The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 9 Vols

by Abraham Lincoln, Roy P. Basler (Editor), Marion Dolores Pratt (editor)

the complete works of Abraham Lincoln

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, Reference, Civil War, Classics, American History

5500 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1894

About the author

Abraham Lincoln was the sixteenth president of the United States from 1861 and led the country during the Civil War.

Lincoln, a moderate, navigated a contentious array of factions with friends and opponents from the Democratic Party and Republican Party. He exploited mutual enmity of the factions, carefully distributing political patronage, and appealed to the American people.

Lincoln closely supervised the strategy and tactics in the war effort, including the selection of generals, and implemented a naval blockade of the trade. He suspended habeas corpus in Maryland and elsewhere, and averted British intervention by defusing the Trent Affair. He issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared free all enslaved persons in states "in rebellion against the United States." It also directed the Navy to "recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons" and to receive them "into the armed service." Lincoln promoted the thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished slavery, except as punishment for a crime.

Lincoln managed his own successful re-election campaign and sought to heal the war-torn nation through reconciliation. On April 14, 1865, just five days after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, he attended a play at theater of Ford in Washington, District of Columbia, with Mary Todd Lincoln, his wife, when Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Boothe fatally assassinated him.

Lincoln is remembered as a martyr and a national hero for for his efforts to preserve the union and abolish slavery. Popular and scholarly polls often rank Lincoln as the greatest president in American history.

Reviews

[Don Heiman · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the early 1980's, I acquired Basler's (Rutgers University Press) 9 volume "The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln" from a Fort Leavenworth US Army Command and General Staff College instructor. 45 years later, after touring 63 Civil war battlefield sites, I decided to read this amazing collection of writings. I quickly learned the full import of the US Civil War history from the eyes of Abraham Lincoln --one of the greatest civil servant in US history. This reading adventure is life changing and helps me deeply appreciate the struggles and blessings our nation continues to experience today --152 years after war's end.

[Don Heiman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This index is an excellent companion to "The Collected Writings of Abraham Lincoln". It has been very helpful in guiding me through over 4,500 pages of written text. The index for all 1953 volumes was published in 1955 and contains 378 pages of references for all eight volumes. The index also contains reference numbers for dubious texts, forgeries, and reference numbers for the location of all "Collected Works" sources. Basler's research is simply amazing.

[Ryan Mizzen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the ninth and final book, comprised entirely of an index for the whole set. This is the first time that I’ve read a set of books for which there is a standalone index.

Whilst I’ve used the previous reviews to praise Lincoln, I think it’s important to also express gratitude to the team led by Roy P. Basler, and the Abraham Lincoln Association, who produced this incredible and extremely comprehensive catalogue of Lincoln’s work. It took the team over five years to pull this set together, and they estimate that it’s almost twice as comprehensive as previous collections of Lincoln’s works, including the Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln by Nicolay and Hay. The set stretches across 4,830 pages.

I traversed back to the first volume to reread what Basler said about putting this collection together. Reflecting on what he got out of the project, Basler said, “If the prophets of doom should be right and the destruction of civilization should be accomplished by the evil forces never wholly absent from the world, ours would have been a large privilege, to survey more completely than any of our contemporaries, the slow and constant development of a great mind and personality oriented to the light in the midst of much darkness… It is that the record of past human effort, in failure and in success, in error and in truth, is the chief source from which mankind can draw an understanding of the meaning of the present and the hope of the future. To have helped in preserving an accurate record of a great man’s work is a privilege of the present which the future can properly assess only be pledging itself in some degree to those principles of honesty, justice, and human brotherhood which will distinguish the writings of Lincoln as long as they are read.”

160 years after Lincoln’s assassination, and over 70 years since this brilliant collection was published, I’m happy to have read the works of this great man, especially as the forces of evil that Basler talks about are pushing humanity towards a cliff edge. Now more than ever we need to understand and apply lessons from history. What better person to go to for that purpose than Abraham Lincoln.

[Readitnweep · Rating 5 out of 5]

A true wordsmith - how I wish he had written fiction! I know he supposedly read Aesop's Fables, which is easy to believe from his writing - and Shakespeare, but did he read current fiction?

Enjoyed reading his own words and not those of others about him.

[Ray Comfort]

The book I'm reading was written in 1905 and I found it via Project Guttenberg with forwards and introductions by Theodore Roosevelt, Joseph Choate and Carl Shurz, who was a personal friend and wrote one of the biographical sketchs.

[Vincent · Rating 4 out of 5]

This includes includes an expansive body of his work--from his debates with douglas to letters to frenemies. Though its a lot of reading, it's great to peer into how this man conversed on great, insightful topics like slavery, to mundane issues.

[Rebekah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love to read historical speeches!