Lincoln by Gore Vidal

Lincoln Reviews

• 
  Jeffrey Keeten

  The 13th Amendment to the Constitution declared that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Formally abolishing slavery in the United States, the 13th Amendment was passed by the Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified by the states on December 6, 1865.
  
  In the immortal words of Joe Biden this was a “big f**king deal”.
  
  
  
  
  If you have not seen the movie Lincoln please go see it. I cannot remember the last time that I have enjoyed a movie so thoroughly. Daniel Day-Lewis is spectacular. For two and a half hours he was LINCOLN, more so than the original. The supporting cast is absolutely superb. David Strathairn plays William Seward and Sally Fields plays Mary Todd. James Spader shows up as one of the men who has the job to strong arm lame duck senators into voting for the 13th Amendment. He was hilarious. The movie made me laugh and moved me to tears of joy and pain. Even though I knew, obviously, that the 13th Amendment had passed I was on the edge of my seat with stomach clenched and my heart in my throat watching the vote. If it had been a sporting event and not a movie theater I would have rung the rafters with my shouts of exultation when the final votes are tallied.
  
  Rachel Maddow said recently something that still resonates with me. “But here is the thing about rights-they’re not actually supposed to be voted on. That’s why they are called rights.” Amazing that we are still discussing rights in this country. Every time we bring up an initiative in this country regarding the rights of some of our citizens I just have to shake my head. It is or at least it should be self-evident.
  
  I’m rarely going to say this, but watching the movie first actually enhanced my reading experience. The movie is based on the Doris Kearns Goodwin book
  Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, but I found whole dialogue scenes lifted from Gore Vidal's book. Let’s just say that Steven Spielberg probably read this book before filming the movie.
  
  
  
  William Seward who gave wise counsel to his rival during the war.
  
  Abraham Lincoln to maintain peace in his own party and to keep an eye on his enemies appointed his rivals to the cabinet. The two most ambitious were William Seward who served as Secretary of State and Salmon P. Chase who served as Secretary of the Treasury. Their plotting and scheming were sometimes a source of amusement to Lincoln, when discovered resignations were offered, but Lincoln refused to accept. When greenback money was introduced Chase’s ambitions got the better of him.
  
  ”You know ,” said Lincoln, “I asked Mr. Chase why he had put himself instead of me on the one-dollar bill, clearly the most in use of the two denominations, and he said, ‘As you are the President, you must be on the most expensive bill; and I on the less.’”
  
  
  
  Salmon P. Chase providing the image for the $1 greenback.
  
  There is something FISHY about Chase.
  
  
  
  Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury.
  
  Lincoln was much more politically savvy than his rivals expected. He outwitted them at every turn and planted devious traps for them. He did the same to his Democratic challengers. He used his knowledge of the law to bend the law and in one of the more controversial moments of his term in office he suspended habeas corpus and threw thousands of agitators in jail. His homespun mannerisms and his penchant for storytelling certainly hid his steely determination. I had always thought of Lincoln as a reluctant politician, but that was part of his brilliance concealing the ambition that made him a man who burned with desire to be reelected. Seward’s respect for Lincoln continued to grow as the war continued. Chase never seemed to learn that he was over-matched by Lincoln, although I did have a soft spot for Chase’s hobby of collecting signatures. Every time he would find a new one he was as excited as I am when I find a book I thought I’d never find. Vidal planted me squarely at the table during cabinet meetings. I came away from these meetings with the smell of cigar smoke in my hair and the pungent taste of bourbon on my tongue.
  
  As much as I want to have sympathy for Mary Todd Lincoln I found it more and more difficult as Vidal revealed more of her character. She was a shopaholic before they knew what to call it. As it became harder for her to get money out of congress and her husband, she started exchanging political favors for money. She was easily slighted and exacted vicious revenge. Lincoln’s clerks who had to deal with her money concerns and her frequent embarrassing outbursts referred to her as the Hellcat. She did suffer from debilitating migraines usually brought on by stress. She would throw childish fits ratcheting Lincoln’s own stress levels higher when the union most needed him concerned about the national interest. Both of them suffered from frequent bouts of melancholy and rarely seemed able to help each other to be happy.
  
  Lincoln had problems with his generals. He even fired some of them more than once. His first choice for command of the Union army was Robert E. Lee, probably the first man in history who was offered the command of two armies fighting against each other. When Lee chose his state over his country Lincoln went with Irwin McDowell who proved very ineffective. Then:
  
  George McClellan referred to as “The Great American Tortoise” because of his inability to engage the enemy. A problem that would plague a series of union generals. The one positive contribution McClellan made to the war effort was he proved to be an excellent trainer. He turned a ragtag army into a drilled and efficient machine. He was fired, rehired and fired again.
  
  
  
  General George B. McClellan, a disappointing fighter, but a dangerous Democratic opponent.
  
  John Pope fired
  Ambrose Burnside fired
  
  
  
  General Joe Hooker the man who lent his name to prostitution.
  
