Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 376
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9
978-0-7425-5973-8 • Paperback • October 2010 • $17.95 • (£13.99)
978-1-4422-0064-7 • eBook • June 2008 • $16.99 • (£12.99)
Thomas L. Krannawitter is coauthor of A Nation Under God? The ACLU and Religion in American Politics and professor of politics at Colorado Christian University.
Introduction
Chapter 1: Was Lincoln a Racist?
Chapter 2: Was the Kansas-Nebraska Act Pro-Choice or Pro-Slavery?
Chapter 3: Who was Right about the Founding Fathers, Lincoln or Taney?
Chapter 4: Was Lincoln a "Child of His Age"?
Chapter 5: Do States Possess a Constitutional Right of Secession?
Chapter 6: Was the Civil War Caused by Slavery or Economics?
Chapter 7: Was Lincoln's Goal to Preserve the Union or End Slavery?
Chapter 8: Was Lincoln the Father of Big Government?
Chapter 9: Was Lincoln a Tyrant?
Conclusion
With literate frankness, emphatic argumentation, and an abundance of sophisticated knowledge about Lincoln and his times, Krannawitter offers a brave, refreshing counter-revisionist assessment of our occasionally maligned and misunderstood 16th President. This book reminds us anew of why Lincoln was indeed great, and why so many of the recent books about him are not! Krannawitter has made a bracing, persuasive, and uplifting contribution to the literature.
— Harold Holzer, co-chairman U.S. Lincoln Bicentennial Commission
Thomas Krannawitter has done us all a tremendous service. In this powerful, comprehensive, intelligent, and thoroughly researched defense of Abraham Lincoln, he has challenged head-on the small clique of recent writers who have set out to destroy a great president's reputation. He has confounded their arguments one-by-one, and reinstalled Lincoln where he belongs—in the pantheon of greatness.
— John C. Waugh
One by one, in his nine chapters, Krannawitter patiently—and sometimes hilariously—disassembles the myths of Lincoln-the-tyrant, Lincoln-the-racist, and Lincoln-the-betrayer, and once more restores the epic gleam of Lincoln the defender of natural right, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Union.
— Allen C. Guelzo, Gettysburg College; author of Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President; Claremont Review of Books
Krannawitter argues that if Lincoln is not great, then no politician is, and without great politicians we sink into the deep funk of cynicism, throwing up our hands at the political process, while despots take charge.
— The American Spectator
The readable Krannawitter upholds Lincoln as the true upholder of rights enshrined in the Declaration of Independence.
— Booklist
Thomas L. Krannawitter has written 350 pages in a Herculean effort to lay out . . . iconoclastic ideas and attitudes.
— The Advocate
Questions are broken down one by one, and though each chapter involves one question . . . the book holds together well. . . . Krannawitter is offering the first detailed and single-minded defense of Lincoln in the 21st century. . . . [He] has a clear understanding of the issues, and fulfills his goal of showing how Lincoln's lessons are relevant to contemporary America.
— America's Civil War
Krannawitter does a great job of putting Lincoln's decision making and political thought in context and explaining those actions. Vindicating Lincoln is a needed and worthwhile analysis of Lincoln and the early political history of the US. It deserves a place on any historian's bookshelf to fill this niche.
— Midwest Book Review