Baseball is the topic that typically graces the virtual
pages of this blog. However, today we are shifting a bit to explore an
historical figure—and one of my personal favorites, 16th President of the
United States, Abraham Lincoln.
Jeff Oppenheimer has written That Nation Might Live: A
Story of Motherhood, Abraham Lincoln & the Civil War. This is the
transcript of an 1865 interview Lincoln friend William H. Herndon had with Sarah
Bush Lincoln, the aging step-mother of the Great Emancipator. What makes this
more than your run of the mill historical primary document is that the author the
recreates the setting of the conversation from his own imagination, using the
actual notes of the event where possible.
Artistic license and history don’t usually play nicely together
but Oppenheimer makes it work here. Although Bush Lincoln was one of the most
important and beloved figures in her famous step-son’s life, she is often pushed
to the fringe of his story. Refreshingly, here she is front and center, and the
role this hard scrabble woman had in Lincoln’s life shines through in this
interpretation of her collective memories.
Rightfully so, Lincoln is remembered as one of the greatest
leaders the United States has ever known. Interestingly, such recognition may
be actually an understatement for someone who navigated the country through the
start of the abolition of slavery and a vicious civil war that had no business
ending in anything other than abject disaster. That someone like the former
president, who grew up in rustic cabins with dirt floors and tragedy, is a
testament to the way he was raised and the opportunities he was provided out of
such difficult circumstances.
Bush Lincoln came into Lincoln’s life when he was a young
boy after his own mother had died of an illness. Despite barely being out of
her teens herself, she rapidly proved to be an effective parental figure,
providing encouragement for her lanky step-son to not be limited by the
rough-hewn log walls and vast tracks of wild forest that surrounded him.
Herndon leads the conversation through Lincoln’s life, and
Bush Lincoln is full of accompanying memories. In particular, two stories stand
out in this rich compilation.
The first concerns Lincoln’s voracious appetite for books
after he more or less taught himself to read. Living on the American frontier,
literacy was nearly as rare available books. However, the enterprising youth
found a curmudgeonly neighbor willing to lend volumes in exchange for work. After
becoming fascinated by a biography of George Washington, it was damaged by rain
before he could return it to his neighborhood librarian. Bush Lincoln not only
helped him navigate through this accident, it was clear that while living an
incredibly busy and hard life on the frontier, she still found time to feed the
curiosity of her prodigy child by asking him questions and encouraging his
curiosity.
The second defining story recounts a young adult Lincoln escorting
cargo down the Mississippi River to New Orleans on a flat boat. It was this
experience that first truly exposed him to slavery, the institution that would
come to be tied to him later in life. Bush Lincoln may not have been the most
eloquent person but she clearly described how he was repulsed by the idea of
humans in forced captivity, all the while trying to make sense of how it fit
into his world and country, and how it all might one day be brought to an end.
Oppenheimer doesn’t make any new historical arguments, or
present alternate theories. However, he never aims to, and that is not what
this book is about. It is the rediscovery of the voice of a quiet yet important
figure in American history. Giving Bush Lincoln a platform brings her and her
experiences back to life and throws Abraham Lincoln in a light not typically
found in your more mainstream works. That Nation Might Live is unconventional,
but in many ways so was the former president—and look what he was able to accomplish.
Disclaimer: I was provided with
a free copy of this book, but received no payment or other consideration for
this review.
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