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With Malice Toward None: A Life of Abraham Lincoln
“Full, fair, and accurate. . . . Certainly the most objective biography of Lincoln ever written.” —Pulitzer Prize-winner David Herbert Donald, New York Times Book Review
From preeminent Civil War historian Stephen B. Oates comes the book the Washington Post hails as “the standard one-volume biography of Lincoln.” Oates’ With Malice Toward None is recognized as the seminal biography of the Sixteenth President, by one of America’s most prominent historians.
From preeminent Civil War historian Stephen B. Oates comes the book the Washington Post hails as “the standard one-volume biography of Lincoln.” Oates’ With Malice Toward None is recognized as the seminal biography of the Sixteenth President, by one of America’s most prominent historians.
544 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1977
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About the author
Stephen B. Oates
42 books64 followersAn expert on 18th century U.S. history, Stephen B. Oates was professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he taught from 1969 until his retirement in 1997. Oates received his BA (1958), MA (1960), and Ph.D. (1969) from the University of Texas.
Oates wrote 16 books during his career, including biographies of Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Lincoln, Clara Barton, and John Brown, and an account of Nat Turner's slave rebellion. His Portrait of America, a compilation of essays about United States history, is widely used in advanced high school and undergraduate university American history courses. His two "Voices of the Storm" books are compilations of monologues of key individuals in events leading up to and during the American Civil War. He also appeared in the well-known Ken Burns PBS documentary on the war.
Oates received the Nevins-Freeman Award of the Chicago Civil War Round Table for his historical work on the American Civil War.
Oates wrote 16 books during his career, including biographies of Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Lincoln, Clara Barton, and John Brown, and an account of Nat Turner's slave rebellion. His Portrait of America, a compilation of essays about United States history, is widely used in advanced high school and undergraduate university American history courses. His two "Voices of the Storm" books are compilations of monologues of key individuals in events leading up to and during the American Civil War. He also appeared in the well-known Ken Burns PBS documentary on the war.
Oates received the Nevins-Freeman Award of the Chicago Civil War Round Table for his historical work on the American Civil War.
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February 12, 2025
With this fine 1977 biography, historian Stephen B. Oates makes a strong and helpful contribution to the crowded field of Lincoln studies. Relatively concise (for a Lincoln biography) at 436 pages, With Malice Toward None provides a well-reasoned and thoughtful look at the life of the greatest American President.
Oates, formerly a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, focused throughout his career on the search for racial justice in America, with biographies of key figures in that struggle: Nat Turner, John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, Clara Barton, Martin Luther King Jr. With his biographies of Nat Turner and John Brown, Oates chronicled the lives of people who went outside the forms of law in order to fight the injustice and cruelty of slavery. When he wrote With Malice Toward None, Oates turned his attention to an American leader who despised slavery just as much as Nat Turner and John Brown did – but who, with his legal training and his enduring belief in the power and the supremacy of the law, fought slavery using legal and Constitutional means.
Oates is willing to engage the ambiguities of Lincoln’s life. When talking about the future president’s career as a lawyer in the Eighth Judicial Circuit of pre-Civil War Illinois, for example, Oates points out that Lincoln “defended both sides in fugitive slave cases, which illustrates the essentially pragmatic approach to the law he and most other attorneys adopted.” He even emphasizes the “cold and brutal logic” through which “attorney Lincoln could set aside his personal convictions – for he claimed to hate slavery – and go all out to win for a client, even if that meant sending a family back into bondage” (p. 101). One senses here the tension between Oates’s admiration for Lincoln’s later anti-slavery work and his disapproval of Lincoln, as a practicing attorney, “working both sides” of the slavery issue.
Sometimes, I felt that Oates, with his strongly held moral beliefs, might have been projecting his own feelings onto Lincoln. When discussing the secession of Virginia, for example, Oates writes that Lincoln was “embittered” by “the lightning speed with which many of Virginia’s Union men had joined the secessionists and voted for disunion….Yes, Lincoln was angry with the people of Virginia. They had allowed ‘this giant insurrection’ to make its nest within their borders, within sight of his office windows where he could see the chimneys and church steeples of Alexandria” (pp. 226-27).
From my own review of Lincoln’s correspondence and other writings of that time, my reading of his emotions at that time is quite different. Lincoln was saddened, to be sure, by Virginia’s decision to secede. He was also surprised; President Lincoln seems to have consistently overestimated the extent of Southern Unionism, particularly in the Upper South. And he was worried about the strategic and tactical problems involved in protecting the Union capital at Washington, D.C., now that a new political entity claiming to be an independent republic was flying its flag and mustering its military forces right across the Potomac River. But “angry”? “Embittered”? I don’t see it that way. Rather, I think that Lincoln at this time bore himself as Horatio describes the ghost of Hamlet’s father – with “a countenance more in sorrow than in anger.”
Oates writes well about strategic and tactical elements of Civil War military history. Considering his career-long commitment to issues of human rights, however, it should be no surprise that where With Malice Toward None really shines is in its depiction of how Lincoln’s stance on the slavery question evolved. At first, Lincoln hoped simply to see the “peculiar institution” restricted to the Southern states in which it was located; later, he saw emancipation as a way to attack and weaken a Confederacy that depended upon enslaved labor to keep its military forces in the field; and still later, he felt able to advocate and push forward complete and permanent abolition of slavery throughout the Union.
A crucial step in that regard, as Oates tells it, came when Lincoln summoned to the White House legislators from the slaveholding “border states” of Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland, and tried to persuade them to accept a plan for compensated emancipation of enslaved people in their states. The legislators came up with one excuse after another not to accept President Lincoln’s plan, and “Their intransigence was a sober lesson to Lincoln….[I]t was now blazingly clear that emancipation could never begin as a voluntary program on the state level. If abolition was to come, it must commence in the rebel South and then be extended into the loyal border later on. Which meant that the President must eradicate slavery himself. Yes, Lincoln could no longer avoid the responsibility” (p. 309).
From this moment of realization, President Lincoln proceeded toward the Emancipation Proclamation that freed enslaved people in rebel-controlled portions of the U.S.A., and later the Thirteenth Amendment that abolished slavery throughout the United States of America.
Oates describes the Thirteenth Amendment as “a cherished political goal” for Lincoln. And Oates suggests that Lincoln championed the Thirteenth Amendment so strongly in part because he sensed the potential limitations of the Emancipation Proclamation – an act that President Lincoln had presented, in his capacity as Commander-in-Chief of the Union military forces, as a sort of emergency war measure. “He deeply feared that Congress, the courts, or a later administration might overturn the emancipation proclamation as an illegal use of power. Also, there was the argument that the proclamation affected only those slaves in the rebel South who reached Union lines” (p. 404), not helping enslaved people in Union-loyal border states, or in Confederate-held territory.
Accordingly, Lincoln “set about using his powers of persuasion and patronage to get the amendment through” (p. 405) – a process dramatized in Steven Spielberg’s film Lincoln (2012) – and Lincoln lived to see the official, Constitutional abolition of slavery everywhere in the United States of America pass through the House of Representatives in January of 1865.
With Malice Toward None takes its title from the healing words of the conclusion of President Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address – “With malice toward none, with charity for all – with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right – let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan – to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations” – and conveys well the key moments and themes of Abraham Lincoln’s extraordinary life.
Oates, formerly a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, focused throughout his career on the search for racial justice in America, with biographies of key figures in that struggle: Nat Turner, John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, Clara Barton, Martin Luther King Jr. With his biographies of Nat Turner and John Brown, Oates chronicled the lives of people who went outside the forms of law in order to fight the injustice and cruelty of slavery. When he wrote With Malice Toward None, Oates turned his attention to an American leader who despised slavery just as much as Nat Turner and John Brown did – but who, with his legal training and his enduring belief in the power and the supremacy of the law, fought slavery using legal and Constitutional means.
