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Books : Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln
Product Description: Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln were the preeminent self-made men of their time. In this masterful dual biography, award-winning HarvardUniversity scholar John Stauffer describes the transformations in the lives of these two giants during a major shift in cultural history, when men rejected the status quo and embraced new ideals of personal liberty. As Douglass and Lincoln reinvented themselves and ultimately became friends, they transformed America.
Lincoln was born dirt poor, had less than one year of formal schooling, and became the nation's greatest president. Douglass spent the first twenty years of his life as a slave, had no formal schooling-in fact, his masters forbade him to read or write-and became one of the nation's greatest writers and activists, as well as a spellbinding orator and messenger of audacious hope, the pioneer who blazed the path traveled by future African-American leaders.
At a time when most whites would not let a black man cross their threshold, Lincoln invited Douglass into the White House. Lincoln recognized that he needed Douglass to help him destroy the Confederacy and preserve the Union; Douglass realized that Lincoln's shrewd sense of public opinion would serve his own goal of freeing the nation's blacks. Their relationship shifted in response to the country's debate over slavery, abolition, and emancipation.
Both were ambitious men. They had great faith in the moral and technological progress of their nation. And they were not always consistent in their views. John Stauffer describes their personal and political struggles with a keen understanding of the dilemmas Douglass and Lincoln confronted and the social context in which they occurred. What emerges is a brilliant portrait of how two of America's greatest leaders lived.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - a few problems....
I've not yet finished reading this book, but I have already discovered a few problems with it. While the book is very well-written and a compelling read, the author's characterizations are based on little more than stereotypes that have already been discredited by other historians. His characterization of Lincoln as impoverished poor white trash is false. Yes, he was born in a log cabin, but ALL the social classes lived in log structures in Kentucky and Indiana at that time. Documentation has been found that proves Lincoln's father was quite well-off. His income was in the upper 20% of the state as a whole. Lincoln belonged solidly to the middle class, if not the upper middle class. His mother and his stepmother were both very literate (which would have been rare amongst the lower classes). Additionally, the author's characterization of Mary Todd Lincoln is condescendingly dismissive. The readers of this book would benefit from Jean Baker's brilliant and thorough biography of Mary Todd Lincoln. I would also recommend a BBC television series called "1900's House". It is difficult for modern readers to imagine the unending, grinding drudgery of housework in the 19th century. We live in modern homes that stay relatively clean without much effort. Homes in the 19th century were primarily heated with coal. While a coal-burning stove can heat a large, high-ceilinged room very comfortably, they constantly generate layer upon layer of coal dust and filth that must be constantly cleaned off. I mention the 1900's house television series because the mother of the family finally gives up on cleaning her house herself and hires a maid. It is easy to make fun of Mary Todd Lincoln and to characterize her as a spoiled upper class brat, but to do so is to simply further the damaging propaganda levelled against her by her enemies - primarily Victorian "gentlemen" of the period whose idea of proper womanhood wasn't far from their idea of a proper slave. Other than those two (rather important) points, I would still give this book 4 stars because it is a highly entertaining read, and it is very difficult for a contemporary historian to write anything fresh about Lincoln, that we haven't all heard before.
Rating: - Powerful and pointed
This book could have been two bios. It is joined together by the idea, a bit of a strain, that Lincoln and Douglass had parallel lives. But the book's somewhat artifical construct takes zero away from it value. The book works on several levels. It is full of information that you may not know: how Lincoln grew up in a culture of violence(eye gouging was the norm); how slaves in the border states could have their own home and jobs as long as they gave a cut of their wages to their owners; how the United States Supreme Court was one case away after the Dred Scott decision from making America a slave nation but the war intervened(slaveowner had his slaves freed in NewYork City where he was preparing them for transit to Texas; issue before Court was whether a slaveowner could move his property to wherever he pleased); how the North was concerned pre-war with the economic effects of slavery and the impact of its spread on the wages of freemen. An an interesting section asserting that Lincoln was too circumspect in dealing with the border states and could have taken a harder line with them(that's debatable). But there is much more, especially the powerful thread of a president who took office promising to eliminate slavery but once in office back peddled, yet moved, bit by bit(prompted by Douglass) to fulfill his destiny and be the agent for the eradication of slavery. If there are parallels to look at it may be with the current President-elect and his move to the center. Lots of stuff for thought. The book is clearly written with a novelist's eye for detail and a poet's sense of overarching theme.
