Mr. Lincoln: The Life of Abraham Lincoln (Adiobook) | Date: 11 April 2011, 17:57
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Five days after Abraham Lincoln was buried in Springfield, Illinois, John Locke Scripps, who had convinced Lincoln to write his first campaign autobiography, wrote: "In certain showy, and what is said to be, most desirable endowments, how many Americans have surpassed him! Yet how he looms above them now!"
The nation's 16th president, Scripps asserted, had become "the Great American Man—the grand central figure in American (perhaps the World's) History."
Historians still find it hard to quibble with Scripps's opinion of Lincoln's place in the story of America. Lincoln was the central figure in the nation's greatest crisis, the Civil War. His achievements in office make as good a case as any that he was the greatest president in U.S. history.
What made Lincoln great? What was it about him that struck those who knew him? This course explores those questions with the help of an authority who, in his own words, has "spent many years trying to get to know this man from afar," and in doing so has become one of the country's most distinguished Lincoln scholars and an award-winning author for his books about Lincoln.
Professor Allen C. Guelzo will lead you on "a great adventure," a tour of Lincoln's life, from his forebears' arrival in America through an evaluation of how his legacy lives on for us today. You will come to know Lincoln through the eyes of those who knew, lived with, and worked with him.
For Lincoln buffs and those simply wishing to know him much better, this course opens a compelling view into his thinking and career.
In addition to asking what it was like to know Lincoln, Professor Guelzo explores three themes:
[list][*]What ideas were at the core of his understanding of American politics?
[*]Why did he oppose slavery, and what propelled him, in the 1850s, into the open opposition to slavery that led to his election to the presidency in 1860?
[*]What particular gifts equipped Lincoln to lead the nation through the "fiery trial" of the Civil War?
[/list][b]Lincoln as Man and President[/b]
"Just think of such a sucker as me as President."
—Abraham Lincoln, commenting to a newspaper editor on his presidential chances
With Professor Guelzo, you will explore Lincoln's pre-presidential life for clues to his most significant personality traits. You will find a man who possessed perhaps the most complex inner life of any American public figure. You will meet a Lincoln who:
[list][*]Was an unusual combination of both introvert and extrovert.
[*]Never joined a church, professed no formal religion, and was even known to have been critical of Christianity before he entered politics. Yet he may have been more moral, ethical, and "Christian" than any other U.S. president.
[*]Held a profoundly fatalistic view of life, rooted in the Calvinist teaching of his youth, that human will was essentially nothing, and everything was predestined by an immensely powerful God.
[/list]However, Lincoln was anything but passive in life. Largely self-taught, he was a quietly confident man who, regardless of the task—learning to be a surveyor, a lawyer, or President of the United States—"went at it with good earnest."
This aspect of the course will enable you to connect Lincoln the man with Lincoln the president. How was it that someone with limited prior political experience and no administrative background, who was considered homely, unsophisticated, and self-deprecating, could have achieved such monumental success as the nation's chief executive?
In fact, as you will see, "folksy" Abraham Lincoln was about nothing if not ambition: his own personal burning ambition ("a little engine that knew no rest," his law partner described it) and his firm conviction that the unfettered opportunity to fulfill one's ambitions—"that every man can make himself"—was what made America great.
[hide=Course Lecture Titles][list][*]1. Young Man Lincoln
[*]2. Whig Meteor
[*]3. Lincoln, Law, and Politics
[*]4. The Mind of Abraham Lincoln
[*]5. Lincoln and Slavery
[*]6. The Great Debates
[*]7. Lincoln and Liberty, Too
[*]8. The Uncertain President
[*]9. The Emancipation Moment
[*]10. Lincoln’s Triumph
[*]11. The President’s Sword
[*]12. The Dream of Lincoln
[/list][/hide]
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