Oates is willing to engage the ambiguities of Lincoln’s life. When talking about the future president’s career as a lawyer in the Eighth Judicial Circuit of pre-Civil War Illinois, for example, Oates points out that Lincoln “defended both sides in fugitive slave cases, which illustrates the essentially pragmatic approach to the law he and most other attorneys adopted.” He even emphasizes the “cold and brutal logic” through which “attorney Lincoln could set aside his personal convictions – for he claimed to hate slavery – and go all out to win for a client, even if that meant sending a family back into bondage” (p. 101). One senses here the tension between Oates’s admiration for Lincoln’s later anti-slavery work and his disapproval of Lincoln, as a practicing attorney, “working both sides” of the slavery issue.
Sometimes, I felt that Oates, with his strongly held moral beliefs, might have been projecting his own feelings onto Lincoln. When discussing the secession of Virginia, for example, Oates writes that Lincoln was “embittered” by “the lightning speed with which many of Virginia’s Union men had joined the secessionists and voted for disunion….Yes, Lincoln was angry with the people of Virginia. They had allowed ‘this giant insurrection’ to make its nest within their borders, within sight of his office windows where he could see the chimneys and church steeples of Alexandria” (pp. 226-27).
From my own review of Lincoln’s correspondence and other writings of that time, my reading of his emotions at that time is quite different. Lincoln was saddened, to be sure, by Virginia’s decision to secede. He was also surprised; President Lincoln seems to have consistently overestimated the extent of Southern Unionism, particularly in the Upper South. And he was worried about the strategic and tactical problems involved in protecting the Union capital at Washington, D.C., now that a new political entity claiming to be an independent republic was flying its flag and mustering its military forces right across the Potomac River. But “angry”? “Embittered”? I don’t see it that way. Rather, I think that Lincoln at this time bore himself as Horatio describes the ghost of Hamlet’s father – with “a countenance more in sorrow than in anger.”
Oates writes well about strategic and tactical elements of Civil War military history. Considering his career-long commitment to issues of human rights, however, it should be no surprise that where With Malice Toward None really shines is in its depiction of how Lincoln’s stance on the slavery question evolved. At first, Lincoln hoped simply to see the “peculiar institution” restricted to the Southern states in which it was located; later, he saw emancipation as a way to attack and weaken a Confederacy that depended upon enslaved labor to keep its military forces in the field; and still later, he felt able to advocate and push forward complete and permanent abolition of slavery throughout the Union.
A crucial step in that regard, as Oates tells it, came when Lincoln summoned to the White House legislators from the slaveholding “border states” of Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland, and tried to persuade them to accept a plan for compensated emancipation of enslaved people in their states. The legislators came up with one excuse after another not to accept President Lincoln’s plan, and “Their intransigence was a sober lesson to Lincoln….[I]t was now blazingly clear that emancipation could never begin as a voluntary program on the state level. If abolition was to come, it must commence in the rebel South and then be extended into the loyal border later on. Which meant that the President must eradicate slavery himself. Yes, Lincoln could no longer avoid the responsibility” (p. 309).
From this moment of realization, President Lincoln proceeded toward the Emancipation Proclamation that freed enslaved people in rebel-controlled portions of the U.S.A., and later the Thirteenth Amendment that abolished slavery throughout the United States of America.
Oates describes the Thirteenth Amendment as “a cherished political goal” for Lincoln. And Oates suggests that Lincoln championed the Thirteenth Amendment so strongly in part because he sensed the potential limitations of the Emancipation Proclamation – an act that President Lincoln had presented, in his capacity as Commander-in-Chief of the Union military forces, as a sort of emergency war measure. “He deeply feared that Congress, the courts, or a later administration might overturn the emancipation proclamation as an illegal use of power. Also, there was the argument that the proclamation affected only those slaves in the rebel South who reached Union lines” (p. 404), not helping enslaved people in Union-loyal border states, or in Confederate-held territory.
Accordingly, Lincoln “set about using his powers of persuasion and patronage to get the amendment through” (p. 405) – a process dramatized in Steven Spielberg’s film Lincoln (2012) – and Lincoln lived to see the official, Constitutional abolition of slavery everywhere in the United States of America pass through the House of Representatives in January of 1865.
With Malice Toward None takes its title from the healing words of the conclusion of President Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address – “With malice toward none, with charity for all – with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right – let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan – to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations” – and conveys well the key moments and themes of Abraham Lincoln’s extraordinary life.
March 6, 2013
No book has ever made me cry like this- then again, I don't read many biographies. It took me much longer to read than I anticipated. Not because it wasn't interesting- but because it was a long book with a lifetime's worth of detailed information. By the end I had really grown to love Lincoln and when his final days drew near I was deeply moved by his life and sacrifices and what he accomplished under what I can only describe as divine guidance.
Everyone ought to study history. We romanticize and misjudge our ancestors when the truth is people are people no matter the era. And every now and then we get an Abraham Lincoln.
Everyone ought to study history. We romanticize and misjudge our ancestors when the truth is people are people no matter the era. And every now and then we get an Abraham Lincoln.
April 5, 2022
For general readers daunted by the endless shelves of doorstop Lincoln biographies, Stephen B. Oates’ With Malice Towards None is indispensable. Written in 1977, Oates’ book provides a clear, concise (436 pages of text) overview of the Great Emancipator’s life from hardscrabble midwestern youth to successful lawyer, politician, orator and finally president during America’s greatest crisis. Oates (also the biographer of John Brown, Nat Turner and Martin Luther King Jr.) does a solid job reconstructing Lincoln’s early life and the construction of his character: always conscious of his humble beginnings, always striving for something better, he becomes the definition of a Self-Made Man. Much of the book focuses both on Lincoln’s ambition for improvement and, more significantly, his palpable dislike of slavery. Oates doesn’t overlook Lincoln’s racist utterances and equivocations over abolition both before and during his presidency, but makes clear that he despised the “peculiar institution” and wrestled with how best to destroy it. The Civil War gave him an opportunity: as Lincoln navigates the treacherous shoals of political rivals, untrustworthy generals and personal tragedy (his son Willie dies during the war, traumatizing his wife and scarring him), he finally decides on emancipation as the conflict’s only possible resolution. In many ways it’s a standard portrait of Lincoln, breaking little new ground even in its time; Oates was even accused of plagiarizing in a years-long clash with other Lincoln scholars. But not everyone has the time for a massive 800-plus page tome of the Doris Kearns Goodwin/Ronald C. White kind, and as such Oates’ limpid, readable volume still fills a valuable niche.
December 2, 2017
An intimate portrait of Lincoln; if I hadn’t liked Lincoln before reading Stephen Oates’ biography, With Malice Toward None, it surely would have won me over. Not that it’s a glowing eulogy or strays from the factual, but simply that it shows the innumerable obstacles—circumstances, people, events—he overcame during a remarkable life.
In the beginning I grumped a little. It seemed a long, slow lead up of failures, and he failed a LOT, to ‘the interesting stuff’. But it was a necessary preparation for the mission of his whole life.
No matter how many times I read or hear of Lincoln’s assassination I hope and pray—for the country’s sake if not his own—for a different outcome.
Perhaps the bitterness, hatred, prejudice, and vengeance festering in hearts, North and South, after the Civil War, would have proved insurmountable even for Lincoln. Perhaps even Lincoln’s calm, careful, and deliberate weighing of all sides was effective only in wartime and would not have stood him during the years of Reconstruction. Perhaps.*
And yet, I still think he could have made a positive difference as president had he lived. But probably it was God’s mercy. He had given enough. He had gotten us through our worst war ever.