  Lincoln had great hope for “Fighting Joe" Hooker and for a while it looked like he finally had a general that wanted to fight. Hooker was knocked unconscious when a Confederate shell hit a pillar of the porch on which he was standing, and the pillar had fallen on him, and he had been unconscious for hours. Once recovered, he had given up drink and without drink there was, everyone said, no longer a “Fighting Joe” Hooker but simply another incompetent Union general named Hooker. He had another issue that may have sapped some of his fighting strength. His headquarters looked like a brothel-casino. In fact, so addicted was Hooker and his immediate staff to the flesh that Washington’s army of prostitutes was now known as Hooker’s girls or, for short HOOKERS.
  
  
  
  
  George Meade fired
  
  The victories, like a breath of fresh air were coming from the generals out west, Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan. Finally Lincoln appoints Ulysses S. Grant to command the Union army and the rest is history.
  
  It was a bad bet for the South to make, with 2/3rds of the population in the North it didn’t take much slide rule work to figure out that a prolonged war would simply result in the South running out of men to fight with. Some say the South might have won if they had fought a defensive war, just holding a line and letting the Yankees come to them. I have been a proponent of that theory as well in the past especially since the Union generals showed such a reluctance to fight their fellow countrymen. The blockade would have continued to squeeze down supply lines and with most of the manufacturing in the North, the sanctions would have continued to erode the ability of the South to fight effectively. Despite having the best generals, and they were truly providing inspirational leadership, and with a population that was determined to hang on to a way of life that was unsustainable; it is still really hard to concoct a scenario that would have resulted in the South winning the war.
  
  The Ancient, as his clerks referred to him, was intent on bringing the Union back together. ”Of course, Pennsylvania is our soil. But so is Virginia. So are the Carolinas. So is Texas. They are forever our soil. That is what this war is about and these damned fools cannot grasp it; or will not grasp it. The whole country is our soil. I cannot fathom such men.”
  
  And here we are living in a Union that Lincoln through guile and ruthlessness managed to hold together. Unfortunately the South did not get to benefit from the benevolence that Lincoln had planned for them during reconstruction. Highly recommended to read in conjunction with a wonderful movie.
  
  I have also reviewed another Gore Vidal book from the Empire series.
  Washington D. C. review
  
  If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit
  http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
  I also have a Facebook blogger page at:
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• 
  Reverenddave

  Arguably the best historical fiction book every written beating out even notables like Shaara's Killer Angels. Hell this is probably one of the top 5 books on the Civil War period. (Along with Shelby Foote's epic three volume opus, McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom, and the aforementioned Killer Angels)
  
  If you have the slightest interest in history, the Civil War, Lincoln or even just a beautifully constructed story of politics in a time of war read it. Meticulously researched and exquisitely put together this book is epic
• 
  Jason

  As I write my review I am within the last hundred pages and last few months of Abraham Lincoln's life. In other words, Good Friday 1865 is on the horizon and both President and Mrs. Lincoln are set to go and see "Our American Cousin" at that now-fated Washingtonian landmark Ford's Theater. I have been immersing myself in all things Lincoln/Civil War in the last few months as a result of the new Spielberg film and my already having seen it twice. For as much as I cannot stop raving about the film itself I do actually have a few issues with it, albeit this is not the forum to bring those issues to fruition. Suffice to say, I have the "Lincoln Bug" and I feel that it is here to stay (at least for a while).
  
  I am a student of American and Presidential History and for all I do know, I somewhat feel that I either a) don't know ANYTHING regarding President Lincoln or b) feel that I know TOO much regarding President Lincoln. In my case, I simply cannot find that happy medium. It's been said countless times in I don't know how many articles I've read or however many interviews I've seen that American Presidents always feel somewhat that they'll never "live up" to Lincoln or that they must "get right" with the legend of Abraham Lincoln in order to perform and/or carry out the duties of the office that they've sworn to uphold.
  
  So now we know just where I'm at in this vast wilderness of historical information. I simply do not know just where I should start on this journey that I'm dying to embark on. So, I did what I thought was the best thing, kill two birds with one stone. I haven't read a historical novel yet this year and I have this new rediscovered fondness for President Lincoln. I decided that it was finally time for me to take a deep breath and at last dive into Vidal's magnum opus for good. I have tried ever since high school to read this and always seem to get to right after the first inaugural where my concentration and stamina wear out. I've always put this book down and sworn to myself that "someday I'll really read this one." Well Christmas week of December 2012 just happened to be that someday.
  
  I must give Vidal credit where it is due as to the vast and immense research that he obviously poured into every character and almost every scene. The one thing I've always hated about this novel is that Vidal never separates his scenes and as a result the reader finds themselves wondering just how they got from the East Room of the White House for example to the barroom halfway across the city. A few times I needed to back up and actually reread pages just to figure out how the transition happened.
  
  For those Civil War buffs out there, all the usual suspects (George McClellan, William Seward, John Wilkes Booth) make at least a page worth of an appearance within this American epic. The first 130 or so pages go just from February, 1861 (when Lincoln himself sneaks into Washington under cover of night) to the conclusion of the First Battle of Manassas (Bull Run) in July, 1861. The second part of the story takes us from December, 1861 to the end of 1863 and the Gettysburg campaign and address, respectively. As I still have yet to complete the third and final part, I can tell you we are going through the 1864 Election and up to Appomattox.
  
  With all that I've mentioned here I have to admit that this is damn fine piece of literature. The few faults that I've brought up shouldn't mar the creation of what for me is quite possibly the BEST historical novel that I've yet read. Pick this one up and lose yourself (if only for a short time) within the politics and times of the early 1860's and the man that single-handedly reinvented the office and tenor of the American Presidency for generations to come.
  
  ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN 1984.
• 
  robin friedman

  A Novel Of Abraham Lincoln
  
  In his 1984 historical novel "Lincoln", Gore Vidal has written with great insight about our sixteenth president, his cabinet, his family, his enemies, and the Civil War Era. Lengthy though the book is, the writing is crisp and eloquent. It held my attention throughout. The book is part of a series of novels by Vidal exploring the history of the United States.
  
  In writing historical novels, it is difficult to tell where fact ends and fiction begins. This is particularly the case in dealing with a complex figure such as Lincoln whose life and political legacy remain controversial and subject to many interpretations. Controversial matters that Vidal addresses in his novel include Lincoln's attitude towards African-Americans and the Reconstruction policy that Lincoln might have pursued if he had lived. Vidal's book shows careful study of Lincoln's life and the Civil War era. He uses the resources uniquely available to the novelist to good advantage by probing the thought processes and feelings of his characters where historical evidence is lacking. I found the portrait of Lincoln compelling, but it is important to remember that Vidal is writing a novel.
  
  Vidal's book begins as the President-elect arrives secretly in Washington, D.C. a few days before his inauguration to thwart a feared assassination attempt in Baltimore. In the course of the novel, passages of recollection by various characters, reliable and unreliable, cast some light on Lincoln's earlier life. The book moves carefully and slowly, with a great deal of attention given, and properly so, to the earlier period of Lincoln's presidency. Much attention is given to Washington, D.C. at the outset of Lincoln's administration, to attempts to avert the war, to Lincoln's formation of his cabinet, and to preparing the nation for what proved to be a long bloody struggle. The pace of the book picks up as it proceeds through Lincoln's first term and reelection, the end of the Civil War, and the assassination.
  
  The picture of Abraham Lincoln that emerges from Vidal is of a man of great intellect, ambition and will, determined to save the Union at all costs. Vidal portrays Lincoln's overriding dedication to the Union. In order to preserve the Union, Lincoln uses extraordinary and even ruthless political skills. Thus, Vidal's novel considers extensively Lincoln's relationship with his cabinet. Vidal shows Lincoln choosing a cabinet from among his political rivals for the presidency, as well as from loyalist democrats, in order to be all-inclusive in the war effort. Lincoln deals with uncanny skill with potential rivals for the presidency, especially Secretary of State Seward and Secretary of the Treasury Chase. (A recent historical study, "Team of Rivals" by Doris Goodwin also treats Lincoln's relationship to his cabinet at length.) The book also shows Lincoln dealing with similar finesse and force with the Radical Republicans in Congress, with Chief Justice Taney on the Supreme Court, and with his military leaders.
  
  Vidal tells his story through a variety of perspectives. Most of the time, the viewpoint is that of John Hay, one of Lincoln's two secretaries, who had detailed and close access to Lincoln throughout the presidency. Hay and Lincoln's other secretary, Nicolay, together wrote one of the earliest biographies of Lincoln. Vidal also gives the reader a large portrait of the many southern conspirators against Lincoln. In particular Vidal develops the character of a young man named David Herrold, with uncertain purpose in life, who ultimately becomes part of the Booth conspiracy to assassinate Lincoln. Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Chase and his ambitious daughter Kate also receive a large share of attention in Vidal's novel.
  
  For all the attention lavished on him, Lincoln as a man remains an enigma. Lincoln largely kept his own counsel and was not demonstrative in showing his feelings. Thus fleshing-out Lincoln's character offers the novelist a great deal of latitude, and Vidal makes the most of it. His novel focuses on Lincoln's difficult relationship with his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, as she spends lavishly, engages herself in political intrigue, and descends to near-madness. The Lincolns endured the death of their young son Willie during the presidency. Vidal properly gives substantial attention to Lincoln's religious views, which became increasing theistic with the prolongation of the Civil War, but never Christian.
  
  Although Gore clearly admires Lincoln and his fortitude in saving the Union, he emphasizes that Lincoln's success came at a high price over and above the loss of blood and treasure in a long bitter war. With his suspension of habeas corpus and suppression of dissent, Lincoln expanded forever the power of the Presidency. The war effort changed the character of the United States from an agrarian republic to a centralized, industrial nation. At the end of the book, Vidal puts his own misgivings into the words of John Hay, stationed in France after the assassination.. Hay remarks that "Lincoln, in some mysterious fashion, had willed his own murder as a form of atonement for the great and terrible thing that he had done by giving so bloody and absolute a rebirth to his nation." (p. 657)
  
  "Lincoln" is a thoughtful and moving book for those readers wanting to think about the ideals and political processes of the United States and about Lincoln's role in their continuing development.
  
  Robin Friedman
• 
  Elizabeth (Alaska)

  This is another entry in the Superb category of true historical fiction. I cannot heap enough praise on Vidal for his ability to present history in a readable format. He understood the characters, mated them with the facts and made them flesh and bone. Still, this is fiction and he says he did take some liberties.

  All of the principal characters really existed, and they said and did pretty much what I have them saying and doing, with the exception of the Surratts and David Herold (who really lived and worked at Thompson’s, which was actually closer to New York Avenue than to Pennsylvania Avenue.) As David’s life is largely unknown until Booth’s conspiracy, I have invented a low-life for him.

