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This chapter discusses the relationship between evangelical Protestantism and the American Civil War through the lives of Abraham Lincoln and William T. Sherman. The jeremiad script of evangelical Protestantism played a major role in sustaining both the Union's and the Confederacy's war efforts, even while Abraham Lincoln's own views on Providence evolved in a manner both similar to and distinctive from that of his contemporaries. Sherman, in contrast, represented the war's potential for fomenting godlessness, with the challenge his Deification of the State represented to conventional nineteenth‐century Christianity. While evangelicals proved equal to the task of fending off this heterodoxy in the short term, the military and political forces Sherman represented had lasting effects on some postwar figures like Oliver Wendell Holmes, and in historical terms, they cannot be ignored.

The Republican free-soil principle was actually a political and moral compromise with the institution of slavery, and Republican leaders were something less than willful agents of violent social revolution. Southerners made no mistake in perceiving the election of Abraham Lincoln as a sharp break with the past. To understand its revolutionary implications for southerners, one must take into account not only the malign countenance of Republicanism in the South, but also the character and conduct of the national government from 1789 to 1861. However, with Lincoln's election, all was suddenly changed. The old republic—which had protected the slaveholding interest on the high seas, in relations with foreign governments, in the District of Columbia, in the federal territories, and to some extent even in the free states—was at an end.

This chapter explores the important role played by the jeremiad in antebellum and Civil War America. It begins with the national day of fasting proclaimed by President James Buchanan in January 1861. Nineteenth‐century Jeremiahs lamented their society's moral state, looked to the example of the nation's founders, and called their fellow Americans to reform. Surrounding these narratives of decline were deeply‐rooted ideas of American chosenness, often fostered by varieties of millennialism that saw the United States as integral to the accomplishment of God's purposes in history. The chapter also explores two rival narratives to the mainstream American jeremiad during these years: an African‐American jeremiad that called down God's justice on white oppressors, and the Southern “Lost Cause” narrative, which viewed the South as a quintessential Christian civilization and lamented its defeat as a sign of God's disapproval of Southern immorality. The chapter concludes with an examination of Abraham Lincoln's unconventional employment of the jeremiad tradition.

This chapter discusses the events that transpired starting from the assassination of Abraham Lincoln on April 15, 1865. The last moments before his death and the anguish of his family and the whole American nation is detailed here. This chapter describes the early political life of Abe Lincoln and his rise to becoming president. The author also describes in detail the days and moments before that fateful day that claimed the life of a man who was well-revered by his people. This chapter also describes the mourning period that the American nation went under after his demise. The author also describes the five guiding themes in the nation's memory of Abraham Lincoln.

This chapter discusses the legacy left by Abraham Lincoln after his death. The author touches on Lincolnography and Lincolnology of scholars. The author also describes a new and improved Lincoln Encyclopedia and the call for buying and selling of Lincolniana. This chapter also discusses the curious fact that Lincoln was one person who could never be the subject of humor, but modern humorists are now making him the butt of their jokes. This chapter also discusses the succeeding themes and images of the apotheosis that became embedded in American thought and imagination. The author also describes the nation's fascination with the Lincoln assassination. This chapter also touches on Abraham Lincoln as the First American and as the self-made Man. The author also notes that Lincoln's individuality has been so embedded into the definition of Americanness that his physiognomy has blended into the representation of Uncle Sam.

This chapter focuses on the tensions within the party system in the summer of 1864, exploring the possible threats to the Union Party's distinctive combination of radicalism on the slavery question and conservative antiparty nationalism. These threats came both from the radical Republicans and from conservative Unionists who sought either a moderate third party or to take control of the Democratic convention. By September, the supporters of the administration, through a mixture of luck and tactical adroitness, had succeeded in polarizing political choices. On one side in the presidential election was a candidate (Lincoln) committed to peace through military victory with emancipation as an essential corollary. On the other was a candidate (McClellan) whose party's commitment to military reunion was questionable and whose opposition to emancipation was unshakeable.

This chapter examines historical films produced in Hollywood about the life and death of American president Abraham Lincoln made during the period from 1930 to 1941. During this period, Lincoln's presence sanctified whatever theme or subject the historian chose and he generously supported whatever period film a studio happened to create. Lincoln lent authenticity to insignificant scripts, healed any divisive tale of the Civil War and he was a prestigious touch added to secure that elusive critical and box-office appeal. Examples of these films include D.W. Griffith's Abraham Lincoln, Darryl Zanuck and Nunnally Johnson's The Prisoner of Shark Island, and John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln.

This chapter assesses the strengths and weaknesses of Abraham Lincoln, focusing on six realms: public communication, organizational capacity, political skill, policy vision, cognitive style, and emotional intelligence. Lincoln entered the White House following a mere eight years as a state legislator and two years in the House of Representatives. He excelled in all of the qualities used here to assess leadership. In the realm of communication, he showed acumen in the way he managed his message, the vision conveyed in his statements, and the clarity of his rhetoric. His organizational methods were unsystematic but effective, and were driven by his political acumen. Lincoln was also a master politician who could cooperate with others regardless of their viewpoints.

