Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

A Self-Made Man: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1809 – 1849
A Self-Made Man: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1809 – 1849
A Self-Made Man: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1809 – 1849
Audiobook21 hours

A Self-Made Man: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1809 – 1849

Written by Sidney Blumenthal

Narrated by Arthur Morey

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

()

About this audiobook

The first in a sweeping, multi-volume history of Abraham Lincoln—from his obscure beginnings to his presidency, death, and the overthrow of his post-Civil War plan of reconciliation—“engaging and informative and…thought-provoking” (The Christian Science Monitor).

From his youth as a voracious newspaper reader, Abraham Lincoln became a free thinker, reading Tom Paine, as well as Shakespeare and the Bible. In the “fascinating” (Booklist, starred review) A Self-Made Man, Sidney Blumenthal reveals how Lincoln’s antislavery thinking began in his childhood in backwoods Kentucky and Indiana. Intensely ambitious, he held political aspirations from his earliest years. Yet he was a socially awkward suitor who had a nervous breakdown over his inability to deal with the opposite sex. His marriage to the upper class Mary Todd was crucial to his social aspirations and his political career. “The Lincoln of Blumenthal’s pen is…a brave progressive facing racist assaults on his religion, ethnicity, and very legitimacy that echo the anti-Obama birther movement….Blumenthal takes the wily pol of Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln and Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals and goes deeper, finding a Vulcan logic and House of Cards ruthlessness” (The Washingtonian).

Based on prodigious research of Lincoln’s record, and of the period and its main players, Blumenthal’s robust biography reflects both Lincoln’s time and the struggle that consumes our own political debate. This first volume traces Lincoln from his birth in 1809 through his education in the political arts, rise to the Congress, and fall into the wilderness from which he emerged as the man we recognize as Abraham Lincoln. “Splendid…no one can come away from reading A Self-Made Man…without eagerly anticipating the ensuing volumes.” (Washington Monthly).
LanguageEnglish
Release dateMay 10, 2016
ISBN9781508214090
A Self-Made Man: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1809 – 1849
Author

Sidney Blumenthal

Sidney Blumenthal is the acclaimed author of A Self-Made Man and Wrestling with His Angel, the first two volumes in his five-volume biography, The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln. He is the former assistant and senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and senior adviser to Hillary Clinton. He has been a national staff reporter for The Washington Post and Washington editor and writer for The New Yorker. His books include the bestselling The Clinton Wars, The Rise of the Counter-Establishment, and The Permanent Campaign. Born and raised in Illinois, he lives in Washington, DC.

Related to A Self-Made Man

Related audiobooks

Political Biographies For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for A Self-Made Man

Rating: 4.065217391304348 out of 5 stars
4/5

23 ratings2 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is one of the more detailed history books I have ever read. This is the first in what will be a series of books that detail the political life of Abraham Lincoln. Countless books have been written about Lincoln, but what sets this book apart is the almost overwhelming details given about seemingly anyone of importance at the national and local (for Illinois and Washington, DC) levels during the years of the 1820s through the 1840s. At times it was difficult to keep all of the people organized in my head while reading, but I have to say that I learned more from this book than any book I can remember reading in a long time.

    I think the author was very fair showing us Lincoln as he was, warts and all. At times he was very biased against some historical figures including John C. Calhoun (who he basically blames for everything bad that happened in the country during his time as a political leader) and Joseph Smith. If I was Mormon, I would probably be offended by the chapters describing the early years of the Mormons and their leader Smith.

    I most enjoyed learning about the real divisions in the anti-slavery movements of the time. We always have the idea that all Northerners were abolitionists but as this book makes clear, the abolitionists were considered extreme radicals and there was a real difference between being an abolitionist and someone considered anti-slavery. Within those groups there were sub-groups and like any real political movement, no matter how important the cause, politics and ambition drove most of the decisions.