  The novel begins a few days before Lincoln's first inauguration and ends with the assassination. There is no barefoot childhood in a log cabin educating himself, for example. There are references by others that his humble life in Illinois may have been exaggerated for political reasons. For example, no photograph of his Illinois mansion was allowed during the campaign.
  
  We revere Lincoln, but I'll admit much was unknown to me. Lincoln was a consummate politician - why should he not have been? Via understatement and humor he was able to manipulate his political opponents. The secession of a half dozen states came even before he took the oath of office. Those states were then in possession of much federal property, including federal personnel at Fort Sumter. And so, war was waged. Lincoln had but one reason for this war and that reason was not the abolition of slavery.

  “And the Union be so restored that no one will ever be able to see the slightest scar from all this great trouble, that will pass now the way a dream does when you wake at last, from a long night’s sleep.”

  A full 5-stars - if I could make them flashing gold stars, I would do it. I look forward to more in this series.
• 
  Ned

  Wildly entertaining, Gore really brings to life Washington DC in 1860, when our nation truly was on the threshold of (near certain) dissolution. Lincoln, the surprise victor of the presidential race faced a mostly confederate-leaning city (the capitol dome was being constructed) and everyone expected the raw-boned Midwesterner to fail. But he was wily and had an animal's instinct with people, keeping his veneer carefully sculpted and his ultimate strategies hidden. The period covered is 1860-1865, and told from Lincoln and his cabinet's point of view in parallel with street-level confederate (secesh) conspirators who ultimately collided with the assassination of our greatest president (by most polls, including mine). It is obvious that Gore read all he could get his hands on (in fact, in my youth I had often cast my eyes over the last days of Lincoln and the hanging of his assassins and conspirators so was familiar with the plot to kill him and his secretary of state).
  
  Gore has a sense of humor that appeals to me, and I found the descriptions of the deceptive generals (who wouldn't fight) and their put-on pomposity hilarious. The jaundiced Seward, a most politically astute secretary of state and the ambitious and proudly upright Salmon Chase (secretary of the treasury, then supreme court head) are nicely contrasted as part of Lincoln's "team of rivals". The internal politics was absolutely caustic, as "the Ancient" or "the tycoon" (as his secretary's dubbed him), stood between the virulently hardline republican abolitionists and the more moderate democrats. Lincoln wanted our nation to be ONE, not two colonies or countries, and this was his underlying ethos. As a lawyer he freed the slaves as a military necessity, as ownership was still constitutional, a political act (among others) that strained the legality of executive powers. He knew these boundaries and, cleverly, split the parties to maintain his power base and to get elected (almost regrettably, he wanted it more to complete what in his heart he knew our nation required vs the naked ambition that characterized him as a much younger man). He grew gaunt and gray in his first term, maintaining his backwoods musculature beneath somewhat disheveled clothing and haircut). Lincoln persevered with humor, and stories, almost as a solitary leader, with his odd jealous and petty wife ("mother") spending like a drunken sailor on herself, and often on the edge of sanity. His favorite son died early in office, and he knew the price of the war he was waging. He bore the awful brunt of his decisions. His secretary, John Hay, tells much of the story and finishes this book beautifully (p. 656):
  
  "Mr. Lincoln had a far greater and more difficult task than Washington's. You see, the Southern states had every Constitutional right to go out of the Union. But Lincoln said, no. Lincoln said, this Union can never be broken. Now that was a terrible responsibility for one man to take. But he took it, knowing he would be obliged to fight the greatest war in human history, which he did, and which he won. So he not only put the Union back together again, but he made an entirely new country, and all of it in his own image". (p. 657)"...Lincoln, in some mysterious fashion, had willed his own murder as a form of atonement for the great an terrible thing that he had done by giving so bloody and absolute a rebirth to his nation."
• 
  Christopher Saunders

  In Lincoln, Gore Vidal tones down his usual insouciance for a fine-grained, occasionally profound portrait of power. Spanning the American Civil War, the novel's told from various perspectives: Lincoln's ambitious cabinet secretaries, William Seward and Salmon Chase (and Chase's daughter Kate Chase Sprague, a force in her own right); his personal secretary, John Hay (whose flirtations with Kate Chase come to naught, and whose visits to a bawdy house provide the story's only vulgar notes); his long-suffering, neurotic wife Mary Todd Lincoln (conjured by Vidal with a mixture of sympathy and aggravation); and David Herrold, who joins several plots to assassinate him. All misjudge or underestimate Lincoln: Seward and Chase, in particular, consider him an unlearned prairie bumpkin to control and manipulate, only to slowly recognize his true brilliance and unyielding vision. Vidal's far less interested in Lincoln the Great Emancipator than Lincoln the Tycoon (in Hay's phrase), a crafty politician-statesman who forges a newly resilient United States. It's not a flattering portrait, with Lincoln agonizing over slavery and race to reconcile the South while acting in highhanded, often dictatorial fashion towards his cabinet, Congress and other rivals. Such abuses make Vidal's Lincoln both unattractive and yet darkly heroic. This man of low birth, erratic education, unstable marriage, embarrassing physical ailments and a weakness for evasive, stemwinding anecdotes also possessed an innate political genius, a vision for America that transcended his shortcomings and guided it through its defining crisis. If Lincoln was a dictator, Vidal argues, it's what the situation warranted: in any case, he was at keast less hypocritical about exercising power than most presidents. A masterpiece of historical fiction, and easily Vidal's greatest achievement.
• 
  Rowena