Only after Lincoln’s death, was he truly appreciated. One hundred-fifty years later, his tremendous impact on our country as well as our immense loss is brought home to me.
A hard book to follow up.
*Certainly even his friends turned on him every time he made a decision they didn’t like. But isn’t that human nature? ‘I approve of you, so long as you agree with me?’
=======================================
October 17, 2017: A huge Lincoln fan. I have multiple statues, books, movies and other memorabilia of Lincoln. But this is my first time to read this book ... actually we are listening to it. Discovered there is a sequel to it: Abraham Lincoln: The Man Behind the Myths, which I may read. But no, I will not read, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, even though my friend who also loves Lincoln says I should. I just refuse.
In the beginning I grumped a little. It seemed a long, slow lead up of failures, and he failed a LOT, to ‘the interesting stuff’. But it was a necessary preparation for the mission of his whole life.
No matter how many times I read or hear of Lincoln’s assassination I hope and pray—for the country’s sake if not his own—for a different outcome.
Perhaps the bitterness, hatred, prejudice, and vengeance festering in hearts, North and South, after the Civil War, would have proved insurmountable even for Lincoln. Perhaps even Lincoln’s calm, careful, and deliberate weighing of all sides was effective only in wartime and would not have stood him during the years of Reconstruction. Perhaps.*
And yet, I still think he could have made a positive difference as president had he lived. But probably it was God’s mercy. He had given enough. He had gotten us through our worst war ever.
Only after Lincoln’s death, was he truly appreciated. One hundred-fifty years later, his tremendous impact on our country as well as our immense loss is brought home to me.
A hard book to follow up.
*Certainly even his friends turned on him every time he made a decision they didn’t like. But isn’t that human nature? ‘I approve of you, so long as you agree with me?’
=======================================
October 17, 2017: A huge Lincoln fan. I have multiple statues, books, movies and other memorabilia of Lincoln. But this is my first time to read this book ... actually we are listening to it. Discovered there is a sequel to it: Abraham Lincoln: The Man Behind the Myths, which I may read. But no, I will not read, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, even though my friend who also loves Lincoln says I should. I just refuse.
August 17, 2024
🦅An American Tragedy 🦅
The story is so huge, so all encompassing as it brings together civil war, a Southern nation, the fight against slavery, Lincoln’s assassination - that if it had not been true no one would have believed it. Yet someone would still have had to write a work of fiction and a screenplay for a movie if it were not true. For the world, in its heart and mind, and America in particular, would have demanded such a story be brought to fruition, for it is mythic in its breadth and depth and touches us at our roots.
Consider: In 1860 slavery was firmly and officially entrenched in the United States. In 1865 it was gone, utterly gone. Slavery no longer existed (though Jim Crow would). Black men were bearing arms and fighting in the war. The American world had completely changed.
Oates’ book is essential. No dry text here. Not only does Lincoln seem alive still and someone I could know, I could know all the others in this immortal tragedy, for they all seem like people I might have met.
This will seem especially so for those who have ever been in leadership, for they will know the experience of being rejected by some, supported by some, backstabbed by many, damned no matter what they did. This was Lincoln’s lot.
But many found out in his death what they had never understood before, and that is, the compassionate man and the wise man he had truly been. For Robert E. Lee the tragedy was heartfelt: “The South has lost the best friend it ever had.”
It’s too bad there is no Arthurian legend attached to Lincoln along the lines that he would return to help America in another hour just as grave as his.
The narration for the audiobook version is beyond belief it is so spot on. I feel like I just lived through a cataclysm.
The story is so huge, so all encompassing as it brings together civil war, a Southern nation, the fight against slavery, Lincoln’s assassination - that if it had not been true no one would have believed it. Yet someone would still have had to write a work of fiction and a screenplay for a movie if it were not true. For the world, in its heart and mind, and America in particular, would have demanded such a story be brought to fruition, for it is mythic in its breadth and depth and touches us at our roots.
Consider: In 1860 slavery was firmly and officially entrenched in the United States. In 1865 it was gone, utterly gone. Slavery no longer existed (though Jim Crow would). Black men were bearing arms and fighting in the war. The American world had completely changed.
Oates’ book is essential. No dry text here. Not only does Lincoln seem alive still and someone I could know, I could know all the others in this immortal tragedy, for they all seem like people I might have met.
This will seem especially so for those who have ever been in leadership, for they will know the experience of being rejected by some, supported by some, backstabbed by many, damned no matter what they did. This was Lincoln’s lot.
But many found out in his death what they had never understood before, and that is, the compassionate man and the wise man he had truly been. For Robert E. Lee the tragedy was heartfelt: “The South has lost the best friend it ever had.”
It’s too bad there is no Arthurian legend attached to Lincoln along the lines that he would return to help America in another hour just as grave as his.
The narration for the audiobook version is beyond belief it is so spot on. I feel like I just lived through a cataclysm.
April 5, 2014
http://bestpresidentialbios.com/2014/...
“With Malice Toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln” is Stephen Oates���s 1977 classic biography of our sixteenth president. Oates is an author, historian and former professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is the author of sixteen books, many of which are focused on important people and issues relating to the Civil War.
Oates’s biography was the first comprehensive treatment of Lincoln in nearly two decades. Critically hailed, it quickly gained a reputation as “the” standard Lincoln biography, replacing Benjamin Thomas’s 1952 biography in that role. Not until David Herbert Donald’s universally acclaimed “Lincoln” was published in 1995 did Oates’s biography relinquish its prominence.
Thirteen years after its publication, Oates became embroiled in a plagiarism controversy when a number of “similarities” between Oates’s biography and Benjamin Thomas’s biography were discovered. The ensuing debate involved several respected historians and authors (including five Pulitzer Prize winners) and the American Historical Association. In Oates’s view he was cleared by the AHA, but in the eyes of many (including Lincoln historian Michael Burlingame) the evidence is against Oates is overwhelming. Here is Oates’s perspective on the controversy as well as that of Burlingame.
Though not as beloved as it was for the two decades following its publication, “With Malice Toward None” remains a popular choice for readers. At just over 400 pages, it is by far the shortest of the “classic” Lincoln biographies. Also, Oates’s style of writing is less formal than that of other Lincoln biographers, making for a relatively easy reading experience.
The book’s brevity comes at a cost, however, as much of the interesting color and detail included in longer biographies is missing here. Its ”informality” also proves to be a double-edged sword. Oates wavers between a “traditional” style of writing and one that is surprisingly colloquial. The frequent moments of vernacular language, while easy to digest, seem more designed for a “books-on-tape” narration rather than serious reading.
In addition, while the author often quotes Lincoln, he also frequently paraphrases what Lincoln “may” have said on some occasion…but without using an actual quote (presumably because none exists). This “improvisation,” which I’ve never before seen in a presidential biography, assists in the flow of the story but is otherwise distracting.
As a general matter, Oates’s text is quite colorful and expressive. His introduction of Mary Todd (Lincoln) to the reader may be the best I’ve read. His description of the evening of Lincoln’s assassination is the most comprehensive I’ve seen (though I’ve not yet read any of the Lincoln “assassination stories.”) Oates’s coverage of the Republican nominating convention, and the political jockeying which preceded it, is fascinating…though too concise. But the book is at its best during the presidential campaign of 1860 and in the months after Lincoln’s election.
