As the war progressed, the embattled president came to believe that Providence had made him the Lord’s instrument to save the Union and in the process end slavery. “The mature Lincoln,” he writes, “viewed the history of the American people and nation as mysteriously but inexorably intertwined with the will and the wishes…of a divine force beyond time and space.”ĭespite his skepticism about human agency in the face of such a force, Lincoln was determined to play a role.
Over time, he argues, Lincoln’s view of the divine evolved from that of a remote deity to one bound up with the human drama. The place religion plays in our political life has long been on Meacham’s radar, and he digs deeply here into Lincoln’s interior spiritual world. Undeniably ambitious, the future president struck a political balance that lent him legitimate credentials as a reformer while maintaining a moderate tone that avoided alienating potential supporters opposed to radical abolitionists.
Instead, his book “charts Lincoln’s struggle to do right as he defined it within the political universe he and his country inhabited.” A “morally imperfect” man, Lincoln nevertheless possessed “a pragmatic vision with a moral component” that provided a guide star for his public life. Meacham has obviously made the calculation that others have covered these and other related topics in exhaustive detail. This is not a biography to turn to when delving into the machinations of Lincoln’s Cabinet, the intimacies of the Lincoln household, or his search for a trustworthy military leader. While it may seem counterintuitive to suggest that a narrative of 421 pages is lean, that description suits And There Was Light. His And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle is an elegantly argued life of our 16th president tailor-made for the contemporary moment. Having already written major works on, among others, Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, Meacham’s turn to Abraham Lincoln seems like a welcome inevitability.
A Pulitzer Prize–winning presidential biographer, he possesses a rare ability to relate the American past to current circumstances in the service of informed, yet gentle advocacy. Jon Meacham is one of the nation’s most engaged, and engaging, public intellectuals.
‘And There Was Light’ Review: Lincoln’s Spiritual World Close
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