  I really like how Vidal writes. I read half of this novel before I watched the Lincoln movie (not the vampire hunter one :D) and I was really impressed by the amount of research that went into this book. As someone who knows very little American history, I definitely gained a lot more knowledge after reading this book.It was a long read but worth it.
• 
  Joe Kraus

  I have memories of when this book came out. As I recall, it was an event, something heralded in bookstores and written about in places beyond the book review sections. Here was a major American intellectual taking on one of our greatest American sacred cows.
  
  This is still an intriguing book, and one I mostly enjoyed, but I’m struck as well by how far in the past its release date now seems. For lack of a better term, Gore Vidal was writing for a “middlebrow” readership, people who were neither academic nor cutting-edge in their expectations of artistry, yet who also expected to be informed.
  
  That world seems deeply shrunken if not vanished today. You can’t really read this book without a lot of what was common knowledge in earlier generations. You need, for instance, to have a solid working knowledge of the sequence of Civil War battles to understand the action here. You need, as well, to have more or less accepted the vision of Lincoln as the great savior of the nation in order to understand the impact the book is seeking.
  
  In a word, this is quasi-revisionist history. The Lincoln whom Vidal gives us is a cosmopolitan who uses his log-cabin/rail-splitter back-story for purely political reasons. He is ever political in his calculations, proving himself much less an abolitionist than many of his allies – particularly Salmon P. Chase and William Sumner. And he is clumsy in a way that often works to his advantage, but clumsy all the same, often over-stepping his Presidential prerogatives and pitting his often cleverer rivals against each other.
  
  All in all, this Lincoln is more an opportunist than a visionary, the right man for his dramatic moment less because of his greatness than because of the peculiar shape of his more modest gifts.
  
  As I understand it from Burr, this is Vidal’s M.O. He takes what we are supposed to know about American history and turns it on its head. Burr wasn’t quite the ruthless and clever figure history told us; he was also a kind of bungler on a great stage.
  
  It’s striking to think that there was once a best-seller audience for this sort of work. I’m glad it still exists, though, because there is a lot of fun here, and it works especially well as an audiobook.
  
  The other striking feature of this – one that further dates it in terms of its appeal – is that this is a novel about the Civil War that takes place almost entirely in people’s kitchens and drawing rooms. We never get direct narration of battle, only the reports of battle as they circulate among people in Washington. We rarely see misconduct; instead, we see people reacting to the stories of it.
  
  In an odd way, then, this feels almost like a staged play. Vidal never bothers with the business of large-scale scenes. Instead, he works to keep that vast story on a human scale.
  
  There are times when this might run on too long and times when it’s frustrating that the stage is so small. All said, though, it’s an intriguing look at a Lincoln who, even with some of the luster knocked off, comes across as a personality who preserved and reinvented the American nation.
  
• 
  Jude

  Gore Vidal was a huge discovery for me. Until I'd read this book, I knew only that he was related to Jackie Kennedy Onassis and and Lee Radziwill and that he was a guest on many talk shows of the 70s & 80s where other well-known guests frequently found his opinions profoundly upsetting. But there was a lot of that going on at the time. I have always admired Abraham Lincoln as our most important president (except for brief periods when I was enamored of Thomas Jefferson, Harry Truman and John Adams, in that order), so I literally checked out Lincoln by Gore Vidal. Apparently, the author read every "scrap" of information that he could find on his subject and then knitted together every true thing he found with what he could only surmise had taken place in between the facts by way of conversations which cannot be confirmed as having taken place. The book is as entertaining and enlightening a story as I have ever had the good fortune to read. I came away with a living portrait of Lincoln, the man, and was astonished to learn of the miriad of seemingly insurmountable circumstances attendant to the ones we commonly know of his life and times. Lincoln's health was not the best and the remedy for his stomach problems (a disgusting, viscous concotion called "Blue Mass") had to be endured often. His wife, though she loved him very much, was not an asset to him with her own frail mental and emotional states and some plain selfishness in the bargain. She embarrassed him publicly and politcially. They lost children together. I hate McClellan today because I read that he organized the Army of the Potomac, but he was a tragedy as a general, to put it mildly, and got a staggering amount of Union soldiers needlessly saughtered. Well, I loved the book. Will read it again.
• 
  Steven Fisher

  Some have deplored Lincoln's indifference to Christianity. But it was not religion, it was religiosity that put him off.
  
  Gore Vidal
• 
  Julie G

  First, I just read through many reviews here on Goodreads where the comment was made (over and over again), what an amazing work of non-fiction this is. I don't want to burst anyone's bubble, but this book is entitled "Lincoln: A Novel" and advises the bookseller to shelve it as Fiction/Literature. This is a novel, y'all, and it's important to know the difference. The author himself, in an afterword, makes it known that, while he stayed true to historical pieces of information as much as possible, he has taken liberties as well.
  
