln, Massachusetts.

Customer Reviews

There are no customer reviews available at this time. To add your review, Register or Sign In to your account using our free eBook Library Software.

Additional Info

Imprint

Simon & Schuster

Filesize

263.6 KB

Number of Pages

128

eBook ISBN

9780743213431

Excerpt from: Lincoln at Home by David Herbert Donald

When the Lincolns moved into the White House on March 4, 1861, they were less prepared than any previous occupants for the duties and challenges they would have to face. An able Illinois lawyer who had gained a national reputation in his debates with Stephen A. Douglas, Lincoln, at the age of fifty-two, had no administrative experience of any sort; he had never been governor of his state or even mayor of his town of Springfield. A profound student of the Constitution and of the writings of the Founding Fathers, he had a limited acquaintance with the government that they had established. He had served only a single, rather unsuccessful term in the House of Representatives in the 1840s and had not returned to the national capital since. Though Lincoln was one of the founders of the Republican party, he had few acquaintances and almost no close personal friends in Washington. In charge of the country's foreign relations, he had no correspondents abroad and no acquaintance with any ruler of a foreign nation.

Nearly a decade younger than her husband, Mary Lincoln was equally unprepared to be mistress of the White House. The daughter of a well-to-do merchant and cotton manufacturer, she had grown up in comfort in Lexington, Kentucky, where she had received the best education available for young women -- including instruction in French. But for the previous twenty-two years, she had lived in semi-frontier Illinois, with only an occasional visit to her Kentucky relatives and one unhappy winter in Washington when her husband was in Congress. In a modest frame house on Eighth Street in Springfield, she had made a comfortable middle-class home for her husband and their children. Like her husband, she had no friends in Washington.