Not every important topic receives equally expert treatment. Some of Lincoln’s most important personal relationships are never fully explored (his parents and his first serious girlfriend, for example) and Oates’s description of the pivotal Lincoln-Douglas debates was the least interesting of any I’ve read. And in the end, the author takes almost no opportunity to provide insightful analysis of Lincoln’s actions or to explore his legacy. Instead, like many other biographies of this president, this book ends disappointingly quickly following Lincoln’s assassination.
Overall, Stephen Oates’s “With Malice Toward None” is a solid, but not outstanding, biography of Abraham Lincoln. While there is much to praise about this book (including its comprehensive but efficient coverage of Lincoln’s life and its fluidity compared to many other biographies) it is far from perfect. Given the large number of options for Lincoln enthusiasts, Oates’s biography will appeal primarily to readers eager for a comprehensive biography of Lincoln but who lack the time required the navigate the newer six-to-eight-hundred page biographies which are enormously popular.
Overall rating: 3¾ stars
“With Malice Toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln” is Stephen Oates���s 1977 classic biography of our sixteenth president. Oates is an author, historian and former professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is the author of sixteen books, many of which are focused on important people and issues relating to the Civil War.
Oates’s biography was the first comprehensive treatment of Lincoln in nearly two decades. Critically hailed, it quickly gained a reputation as “the” standard Lincoln biography, replacing Benjamin Thomas’s 1952 biography in that role. Not until David Herbert Donald’s universally acclaimed “Lincoln” was published in 1995 did Oates’s biography relinquish its prominence.
Thirteen years after its publication, Oates became embroiled in a plagiarism controversy when a number of “similarities” between Oates’s biography and Benjamin Thomas’s biography were discovered. The ensuing debate involved several respected historians and authors (including five Pulitzer Prize winners) and the American Historical Association. In Oates’s view he was cleared by the AHA, but in the eyes of many (including Lincoln historian Michael Burlingame) the evidence is against Oates is overwhelming. Here is Oates’s perspective on the controversy as well as that of Burlingame.
Though not as beloved as it was for the two decades following its publication, “With Malice Toward None” remains a popular choice for readers. At just over 400 pages, it is by far the shortest of the “classic” Lincoln biographies. Also, Oates’s style of writing is less formal than that of other Lincoln biographers, making for a relatively easy reading experience.
The book’s brevity comes at a cost, however, as much of the interesting color and detail included in longer biographies is missing here. Its ”informality” also proves to be a double-edged sword. Oates wavers between a “traditional” style of writing and one that is surprisingly colloquial. The frequent moments of vernacular language, while easy to digest, seem more designed for a “books-on-tape” narration rather than serious reading.
In addition, while the author often quotes Lincoln, he also frequently paraphrases what Lincoln “may” have said on some occasion…but without using an actual quote (presumably because none exists). This “improvisation,” which I’ve never before seen in a presidential biography, assists in the flow of the story but is otherwise distracting.
As a general matter, Oates’s text is quite colorful and expressive. His introduction of Mary Todd (Lincoln) to the reader may be the best I’ve read. His description of the evening of Lincoln’s assassination is the most comprehensive I’ve seen (though I’ve not yet read any of the Lincoln “assassination stories.”) Oates’s coverage of the Republican nominating convention, and the political jockeying which preceded it, is fascinating…though too concise. But the book is at its best during the presidential campaign of 1860 and in the months after Lincoln’s election.
Not every important topic receives equally expert treatment. Some of Lincoln’s most important personal relationships are never fully explored (his parents and his first serious girlfriend, for example) and Oates’s description of the pivotal Lincoln-Douglas debates was the least interesting of any I’ve read. And in the end, the author takes almost no opportunity to provide insightful analysis of Lincoln’s actions or to explore his legacy. Instead, like many other biographies of this president, this book ends disappointingly quickly following Lincoln’s assassination.
Overall, Stephen Oates’s “With Malice Toward None” is a solid, but not outstanding, biography of Abraham Lincoln. While there is much to praise about this book (including its comprehensive but efficient coverage of Lincoln’s life and its fluidity compared to many other biographies) it is far from perfect. Given the large number of options for Lincoln enthusiasts, Oates’s biography will appeal primarily to readers eager for a comprehensive biography of Lincoln but who lack the time required the navigate the newer six-to-eight-hundred page biographies which are enormously popular.
Overall rating: 3¾ stars
September 29, 2022
I have read a half dozen full or partial biographies on Lincoln and while well written I would call this the darkest of the lot. To be sure there is no hero worship. Here are some pros and cons.
Pros:
1. The narrative moves quickly.
2. The author Oates stays on task with Lincoln as the subject and avoids the tangents especially common with other authors when discussing Lincoln and the Civil War.
3. The coverage of Lincoln's last day is touching and succinct and the best version of his final day that I have read.
4. There is an unexpected freshness to the read.
Cons:
1. It is necessary to have read other biographies because this book is a single volume bio of only 500 pages.
2. Lincoln's legislative career is barely mentioned.
3. There are no additional pages dedicated to the most historical moments like the Gettysburg address.
4. Too much focus on Lincoln's depression.
4 stars. Solid read but I did not enjoy it as much as the Donald, Goodwin or Sandburg Lincoln bios.
Pros:
1. The narrative moves quickly.
2. The author Oates stays on task with Lincoln as the subject and avoids the tangents especially common with other authors when discussing Lincoln and the Civil War.
3. The coverage of Lincoln's last day is touching and succinct and the best version of his final day that I have read.
4. There is an unexpected freshness to the read.
Cons:
1. It is necessary to have read other biographies because this book is a single volume bio of only 500 pages.
2. Lincoln's legislative career is barely mentioned.
3. There are no additional pages dedicated to the most historical moments like the Gettysburg address.
4. Too much focus on Lincoln's depression.
4 stars. Solid read but I did not enjoy it as much as the Donald, Goodwin or Sandburg Lincoln bios.
March 24, 2024
This was an excellent book to get to know Lincoln as a person, not a carved granite Olympian figure in the nation’s capital. An engaging account, I thoroughly enjoyed it= 5 Stars.
Life for Lincoln was never easy, he came from rural America-an area now classified by the left as a threat to the nation. He did not have time for school or book-learning:
He was a hard worker, eventually his skill with the axe would be used in his political campaign. Lincoln got his story-telling expertise from his father. He found any opportunity to expand his education, self-taught when necessary:
Lincoln came from a tough background. What would it be like to hear Lincoln speaking in his sharp, high-pitched voice?
Welcome to Illinois! His eventual home state was no easy place to live in:
Lincoln’s only military experience was in the Black Hawk War. He was elected captain of his militia unit and had exposure to the results of combat without actually being in combat (except against mosquitos):
Lincoln was not a successful businessman. He partnered with a known alcoholic in a general store and made other investments. Lincoln liked to talk politics and tell stories rather than run the store. His partner preferred to drink. The store fails and the debts pile up. The moniker of Honest Abe is based on the aftermath:
The US had a terrible depression in 1837 that took three years to recover from. Lincoln and Douglas began their series of debates that would eventually see Lincoln in the White House. He first gains national prominence with his arguments about banks and finance:
That volcano has been erupting ever since…
https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/histor...
Lincoln carefully comes to the anti-slavery side, yet he is not an abolitionist. He and the nascent Republican party are not for abolishing slavery yet-they are against the extension of slavery into Kansas, Nebraska and elsewhere. The “peculiar” institution is coming under criticism. He points out the hypocrisy of the pro-slavery Democrats:
Before the Civil War and up to January 1863, Lincoln and the Republicans do not call for the end of slavery, only that it not be extended. Various schemes to pay slaveholders/states to free their slaves are surfaced. While slavery is the cause of the war, many felt the Constitution required them to accept it in the South. Lincoln talks to his friend:
You can’t be for equality and accept slavery. Lincoln details the decline that will result:
There are some many great passages about Lincoln and his heroic, yet tragic life. Oates recounts his improbable rise to the Presidency, despite being kept off the election ballot in 10 southern states (a tactic the Democrats still employ 164 years later). Lincoln was an ambitious politician. His suffering during the Civil War is daunting, yet he perseveres. He was such an amazing figure and was heaven-sent for the times.