  Okay, now that THAT is out of the way, the 2nd thing I want to write: if you are not a Lincoln devotee, a great lover of American history or a person who follows politics/U.S. Presidents, this book is probably going to sit on your nightstand, unfinished, for the rest of your life.
  
  I LOVE Lincoln, he is hands-down my favorite U.S. President, and he's one of my favorite human beings of all time. I am also a great reader. But, this book was heavy in my hands and it was hard to crack open once I had put it down.
  
  This is a well-written novel, and it seems an accurate enough description of the people and the times, but, if you are a lover of Lincoln and you're not sure you're up to tackling these 657 pages, may I recommend Rosemary Wells' fabulous small book, "Lincoln and His Boys" and/or Walt Whitman's "Civil War Poetry and Prose?"
• 
  Scott W.

  Whatever hubris it takes to write a biography of Abraham Lincoln, it surely takes plenty to write a research-intensive 657-page novel that covers the entire presidency. Vidal accomplishes this compression by including a pile of exposition in dialogue without it ever quite seeming like he's doing so; perhaps famous national leaders are the only characters in fiction exempt from the rule.
  
  Portraits of "minor" characters -- John Hay (one of Lincoln's personal secretaries) and Kate Chase (daughter of Treasury secretary Salmon Chase) in particular -- are vivid and convincing, but I loved the book most for its glimpse of Washington, D.C. during the Civil War: the mud, the noise, the smell, the vulnerability to attack, the coziness, the charm, etc. Takes small liberties with the historical timeline and invents a few crucial Confederate spies/sympathizers, all to the good.
  
  Final note: the book sparked a HUGE spitting match between Vidal and several eminent Lincoln scholars (though not all of them) in the New York Review of Books. I take both sides, really, although I lean to Vidal: the cover of the book says "a novel," after all, a form equally available to all, or at least to all of the participants in the spitting match.
• 
  Adam

  
  Gore Vidal's enjoyable and masterly fictional biography of Abraham Lincoln is, according to the author, largely based on fact.
  
  Until I read
  Lincoln I had a naive belief that he was a modern saint. That he was not. He is portrayed as being a brilliant politician: persistent, both ruthless as well as humane, and pragmatic.
  
  We are introduced to him as the USA was in the process of becoming disunited and was plunging into a deadly civil war. Not only was his country disunited, but also was his Republican party, many of whose senior members had little faith in his ability to win the Civil War. Yet, he pulled it off. Despite mammoth losses of life on the battlefields, incompetent military commanders, and numerous attempts to sabotage his work, Lincoln managed to defeat the Confederates and to prevent the unity of the young USA from becoming permanently disrupted.
  
  I was surprised to learn that 'Honest Abe' was not always in favour of liberating the Black slaves and ending slavery in the USA. It was almost, it seemed to me, for pragmatic reasons that he was gradually won over to these things. The integrity of the USA was in the forefront of his mind. If allowing slavery in states that would have otherwise become disloyal to the union permitted him to keep them as allies, he allowed that even though many of his closest colleagues were in favour of abolishing slavery.
  
  The novel contains a plethora of interesting and well-portrayed characters, all of whom contribute to the suspense that is maintained throughout its more than 600 pages of tiny font.
• 
  Felisa Rosa

  
  Once again, I am amazed by the breadth and depth of Vidal's knowledge. His seemingly encyclopedic grasp of the era is matched in equal parts by caustic wit and empathy. Vidal's Lincoln is at once human and monolithic, and the pages are imbued with his curious melancholy. (On a side note, one gets the feeling that Mark Ryden had read this book...)
  The supporting characters are equally interesting. Mary Todd is nuanced and Vidal brilliantly tracks the evolution of Lincoln's relationship with his cigar chomping and ultimately lovable secretary of state, Seward. But in the end it's Vidal's one liners that I love best. Whether humorous, descriptive, or dramatic, they'll give you chills.
• 
  Richard Kenneth Conde

  I read Gore Vidal's biography of President Lincoln several years ago, after watching and In Depth interview on C-Span Books TV. He placed a high value on writing historical fiction as a way to read and learn about history. The primary value of historical fiction (besides the pleasure of reading), where the writer has done considerable research to get the details mostly right, is being its ability to make historical events comprehensible, by providing the reader with context for how events would look to a person living through the era. A lot of historical events and controversies seem impenetrable, pointless, or trivial to modern readers, which can make it very difficult to really understand the passions of the times. A good historical writer can let you get into the heads of people a bit to understand why they would care so deeply about an issue that seems silly today. A second thing historical fiction can provide is a sympathetic frame to historical events by following characters (real or made up) through historical events, the writer can provide a window for the reader to become emotionally involved in historical events, in a way that a non-fiction treatment might fail to do. This can also reduce large, complicated events down to a more human scale, making it easier to absorb at least one angle of historical events (at the expense, perhaps, of having the broad view of what's going on).
  
  The book splits its time between Lincoln's White House and the eventual plotters who assassinate him. The Lincoln sections are mostly told from the point of view of John Hay, his young secretary. This is a device that I recall worked well as it allowed Lincoln to stay a little mysterious and distant to the reader, while still providing a fairly intimate portrayal of his personality and presidency. Lincoln comes across as very human and likable, but also slowly getting crushed under the weight of the war, and shows some of the progression his own thinking goes through as the war drags on.
  