    Highly recommended but only for those that have a deep knowledge of of the antebellum era coming into the book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    “I used to be a slave.”Who can resist the beginning of a book, or the beginnings of a political party (the Republican Party), that starts with a statement like this?Even more intriguing, this is a statement by a United States President who is undoubtedly one of the best-known Presidents in the world, even if he is not the most beloved by all Americans in every region of the country. It is important to review the events in Abraham Lincoln’s life to see how he came to be radicalized, to become an Abolitionist at a time when most Americans weren’t interested and had no opinion on the subject of human ownership since they were not themselves slaves or slave owners. The myth of all southerners owning hundreds of slaves is exactly that, a myth, since tax records verify that even the most prosperous planters usually owned less than a dozen. There were also slave owners in the north since slavery knew no boundaries until a few states started passing laws prohibiting the practice. The discussion and the fights only began when the new western territories that were about to become states had to make a decision as to which way they would go, to legalize or not legalize slavery, to return runaway slaves to their masters or to offer them sanctuary and freedom.Why did Lincoln feel he could legitimately claim the label of “slave” and how did he come to be so opposed to slavery, an institution of that had been widely accepted in this country for over two hundred years before, since virtually the beginning of our country’s settlement by Europeans?Indeed, there were not just slaves, but also free black men and women living here on these shores as early as the 1600s. Not every person with DNA out of the African continent had an ancestor who was brought over as a slave but with the popularity of genealogical research today, there are many “white” people who are only now discovering a surprising trace of African roots since intermarriage was frequent, social class being more the deciding factor than race. The Dutch had outlawed slavery in their homeland but in their settlement on Manhattan Island, the wild frontier, the colonial governors made their own rules. Interestingly, the Dutch governors felt the Africans purchased from the Spanish slave traders were much more useful as craftsmen and tradesmen, not as crop workers, perhaps because the crops were too valuable to trust to anyone who might not have a vested interest in continuing the local way of life. This also points to an acknowledgement of, if not respect for, the talent and creative abilities of the African captives. It was only later on in the south when the (white) Scottish slaves captured in battle against the English and sentenced to slavery in Barbados and other colonies, were found to be severely deficient, if not useless, for working in hot climates that they were not accustomed to. The southern states also had a large Scots and Irish population that may have found it distasteful to enslave people who looked and sounded like them, their own former countrymen. Slaves purchased from the transatlantic trade were also less intractable than the Indians they pressed into slavery since the Native Americans escaped when they could, and being on their own continent, familiar with survival in this land, could sometimes make their way back home. Slaves were an investment, valuable property, as the author confirms in his reporting that sometimes mortgages were taken out on them, the slaves being used as collateral when the owners were in short supply of cash.But back to the book. This is a great American story that deserves your time. It is a wonderful rags-to-riches story but there are also murders, duels, great personal financial and political failures and successes, the struggles continuing right up to a few years before Abraham Lincoln’s greatest triumph, his winning the Presidency. There is intrigue, scandal, personal depression and grief over the loss of three beloved women and two sons, even near-total mental breakdown, giving a more human picture to any of us who have ever struggled in our careers or personal lives while trying to follow our passions. Abraham Lincoln’s relationship to his southern aristocratic wife, whose family owned slaves, is complicated, not at all a love story with a happily ever after. Lincoln’s difficult relationship with his father had ended long before the senior Lincoln died, perhaps in early childhood, although we will never know all the details since he diplomatically said little about his father at all. It was his father who had hired him out as a virtual slave, an underfed boy well over six feet tall, keeping for himself all the wages that the boy earned. Many human beings, even Americans, have lived and still live in some kind of bondage and this alone taps into our personal and collective outrage. As a young man travelling to towns along the Mississippi, Lincoln personally witnessed slave auctions and was appalled by what he witnessed with his own eyes.Contemporaries who described the future President as a boy said he was “always reading” and “lazy”. Today we might find his counterpart in a young person continually sneaking off to surf the web. Left to fend for himself and living almost like a feral child, young Abraham Lincoln had no schooling to speak of, however his brilliant and analytical mind was apparent to anyone who heard him speak or debate. There were only a few speeches that were recalled as not very notable when he apparently stuck to the required subject and toned it down. His lack of education credentials might today relegate him to a life of washing dishes but the lawyers who took him on as a partner were sharp enough to recognize talent when they saw it. Often historians label his great mind as his “wit”, but when that was turned against his debate partners and political opponents, it might be more aptly described as cutting sarcasm. Even though we have heard that Lincoln was highly intelligent, who among us knew he actually had a US Government patent? You’ll have to read the book to find out what it was for.We often hear the name Stephen Douglas associated with Lincoln. Who was he and why did he play such a major role in Lincoln’s life and American history? We see how this one man, a giant in his own right, was as equally responsible for Lincoln’s misery as he was for his success. We also see how Jefferson Davis, the first and only President of the Confederate States of America, rose to the position he did, not being some southern nobody but a force to be reckoned with, the one man who might have conceivably led the Confederacy to victory and led a new nation. He was certainly a worthy adversary.Lincoln actually did practice law, take on cases, and became entangled in the controversy over the emerging Mormon Church and their stormy and violent beginnings, solidifying Lincoln’s opinions on polygamy, which he considered to be a form of slavery of women. There is the strangely familiar story of Lincoln being forced by his law firm to be co-counsel for a slave owner attempting to recover his property, to get back his runaway slaves. It was said that Lincoln lost this case, gave that case away since “…he had one peculiarity: he couldn’t fight in a bad case.”The Lincoln years were times of great change and great upheaval, the children of the original American revolutionaries (John Quincy Adams) dying and the new generation coming to power, a new age beginning for the United States. Lincoln was a Whig all of his life until the birth of the Republican party. There were other parties at the time, including the Liberty Party, the Free Soil Party and the Democratic Party, some of which have largely been forgotten by the American public. There is political wheeling and dealing and back office deals brokered by each party in the interest of getting their man into the White House. Actually, come to think of it, not much has really changed in the past 150 years.There are other stories within the story: the forgotten great financial crisis of 1838 and the Mexican War. We don’t even mention this war in the history books anymore, let alone recall what it was about. Some things are just too messy to fit neatly into the American narrative. Some of the most chilling revelations in the book and in other places in recent years, are the actual street addresses where the slave auctions took place, often adjoining the city court houses. Perhaps we have passed the building or parking lot and felt a cold shadow as we passed by there or sensed that there was something more, historically, that had taken place on this spot. There are photos of many of the characters in this drama, along with descriptions, both physical and psychological, bringing many historical figures to three-dimensional life. I enjoyed seeing the less-familiar photos of old Abe himself, who by the way, was only in his mid-fifties when he died. There is also a helpful timeline and cast of characters. Although there is a mountain of information, lore about Lincoln’s beginnings were not there in great detail. This book is an absolute treasure, more about the man and his political life than surviving gossip about his beginnings. President Lincoln’s greatest asset may have been persistent patience. He is described by one man as “a powerful intellect… he possessed the power of patient thought…a very rare quality nowadays-and these alone made him a formidable antagonist…” Although my local librarian gave me a stern look and said, “You want to renew…AGAIN?!”, I would advise you to take your time and sort through this goldmine of information about the man, the heroes, the villains, the crises and the scandals of the day, the individual and historical events that have shaped us as a nation ….if you have the power of patient thought to stick with it.