Life for Lincoln was never easy, he came from rural America-an area now classified by the left as a threat to the nation. He did not have time for school or book-learning:
He was a hard worker, eventually his skill with the axe would be used in his political campaign. Lincoln got his story-telling expertise from his father. He found any opportunity to expand his education, self-taught when necessary:
Lincoln came from a tough background. What would it be like to hear Lincoln speaking in his sharp, high-pitched voice?
Welcome to Illinois! His eventual home state was no easy place to live in:
Lincoln’s only military experience was in the Black Hawk War. He was elected captain of his militia unit and had exposure to the results of combat without actually being in combat (except against mosquitos):
Lincoln was not a successful businessman. He partnered with a known alcoholic in a general store and made other investments. Lincoln liked to talk politics and tell stories rather than run the store. His partner preferred to drink. The store fails and the debts pile up. The moniker of Honest Abe is based on the aftermath:
The US had a terrible depression in 1837 that took three years to recover from. Lincoln and Douglas began their series of debates that would eventually see Lincoln in the White House. He first gains national prominence with his arguments about banks and finance:
That volcano has been erupting ever since…
https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/histor...
Lincoln carefully comes to the anti-slavery side, yet he is not an abolitionist. He and the nascent Republican party are not for abolishing slavery yet-they are against the extension of slavery into Kansas, Nebraska and elsewhere. The “peculiar” institution is coming under criticism. He points out the hypocrisy of the pro-slavery Democrats:
Before the Civil War and up to January 1863, Lincoln and the Republicans do not call for the end of slavery, only that it not be extended. Various schemes to pay slaveholders/states to free their slaves are surfaced. While slavery is the cause of the war, many felt the Constitution required them to accept it in the South. Lincoln talks to his friend:
You can’t be for equality and accept slavery. Lincoln details the decline that will result:
There are some many great passages about Lincoln and his heroic, yet tragic life. Oates recounts his improbable rise to the Presidency, despite being kept off the election ballot in 10 southern states (a tactic the Democrats still employ 164 years later). Lincoln was an ambitious politician. His suffering during the Civil War is daunting, yet he perseveres. He was such an amazing figure and was heaven-sent for the times.
August 15, 2016
What a dude! It wasn't just that he did so much, but he stayed so calm while doing it.
This is a must read!
This is a must read!
February 12, 2013
My favorite Lincoln biography. Take this with a grain of salt. You know how this works when you critically assess another reader's statements - what often comes out is that it is very likely the reader's only foray into said biographies. :> Not quite true for me, I recently finished "Lincoln and Whitman: parallel lives in Civil War Washington". Another excellent read, with a finale that's hard to beat in the genre. Off to "Team of Rivals" we go . . .
April 23, 2022
Stephen B. Oates' biography of Abraham Lincoln is a great reason why we should be getting our history from substantial, well-researched works rather than memes and snappy internet one-liners. After wading through various mythologies of Lincoln, the Lost Cause of the South, and the Civil War, I decided the only way to cut through the fog was to go to something more authoritative.
The result was a de-mythologizing of Lincoln that actually made me respect him more. Lincoln grappled with the most divisive time and the most divisive issue in American history without resorting to hate.
He took so much political flak for the stand he took against slavery, a stance that cost him dearly throughout his life. He took flak from radical abolitionists for not taking a firmer stance and for extending too much grace to slave states which remained in the Union. He still takes flak today for out-of-context quotes and views on race which were thoroughly the product of his time.
The reality is that Lincoln walked a political knife-edge between North and South, between slave states and free states, between total war and surrender, between dictatorship and liberty, between conscience and compromise.
Before I read this book, I believed Lincoln was our greatest president because I was told he was. After reading this book, I can see why he was our greatest president.
The result was a de-mythologizing of Lincoln that actually made me respect him more. Lincoln grappled with the most divisive time and the most divisive issue in American history without resorting to hate.
He took so much political flak for the stand he took against slavery, a stance that cost him dearly throughout his life. He took flak from radical abolitionists for not taking a firmer stance and for extending too much grace to slave states which remained in the Union. He still takes flak today for out-of-context quotes and views on race which were thoroughly the product of his time.
The reality is that Lincoln walked a political knife-edge between North and South, between slave states and free states, between total war and surrender, between dictatorship and liberty, between conscience and compromise.
Before I read this book, I believed Lincoln was our greatest president because I was told he was. After reading this book, I can see why he was our greatest president.
February 17, 2013
I was looking for a good, comprehensive biography of Abraham Lincoln's life. Mission accomplished.
Of course, you will learn all about Lincoln's political life, but you also get a sense of who he was as a person. A son, a friend, a father, a husband, a community member. Looking back, we think of Lincoln as a strong, intelligent man of leadership. And he was, but it took him a while to get there. He has his problems and weaknesses just like any other human being.
A reader of this book will see how Lincoln had to fight for everything he earned. He worked his way to the top of American political life, and once he reached the top, he found his work had only just begun. This imperfect, somewhat inexperienced man faced managing a war, dealing with splits between Democrats and Republicans and splits within the Republican party, figuring out how to free slaves and integrate them into a white society that did not want them, and above all trying to save the Union. Why was Lincoln a great man? Because he actually managed to do all of the above, or at least set things on the right path. No other President in American history faced such a great burden.
Although this book isn't exactly a page-turner, it is very easy to follow and provides a very good overview of Lincoln's life, both personal and professional. If you want to have a good foundation for learning about the great Abraham Lincoln, this is an ideal place to begin.
Of course, you will learn all about Lincoln's political life, but you also get a sense of who he was as a person. A son, a friend, a father, a husband, a community member. Looking back, we think of Lincoln as a strong, intelligent man of leadership. And he was, but it took him a while to get there. He has his problems and weaknesses just like any other human being.
A reader of this book will see how Lincoln had to fight for everything he earned. He worked his way to the top of American political life, and once he reached the top, he found his work had only just begun. This imperfect, somewhat inexperienced man faced managing a war, dealing with splits between Democrats and Republicans and splits within the Republican party, figuring out how to free slaves and integrate them into a white society that did not want them, and above all trying to save the Union. Why was Lincoln a great man? Because he actually managed to do all of the above, or at least set things on the right path. No other President in American history faced such a great burden.
Although this book isn't exactly a page-turner, it is very easy to follow and provides a very good overview of Lincoln's life, both personal and professional. If you want to have a good foundation for learning about the great Abraham Lincoln, this is an ideal place to begin.
July 6, 2024
Oates is a decent writer who ostensibly does not shy away from discussing Lincoln's weaknesses. Yet, are these really weaknesses? His depression, distance from others, all of it still fits a particular Lincoln myth, if diverting somewhat more from the Father Abraham trope, or what was worse the image of the rail-splitting bumpkin. Instead, we get here Lincoln as a gloomy politician who had high ideals but balanced them with pragmatism.
What you get here is a fair, but still shallow look at the man. And perhaps, for all that is written on him, we are stuck with shallow books. Lincoln never truly divulged his heart, and the timing of his death insured he would become the Jesus Christ of American history. To make matters worse, his harshest critics often write books that border on buffoonery or are in the more serious (and for some darker) realm of reactionary thought. Either way, Lincoln, for all the drama of his life, is a hard subject for a biographer to approach, for chances are they did not "discover" the topic. They instead grew up with a version of Lincoln, and those preconceived notions will tell in the narrative. Oates did better than most at getting out of that trap, but he did not go far enough.