  In general, I've found the Vidal historical novels that I've read ("Burr", "Lincoln", and "Julian") a little dry, but well worth reading. He's very good at providing the context that I mentioned above, and providing insight into how mostly forgotten historical events looked to people alive at the time. The downsides are that the characters sometimes stay a little distant, and Vidal seems to be mostly interested in the gentry, he rarely spends time with "regular" American people.
• 
  Lindz

  This is not the easiest book to read. It is dense, large, and dense. But very much worth the read if you have any interest in the American Civil War or President Lincoln.
  
  Like any good Historical novel worth it's salt, it's brilliantly researched. A lot of the things said by Lincoln in the novel were in fact recorded speech from the great President. What I love about this novel though is that you never quite know what is going through Lincoln's head. All the point of views are from his wife, his secretary, his minister of treasury and his minister of war.
  
  You will feel smarter after reading this novel.
• 
  Inese Okonova

  Bija grūti lasīt, gluži tāpat kā Vidala pirmo impērijas stāstu par Āronu Beru, jo autora erudīcija un zināšanas par laikmetu un ASV politiskās vēstures niansēm ir n-tās reizes pārāka par maniem virpusējiem iespaidiem. Vidals lasītāju šajā ziņā netaupa. Romāna darbība simtprocentīgi risinās ASV Pilsoņu kara laikā, bet darba centrā nav ne lielās kaujas, ne cilvēciskās drāmas. Pilsoņu karu lasītājs iepazīst no Vašingtonas varas gaiteņu aizkulisēm un politiskām intringām, kas tolaik galvenajiem varoņiem bija daudz nozīmīgākas nekā mums, par to lasot ar laika distanci.
  Vidals rāda, kā uz jaunas, vēl tikai dzimstošas impērijas! fona rodas mīts. Turklāt, pēc viņa droši vien ķecerīgā viedokļa, mīts tiek radīts ļoti apzināti. Ja īsi jāraksturo grāmata, tas ir stāsts par ģēniju, kurš visus piemuļķoja ar savu pieticību, lai ieņemtu pirmo pozīciju, kas savukārt viņam bija vajadzīga nevis personiskā labuma vai varaskāres dēļ, bet gan tāpēc, lai izpildītu misiju, ko, pēc viņa domām, neviens cits nespētu. Piņķerīgi. Bet tāda ir arī pati grāmata.
• 
  Marty Fried

  This is the first book I've read by Gore Vidal, and now I want to read more. He really brought this period to life and made it interesting and understandable. It was nothing like what I would have thought, had I thought more about it. The White House was a rat-infested dump with smelly swamps and garbage all around, where people were often sick or died, and inhabited by mostly confederate sympathizers. It was not the best place to be a Yankee.
  
  Lincoln was always interesting. He and his family didn't really fit in well with the existing society. He seemed to be odd and not too bright, and people thought he was not in control. But somehow, he was always able to arrange things to turn out the way he wanted, often without people realizing he was doing it - probably due to his homey way of talking, injecting stories, etc. I thought he was pretty entertaining. His wife, on the other hand, was a handful and somewhat, if not completely, crazy, especially later in the book. Much of the time, she could not stop spending money on both herself and the Capitol, which neither could really afford. She then had to do whatever she could to stave off the debtors, much of which was illegal or immoral.
  
  Even though I of course knew what was going to happen to him, He was assassinated, there was still an air of suspense as the time approached, and a sense of the sadness and anger after the event.
  
  This book took me longer to finish than normal, but I think it was worth it. Fortunately, I had audiobooks to listen to at the same time.
• 
  George

  I would have liked to give this book a higher rating, but to me, Vidal seems to have greatly admired Lincoln, but he shows no real understanding of him as a human being. Lincoln was an enigma in many respects, and in a work of non-fiction that might be a more acceptible point of view. Here, in a substantial novel, it leaves the presentation with a hollow center. And it greatly subtracts from the drama of the events. I think George MacDonald Fraser managed to convey a more engaging character in his two or three scenes with Lincoln in Flash for Freedom than Vidal managed in his entire book. Give me Burr or 1876 any day.
• 
  Kristina

  a chunk of a book that I found slow going at first because I was struggling to find the time to read but it warmed up as I got further in and I really enjoyed the political scheming and plots that surrounded Lincoln. A great insight into his wife Mary Todd Lincoln also.
• 
  Jenny Karraker

  I really enjoyed this book. It is listed as fiction, because it is written in novel form, with dialogue that isn't quoted from specific historical documents. However, the events and characters were all real. It was intriguing to read of how disrespected Lincoln was, especially by people in his own cabinet. They often thought him a naive, backwoods simpleton who knew nothing about politics and governing. But as Barbara Gannon often says in her Civil War class at University of Central Florida, you have to remember that this guy was a lawyer and knew exactly what he was doing. There was a method in his madness that eventually astounds those who earlier opposed him. When you read of the pressure he was under from the casualties of the war and its seeming no end in sight, you are reminded of his strength of character, the compassion he had for people on both sides of the war, and his determination and stamina to persevere amidst the opposition from both the South and North, bickering within his own party, and the tremendous slaughter on the battlefields. This book also portrayed a more compassionate view of Mary Todd Lincoln. She has often been portrayed as an emotionally unstable woman (though perhaps today she would have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder). Yet here she is described as being very knowledgeable about the politics of the day and seemed to be a good companion for Lincoln. In visiting Japan 25 years ago, I learned that they call Washington the father of the United States and Lincoln the mother. He certainly displayed a great loyalty and sacrificial lifestyle for this country. It is so shocking that he is assassinated at the end of the war; but on a philosophical view, perhaps his role was to get us through this great conflagration and unite us into a country that more accurately reflects the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal. In light of recent events over the past year, we certainly need to visit those racial issues again and work toward the things Mr Lincoln strove for so courageously.
• 
  Michael Criswell