Rating: - "Easy to Read"
Written by: John Stauffer
Published by: Twelve
Reviewed by: Stephanie Rollins [...] 12/2008
ISBN: 978-0-446-58009-0
"Easy to Read" 4 stars
I do not like history books. My mind usually shuts off when a book takes a historical turn. This book actually held my attention. It reads like a novel.
Both Lincoln and Douglass were self-made and self-taught. It is mentioned in this book that Douglass raised himself from slavery. Douglass raised himself from white trash. The parallels only start there. Even those who do not like history will love this book.
Rating: - Timely, well-researched and nuanced
John Stauffer has written a rather incredible book. And while it is not exactly the dual biography it has been touted as, the whole is still much larger than the sum of the parts: It is timely, well researched and nuanced; and accomplishes the tricky task of following the parallel lives of these two preeminent self-made men until they converge. And then it explores the importance of that convergence to the development of our democracy during the period surrounding the Civil War.
Stauffer whets our appetites by pointing out the numerous similarities between these two giants of American history: they were both dirt poor, self-made and self-taught men who read the same books and had fights that helped shape their adult lives, as they went on to grow into larger than life speakers, writers and national icons.
However, the main menu of this presentation is how these two men -- with such similar personal backgrounds, but with such equally dissimilar political backgrounds (Douglass was a revolutionary; Lincoln a political conservative) - were nevertheless eventually drawn into the same political orbit where out of necessity, they came to trust, admire and then even to depend on each other. This book then is about how their separate lives converged and were intertwined to produce the greater good for the American nation. Both had to evolve and first transform themselves before they could help transform the country.
But Stauffer's greatest contribution to American history is in re-humanizing Lincoln. This author, (as was the case with the much more difficult book "Force into Glory, by Lerone Bennett) dispels forever the mostly romanticized fiction of Lincoln as being a flawless and unquestioning champion of Black rights. In fact, the one thing consistent about Lincoln was that he "was a man of his times" in regards to the issue of race. That is to say he was more concerned with saving the union than with freeing the slaves. In fact, the point at which the two lives began to converge was when Douglass started writing about Lincoln's backward and racist attitudes and political positions towards blacks, in his abolitionist newspaper.
Among the things that upset Douglass most about Lincoln was the fact that Lincoln ran for re-election as Congressman from Illinois on promises to strictly enforce the dreaded and draconian fugitive slave laws. Douglass was even more bitter over the fact that when Lincoln was reelected he refused to support a bill to emancipate Blacks in Washington D.C. Douglass also wrote about Lincoln's ... Read More
Rating: - Will satisfy with the fresh light it casts upon two towering figures in American history
With the hindsight that makes for history filled out and fully viewed, we can make linkages that, in their time, might not have been apparent or apropos. Such is the case with GIANTS, the linkage between two great men whose contemporaneous lives filled the stage with action, philosophy and legacy, but who, in their lifetimes, were neither close friends nor fellow travelers.
John Stauffer, a professor of English at Harvard and author of several noted history books (METEOR OF WAR: The John Brown Story, and THE BLACK HEARTS OF MEN: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race), has highlighted here the similarities between the rough-cut, self-educated Civil War president, Abraham Lincoln, and the renowned human rights autodidact, agitator, orator and editor, freed slave Frederick Douglass. Both men sought to break free from the limitations of their childhood circumstances, fought literally and figuratively for what they believed and were admired as great strategists on the battlefields they found themselves on. Both were alcohol- and tobacco-free at a time when nearly all men indulged in both habits. Both had numerous sexual liaisons, and both loved poetry. One man was tasked with uniting a nation torn apart by the onerous stigma of human slavery, and the other was charged with exhorting his people to free themselves from that stigma and rise above it. Both had some success and some notable failures.
Douglass wrote his autobiography, MY BONDAGE AND MY FREEDOM, and it is a remarkable work. Simple, articulate and honest to a painful degree, it clearly delineated what it meant to be a slave in America. A tall, strong adolescent, Douglass learned early on that even his benign masters (and there were several, possibly because he had been fathered by one of their extended family) did not shrink from sending him out to work for people with a cruel streak and a taste for torture. His benign masters were forced by the strictures of presumed white superiority to allow the young man to be flayed bloody and to defend the rights of the men who did the whipping. That a person in their care could starve, hide and wait long nights in terror rather than face another such punishment did not seem outrageous to his white owners. Douglass was smarter than many slaves and not bound by superstition. His young life reached a turning point when one overseer engaged him in a physical fight and was unable to win after four hours of continuous exertion. Though that victory did not bring release to the slave, it did instill in him the courage to overcome a master ... Read More
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