What you get here is a fair, but still shallow look at the man. And perhaps, for all that is written on him, we are stuck with shallow books. Lincoln never truly divulged his heart, and the timing of his death insured he would become the Jesus Christ of American history. To make matters worse, his harshest critics often write books that border on buffoonery or are in the more serious (and for some darker) realm of reactionary thought. Either way, Lincoln, for all the drama of his life, is a hard subject for a biographer to approach, for chances are they did not "discover" the topic. They instead grew up with a version of Lincoln, and those preconceived notions will tell in the narrative. Oates did better than most at getting out of that trap, but he did not go far enough.
July 9, 2013
Even though I knew how this story would end, this book still had me on the edge of my seat! Lincoln is one of my heroes, and this is the only biography of his that I actually enjoyed. It wasn't as dry as most others, and read like a novel. I loved seeing him in the light of a real human, from his humble upbringing, through trial after trial, and failure after failure. He was both a spiritual and a political giant, and was no doubt divinely appointed for his time as President. I admire how benevolent he was, even to those who hated him, used him, and betrayed him. He stood for what he knew to be right, even in the fiercest opposition. I love Harriet Beecher Stowe's description of him: "... a man of peculiar strengths, not a strong, aggressive individual so much as a passive one with the durability of an iron cable, swaying back and forth in the tempest of politics, yet tenacious in carrying his 'great end.'" I also admire how his word was like an unbreakable contract that couldn't be broken. What a different world this would be if we could count on every politician to be as honest and trustworthy.....
August 13, 2013
I loved this book! I learned about the Big stuff regarding Lincoln's life in grade school but I have never really understood the smaller details associated with his life. This is a fantastic history book. I was shocked that his presidency was under constant criticism...right up to the point of his assassination. It was also interesting to read about the prominent people of the day and the absolute, bigoted comments they made concerning equality of all men. If this book piques your interest in the Civil War, check out "Killer Angels" which is THE book about the battle of Gettysburg. Abraham Lincoln truly was a national hero!
September 26, 2016
“With Malice Toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln” by Stephen B. Oates was a wonderful biography of our 16th president. What I liked especially about it was its balance. It was not chiefly a retelling of the Civil War battles, but rather a comprehensive one-volume accounting of Abraham Lincoln’s life. You are past page 200 before Lincoln is elected to his first Term, so there is a lot of material on his early life and work in politics.
After reviewing his first years in Kentucky/Indiana/Illinois, the narrative delves into how Lincoln got interested in law, his initial efforts in political office, and then his part in the segue of Whigs into Republicans. Oates gives the reader a sense of the times, especially concerning the country’s hardening stance on slavery…many in the North originally thought it was tolerable if kept in the South where it would slowly die of its own weight, but did not want it to extend into new territories which would de facto nationalize it.
We see how even Lincoln’s views on slavery crystallized over the years…how early on he was more a fan of gradual abolition followed by colonization to places like Haiti and Liberia. To make it a workable solution, he supposed the North must compensate the South for the loss of its ‘property’ should colonization occur. All of this, of course, matured into a belief that we had to stop it here and now or it would permanently divide the country.
The narrative is especially strong at giving us a feel for the interplay between Lincoln and a whole cast of characters he faced in his life: Edwin Stanton, Charles Sumner, William Herndon, Ulysses Grant, William Sherman, George McClellan, James Buchanan, Stephan Douglas, Frederick Douglass, Salmon Chase, John Calhoun, and on and on.
Our system of government is interesting for many reasons, few more so than how flexible it is. In Oates’ book you are reminded how Democrats fought to continue slavery in the south and extend it into the Kansas-Nebraska territory, while Republicans fought against it. Jump forward a hundred years and it would be the Democrats who brought us a measure of civil rights. All very interesting, as is this book. While there has been a lot more written on Lincoln in the intervening years, Oates’ 1977 book stands up to the competition. Highly recommended.
After reviewing his first years in Kentucky/Indiana/Illinois, the narrative delves into how Lincoln got interested in law, his initial efforts in political office, and then his part in the segue of Whigs into Republicans. Oates gives the reader a sense of the times, especially concerning the country’s hardening stance on slavery…many in the North originally thought it was tolerable if kept in the South where it would slowly die of its own weight, but did not want it to extend into new territories which would de facto nationalize it.
We see how even Lincoln’s views on slavery crystallized over the years…how early on he was more a fan of gradual abolition followed by colonization to places like Haiti and Liberia. To make it a workable solution, he supposed the North must compensate the South for the loss of its ‘property’ should colonization occur. All of this, of course, matured into a belief that we had to stop it here and now or it would permanently divide the country.
The narrative is especially strong at giving us a feel for the interplay between Lincoln and a whole cast of characters he faced in his life: Edwin Stanton, Charles Sumner, William Herndon, Ulysses Grant, William Sherman, George McClellan, James Buchanan, Stephan Douglas, Frederick Douglass, Salmon Chase, John Calhoun, and on and on.
Our system of government is interesting for many reasons, few more so than how flexible it is. In Oates’ book you are reminded how Democrats fought to continue slavery in the south and extend it into the Kansas-Nebraska territory, while Republicans fought against it. Jump forward a hundred years and it would be the Democrats who brought us a measure of civil rights. All very interesting, as is this book. While there has been a lot more written on Lincoln in the intervening years, Oates’ 1977 book stands up to the competition. Highly recommended.
July 29, 2014
Quite old-fashioned, and that's not a bad thing. Oates is a cheerful sort of fellow, I think. He's a history professor at UMass Amherst and I imagine his lectures are fun, lighthearted things, full of jokes and anecdotes and cheesy cartoon video clips. He writes in that style, in prose full of interjections and opinions, free of footnotes but rich in personality. His levity can't be excused as shallowness, though, as he gives quite the rundown, especially on the political side.
Oates's focus is the solitary hero: Lincoln as president, as commander-in-chief (there's tons of detail on the war effort and the relations with his generals). This is no "Team of Rivals"; Oates's Lincoln acts willfully, authoritatively, and often alone. Not a novel perspective, but a valid one.
Where this biography makes it's unique contribution is portraying Lincoln as a man. There are scenes of near-classic humanity in the deaths of his son, in his agonizing over the war, in his bearing the crushing stress of his duty. Lincoln occupies in this narrative just the right spot on the stage: front and center, clearly the hero, not overshadowing the supporting cast of Seward, Sumner, Mary Lincoln, but truly the focus of some first-quality psychoanalysis. This is the most personal Lincoln biography I've yet read. His sadness, his inner conflict, his temper-- this is a truly human Lincoln.
This focus leads to some truly good writing, even if it tends to occasional adulation, and it effectively drives the bulky narrative, which meanders at times in its pursuit of comprehensiveness, and offers, older as it is, fewer original insights than some other studies.
A bit generic, a bit too standard.
Still, a totally worthwhile,and what is more, a perfectly enjoyable book.
Oates's focus is the solitary hero: Lincoln as president, as commander-in-chief (there's tons of detail on the war effort and the relations with his generals). This is no "Team of Rivals"; Oates's Lincoln acts willfully, authoritatively, and often alone. Not a novel perspective, but a valid one.