  What you probably think about Abraham Lincoln is wrong. At least, that's what Vidal sets out to prove in this masterful account. As the predominant American martyr, Lincoln's name has been enshrined in legends and serious histories alike as a man who did much to thrust the forces of progress ahead closer to the age of modern "enlightenment" we now live in. While Vidal certainly doesn't downplay the significance of Lincoln's presidency, he deftly muddies the waters regarding the true motives of his actions. This naturally generated quite a bit of controversy when the book was first released, with many admirers of Lincoln writing pearl-clutching polemics castigating Vidal for straying from the proper depiction of one of America's most celebrated saints. Regardless, enthusiasts of historical fiction continue to cite it as being among the best and most accurate accounts out there.
  
  One needs only to read the first few chapters to see that this is a product of pure writing talent. Lincoln's wit and charm are on full display in every chapter. His enigmatic personality is brilliantly conveyed through his interactions with the primary POV characters(John Hay and William Seward) who are constantly guessing what Lincoln is thinking at the present moment. Their respect for Lincoln grows throughout the narrative as they are continuously impressed with his creative strategies.
  
  My lone critique has to do with the side plot involving David Herold, only because it felt incomplete. For someone known only because he was indicted in the assassination plot, it's puzzling that Vidal didn't include a closing chapter on his arc detailing the last moments before his execution.
  
  Besides that, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Highly recommended for any enthusiast of historical fiction.
• 
  Louise

  I'd like to give this book 5 stars for the extraordinary undertaking of thought and research that it represents, but the book, while very good, is weakened by its ambition and its reliance on dialog.
  
  I think Vidal developed insight into many of the players (Lincoln, Mary, Salmon Chase, Kate Chase, Sprague, Stanton, Seward, David, Hay...) and wanted to sketch a portrait of each one of them. This detracted from his most interesting portrait, that of Lincoln.
  
  The characters are developed primarily through conversation, so much that it reads more like a script than a novel. Even as a script, it's in need of an edit. Some of the conversation has tremendous impact, such as Lincoln at cabinet meetings, exchanges with Mary, meeting with free Blacks, Lincoln on his own political situation, Mary talking with relatives, David and Booth, and Hay in Paris. At other times, the dialog seems to be there because it's just too clever to leave out.
  
  Gore's "Vidal's Burr: A Novel" is a far better book. Perhaps my reading was enriched by my having read Chernow's "Alexander Hamilty and Isenberg's "The Fallen Founder". Perhaps I have caught more nuance had I read Goodwin's Team of Rivals" in advance.
  
• 
  Roger Norman

  I read this book twenty-five years ago and remembered it as unusual - so detailed historically and bold psychologically. A second reading confirmed both of these features. It is a real tour de force of historical imagination and reconstruction, written by a man with a very sure touch. In 650 pages there are almost no longueurs and, although Vidal clearly admired and respected his subject, no tendency to lionize or flatter.
  Twenty-five years of our literary epoch is a long time and once or twice I found myself surprised by the formality of the storytelling in terms of order, pace and rhythm - surprised because there was nothing conventional about Vidal as man or journalist or essayist - also relieved that the story did not start at the end or jump to and fro in time, one of the inescapable devices of so-called modernism. I wondered at the end why the author didn't simply write it as history - which he was of course perfectly capable of doing.
  There is a conclusion, given to the President's likeable young secretary, John Hay, on the last page of the book, who explains his reason for placing Lincoln as the greatest of presidents, above even Washington: 'Mr Lincoln had a far greater and more difficult task than Washington's. The Southern States had every Constitutional right to go out of the Union. But Lincoln said, no. Lincoln said, this Union can never be broken. Now that was a terrible responsibility for one man to take. But he took it, knowing he would be obliged to fight the greatest war in human history, which he did, and which he won. So he not only put the Union back together again, but he made an entirely new country, and all of it in his own image.'
  One might quibble with the very last bit, but Vidal doesn't make it easy to do so.
• 
  Caroline Mann

  A book that complicates and challenges and deepens your understanding of Lincoln while also telling a fantastically entertaining story.
  
  If you’re like me (if you retained only a basic knowledge of the Civil War from days in high school history class), I recommend avoiding the urge to search characters on the internet until you’re through reading. I made the mistake of looking up Stephen Douglas early on and was sad to learn of his death before Vidal had woven that into the story.
  
  Vidal’s writing is successful but I would not call his style impressive. Still, when the book is almost 700 pages long, the ability to balance and organize a coherent plot through it all is impressive enough.
• 
  RK Byers

  i've heard slavery had something to do with this guy. maybe i need to read another book on him or something.