This chapter carefully analyzes the text of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address – beginning with the opening line, which evokes the Declaration of Independence rather than the Constitution – as the “preamble” to the new constitutional legal order. The author focuses on themes of nationhood, national identity, divine mission, equality and popular democracy, in contrast to the Constitution's original emphasis on a republic made up of free individuals.

This chapter explores the iconography of Lincoln's death. It shows how artists of the day portrayed—and routinely exaggerated—the scene inside the small boarding house bedroom to which the president was carried to die after he was shot across the street at Ford's Theatre. Anxious to know and remember precisely how their president had breathed his last, Americans eagerly purchased these interpretations, however wildly exaggerated. For artists depicting the scene, the death supplied a grand opportunity to memorialize a great historical event (and sell pictures). As one after another of them worked to include more and more bedside mourners, the death chamber expanded to host them—creating a phenomenon modern historians now describe as the “rubber room.” And thus the supposed grandeur of Lincoln's rather plain final surroundings became enshrined in American memory.

The Civil War was a decisive chapter in the history of American theology. While the leading theological commentators on the war continued to rely on the theological constructs that had been developed during the early years of the republic, more and more Americans found these constructs inadequate. One of the great ironies of the war era was that while theologians North and South found it very difficult to transcend the political–religious ideologies of their own regions, a few laypeople broke through to more profound theological insight. The most remarkable example was President Abraham Lincoln who, especially in his Second Inaugural Address, reached levels of theological profundity that none of the more thoroughly Americanized theologians reached.

This chapter discusses the nomination and reelection of Lincoln as President of the United States. It starts by citing events that predicted Lincoln's nomination by the Republican Party. His popularity, especially with the Army, guaranteed his reelection and the other candidates up for nomination could not really compete with him. The predictions came true, as Lincoln was elected for another term in the 1864 US Presidential elections.

This chapter's proving ground would be George Grey Barnard's Lincoln in Cincinnati's Lytle Park. As the centennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth loomed, Cincinnati, like other major cities, sought to erect a suitable monument to his memory. In 1907, Charles Taft found himself as one of thirty-five prominent citizens named to the Committee on a Permanent Memorial of the Lincoln Centennial Memorial Association. In 1909, the Committee found itself with a $100,000 windfall, the contribution of a wealthy widow, Mrs. Frederick H. Alms, whose husband, a Civil War veteran, held Lincoln in high regard. For Eleanora Alms, this was a worthy project that would honor not only her husband but also the “man he and his soldier comrades worshipped”. Her only stipulation for the donation was that the city maintain, repair, and clean in perpetuity the Lincoln statue.

Augustus Saint-Gaudens was obsessed with Abraham Lincoln in the autumn of 1883, when he hurried east to Chicago by train from Helena, Montana. As the wheels of the Pullman coach made their syncopated music over the rails, three friends passed the time by playing cards, smoking, laughing, and enjoying one another's company. It was a three-day journey alone from Helena to Saint Paul, Minnesota, the hometown of the youngest of the three, the twenty-four-year-old architect Cass Gilbert. Saint-Gaudens, the senior member of the group, a rising star on the American artistic landscape, was anxious for his next commission, a heroic statue of Abraham Lincoln—a prize commission indeed, particularly for an energetic and ambitious artist. Saint-Gaudens immersed himself in reading Lincoln's writings and available works about the president. Where Saint-Gaudens and Stanford White's collaboration departed from other Lincoln statues, getting it right in Chicago was in the use of the presidential chair as balanced against the pensive figure.

Many religious Northerners believed that God demonstrated his care for his chosen people by chastening them when they had sinned and disobeyed his laws. Slavery was one of those national sins, and devout civilians often asserted that God intended the war to destroy the peculiar institution. By the second year of war, many observers claimed that victories had been few because the government had failed to act decisively against slavery. President Lincoln, however, had determined to settle the matter by issuing the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. In contrast to most religious Northerners, he did not presume to know the mind of God but sounded a note of humble uncertainty regarding the Divine Will. The politicization of the pulpit continued as ministers promoted the war and claimed that God would preserve the Union, but some church members expressed concern that political interests had detracted from genuine spiritual vitality.

After his death, a special funeral train carried Lincoln's remains north and west over a thousand-mile journey home to Illinois, stopping for ceremonies in the leading cities of seven states. This chapter describes the passage of Lincoln's body through New York. The city had never seen so elaborate, and so crowded, an event for any hero, and the chapter helps transport the modern reader onto the Broadway of the mid-19th century, with its famously gaudy signs and shops now draped in black and adorned with Lincoln images for his last “visit” to the nation's largest metropolis. Among the many mourners were surely New Yorkers who had long and bitterly opposed the Republican president in politics; but unlike the unapologetic critics who found themselves in legal difficulties elsewhere for openly demonstrating their hostility, the chapter shows an overwhelmingly Democratic city united in sorrow.

Introduces basic concepts of social choice. Describes the median voter theorem for one issue dimension, and its chaotic failure in more than one. It explains what rhetoric and heresthetics are, also how veto games and credible commitments have operated in British politics since 1846. It introduces W.H. Riker's account of the triumph of Abraham Lincoln in 1860.