Where this biography makes it's unique contribution is portraying Lincoln as a man. There are scenes of near-classic humanity in the deaths of his son, in his agonizing over the war, in his bearing the crushing stress of his duty. Lincoln occupies in this narrative just the right spot on the stage: front and center, clearly the hero, not overshadowing the supporting cast of Seward, Sumner, Mary Lincoln, but truly the focus of some first-quality psychoanalysis. This is the most personal Lincoln biography I've yet read. His sadness, his inner conflict, his temper-- this is a truly human Lincoln.
This focus leads to some truly good writing, even if it tends to occasional adulation, and it effectively drives the bulky narrative, which meanders at times in its pursuit of comprehensiveness, and offers, older as it is, fewer original insights than some other studies.
A bit generic, a bit too standard.
Still, a totally worthwhile,and what is more, a perfectly enjoyable book.
September 1, 2021
Upon seeing Stephen B. Oates’ obit in Sunday’s Times, I remembered reading this bio years ago and loving it. Oates's Lincoln was alive, strong, funny, ambitious, tormented, depressed, flawed, sad and wise. He was a man, not a saint. It’s high time I read more by this master historian, perhaps starting with his much-lauded book on Martin Luther King Jr. RIP, Mr. Oates.
March 28, 2018
Extremely well done biography on Abraham Lincoln!
Would recommend to everyone.
Recommended to me by David
I learned a lot from this book.
A blessing from God that this was the man in leadership during one of the most tragic times in America's history.
Would recommend to everyone.
Recommended to me by David
I learned a lot from this book.
A blessing from God that this was the man in leadership during one of the most tragic times in America's history.
November 27, 2020
The first half, while it seemed to drag on forever, had more new information in it than the second half. Also the ending was much too abrupt. I would have liked some reflection on Lincoln's legacy, or the transition after his death. I don't think I'll read more by this author, and I would recommend A Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin instead.
July 30, 2024
"As always, the rival propaganda mills labored at white heat..."
Reading this in a U.S. election year, as I've just done (2024), it's hard not to be impressed how demagoguery is certainly nothing new. I mean, we think America is politically polarized today and that we have some pretty ridiculous officeholders who somehow continue being actually elected to positions of power! Well, no doubt, we are and we do, but as this bio does a good job of reminding us, we as a country have, in some fundamental ways, had it way worse. It also reminds us how historically lucky we were to have Lincoln when and where he was in the nation's evolution.
Oates doesn't shy away from detailing Lincoln's rookie mistakes as president, but he also well documents the extraordinary odds Lincoln had to beat to get where he was, as well as the near constant barrage of political backstabbing he had to contend with from people clearly on the wrong side of history. ("In this confusing conflict, it was sometimes difficult indeed to tell who your friends were.") It's almost dumbfounding to read of the Union generals' military ineptitude and belligerent inertness that was prevalent during most of the Civil War's first three years, but it does help explain why the war lasted as long as it did--and, meanwhile, makes Lincoln's achievements while in office all the more monumental.
Even though this book initially appears dense, Oates' prose and expertise on the key events and players of the era, covering all 56 years of Lincoln's too-short life, ultimately somehow make this volume also seem too short of a read. I was left wishing there had been more for him to report.
First line:
"Outside of Illinois, people knew little about him."
February 17, 2019
One gains a much greater appreciation A. Lincoln:
The legitimate object of government for Lincoln was "to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they can not by individual effort, or do so well, for themselves."
Lincoln "made simplicity and candor a mask of deep feelings carefully concealed."
"Resolve to be honest at all events, and if in your own judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer."
The best way to avoid disaster, Lincoln insisted, was through wisdom and forbearance.
"I happen temporarily to occupy this big White House. I am living witness that any of your children may look to come here as my father's child has. It is in order that each of you may have through this free government which we have enjoyed, an open field and fair chance for your industry, enterprise and intelligence; that you may all have equal privileges in the race of life, with all its desirable human aspirations. It is for this the struggle should be maintained, that we may not lose our birthright."
Lincoln believed that people were not chained to the conditions of their birth and that they should be able to better themselves in their lives through the fruits of their own talents and hard work.
Great goals for individuals and governments.
The legitimate object of government for Lincoln was "to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they can not by individual effort, or do so well, for themselves."
Lincoln "made simplicity and candor a mask of deep feelings carefully concealed."
"Resolve to be honest at all events, and if in your own judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer."
The best way to avoid disaster, Lincoln insisted, was through wisdom and forbearance.
"I happen temporarily to occupy this big White House. I am living witness that any of your children may look to come here as my father's child has. It is in order that each of you may have through this free government which we have enjoyed, an open field and fair chance for your industry, enterprise and intelligence; that you may all have equal privileges in the race of life, with all its desirable human aspirations. It is for this the struggle should be maintained, that we may not lose our birthright."
Lincoln believed that people were not chained to the conditions of their birth and that they should be able to better themselves in their lives through the fruits of their own talents and hard work.
Great goals for individuals and governments.
July 31, 2025
Oates makes the details about Lincoln’s life and presidency a page turner. While this seems like a general biography without a strong thesis, the author does focus most on his relationships with his colleagues, cabinet members, generals, and his family members.
While I have always loved Lincoln, this book gave him space to be human. His administration was messy, he had never been in any executive role before the presidency. He kept generals and cabinet members in place even when they didn’t deserve it and wanted to see the best in people.
On the other hand, one of his greatest strengths was his ability to not hold a grudge. He could let go of personal hurts and attacks and keep people around for their experience and expertise.
He was absolutely committed to the American cause of freedom and self-governance. And he knew that to give everyone the best chance at realizing that freedom, America had to be strong and unified, no matter the cost.
The last chapter is the saddest. Political allies and rivals alike mourned his death, despite publicly criticizing him earlier that day or week. His national impact on the American citizenry was lasting and his personal impact on those he met was deep.
While I have always loved Lincoln, this book gave him space to be human. His administration was messy, he had never been in any executive role before the presidency. He kept generals and cabinet members in place even when they didn’t deserve it and wanted to see the best in people.
On the other hand, one of his greatest strengths was his ability to not hold a grudge. He could let go of personal hurts and attacks and keep people around for their experience and expertise.
He was absolutely committed to the American cause of freedom and self-governance. And he knew that to give everyone the best chance at realizing that freedom, America had to be strong and unified, no matter the cost.
The last chapter is the saddest. Political allies and rivals alike mourned his death, despite publicly criticizing him earlier that day or week. His national impact on the American citizenry was lasting and his personal impact on those he met was deep.
December 15, 2025
I’ve long wanted to read a Lincoln biography, but with so many in print, how does one choose? Well, having previously read a shorter book about Lincoln by Stephen Oates, I felt safe choosing this one. But I was also attracted to the title of this book. I appreciate the phrase Oates chose for the title to sum up the life of Abraham Lincoln. The political world seemed as ruthless and as spiteful then as it seems now, but Lincoln was a different sort of politician. He was once marketed in a campaign as “Honest Abe,” but it seems to me he could’ve also been known as “a man in whom there is no guile.” He was such a good-hearted man, and though Oates makes it clear he had flaws, it was Lincoln’s willingness to look past the flaws of both friends and foes alike, and see good in them, that most impressed me about him. In fact, by the end of the book, I felt befriended by him myself, leaving me wiping tears away at the book’s conclusion. This was a highly readable book and a very rewarding account of the life of a man who is worth remembering.
August 31, 2007
Listened to audiobook from Recorded Books.
Narrated By: Nelson Runger
The Los Angeles Times hails this biography as the finest ever written. With an outstanding blend of brilliant scholarship and entertaining style, Professor Stephen B. Oates brings us closer than ever before to knowing the real Abraham Lincoln. Here is Lincoln as he really was—a gentle, determined man obsessed with death yet filled with life, troubled with bouts of melancholy yet blessed with a witty nature, and gifted with a talent for literary expression. With Malice Toward None reads like an enthralling novel while piecing together the richest, fullest portrait of Lincoln in existence.
