Big Enough to Be Inconsistent: Abraham Lincoln Confronts Slavery and Race

by George M. Fredrickson

Book Overview

"Cruel, merciful; peace-loving, a fighter; despising Negroes and letting them fight and vote; protecting slavery and freeing slaves." Abraham Lincoln was, W. E. B. Du Bois declared, "big enough to be inconsistent." Big enough, indeed, for every generation to have its own Lincoln--unifier or emancipator, egalitarian or racist. In an effort to reconcile these views, and to offer a more complex and nuanced account of a figure so central to American...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674027744
• ISBN13: 9780674027749
• Release Date: February 2008
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 168 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.8" x 7.3"