Narrated By: Nelson Runger
The Los Angeles Times hails this biography as the finest ever written. With an outstanding blend of brilliant scholarship and entertaining style, Professor Stephen B. Oates brings us closer than ever before to knowing the real Abraham Lincoln. Here is Lincoln as he really was—a gentle, determined man obsessed with death yet filled with life, troubled with bouts of melancholy yet blessed with a witty nature, and gifted with a talent for literary expression. With Malice Toward None reads like an enthralling novel while piecing together the richest, fullest portrait of Lincoln in existence.
September 4, 2009
Oates clearly holds Lincoln in adulation. I read the entire book wondering what human qualities and shortcomings might have been left out of glossed over. This read more like a pro - lincoln debate presentation. i'd like to hear the con viewpoint so i can make my own descision. again, great subject matter though and the arguments against the legality of secession WERE compelling and made me really re-think my position. (i didn't chionge it though)
He dies at the end...
He dies at the end...
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 5, 2019
There are many excellent biographies of Abraham Lincoln but I consider this one the best. The man that Oates writes about seems closer to Lincoln as I understand him, a master politician who still committed himself (if cautiously) to noble goals for the United States. To read this book is to understand what motivated Lincoln beyond his own considerable ambitions.
August 17, 2012
This text may seem tedious in regard to the details of Lincoln's early life. I found later that these details aided in my understanding of Lincoln's decisions in office. At the conclusion of the text, I felt I knew Lincoln personally and may have even shed a tear reading about his death:)
December 3, 2025
Parts of it are thought to be plagiarized. Also. boring.
May 15, 2019
If not pulling the USA through its greatest domestic crisis is reason enough to have Abraham Lincoln
top historical polls year after year as our country's greatest president than I offer another. This most
melancholy of men who deflected a lot of criticism with humor was also a man who managed to
articulate issues right down to their moral imperative. It's the reason I think that Lincoln endures
to this day and into the future for countless generations.
He had no political office at the time the new Republican party chose its second nominee for president
in 1860. The split of the Democrats in two tickets all but guaranteed his election in 1860 with barely
a vote in the would be rebel states where his party wasn't on the ballot in several. The mere election
to the presidency of a man not committed to maintaining the south's 'particular institution' of
slavery was enough to guarantee a Civil War which we had been postponing for years.
When he was the presumptive nominee of the GOP in 1858 and had that series of debates with
Stephen Douglas, Lincoln had not held office for years. His experience consisted of several terms
in the Illinois legislature and one term in Congress 1847-1849. All his rivals for that nomination
had more experience in office. None had his gift for eloquence.
He was a strange combination of melancholy and humor, the humor deflected the melancholy and
it was his face to the world. He had a rare gift of not holding grudges. His Secretary of War Edwin
M. Stanton also an attorney had worked with him on a case years before and treated him shabbily.
Not many would have put him in the Cabinet and gain his respect as well. As he said the country
was in crisis and personal grudges just had to be laid aside and not entertained.
Not many would have put a number of his rivals in his cabinet such as William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase and Edward Bates. All of these were put in nomination at the 1860 Republican Convention. That aspect of Lincoln's presidency is covered in Doris Kearns Goodwin book Team Of
Rivals, but Stephen B. Oates discusses it at length. Seward and Bates grew to respect their chief,
Chase did his job but was a chronic schemer as well and always thought he should have been where
Lincoln was.
Lincoln and his many generals has also had whole studies done by military historians, lay and professional. He tried one after another until he found his man in Ulysses S. Grant. Grant in his
way was as laconic as Lincoln. He also offered no excuses when he blundered as in the disaster
at Cold Harbor. It was a refreshing contrast to who he was dealing with before and he kept him on
until the surrender at Appomattox. William T. Sherman, Phillip H. Sheridan, and George Thomas
also rose to the fore, these four brought eventual Union victory.
Lincoln was married to Mary Todd Lincoln and our view of her is colored in many ways by the
years of her widowhood. She broke tradition and upset her southern family by marrying a man who seemed shiftless and held views antithetical to their's. Oates says their's was a happy marriage enduring despite the death of two of her four sons. Unlike her husband, that woman excelled at nursing grudges.
Like some epic play with the hero taken at the moment of supreme triumph, Lincoln is assassinated
five days after the surrender at Appomattox. How he might have dealt with Reconstruction will
have historians speculating for centuries. But he sure couldn't have done worse than his successor
did. That story belongs in a biography of Andrew Johnson.
There were outstanding books on Lincoln before this one and after this one. But Stephen Oates does a grand job in laying out the problems he faced and how he dealt with all of them.
top historical polls year after year as our country's greatest president than I offer another. This most
melancholy of men who deflected a lot of criticism with humor was also a man who managed to
articulate issues right down to their moral imperative. It's the reason I think that Lincoln endures
to this day and into the future for countless generations.
He had no political office at the time the new Republican party chose its second nominee for president
in 1860. The split of the Democrats in two tickets all but guaranteed his election in 1860 with barely
a vote in the would be rebel states where his party wasn't on the ballot in several. The mere election
to the presidency of a man not committed to maintaining the south's 'particular institution' of
slavery was enough to guarantee a Civil War which we had been postponing for years.
When he was the presumptive nominee of the GOP in 1858 and had that series of debates with
Stephen Douglas, Lincoln had not held office for years. His experience consisted of several terms
in the Illinois legislature and one term in Congress 1847-1849. All his rivals for that nomination
had more experience in office. None had his gift for eloquence.
He was a strange combination of melancholy and humor, the humor deflected the melancholy and
it was his face to the world. He had a rare gift of not holding grudges. His Secretary of War Edwin
M. Stanton also an attorney had worked with him on a case years before and treated him shabbily.
Not many would have put him in the Cabinet and gain his respect as well. As he said the country
was in crisis and personal grudges just had to be laid aside and not entertained.
Not many would have put a number of his rivals in his cabinet such as William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase and Edward Bates. All of these were put in nomination at the 1860 Republican Convention. That aspect of Lincoln's presidency is covered in Doris Kearns Goodwin book Team Of
Rivals, but Stephen B. Oates discusses it at length. Seward and Bates grew to respect their chief,
Chase did his job but was a chronic schemer as well and always thought he should have been where
Lincoln was.
Lincoln and his many generals has also had whole studies done by military historians, lay and professional. He tried one after another until he found his man in Ulysses S. Grant. Grant in his
way was as laconic as Lincoln. He also offered no excuses when he blundered as in the disaster
at Cold Harbor. It was a refreshing contrast to who he was dealing with before and he kept him on
until the surrender at Appomattox. William T. Sherman, Phillip H. Sheridan, and George Thomas
also rose to the fore, these four brought eventual Union victory.
Lincoln was married to Mary Todd Lincoln and our view of her is colored in many ways by the
years of her widowhood. She broke tradition and upset her southern family by marrying a man who seemed shiftless and held views antithetical to their's. Oates says their's was a happy marriage enduring despite the death of two of her four sons. Unlike her husband, that woman excelled at nursing grudges.
Like some epic play with the hero taken at the moment of supreme triumph, Lincoln is assassinated
five days after the surrender at Appomattox. How he might have dealt with Reconstruction will
have historians speculating for centuries. But he sure couldn't have done worse than his successor
did. That story belongs in a biography of Andrew Johnson.
There were outstanding books on Lincoln before this one and after this one. But Stephen Oates does a grand job in laying out the problems he faced and how he dealt with all of them.
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